Introduction

This week none of the six anime I’m watching (which started this season) have changed in ratings from last week, so I won’t be adding their ratings to the reviews this time around.  Other than that, this week has gotten me excited once again for the rest of this season.

While I had been getting bored with the anime this season for the most part (including those which are continuing from the Winter 2018 season) this week seemed to be a revival in which I suddenly regained interest in the various series.

Love To-LIE-Angle

I know I just said that I suddenly became more interested in the series this season, but let’s face it, Love To-LIE-Angle is a short so it doesn’t really count. Somehow this week’s episode became even more yuri and included more fan service than any before.

I feel like it can’t really go beyond the episode that aired this week, so if that’s the kind of material you’re looking for then it’s probably all downhill from here. I’ve come to accept this anime for what it is, as I think I mentioned last week, and so I don’t mind the fan service any more.

Comic Girls

Both halves of this week’s episode of Comic Girls were related, although the second half was far superior to the first. This episode was about how Kaos is a failure of a manga artist with the first half centering on her being depressed about never getting her storyboards approved.

Overall, I didn’t like this first half and I was expecting the second half to not be much better. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the second half of the episode shifted focus to the older group of girls made up of the teacher, Kaos’ editor, and the manga artist matron.

These three girls all originally wanted to be manga artists as well when they were in high school, but ended up following different career paths. Out of the three (I don’t remember any of their names) the teacher is my favorite character, and is possibly the best character in the anime (sorry Fuura senpai).

The teacher wearing an old school uniform is definitely the kind of fan service I can get behind. Just make her one of the main characters already.

Megalo Box

Last week I predicted that the fight between Joe and Mikio was going to happen this week. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but the fight does now appear to be happening next week.

While there was no official fight, this week’s episode was still good due to the amount of information we received. It was learned that the reason Mikio didn’t want to fight Joe was because his AI infused Megalo gear predicts movement based on his opponent’s Megalo gear.

This means that Joe should have an advantage since he doesn’t use Megalo gear at all.

There was also plenty of suspense because it was unsure if Joe would really be able to compete for the final spot of Megalonia or not. At one point during this episode, I thought he would officially be disqualified from the tournament and simply end up fighting Yuuri in an unofficial match afterwards.

However, Joe made sure he got a second chance to fight Mikio, and that’s a fight I’m looking forward to.

Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri had a Hina-centric episode this week so obviously it was a good one. A member of the organization Hina and Anzu belong to came to this dimension in order to perform a checkup on how Hina is adjusting to her new life.

Most of the things being tested were simple, such as stopping for red lights while walking, but the organization member still expected Hina to fail every test. It was also revealed that Hina was originally banished to this dimension after she went on a rampage and destroyed an entire city.

Surprisingly, Hina ends up passing every test, which means she’s set to be sent back to her own dimension. On the other hand, Anzu is allowed to stay where she is because she’s already been registered as MIA (the organization figured Hina killed her).

Hina’s psychic powers are also discovered by one of her classmates who begins to believe that she too possesses the same powers that Hina does. Spoiler: she doesn’t.

In the end, Hina is unable to go back to her dimension because, as we learned with Anzu, espers apparently need those red ball things to travel through dimensions. Anzu’s was broken due to going through the washing machine, and Hina’s was thrown out by Nitta after he got trapped in it.

My Hero Academia Season 3

This week was the second setup episode in a row for the mission to save Bakugo from the League of Villains. Because of that, there wasn’t really any action, but we were introduced to the two different groups who will attempt to save him.

The group of students who are going to rescue Bakugo is made up of Midoriya, Iida, Todoroki, Kirishima, and Yaoyorozu. Their plan is to sneak into the League of Villains’ hideout and rescue Bakugo without confronting the villains. To do this, they gathered disguises this week.

The official group that was put together to save Bakugo is made of pro heroes such as All Might, Endeavor, Gran Torino, Mt. Lady, Kamui Wood, Best Jeanist, Tiger from the Wild, Wild Pussycats, and some Orca hero who I don’t think was introduced prior to this (I may have missed a hero or two).

