A Tour of Sunnydale - Welcome to the Hellmouth

I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer a whole lot. I want to watch it again, and I like writing about it, so why not do a series of reviews on each episode? Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to A Tour of Sunnydale.

The very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - ignoring the unaired pilot episode that it shares most of its plot with and the terrible original movie - is Welcome to the Hellmouth. It is the first part of a two-parter along with the next episode The Harvest, and is written by showrunner Joss Whedon, and is the only directorial contribution of Charles Martin Smith to the series. According to The Phi Phenomenon, Welcome to the Hellmouth is on average considered the 40th best episode of the show, placing it comfortably within the top third of episodes in terms of quality. Due to the importance of... well, a first episode, the length of this review is likely to be significantly above-average, especially as I discuss a lot more specific character stuff.

From its opening moments, one thing is abundantly clear about Welcome to the Hellmouth: This is decidedly, unavoidably the 90s. The opening scene whereupon a hapless girl and a dangerous-looking boy sneak into a school and the boy reassures the nervous girl that they're all alone seems straight out of a cheesy PSA. That is, right until the girl turns out to be a vampire and murders him.

It's decidedly a bold statement right out of the gate, and it works as both a nice little moment of subversion in its own right and as a punchy, to-the-point mission statement for the entire show, but it's ultimately of so little consequence that it feels like a waste of something as momentously important as the first scene in what will become a 244 episode epic spanning 2 different shows.

But we've got more important things to do, as our protagonist lays in a bed and sees freaky visions: Weird monsters, a demon who looks like he'd be unsettingly comfortable invading the Internet, and a particularly distinctive vampire. It's clear they're prophetic, and we wonder why the girl is having them, and also why we're lingering so unbearably long on this scene. Later on we'll learn the girl is the titular Buffy, and that she's the Slayer, the one girl in all the world chosen to stand against the vampires and other forces of evil (mostly other forces of evil, as it'll turn out)

I was surprised by how immediately present Buffy was in Welcome to the Hellmouth something I'll be saying a lot throughout this review. Practically from her very first line she's just there, fully formed as the character I've grown to love so much. She's obviously green: this is season 1 Buffy, the child who wants to leave her duty behind and simply live a normal life. She knows how to slay vampires: Throughout the episode she displays admirable initiative, knowledge and general effectiveness at her job, be it in her quick assessment of the situation with the dead boy in the locker, the decisive action she takes at the Bronze, or the cocky swagger she puts on to taunt the vampires into attacking her in the final showdown in the mausoleum.

A character who definitely doesn't just materialize as impressively fully-formed as Buffy is Xander, who is introduced to us being cool on a skateboard before failing completely because of horniness, and who we are to understand is a loser. In the first season Xander will have plenty of opporunity to demonstrate he is both an idiot and a complete loser, but in this episode he's actually presented as funny, good looking, perceptive and surprisingly cool, which makes it seem like his only social flaw is hanging out with Willow and Jesse. We'll talk about Willow later, but Jesse's entire role in this episode appears to be being exactly Xander but creepily horny all the time. He's not well done, and whilst in the whirlwind of everything that's happening it may not be obvious what his fate is, it certainly is evident on a rewatch in the minimal amount of effort put towards giving him a personality.

The other character who just appears to poof into existence fully formed is Willow, who is exactly the early-season Willow Rosenberg I adore so much. She's a pushover and a shy wallflower, but she's kind-hearted and gentle and willing to help complete strangers. There's a couple plot beats that don't work very well, mostly in the scene in the Bronze: It's already evident even this early on that Willow digs Xander big time, but yet she says she can't talk around boys she likes, and it's awkward how quickly her shy attitude goes away upon hearing Buffy's advice, but both of these come across as oversights rather than intended character traits.

To round of the original four Scoobies is Giles, the librarian and Buffy's Watcher, who is introduced as a more exageratedly British and twee version of himself than we'll grow to know. It's honestly kind of annoying at this point, and he comes across as a much more one-note character than he is, essentially just a less creepy Merrick from the original movie. Still, I respect the clever way he is used to seamlessly merge exposition into the show: What Buffy doesn't know he explains for obvious reasons, whilst her backstory is a constant source of beffudelment to him, which he explains as much to himself as to Buffy or the audience. It works surprisingly well, and it actually took me a while to realize I was being exposited to.

Another major character introduced in the episode is Angel, who is basically a completely different person from what he quickly morphs into. He's got the mysterious and handsome part pat down, but otherwise he's got a mysterious trickster vibe to him, and you get the feeling he's warning Buffy of an impending threat as much for his own amusement as any other reason. He's snarky, funny and likeable: A more handsome, grown up, mysterious Xander. He's decidedly not the Angel I remember from early Buffy: I actually want to see more of this character.

To round of this massive dump of new characters is Cordelia, who is just as one dimensional as she'll remain until the third season, but who is introduced brillianty: Initially appearing as a nice girl who helps Buffy out and who has a genuinely fantastic scene of bonding with her over fashion, she's soon revealed to be a terrible bully to poor innocent Willow who has the cutest and most heart-breaking reaction in the history of television, firmly cementing the until just moments ago sympathetic  Cordelia as thoroughly unlikeable. It's effective television, and may in fact be my favorite moment in this first episode.

Beyond this run-down of character introductions there's actually surprisingly little to say about Welcome to the Hellmouth. Very little actually happens: Buffy moves into a new school, meets some people, doesn't want to be the Slayer, gets some cryptic advice, then has to rescue Willow. This is why I typically consider The Harvest the stronger part of the opening two - parter (Which is why it surprised me that it's number 67 on The Phi Phenomenon, considerably lower than Welcome to the Hellmouth), since Hellmouth is the setup for the actual plot happening in Harvest. That said, Welcome to the Hellmouth is a strong opening to the series. It's very effective at setting the tone the series will maintain for most of its first two seasons, and it has a lot of strong scenes (Buffy's meeting with Principal Flutie is fantastic, and there's some absolutely phenomenal mother-daughter dialogue between her and Joyce), as well as Joss Whedon's trademark witty dialogue. It's also masterful at making the large amount of exposition it presents go down very easily thanks to clever writing. Unfortunately, like a lot of the weaker first season, it really doesn't stand up to later Buffy and Angel, and feels somewhat disappointing as a result. Welcome to the Hellmouth is an appropriate introduction to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's kind of all it is.

Here's ranking and rating: The ranking is of all episodes of Buffy and Angel I've watched so far, with 1 being the best one, and the rating is out of ten in context of the quality of the show: I'm essentially trying to decide what 10% of quality of that particular show the episode belongs in. Because both shows are so good, this means negative ratings are not neccesarily a diss on the episode -  I just think it's one of the show's weaker ones.

