Anime 2025

Not a lot of it this past year, and it's reached the point that there are pretty much no titles fron the seasonal lists that I really wanted to have seen, but didn't - such a change from even a few years ago.

While Sonyroll put Frieren on free, it was merely OK for the one episode I got to before the site went into one of its usual long-running "shan't" attacks, and looking at the manga didn't encourage returning, with incipient academy and tournament arcs.

The big gem was Milky Subway, inconsquential humour though it might be, with the one episode of Dungeons & Television coming close behind.

Also watched during the Christmas Amazon Prime burst -

Magilumiere Magical Girls - mediocre but harmless, for the bits that I skimmed throug. The rookie magical girl MC is so clearly meant to be a Nanoha look-alike, but she is no White Devil.

Gundam GQUC0085X - Machu was a much more together character than Suletta, so it started off on a positive note, and was generally a fun ride. The UC references, including to the trippy bit near the end of Unicorn, helped a great deal, even if some of the cameos (and I'm looking at you here, Bask Om) were entirely gratuitous and fed nothing into the story.

The Char was quite predictably obvious this time.

Look Back - a little mood piece from the mangaka for Chainsaw Man; entirely harmless.

Pon no Michi - which I picked up on the strength of the /a/non who kept posting about it as being the worst anime ever. It wasn't that bad, just solidly mediocre, and where it failed, it was for not really knowing what it was doing. It's not a mah-jongg anime even in the way that Saki is - games happen, characters may get FKMT-face, but we never get play by play; nor, despite the bits where they get out of their clubhouse and walk around the town of Onomichi, is it even as much of a tourist publicity series as Yama no Susume; and the girls can be a little bit abrasive, verging on bullying, at times, so it's not even a full on cute girl series.

And I'm still stalled on my attempt to watch Legends of the Galactic Heroes.