While I’m not sure that we’ll actually get any good fights next week, we should finally be introduced to the main antagonist of the arc, All for One.

Gun Gale Online

Finally, we have Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. In this episode we’re introduced to the avatar of LLENN’s friend (I don’t remember her avatar’s name or her real name). As I previously predicted, she is, in fact, the grenade launcher wielding loli.

Aside from P-chan, I think she’s probably the best character introduced in the series so far. One of the highlights of the episode involved her referring to M as her and LLENN’s “sugar daddy” since he gave them 10 million in-game credits to buy new gear.

Squad Jam 2 officially began at the end of the episode, but prior to that we were shown a few of the teams who are expected to be major rivals for this arc. While LLENN and her friend are a team of two like she was with M, the other teams they’ll be fighting appear to have more members again.

The second place team from the first Squad Jam made up of the rhythmic gymnastics girls is back again and looking to go head to head against LLENN once again. The third place team from the first Squad Jam is also back and seem to have some sort of plan in place for taking down M this time.

The third and final opposing team we’re introduced to is the one which M and Pito are a part of. I originally expected them to be a team of two, but they instead have four other members who are all unknown. Each of the four mystery players have their faces covered and appear to possibly be military.

I think what’s more likely is that they’re Pito’s bodyguards, following my theory that Pito is actually the famous singer that LLENN and her friend like. Maybe we’ll learn their true identities next week.

Introduction

We’re now into the second half of the season and the new shows are starting to wear on me a bit. Not only have many of the new shows from this season slowed down, but even some of the anime in their second cour are starting to lose my interest.

Hopefully each of these six series (at least those that are one cour) can finish strong over the next few weeks.

Love To-LIE-Angle

Despite how I just mentioned that I’m starting to get bored with the anime this season, I’ve decided to increase the rating for Love To-LIE-Angle from a 4 to a 5/10. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s entertaining enough for five-minute episodes even if it’s pointless.

Sure, the show is mainly just yuri fan service, but every now and then you’ll get a gem out of it like when Konomi smacked a wild boar with a tin full of water (see image below). It’s action shots like this that more comedy anime need to incorporate.

Other than that scene, I honestly don’t remember what happened in the episode so either it was more pointless than usual, or the boar scene simply out-shined everything else.

Comic Girls

Comic Girls was simply alright this week and is remaining at a 6/10. The more I think about it, the more Comic Girls seems just like a full length version of Love To-LIE-Angle, but that’s also not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, this week’s episode followed Kaos as she decided to get glasses, partially because her eyesight is failing and partially because she wants to look more mature. Unfortunately for her, she’s still going to look like an elementary school student no matter what she does.

I thought the best gag of the episode came at the end when Kaos attempts drawing with her new glasses for the first time. Now that she can see well, she realizes how bad her drawings really are and so she locks her glasses away to hide from her shame.

Megalo Box

Last week a new opponent who has the persona of a lion was set up as the third of four megalo boxers to be featured in the Megalonia competition. However, as I predicted, this week’s episode did not feature a fight between him and Gearless Joe.

What I didn’t predict though, was that another fight would take place between Joe’s fight against Aragaki and this new lion fighter whose name I don’t remember. Apparently Mikio Shirato, brother of Yukiko Shirato who’s hosting Megalonia, is a megalo boxer himself.

Mikio knows that although he’s high enough in the rankings to enter Megalonia, Joe has a high chance of being picked instead simply due to his growing popularity. To ensure he’s picked, Mikio challenges Joe to a match for the final position in the championship.

Unfortunately we don’t get the fight between these two this episode, but there was a twist at the end which casts doubt on if Joe will make it into Megalonia at all. Despite this, he’s the protagonist so I still think he’ll make it there and win the whole thing.

My rating of 7/10 for Megalo Box hasn’t changed this week.

Hinamatsuri

This week I dropped Hinamatsuri from an 8 to a 7/10. It’s not that this week’s episode was bad, because it wasn’t, but over the past few weeks I’ve just started to get tired of these series as I mentioned earlier. Basically, the novelty has worn off.