Ranked List

Rating: 3/10. I can't see liking many episodes of Buffy less than this one, but there's definitely a decent amount that are weaker.

Thoughts on the first episode of Life is Strange Before The Storm

Last year's Life is Strange was not only one of my favorite games of the year, but also one of my favorite games of all time. Despite some clear and glaring flaws, there was a solid emotional core to that game. It portrayed the late teenage years of its characters with all the nostalgic, wistful flair that they deserved, but didn't shy away from the genuinely horrid things that teenagers often going through, whether they be relentless bullying, genuine struggles with self-esteem and mental issues, or having to deal with broken family life. It also focused on an incredibly dark story-line involving a series of mysterious disappearances of high-school girls that made it pretty explicitly clear how terrible the stuff these girls went through really was.Through its gentle folksy-indie rock soundtrack and painterly watercolor aesthetic it made the often very fucked-up content of some of its harsher moments more shocking, but also ensured that a game that went to some very dark places didn't feel exhaustingly gloomy.

Of course, the two standout features of the original Life is Strange were its supernatural elements, whereupon our main character Max can mysteriously rewind time and has visions of a weird storm wiping out town in a week, and the truly heartfelt but nonetheless complex relationship between Max and her estranged childhood friend Chloe. The supernatural elements were sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the episodes that focus most strongly on them (1 and 5) are by far the weakest, which I'd argue is a direct result of said focus. On the other, they're responsible for a lot of the good puzzles, the two strongest sequences in the game (namely the ending of episode 2 and the stretch from the last scene of 3 to the end of the first hour of 4), and the key ability to see the short-term results of each branch of big choices before committing to one path that gave decision-making a dynamic unique to the rest of the genre.

Chloe, however, is phenomenal. A combination of great character writing, a fantastic voice performance by Ashly Burch and a big old ball of complicated hang-ups, Chloe Price is the real reason to play Life is Strange. I basically have nothing negative to say about her as a character. Much like The Walking Dead's Clementine, Chloe is the biggest reason I like one of my favorite games of all time.

Nonetheless, I was incredibly worried when Life is Strange: Before the Storm was announced. Chloe as the playable character seemed like a fairly terrible idea after seeing how that turned out for Clementine in the mediocre second season of The Walking Dead. The announcement that it would focus on her relationship with Rachel Amber, the girl whose disappearance kicks off the investigation that Max and Chloe carry out in the original game, was also somewhat disappointing. I just didn't really want to see that relationship. In Life is Strange, Rachel Amber was held up on a pedestal as basically a perfect human being. Everyone except Victoria loved her, and it was implied that her spirit was acting as a guide to Max from the other world. Rachel Amber was the symbol of everything that Max wanted and needed to become. Having a perfect character like that in your story is a tricky thing to do well, especially in a world where everyone is as messed up inside as they are in Arcadia Bay, and I didn't want the game to take that risk for no reason. The other option is making Rachel Amber yet another teenager in the fucked-up world of Blackwell Academy, with her own hang-ups and imperfections. This would certainly make her more interesting, but that would kind of undercut her place in the story of the previous game.

That second option is exactly what Life is Strange: Before the Storm does in its first episode. Below her perfect facade, Rachel Amber is yet another teenager with the same types of problems that everyone else does. I do honestly enjoy the way she's presented in this game. She's friendly, cool, and instantly likable in a way that completely justifies Chloe's complete and utter infatuation with her by the time the first game rolls about, but only until the shit hits the fan, at which point she becomes an unreasonable angry mess of a human being. You can see features Chloe displays in the original but is missing in Before the Storm in Rachel, and Chloe even begins to pick up some bad habits from Rachel near the end of the episode. Unfortunately, this does mean that my pre-release fear came to be. Rachel Amber is a good character in Life is Strange: Before the Storm. She also makes the first game weaker by the sole fact that we ever get to see her on screen. I'm glad she's well written, but I'd rather she was never written at all.

Another big worry was, as previously mentioned, the use of Chloe as the playable character. Back when The Walking Dead Season 2 came out, I was immensely disappointed in the use of Clementine as the playable character in that game. I thought it promising pre-release, but it turned out she was completely unfit to the role. Whilst the game attempted to chronicle her slide from the innocence and naivete that the first season's protagonist Lee was so keen on protecting, it came across as forced, with Clementine being put in absolutely horrible situations for no apparent reason other than to make the audience feel bad for her. It turned out that when it was the player that was doing the thinking and decision-making and not the character you couldn't really make the character properly change that way. My preconceptions of who Clementine was prevented me from seeing the changes in her, and my own desire to make her commit certain actions as a player resulted in a frustrating disconnect.

Chloe is handled much better than Clementine, but playing as her still brings up a fair share of issues. The game puts a lot less choice on the player than Life is Strange did. There's only two major choices in the episode, and both of them seem to basically have all their consequences play out by the end of it. The less important general dialogue choices are also more tonal decisions than about actually affecting the flow of conversation. This means that Chloe is decidedly the same Chloe Price we met in Life is Strange, if somewhat younger and less cynical. This aspect of the game works pretty well, and it allows Chloe to go through a fairly satisfying little arc from the start of the episode to the end. Unfortunately, it also means that you don't really feel like you're properly controlling Chloe, or making any real decisions. Whilst the first Life is Strange was fairly linear in what you could do on the larger scale, you could push Max towards making drastically different choices at the local level. Take the beachside conversation with Frank in the fourth episode of Life is Strange, where you can have Max settle at anything from both Frank and his dog getting shot to everyone leaving the conversation having reconciled, and compare it to the argument with Rachel at the end of the first episode of Before the Storm, where no matter what you do the two of you make up and come to a mutual understanding.

Despite this, I still had a problem with understanding just how much this is the fucked-up punk-rock stoner Chloe we see through most of Life is Strange, and how much this is the naive happy girl with a fascination with pirates that we saw briefly in flashback near the end of the third episode. It's up to the player to some extent, and the moments where the game left this in my hands left me confused as to just how cynical and dark the Chloe I was playing as was, making me feel like I should be trying to role play this character I know rather than making my own decisions. The bits of the game that control Chloe for you (and the internal monologue she gives throughout) seem to be just as confused in this regard. I understand to some extent the point is that this is a Chloe that's not adopted the tough girl persona we see in Life is Strange, but one that is scarred by William's death and Max's perceived abandonment of her. This does often come across very effectively, with fantastic little lines of dialogue where Chloe seems to fluctuate between sadness and rage on the drop of a dime, but there's also a large part of the dialogue that just seems to indicate Chloe is totally one way before jarringly u-turning into the other mode after several minutes.