That said, this week’s episode included three different plot lines. First we saw Anzu learning how to work in the restaurant she now lives in, then we saw Hina run for student council president, and finally we saw Nitta go on a date with Utako.

While Anzu’s story was a success, Hina didn’t win the race for student council president because first-year students aren’t allowed to run for that position to begin with. She did, however, get elected treasurer, but since she wanted to be president she never shows up.

While all this was going on, Nitta was trying to get a date with Utako who ended up turning him down because she didn’t want to get between his relationship with his “daughter,” Hina. On the other hand, Hina wants Nitta to date Utako because she wants a mom.

I think in the end of the series Nitta and Utako will end up being together simply due to the scene of them and Hina in the OP for the anime.

My Hero Academia Season 3

My Hero Academia season 3, or Macademia as I’ll be referring to it for the foreseeable future, wasn’t the exciting episode I was hoping for. I was expecting to see a full fight involving “best girl” Himiko Toga, but instead we largely saw what happened last week, but from different perspectives.

The only real new information we got was that Tokoyami was rescued by his classmates, but Bakugo was not. In the end, Bakugo is shown in the bar used as the villain’s hideout with the rest of the League of Villains.

While nothing really happened this week, and I would like to say that there surely must be a good amount of action next week involving the rescue of Bakugo, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Based on the next episode preview, it looks like we’ll see the setup for the rescue with the actual rescue coming the following week. However, since there appear to be two different rescue operations being planned (by the students and pro heroes) I expect that battle to be a good one.

Gun Gale Online

Finally, we have Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. This was another setup episode, like we had in Macademia, but with a lot more new information given to us. Karen (LLENN) meets her Squad Jam partner M in real life, much to her surprise.

During this interaction we learn that there’s going to be a second Squad Jam and Pito is going to be participating this time (I think she’s the sponsor). We also learn that if Pito is defeated by anyone other than LLENN, she’s going to kill M and then herself in real life.

While this seems that this is a bit too crazy for anyone to actually do, it turns out that Pito is obsessed with the death game that went on in Sword Art Online and so is trying to recreate her own version of it in some way. M is also set up to be on Pito’s team during Squad Jam 2.

However, this leaves LLENN without a teammate for the next Squad Jam and so she contacts one of her friends who we met earlier in the series, but whose name I forget, to be her partner. I’m assuming this is going to be the grenade launcher girl we see in the OP.

I still have Gun Gale Online rated at a 5/10 after I lowered it last week, but maybe with the addition of grenade launcher girl the series will get better again.

Introduction

With week six we’re officially at the halfway point of the Spring season. While I think most of the below series had a good episode six, there’s one anime in particular which disappointed me. Can you guess which one?

Love To-LIE-Angle

This week in our fan service short, there was a water gun fight between all the girls living in the dorm. They split into teams of two and battled it out until one team was completely eliminated.

While we were introduced to a new girl last week (I don’t know her name or the names of any of the characters), she really became a new character this week because it appears she’ll be sticking around for the rest of the season. Originally I wasn’t sure if she was a one-episode character or not.

In all honesty, this was probably the most tame episodes of this series. Although I still have it rated at a 4/10, I keep wanting to move it to a 5. Maybe next week it will finally get bumped up, but only time will tell.

Comic Girls

While Love To-LIE-Angle cemented its new character from last week, Comic Girls introduced a new character this week and she may be my favorite girl of the series so far. Fuura is a second year in high school and was previously living in the dorm with Tsubasa and Ruki.

It’s not entirely clear why Fuura left the dorm, but it may have to do with her tendency to enjoy scaring the other girls. Now that she’s back, Moeta has become her new favorite plaything because she likes hearing her scream in horror.

Fuura is a horror manga artist, which explains her character traits. I’m looking forward to learning more about her character as the show progresses.

However, that was just the first half of the episode, the second half was about Tsubasa and wasn’t as good. In this half, the girls’ teacher finds out that Tsubasa is the famous manga artist who she loves.