Despite these flaws, I'm excited to see where Before the Storm goes next. It's not much more flawed than the often cringe-worthy first episode of the original game, and it has some pretty high highs. It's inherited a lot of the strengths of the first game, and has interesting new twists on a lot of it. Getting to see a young and earnest Nathan Prescott, impotent to deal with the bullies that made him into the monster he is in the original, or a Victoria Chase who's not yet properly stepped into her alpha bitch role and hasn't learned to hide her inferiority complex is truly fascinating. The story of Rachel Amber and Chloe's friendship has some issues: It moves too fast and feels too important to the two of them way too soon, but it's nonetheless got some cool moments of genuine human connection that are up there with the very best scenes between Max and Chloe in the original. The new backtalk system is a cool mechanical replacement for the time-travel mechanic from Life is Strange, and is very appropriate to Chloe's character, especially in this period of her development. This feels like another Episode 1 of Life is Strange: Severely flawed and apparently a harbinger of a game that has deep-seeded issues niggling at a very strong core experience. The original managed to get rid of these issues as quickly as the very next episode. If the other two episodes of Before the Storm are as good as episodes 2 and 3 of Life is Strange, we might be in for something really great. It just needs to iron out the wrinkles as quickly and effectively as its predecessor.

Tamako Market - Delactable

A year or two ago, before I properly got into anime, I tried out Tamako Market. I found it incredibly boring, if admittedly well made, so I dropped it halfway through the third episode and went on to watch some generic shounen action show instead.

Upon getting into this stuff and becoming a raving lunatic who'll sing the praises of Kyoto Animation all day long and especially of director Naoko Yamada, I was rather surprised to find out that that rather mediocre show I dropped a while prior was made by the same person who'd made the frankly life-changing K-On!, the incredibly well-directed A Silent Voice, as well as the person who worked in the background on the incredibly solid Hibike! Euphonium. Naoko Yamada has quickly become one of my absolute favorite creatives alive, so I felt the need to go back and give Tamako Market a second chance.

What I found was a very solid, but somewhat unremarkable little slice-of-lifeish comedyyyyy fantasy? romance thing. Indeed, despite feeling fairly generic, Tamako Market is a show whose genre is hard to pin down. It focuses on the titular Tamako, who lives in the titular market, the daughter of a mochi shop owner. A talking bird with the power to become a projector in search for a bride for its prince suddenly shows up and winds up living with Tamako and getting incredibly fat.

Then the show just kind of goes. For the most part, Tamako Market engages in the same kind of shenanigans as Naoko Yamada's other big show, K-On!, with most episodes being their own little self-contained stories that nonetheless form part of a larger overarching story (think monster of the week, if the monsters were things like making a new friend or participating in a school festival). The little vignettes that make up each episode are usually very effective. There's no episode of Tamako Market that isn't fun, and, whilst the show demonstrates a bit of propensity for forced drama, most of them contain at least one or two genuinely heartwarming moments. 

This is helped in large part by the show's large supporting cast. Tamako and her immediate group of friends and family are fairly well-fleshed out, but most of the show's cast are workers at the market where Tamako's dad's store is located. They all have incredibly one-note personalities, but the show leans very strongly into them by making that one note play at the exact right time, really helping to punctuate both serious moments and jokes. You'll never get a full episode dedicated to the record shop guy, but he's sure to have an amusingly out-of-nowhere pseudo-deep quote and the perfect record to put on when the moment is right. They've also got their own friendships and rivalries between themselves that are often only hinted at via visuals (The croquette lady and the flower shop owner are always hanging out together, for instance). As such, despite being transparently shallow and one-dimensional, these characters manage to become fairly endearing. Combine with this fact their visual designs are spot-on, and that there's a ridiculously large number of them, and the market becomes a lively, believable place, full of people we like enough to be willing to suspend our disbelief in.

However, this focus on the supporting cast (and the larger main cast) means that Tamako Market is nowhere near as in-depth of a character study as K-On!. We don't get to know Tamako and company as well as we do the members of Hokago Tea Time and the one or two other people that make up the central core of K-On!. This would be fine, since K-On! is an incredibly high bar to set, but there's also the problem that the main cast is mostly fairly bland, suffering the same "one trait" syndrome that the supporting cast has. We certainly get to know them better, and their personalities are more multifaceted, but everything they do tends to fit very neatly within their archetype. Tamako is the ditzy energetic protagonist, Yui Hirasawa without the nuance. Dela is the goofily pompous mascot character that always gets his comeuppance, Teddie minus the existential dread. Midori is the responsible normal friend, Kanna is the short deadpan friend (also best girl), Shiori is the shy and kind friend, Mochizou is the childhood friend with a crush on the main character and no idea how to express it, Anko is the bratty but deep down kind younger sister, etcetera.

These characters aren't bland enough to not be able to relate or become fond of them (I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for Tamako's dad and Kanna), but they are bland enough to make the show as a whole rather unremarkable. I see in Tamako Market what a lot of people purport to see in a lot of similar shows, including my beloved K-On!. It's mostly cute girls doing cute things, which is a nice thing to see. A lot of these cute things are very cute, and when the show wants it can be really genuinely heartwarming. It's well made: It looks good, the dialogue mostly works, and the overarching storyline is fairly satisfying. It's not even lacking an identity the way I thought something like Sansha Sanyou did: the market setting is uniquely well executed, and gives the show its own distinct energy and feel.

But that's kind of all I see in it. It's a really, really good one of these, one of the best, but that's all it is. I just can't go beyond "good" on this one, even when I honestly kind of want to. It's a solid story, well told, with its own distinct thing that makes watching it over the millions of similar shows worthwhile, but it never went beyond. It didn't have a couple of incredibly powerful moments that blew me away like something like Death Parade, but it also wasn't consistently beyond just good, like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It certainly wasn't both things, like is the case with my absolute favorites in K-On! and Cowboy Bebop. It was just baseline good, baseline really really solid the entire way throughout.

Possibly the most frustrating thing about it is that I feel like it's content to be that way. It never really tries to go beyond. The closest it comes is in episode 10, which happens to be the best episode of the entire series, where a plot point that's been foreshadowed since the start pays off and there's a bigger focus on the emotional climax than most other episodes. For the rest of its run time, Tamako Market is obviously content to just be good. That's a commendable thing. "Just" being good is fairly high praise in my book, it's a hard thing to achieve indeed. What makes it frustrating is knowing that Naoko Yamada is able to do so much more. This is by far her weakest work, and I get the feeling that it's that way due to a lack of ambition rather than a lack of talent. I should not feel as robbed by a show that I like as much as I do Tamako Market, but I suppose that's the curse of high expectations.