I still have this series as a 6/10, but I’m hoping Fuura can push the series up to a 7.

Megalo Box

This week of Megalo Box was much better than last week. There was plenty of action between Joe and Nanbu’s previous fighter. Further, we were introduced to another fighter who will be competing in Megalonia.

This new fighter appears to have a lion persona similar to how one of the earlier fights Joe had was against a fighter with a shark persona. For now, it’s unclear whether this will be Joe’s next opponent or just someone he’ll have to fight eventually.

There are currently three fighters locked in for Megalonia, but we were only really introduced to the lion guy and the champion so my guess is that Joe will fight those two for the semi-finals and finals respectively.

It seems as though we’re getting close to the end of the series even though the season is only halfway over, so I expect the next episode to be slow to make up for this. Megalo Box is still a 7/10.

Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri had a good week six. The first half of the series was funny as it always is when it involves Hina, but the second half was an emotional segment about Anzu. I liked how in one episode this series could make me feel two completely different things.

In the first half, Nitta and Hina go to visit Nitta’s family (his mother and sister). Nitta originally has Hina memorize a script for when she gets questioned by his family, but as expected, Hina isn’t able to deviate from the memorized script when necessary and so this plan falls apart.

Eventually he decides to tell them that Hina is actually his daughter rather than the daughter of a fellow Yakuza whose whole family was killed.

The second half saw the outlaw of the homeless camp in the park. Because of this, all the homeless people living there have to split up and go their own ways. However, Anzu likes being able to live together with everyone there and is unwilling to accept this change.

In the end, Yassan is able to get Anzu a place to stay with a family which owns a bakery or restaurant of some sort. Here, Anzu starts her new, non-homeless life, but she’ll never forget the friends she made and lessons she learned while living on the streets.

As you may expect, Hinamatsuri is still an 8/10 for me, and although I like the series a lot, I don’t expect it to go any higher than that.

Gun Gale Online

Gun Gale Online was the disappointment of the week. Although it’s only a one cour season (12 episodes), it had a recap episode this week. Recap episodes are typically used between cours for seasons which are multiple cours long, not within a single cour.

Since it was just a recap episode, I didn’t actually watch the whole thing, but rather skimmed through it until the post-credits scene. However, while I thought I was going to actually get some real content after the credits, instead the series just put a series of dumb gags there.

Due to the uselessness of this episode and the poor choice to include it at all, I lowered this series from a 6 to a 5/10. I was so annoyed by this episode I even considered lowering the series to a 4. Really, there were better things to do than including a recap episode.

They could have skipped this week if they decided they weren’t ready for the next episode. Otherwise, they could have moved every other episode’s airing date up by a week and just ended the series early. I even would have accepted a filler episode if time and budget weren’t the issues.

My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia season 3 was one of the better episodes this week along with that of Comic Girls. There’s one simple reason for this, we were (more) officially introduced to “best girl” Himiko Toga.

While there wasn’t too much action this week, there was a lot of setup for next week’s episode so I’m expecting that to be one of the best yet. In this episode we saw Tokoyami and his Dark Shadow quirk go on a rampage as well as a short fight between Himiko, Tsu, and Ochako.

Himiko Toga is a villain who’s part of the League of Villains’ Vanguard Action Squad. She’s a yandere character who’s attracted to beat up men to the point where she wants to kill and become them. Sounds pretty yandere to me.

She also uses hypodermic needles to collect the blood of her adversaries, but it’s not entirely clear what the purpose for this is yet. We don’t know what her quirk is because she hasn’t shown it, but the blood may have something to do with that.

Another explanation is that she’s collecting the blood of heroes for Stain to use because she’s one of his followers. Finally, a third explanation is that she’s collecting the blood of heroes so that the leader of the villains, All for One, can somehow steal their quirks.

While I think all of these are viable options, I’m kind of hoping for the first. I think her collecting the blood for Stain or All for One may be more interesting plot-wise, but at the same time I really want it to have something to do with her quirk since she’s a yandere.