Final Score: 7/10

Tamako Market is a decidedly good show with tonnes of positives and very few failings, which definitely makes it worth a watch. Unfortunately, that's kind of all it is or ever aspires to be. 

Double Feature: The Asterisk War and Say I Love You

It's been a while since I actively despised something I watched. I've seen all kind of bad film and TV recently. Sometimes it's me specifically looking for bad stuff, like my millionth rewatch of The Room, or the slightly drunk decision I made to watch Tammy & the T-Rex. More often, it's me stumbling upon it, like the absolutely awful Prometheus, the incredibly boring and overly edgy Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, or the nothing that is Yuru Yuri.

But I've watched a lot of shit. One of my favorite pastimes at university was putting on a terrible movie and ripping it apart with my friends. When you've willing subjected yourself to Birdemic, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Beast of Yucca Flats and Smosh: The Movie, it's hard to really be upset at anything for being bad anymore. This rigorous training has kind of broken me. My reaction to bad film and television is no longer to be angry or bored, it's to laugh at it. Even the worst of the worst is amusing in it's awfulness, like that bit in 5 Centimeters Per Second  (a film which contrary to popular belief is garbage) where a dude sits on a train for 20 minutes and nothing happens except pseudo-philosophical monologue. That's funny! Why the fuck would you put that in there? This is silly, therefore the idea of it amuses me.

Whether fortunately or unfortunately though, I've recently found out that there is, indeed, still things that will drive me insane with their awfulness. Recently, I made the terrible decision to watch The Asterisk War, which became a bit of a seasonal laughing stock for the community back when it first aired, and which has since become infamous because of Digibro's seminal 13 part bitch-a-thon The Asterisk War Sucks, where he tears the series apart in scary levels of detail.

There's very little I can say about The Asterisk War that isn't covered in this series of video essays. It's puerile wish fulfillment at its worst, designed to make the main character look cool first, and any other concerns are essentially disregarded. As a result, it presents a world full of plastic characters that seem to exist solely to adhere to the archetypes that we expect them to be in, and to fawn over every move main character Ayato makes. Characters act unbelievably and nonsensically, and nothing of real interest happens other than new situations for Ayato to look badass by easily handling presenting themselves. There is simply nothing to sink one's teeth into. All attempts at intrigue fall completely flat due to their resolution being obvious and telegraphed, and thematic depth is simply not attempted.

This is my exact problem with Say I Love You, the 2012 shoujo romance show by studio Zexcs. Say I Love You is only wish fulfillment. It may be less obvious in intent, but a simple watch-through should be enough to demonstrate this. It follows Mei, a girl who was betrayed by her friends as a child and who has distanced herself from the rest of her classmates in order to avoid getting hurt again. She's noticed by Kurosawa, the hottest guy in school who has all the girls hanging from his every word. He finds her interesting, you see, since she's not superficial like all those other girls. He begins hanging out with her, and they soon fall in love and begin dating.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this. In fact, after the first episode of Say I Love You, I was excited to watch more. Mei had a quietly fiery attitude to her, avoiding conversation at all costs and not hesitating to roundhouse kick a dude in the face for annoying her. Meanwhile, Kurosawa seemed nice but had a sliminess to him that seemed to stem from being so effortlessly popular this whole time.

This all disappears after episode one. Kurosawa is just the nicest, hottest, and as we later discover, richest dude in school. Mei is just a shy, plain wallflower who he immediately hopelessly falls for whilst ignoring the advances of much more attractive girls. You know this story, you've seen it before, and you'll see it again.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much literally all there is. There's a bunch of drama, but it all involves either Mei or Kurosawa misunderstanding the other's intentions, or assuming something untrue. The show goes through three or four mini-arcs, but they're all the exact same: Some new character is introduced, who immediately falls, or is established to have a long-time love, for one of the main characters. One of the main couple thinks the other is in love with said new character, and starts acting like a dick. A supporting character, usually the meddler in one of the previous arcs, talks to whoever's being suspicious, tells them to talk it out with their significant order, and they reconcile, inducting that arc's new character into their group of friends.

What's telling is how this is portrayed depending on who is suspicious. When Mei's suspicious, she's full of internal doubt and guilt. Surely Kurosawa couldn't do this to her? No, but he must, the evidence points to it! But then he's too much of a good person for this! I guess I'll just be quiet and wait for the issue to resolve itself. Which it then does, with a token show of effort from Mei, and then the girl who was being confrontational realizes just how great and cool Mei is and becomes one of her devoted group of close friends.

On the other hand, when it's Kurosawa, he's being a dick. Surely he should know Mei wouldn't do this to him? I mean, it's obvious that she's doing nothing wrong. Why would he suspect? Oh, it turns out he was just being too gallant and protective because he just loves Mei so damn much, he can't stand the idea of her being taken away from him. Mei is just so great and he loves her so much. Kurosawa loves Mei, and Mei is the woman Kurosawa loves, so Kurosawa is in love with Mei whom he is in love with and loves.

This really is all there is to Say I Love You. It's childish wish fulfillment, meant to help teenage girls live the fantasy that even though they might be boring and have no friends one day the prince charming they deserve will come and recognize them for the incredible person they are and fall deeply in love with them.

You know what? I have no problem with wish fulfillment. I love a lot of shonen action shows, like Cowboy Bebop or Food Wars where a decent part of the appeal is imagining myself as someone as effortlessly badass as the main character. It's valuable escapism that helps you remove yourself from the problems of the world. But wish fulfillment isn't all there is to art. Bebop's Spike Spiegel is an undeniable badass, yes, but he's also a complex character. Cowboy Bebop is about him dealing with the trauma and pain of living in the real world, and about how his badassery stems from a detachment from the tragedies going on around him that he has to struggle to maintain in order to be able to simply live in Bebop's cutthroat world. Even the much simpler and much more fun-oriented Food Wars' main character Soma has to deal with the elitist structure of the food world, where his cooking style oriented around making the best of simple ingredients and recipes is looked down upon by a culture dominated by fancy dishes made from the most expensive ingredients around. Much of Food Wars is centered around Soma understanding how and why this elitist system came about, and figuring out how to prove himself within it without loosing his own distinctive style. In other words, Food Wars is about an artist struggling to improve without loosing his individuality.

Wish fulfillment does not mean you can't have thematic depth. That's the thing that both The Asterisk War and Say I Love You fail to understand. By centering their shows entirely around wish fulfillment, they become boring. Even if I project myself onto Ayato, there's no satisfaction. There's no feeling that I've figured something out, or at least come out well from some sort of internal struggle. I've simply been a badass my whole life and effortlessly crushed some evil dudes. So what? Me, as a person, what have I gained from being Ayato? I escaped my mundane life for a bit, and got plopped right back in it, none the wiser. After projecting myself onto Spike, though, I came out having thought some more about how to deal with bad things in my past, and with some food for thought about how I should interact with tragedies that happen around me, but not to me, in the future. It hasn't necessarily changed the way I act or behave, but Spike is a character with applicability to real life. He makes me think about things.

Thinking about things is the part of fiction that entertains. At no point during The Asterisk War or Say I Love You did I find myself thinking about anything. I'm not asking to be made to consider moral conundrums. It's fine if all I'm wondering about is how the character will get out of this situation, or what happens next. But these were shows so busy trying to make me want to be their main character that they set up absolutely boring, by the numbers worlds and plots that have no room for surprises.

This is all a long way of saying that there's just nothing interesting about either The Asterisk War or Say I Love You. They're not interesting on a plot level. Their worlds aren't anything interesting. There's no characters in them that took me by surprise. Most egregiously of all, they're about nothing: nothing to say or think about whatsoever. If these weren't both very good looking shows with competent audio mixing, there'd be absolutely nothing reedemeable about either of them. This type of stuff is precisely why wish fulfillment is a dirty word when it comes to talking about fiction. Both The Asterisk War and Say I Love You get

2/10

for being some of the most boring, pointless shows I've ever had the displeasure to watch. I absolutely hated both of these shows.

The appeal of the Pokemon games.

I recently wrote an absolutely gushing review of Pokemon Sun, in which I praised it for just how much of a joy it is to play. In the same review, I mentioned Pokemon Black, and how its in-depth story and self-reflection on the series' internal logic made it appealing.

It really made me think: Why do I like the Pokemon games? I mean, there's a pretty simple reason why I like all of them: The Pokemon designs are endlessly creative, and the mechanics started off  really good and got progressively better and better with each installment. Even without the various distinctions of the different games strengths and weaknesses, Pokemon would be worth playing just for the combat alone.

And yet, that's not the only (or even main) reason I play any given game in the series. It seems like each game has a new and different appeal to me, and it's the series' ever-changing nature that really keeps me hooked, never quite sure what the thing that'll stand out to me in the next one is.

Because of that, though, I have trouble justifying to myself why Pokemon Blue is still one of my favorite installments in the series. Being the first, it's the most baseline of the Pokemon games, and I don't think many people will claim it isn't the absolute weakest mechanically. It's a ridiculously standard adventure, with the Kanto region lacking the originality of future regions and the story being as basic as it gets.

Part of me screams that this must be nostalgia goggles. This is the first game I ever really played, of course I'd be fond of it. But yet, on my very numerous return trips through Kanto on my by now decrepit GameBoy Colour, I've never been disappointed in my high expectations the same way I have by other childhood favorites. Instead, I find the simplicity and straight-forwardness of Kanto charming. Future regions go for specific vibes, be it the traditional Japanese Johto, tropical Hoenn, or distinctly European Kalos. Kanto is just a simple collection of fairly vanilla towns and fields, but that gives it its own personality and universal appeal (though there are certainly many memorable locations around). Meanwhile, the story, simpler than any other game, is somewhat charming, with Team Rocket being just obviously evil, and Red slowly growing in power to be able to defeat them. Pokemon Blue is charmingly simple and innocent, without the nuance of the future games. It's by far the most childish of the Pokemon games, and this is what brings me back to it a lot.

Its sequel, Pokemon Crystal, however, is possibly my least favorite game in the series, duking it out with generation four's Pokemon Platinum for the bottom spot. I can understand the appeal of it, I really can. Johto's a cool region, feeling distinctly ancient, which contrasted with Kanto's vanilla vague modernity, and the larger emphasis on story and character made the stakes feel both bigger and more personal. I view Pokemon Crystal as a stepping stone to the things that made me love every future generation, be it its larger emphasis on an interesting region or on character, but I simply don't think it fleshed out those aspects enough. I have heard from its many fans the argument that what makes it great is the lack of focus on every aspect, giving it a jack-of-all trades appeal, and that's certainly one that I can understand. It also features two of the coolest moments in the series: Realizing that you get to go through Kanto after beating Johto, and of course, the unforgettable battle with Trainer Red deep within Mt. Steel.

Generation Three for me is where the Pokemon I really love begins. Pokemon Ruby is in my triumvirate of 9/10 Pokemon games, though it definitely comes in behind Black and Sun. The Hoenn region is simply an accomplishment unlike anything else in the Pokemon series up until this point. It's fundamentally different from either Kanto or Johto, feeling considerably more fantastical. It's a tropical region, with lakes formed inside craters, fields of ash created by active volcanoes, a city entirely in the trees of a jungle, and a small, rustic village floating on logs in the ocean. Hoenn is brimming to the edge with cool things to discover, little cryptic secrets to uncover, and marvels of nature to wonder at. It's also full of unique characters, with their own quirks and personalities. It's bigger than anything the Pokemon series had ever produced, and I'd argue it's to this day the most creative region we've seen. I recently re-visited the region playing Omega Ruby, and was blown away by just how damn cool this thing is. Pokemon Ruby is a game that puts me in awe every time I turn a corner, no matter how damn well I know what is around that corner. Also, that soundtrack is the best, fuck everyone who complains about the horns, they rule.

Pokemon Platinum, however, takes a different approach. I've mentioned previously I'm not a massive fan of the Sinnoh region, but I can't really diss it for being badly made. Whilst approaching Kanto levels of blandness, Sinnoh is big. I mean, really massive. There's a lot to explore and do in Pokemon Platinum. This is by far the biggest game in the series, and, whilst I don't think the content is as fun minute-per-minute as most other entries, there's definitely more sheer amount of fun to be had simply because of the amount of time you'll be spending in even a non-completionistic adventure through Sinnoh. Familiarity with a world breeds fondness, and I was certainly fond of some of my favorite hangouts in Sinnoh by the time I was done with the massive adventure through it. It's not like Sinnoh is completely devoid of flavor by any means, but it's not as jam-packed with it as its predecessors or some of its successors. I tend to become irritated at Pokemon Platinum because of how damn slow-moving it is, and how it doesn't have as many cool things in it as say, Ruby, but it's not an experience I deem unworthy in any way.