It seems that we’ll get to see her in action more next episode so hopefully this will be answered then and we’ll get to learn more about her quirk if she even has one.

My Hero Academia season 3 is still an 8/10.

Introduction

We’re now five weeks into the Spring 2018 season and a few of the ratings for the series this season have shifted. This week will be featuring spoilers (especially for Gun Gale Online, however, I’ll also be making some predictions about these series going forward.

Finally, before we begin, finding high quality gifs of these series every week isn’t the easiest thing to do, so from here on out I’ll just be using screenshots which I can easily take myself.

Love To-LIE-Angle

I don’t have much to say about this series. This week, like every other week so far, this short series was just more yuri fan service. While that’s not always a bad thing, I tend to want something more as well like, you know, plot.

Love To-LIE-Angle (I still don’t understand the name) is still a 4/10 at this point. I wanted to lower it, but the art is still decent and it’s nowhere near the worst thing I’ve seen so I’ll allow it to stay where it is.

Comic Girls

Last week you may recall that Comic girls had a Ruki-centered episode which I actually liked a lot. This week was all about Koyume, who I don’t like as much as the other three girls, but her episode was still good.

The first half of the episode counted as the “obligatory beach episode” for the anime and because of that I thought it was going to be bad. However, I was pleasantly surprised and the second half, featuring an amusement park date between Koyume and Tsubasa, was even better.

After these past two episodes I’m considering bumping up the rating for this series, but for now it’s still a 6/10.

Megalo Box

Megalo Box has been one of the stand-out anime of the season, however I found this week’s episode to be lacking and so I downgraded the series to a 7/10. This episode wasn’t the only reason for my lowering of the score. The hype of the series has been wearing off on me and so this was bound to happen anyway.

This week we set up and started a fight between Joe and a fighter who was also formerly trained by Nanbu. Although this isn’t even the finals of Megalonia, this fight is set up to be one of the hardest Joe will have to face throughout the series.

By the end of this episode, we only got partway through the first round of the fight with Joe being knocked down and possibly out. Since this is the final fight before Joe can qualify for the Megalonia finals, I’m assuming that he’ll come back to win it next week.

Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri is still my favorite series of the season at an 8/10, but there’s a new competitor this week which we’ll get to in a bit. This week’s episode was focused on Hitomi as her friends from school try to figure out what she’s doing going into a bar at night.

As with any episode that doesn’t focus on Hina, this one wasn’t as good, however, any scene that had Hina in it was instantly a great scene. Throughout this episode, Hina is being dragged all over the place without knowing what’s going on.

Gun Gale Online

While Gun Gale Online is still a 6/10, it includes the best girl of the season in the form of P-chan (I planned to make a best girl of Winter 2018 post, but I still haven’t done that yet). This episode, LLENN and P-chan bring home the gold for team LM in the Squad Jam competition.

However, before winning, P-chan gives her life to save LLENN and is destroyed. I’m hoping that P-chan makes a full recovery and comes back into the series. Honestly, I may have to downgrade the rating if P-chan is really dead.

My Hero Academia

Finally, we have My Hero Academia season 3. This was by far the best episode of the week and the current arc is looking to be better than anything from the previous two seasons (and I really liked the sports festival arc).

This arc is surpassing all my expectations, and I’ve heard that this is just the beginning of a string of the best arcs written for the series so far so there’s plenty more to look forward to. Also, after this week I upgraded My Hero Academia season 3 to an 8/10.

Overview

It’s now been three weeks since I did my first review of the anime I was watching during the Spring 2018 season and I figured I should do weekly follow-ups about the new episodes.

This time around, we have the same five anime from week 1, as well as a bonus sixth anime I picked up after writing that. After the first week, I made my prediction that Megalo Box was going to be the best series of the season, and while it will probably still end up rated the best by the masses, my vote has changed.

After adding Hinamatsuri to my currently watching list, I decided that it was better than Megalo Box. Sure, Megalo Box is still a great anime and deserves to be watched, but Hinamatsuri is the anime I look forward to more than anything else this season.