Pokemon Black's Unova is just as dull, if not even duller, than Sinnoh. However, what Pokemon Black does is put all its eggs into one basket: That of its story and characters. As a result, this is by far the best story told in a Pokemon game, filled with fantastic characters with tonnes of depth and complexity. Pokemon Black is a dark and complex game, exploring moral questions that the rest of the series had taken for granted. Exploring its story and its moodier, more grown-up worldview would make it an outstanding game in the series, but it cleverly peppers its cast of great characters throughout the world, often making Gym Leaders active participants in the plot around the area of their town. As such, the world feels a lot more alive than it really is, and you get a real feeling as to what Gym Leaders' role in the world is, which is a huge boon for the rest of the series. It's also an absolutely gorgeous game, which I think was only recently overthrown by Pokemon Sun as the prettiest in the series. Whenever I feel like playing a Pokemon game that makes me think, or one that's slightly moodier than the rest, Pokemon Black is a solid choice.

I unfortunately have nothing to say about Black 2 or White 2. I own a copy of White 2 and plan to play it soon, but this duet is still the only main series installment I've not played.

Pokemon X carries the tradition of me not really caring for the even-numbered generations, though to a much lesser extent than Crystal or Platinum. The french-flavored Kalos region is a stunning place. It really does compete with both Hoenn and Alola for the "favorite region" spot, even if I think it falls slightly behind the two of them. Pokemon X might be the most stylish game in the series. It oozes with elegance and beauty the entire way through, in a way very uncharacteristic of the series. It also takes a similarly dark tone to Black, though playing it in contrast to the beautiful surroundings as opposed to Black's moody American-inspired cities. Its story is admittedly fairly boring, and the massive roster of important characters ends up being quite bland, but these are faults that Ruby also had, and I think just how damn cool Kalos is makes up for it

My main issue with X, and the reason I come back to it less than Blue, Ruby, Black or, I'm sure now Sun is that it's the only Pokemon game that I don't enjoy the combat in outside of multiplayer. Pokemon X  is simply too damn easy. In both of my playthroughs I turned off the EXP share, which means I was essentially playing on hard mode, and I never once lost a battle, breezing through every gym leader, the boss of Team Flare, and, most upsettingly of all, through the Elite Four. There's simply no challenge here, and as such the game becomes really boring to play. I'm just hoping the inevitable remakes a few generations down the line up the challenge. As is, I think I'll limit revisits to Kalos to simply tourist-trips through my completed save file rather than starting a new one. It's a real shame, because if I liked playing through the game getting to see Kalos again would be a treat similar to the pleasure of seeing Hoenn for the millionth time. I may prefer X to Platinum or Crystal, but it's a lot more likely I'll replay the latter two.

Of course, I already gave a very long explanation of why I absolutely adore Pokemon Sun, which you can find here. To summarize: I think this is the game with the best region in the series. Alola is an amazing place, one that feels more real than any other region so far. It's full of welcoming, warm people, but is deeply connected to its primal roots. You're also graced with an absolutely fantastic assemble cast of characters that go on a journey with you, and with Lillie, the best character in all of Pokemon. Most of all, it's an amazingly pleasant experience. Most of everything is nice, warm, and inviting. This makes the moments that aren't stand out even more, but most importantly it makes Pokemon Sun a real joy to play through, a game that kept a smile on my face for most of my play time in it. Rather than the complicated reasons the rest of the series gives me for playing them, Pokemon Sun made me real happy, and that's all I needed.




I really do adore the Pokemon series. It's often accused of sticking too closely to the same formula, but I think that that's an unfair accusation. It's a series that goes in many different directions, with different reasons to play each entry. It's maintained itself fresh and enjoyable throughout the years because it's willing to shake up what makes the experience stand out whilst leaning on the same incredibly solid mechanical core. Even the entries I like less I enormously respect, because I think they simply nail experiences I don't necessarily care about having that much. You don't get to be a series as well-loved and enduring as Pokemon without having the guts to present experiences that have such wildly different appeals.

Pokemon Sun is the best one yet

Note: I'm talking about Pokemon. Since they have two games per installment, I'll just be referring to either the one I played or the one that has the first title when you usually say it (X and Y, Ruby and Sapphire, etc)

Seldom has a game made me as happy as Pokemon Sun. I'm a big fan of the Pokemon series. Pokemon Blue was the first game I ever owned, and I'm told by my parents that my young self liked it so much that I learned to read in order to be able to play it. Pokemon Blue, along with the mechanics of the Pokemon series, will always have a special place in my heart, for obvious reasons. I'm also a big fan of the generation three games, with Pokemon Ruby being my favorite game before I got properly into games, and definitely one of the games I've played the most. It's an expansive, fantastically crafted world, with tonnes of creative monster designs and a kickass soundtrack.

Up till now, however, it was the first wave of generation five games, specifically Pokemon Black, that I considered the best, due to their unusually story-focused approach. You still had the usual depth of a Pokemon game, but with a story that actually made you care about it. Cheren, Bianca, Ghetsis and especially N are fantastic characters, and the story as a whole is a fascinating look into the morality behind the whole premise of the series. Whilst the Unova region shares some blandness with Sinnoh, Pokemon Black had me legitimately thinking about the big questions that, up until that point, had been relegated to jokey observations between Pokemon fans.

That said, it was tonally a lot darker than the series had been up until that point. It's not that there wasn't dark stuff previously (Lavender Town is still a symbol of childhood trauma for many gamers), but generation five put dark themes at the very core of the experience of playing it. So did generation six, with its major theme of war and death. This isn't necessarily a bad thing (I just got telling you that the darkest game in the series used to be my favorite!), but it's not why I originally came to Pokemon. Pokemon Blue was a fun, relatively light-hearted romp through a land full to the brim of cool looking monsters.

In this way, despite all of its advances, bells and whistles and clear effort to shake up the formula, Pokemon Sun is the most old-school game in the series since the GameBoy. Set in the Hawaiian-inspired island paradise of Alola, it has you play a newcomer who's soon to obtain their starter Pokemon, chosen from one of three types that play off each other in a rock-paper-scissors manner. However, instead of a relatively lonely journey to fight the Gym Leaders of the region in Pokemon battle in order to gain access to the Elite Four and become champion whilst ocasionally running into your jerkass rival who picked the Pokemon with a type advantage to yours, this time you set off as a group with your new friend Hau who picked the Pokemon at a disadvantage to yours, the local Pokemon Professor Kakui and his mysterious assistant Lillie on the Island Challenge, an ancient Alolan rite of passage for trainers.

The sense of community is immediate and effective. From your doorstep when you first leave home to go get your first Pokemon to the final steps before your final challenge, you're accompanied by a rotating group of friends on the same journey you're on. The brunt of your journey is done alone, of course, but you'll often stick close to each other in dangerous or intimidating stretches of road, help each other out of trouble, and always all meet up at the next town or Pokemon Center down the road. It's a sensation that reminded me of my pilgrimage down the Camino de Santiago, a network of roads that encompasses most of Spain. I'd come across the friends and acquaintances that I made on the road and stop to chat, do stretches of path together, and then we'd all see each other, plus a few new faces and minus a few old ones, at the pilgrim's hostel in the next milestone town at the end of the day. Some people you'd meet on the road once, have a few nice words with, and never meet again, and some people you'd see each day for hundreds of kilometers. It's a unique feeling, one of strong community even when the great majority of your time is spent alone, and not one that I'd expected to be captured this perfectly in a silly game for kids where a ghost owl made of grass can beat up a sandcastle.

What's more, despite its size, the stable of characters you end up travelling and meeting along the way is fantastically characterized across the board. Hau's relentless enthusiasm and cheer isn't some sort of facade he puts up, it's genuinely who he is, but he's this way for a reason. Professor Kakui is energetic and goofy, but it barely hides the strong mind, will, and heart that make him one of the most respected and beloved people across all of Alola. The kahuna of Melemele Island, Hala, is a stolid elder who is deeply entrenched in his ways and not only cares deeply for his island, but enjoys a good joke and party as much as anyone.

Most importantly, almost everyone you travel with is fundamentally a good, likable, well-rounded person. Where Cheren and Bianca were deeply flawed individuals with tonnes of issues to get through, Hau is just a cheery, friendly guy. He's nice, and he wants to help you out and be your friend. There's some stuff he struggles with, sure, and he's got some internal conflict and some growth to be done, but he's a well-adjusted, kind-hearted individual. Most individual characters from Sun do fail to live up to the depth of Black's smaller cast, but they all have enough depth to be interesting and, in this case at least, I'd say that quality beats quantity.

Even this, however, is discounting the star of the show, Lillie, the one person who never leaves your community, and who is the best character in the history of Pokemon. Her arc is a pretty archetypal one. She starts of kind of shy, cowardly, and weak, and slowly grows braver and stronger. The real strength here is in execution, and in Lillie's very specific character. From the very start, she's obviously a kind and caring person, refusing to become a trainer because she doesn't want Pokemon to get hurt on her behalf, and making sure to keep a large stock of healing supplies on her at all times in order to be able to help the Pokemon of the trainers around her. 

Lillie's caring nature is the fundamental building block of her personality, and all her growth comes from her understanding how to be herself better through interactions with the rest of the cast. It seems natural, as she learns about how other people see things, and as she sees more of Alola and the way the world works, that her attitude towards doing the things she wants to do slowly changes and becomes stronger until all she shares with the person she was at the start of the story is her fundamental her-ness.

One of the game's best traits is how Lillie forms complex and heartfelt relationships with many of the other characters. Professor Kakui becomes a father figure to her, albeit one she can't keep up with the energy of. It's thanks to him that she has the courage to befriend anyone else at all. Hau cheers her up and makes her laugh, and teaches her the value of a smile and a positive outlook on life. Acerola becomes her weird, offbeat friend, and she ends up forming a strange, mostly silent friendship with short-tempered Hapu. Most surprisingly of all, she grows a deep bond with the silent player character, growing to very much look up to them, yet still feeling on equal ground, and it never comes across as the same creepy wish-fulfillment stuff that other Pokemon games with similar relationships did. If anything, you get the feeling your player character ends up looking up to Lillie's kindness and strength of purpose the same way she looks up to their courage and strength of will. I certainly ended up that way.

That is a large part of what makes Pokemon Sun such a joy to play. It's basically a given that a Pokemon game has excellent mechanics and level design at this point, but Pokemon Sun feels like a very particular kind of journey with a large quantity of very likable and interesting people, many of whom you form close connections with as you travel across the land. The other big part is that Alola itself is the best region yet to appear in a Pokemon game, beating out generation three's fantastic Hoenn region and generation six's woefully misused, but beautiful, Kalos region. Part of this is the inevitable advance of technology: Generation seven is by far the prettiest so far, with a massive improvement in looks even over the very good looking Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

That's far from all that makes Alola special though. It's full of spectacular vistas and creative little areas, and the developers obviously put a lot of care into making the place make sense. One of my favorite aspects is the Alolan Pokemon, new takes on old generation one Pokemon that have adapted to the Alolan environment in different ways to their Kanto counterparts. Alolan Sandshrew, for instance, made the icy flat mountaintop mesas of Ula'Ula Island its home due to Alola's lack of straight-up desert since it can only deal with flat terrain, and eventually learned to live with an icy shell. But this also goes way deeper, like of course resort towns would hire young people to keep its beaches clean by throwing the disgusting-looking water Pokemon Pyukumuku back into the ocean, or obviously there'd be a respectful fear of the small, inoffensive looking fish Pokemon Wishiwashi, which school into incredibly dangerous rampaging swarms.

There's also a real sense of history and tradition here. Rather than the modern-feeling Pokemon gyms of previous games, the recurring challenge points here are Island Trials, small tasks set to you by respected citizens (known as Trial Captains) with a deep connection to the elements in order to honor one specific element. Rather than battling gym leaders, you battle Totem Pokemon, the powerful guardians of each Trial Site, in order to gain their respect and be allowed to continue your journey towards adulthood. Once you pass all the trials on an island, you battle a Kahuna, an individual chosen by the legendary guardian Pokemon of their island, who embodies the spirit of their island's people and acts as a de facto leader to the people of the island. The people of Alola hold a deep respect and adherence to their land and its traditions, and as such there's a primal, ancient feeling to the entire place.

And yet, Alola is also a deeply inviting and fun place. It's sunny, just the right amount of tropical and relaxed. Its denizens spend their time doing their jobs, but they're open, pleasant people, who've always got the time to give a stranger a kind word and a smile, and who never seem to be in a rush to get anything done. There's places with a deep, ancient connection to primal nature, but just as often you're spending your time on a nice wooden beach path, or a pleasant leisurely trek up a gently sloping hill.