As with the week 1 review, I will not be going over series which are either continuing year-round (Boruto) or started last season and are now in their second cour (Darling in the Franxx and Record of Grancrest War). Only seasons which began in Spring 2018 count.

 Love To-LIE-Angle

We’ll start things off with the worst series I’m watching this season, Love To-LIE-Angle. Episode 4 was about needing to use the restroom when you are currently unable to; in this case, the toilet in the house was being repaired.

I don’t really know why the writer thought that this was a good plot. I can only guess that since it’s a short it can’t have any real plot and that’s why something like this was written, but it really didn’t help the series.

While the plot may be bad, the art isn’t so I still have this series rated as a 4/10. I don’t see it going any higher than that over the course of the season.

My Hero Academia Season 3

As predicted, My Hero Academia Season 3 is holding up well compared to the previous two seasons. This episode in particular was the best episode of the third season so far and may even be the best episode in the series so far.

While hero classes A and B are out in the mountains for a Summer training camp, they are attacked by a group that is part of the League of Villains. There’s a good fight involving Deku and I can’t wait to see more of the fight animation this season.

Although this episode was really good, I still have this season of MHA rated at a 7/10 until it proves it can consistently be the quality of the episode from this week, in which case I would bump it up to an 8.

Megalo Box

As I previously mentioned, Megalo Box is one of the standout series of the season. While it may not have the action scenes of MHA, it makes up for that with character.

By this, I don’t necessarily mean the characters themselves, but rather the character of the story and style. I think I mentioned this during the week 1 review, but it reminds me a lot of Cowboy Bebop, but I think I like it even more.

This week our protagonist, Joe, became known as “Gearless Joe” due to fighting without any Megalo gear after his was destroyed. It seems as though he’ll be going through the rest of the season without using any Megalo gear which just adds to his underdog story.

I currently have Megalo Box rated as an 8/10, but I’m thinking that once the series is finished and I have a chance to look back on it, it may drop to a 7.

Gun Gale Online

Gun Gale Online is the surprisingly good anime of the season. While I’m not much of a fan of Sword Art Online, the removal of Kirito as the protagonist did wonders for this spin-off.

In this week’s episode, Llenn and M continue to fight through the battle royal competition known as Squad Jam (I had to look up the name of that one). At the start of the episode there are only three teams left, will Team L/M be able to win the competition?

This episode also left off on a huge cliffhanger which is both a blessing and a curse as all cliffhangers are.

GGO is currently rated as a 6/10, but we’ll see where it goes in the future.

Comic Girls

The final anime which was featured in my week 1 review is Comic Girls. Honestly, I really want this show to be good, but I still can’t tell if it will ever get to that point. It’s not bad, but it just doesn’t stand out enough.

With the exception of the short, Love To-LIE-Angle, this is the series which I look forward to watching the least each week. That said, episode 4 was a step in the right direction for the show.

This week we got an entertaining episode that centered around Ruki and her adult-oriented manga. I’m hoping we get an episode like this for each of the other characters because, for now, they’re little more than tropes.

Comic Girls has been a solid 6/10 since week 1 and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

Hinamatsuri

Finally, the anime we’ve all been waiting for, Hinamatsuri. Unfortunately, I wasn’t watching this series at the time that I wrote my week 1 review and hadn’t done a weekly update since, but I can finally tell you about this anime.

Hinamatsuri is a comedy about a Yakuza (Japanese version of the Mafia) Lieutenant and a young girl with psychic abilities from another dimension. The contrast between the impossible situations found in this series and the dry humor it uses are what make the show.

In the most recent episode, Hina gets disowned and kicked out of the apartment by Nitta for breaking another one of his prized vases. The second half of the episode is about Anzu, a homeless girl from the same dimension as Hina, and Hitomi, Hina’s middle school classmate who works as a bartender.

While these characters are good in their own right, Hina and Nitta are really the characters who make the show and so the second half simply wasn’t as good as the first.

Hinamatsuri is an 8/10 for me right now, and I think that’s probably where it’s going to stay if the series continues on in the same direction.