To be completely honest, the sense of community, Lillie, and Alola probably would have been enough for me to start considering whether I like Pokemon Sun more than Black. I don't know on what side I would have fallen, but it'd be a debate I would have had to have. What pushes Sun as the definite victor is its story. At first glance, it's nothing extraordinary. There's a lot of the old tropes of Pokemon games here: There's a bad group of people who name themselves Team followed by some goofy word (in this case Skull) who steal Pokemon. On the way through your adventure, they keep doing bad stuff and you keep fighting them, and eventually a legendary Pokemon ends up unleashed, after which they recognize the error of their ways and stop being bad.

The story of Pokemon Sun isn't as good as Pokemon Black, but then it's Black's main focus, whereas Sun is more focused on creating the aforementioned sense of community, fleshing out its characters, and making its setting solid. As such, its story doesn't have the thematic depth of Black. It's also lacking the personal touch of the generation six games, the giant stakes of generation four, or the pleasant simplicity of generation one. What it does do is serve as a fantastic vehicle for the strengths of Pokemon Sun. Team Skull seem like villains at first, but you end up discovering that most of them have a soft side, be it Guzma's secret deep concern for Lusamine, Plumeria's mother-like care for the grunts, or the grunt's deep, genuine admiration for both Guzma and Plumeria. You end up understanding how Team Skull formed out of Alolan community, a bunch of people irritated by society's emphasis on respecting nature over Team Skull's value of human togetherness. Team Skull is decidedly villainous, but at no point do they come across as bad people, and even at their most heinous their goofy "gangsta" attitude and general incompetence keeps the tone appropriately cheery for Alola. This is true for any element of the plot: the downright dark is kept funny enough to fit Alola's cheery atmosphere aside from a few key moments, and everything else is made to further the player's understanding of Alola as a region.

But the real star, as I said before, is Lillie, with the story serving to guide her through her character arc. The events of the plot aren't really all that interesting or innovative, but they force Lillie to change. As such, the plot becomes secondary to seeing how Lillie (and whoever else is travelling with you at that point) reacts to the events unfolding, both in terms of the player's interest in them and the time that the game spends on either thing. This allows the game to spend large amounts of time on things insignificant to the main story that are actually big character moments (one of my favorite early game sub-plotlines is about Lillie getting stuck on a hill with no Repels, while one of the best late ones involves her going out shopping). It knows that this is its strength, and it makes the story about the characters and setting rather than making the characters and setting simply things that inhabit the story.

Pokemon Sun is a truly joyous experience. From beginning to end, exploring Alola with my ever-changing group of travelling companions, and getting to know and form a deep bond with that strange girl with the big hat I initially dismissed as just a friend of Professor Kukui had me with a, big, joyous, smile on my face. Alola is a beautiful region, full of whim and whimsy and childish joy to see what's beyond the next corner, yet with more texture and depth than even previous regions which you'd think sacrificed creativity for complexity (I'm looking at you, Sinnoh and Unova). I really can't stop repeating that word "joy", because it's the perfect word for what Pokemon Sun made me feel.

9/10
Pokemon Sun made me feel tremendous amounts of joy, and that's all I need to know.

Quickfire Cleanup

The following is a series of short thoughts about a bunch of shows that I didn't have enough to say about to justify a full entry on the blog. As the percentage of free time I spend on anime increases but my free time decreases, this might be a recurring series. Note that very few of the scores I give are below 5, with most of them being higher than 7. This is because I'm only reviewing shows I completed. I drop stuff that doesn't hook me pretty quickly.

Ace Attorney
An adaptation of one of the greatest series of games. Starts off completely terrible, adapting the material way too faithfully to work as a show and with some shoddy art and animation, but picks up once we get into Justice For All, getting bolder with major changes to make the material work better in show form. Inferior in every way to the games aside from the fact that Turnabout Big Top is a lot better here (mostly because it's an awful case in the game). Overall, acceptable but unremarkable adaptation of remarkable material. 5/10 

Bakemonogatari
Weird as fuck. It took me a while to get invested in the characters and story, but physically watching this thing kept me hooked long enough that it eventually happened, and once it did I really loved it. Fantastically directed: makes the 90% of its running time that consists of characters standing somewhere and talking super engaging and exciting through visual style and framing alone. 8/10

Food Wars
Stupid, stupid fun. Nails the "non battle battle" shounen style. Consistently high production values as would be expected from J.C. Staff. Enough engaging and endearing characters to keep me hooked the entire way through. Vapid and substanceless, but enough fun that I really didn't care. 8/10

Girlish Number
I love seeing this thing take down the anime industry. Unfortunately it relies too much on the strength of its main character, who isn't really all that interesting or likeable. Its strong satire of the industry carries it a long way, but it's still brought down by a relatively bland cast of characters with the exception of the producer. 6/10

Haikyuu!!
Fantastic sports show. Led by a cast of likeable underdog protagonists, with the "non battle battle" shounen style polished to an absolute shining sheen. My favorite sports story, though I really haven't seen that many of them. Drags a tiny bit in mid-season 2, but the first and third seasons are phenomenal. 9/10 

Hibike! Euphonium
Conflicted on this one. Loved it upon watching it, but my opinion of it has steadily dropped since. Needs a rewatch, but my initial impression was incredibly positive, so I ranked it accordingly. 8/10

Konosuba
Everyone knows this thing is hilarious. I thought Season 1 was a bit overrated, but really loved Season 2. 8/10

Keijo!!!!!!!!
Fuck those exclamation marks. The concept (girls must compete in wrestling matches using only their breasts and butts) seems degrading, but it actually treats its characters with surprising respect. Fairly bland cast with a couple exceptions. Fantastic animation makes it worth a watch unless you're averse to fanservice. 6/10

Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls
One of those "voice actresses doing improv and then we animate some CG" shows. Painfully unfunny, terrible audio quality, CG models look terrible. Slight redemption in that there's some OK concept art here and there. Only finished it because it's super brief, at 12 episodes that are 8 minutes each. LATER EDIT: Space Patrol Luluco is even briefer and is brilliant, which makes me like this less.. 2/10

Sansha Sanyou
Perfectly average, middle of the road "cute girls doing cute things" show. The cast of characters is pretty good, but the show struggles to do anything at all with them. Entertaining enough to pass the time with, but not really worthy of any attention given how crowded its genre is. 5/10

Tengen Tonpa Gurren Lagann
Considered a classic for a good reason. Gorgeous, inhabited by fantastically fleshed out characters, and with a plot that consistently increases in magnitude and stakes until it reaches entertainingly ridiculous proportions. Weirdly reminds me of The Wonderful 101 in that regard. Real good. 9/10 

The Seven Deadly Sins
A super generic shounen action series. Competent but unremarkable in every way. 5/10