Quick Final Thoughts – Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Another show that I’m giving a full review later, so another really quick post. Kyo Ani has hit another home run with one of the most heartwarming comedies in years that had a ton of nice subtext while also bucking the annoying tropes that usually plague the monster girl genre (see my thoughts on Interviews with Monster Girls). It had a few minor but noticeable flaws, but it was joyous to watch every week.
9/10. Fafnir is 10/10 husband material tho

Quick Final Thoughts – ClassicaLoid

I will never understand why more people don’t like this show. Never in my life. The concept was amazing and they mined a ton of comedic gold out of it, and while it wasn’t necessarily on all cylinders the whole time, it remained a crazy, rollicking good time and radiated zany positivity throughout. I’ll have more to say in a full review, but I’ll spoil my rating for now anyway.

9/10, and a strong contender for comedy of the year.

Quick Final Thoughts – Saga of Tanya the Evil

Why couldn’t Izetta have been more like this? Seriously, this is exactly the kind of magical war story I was looking for, with the added bonus of being a story about a vendetta against the kind of god who would condone the world being the way it is. Despite being an AU where we’re meant to root for Germany, the story makes a lot of smart decisions that enable such a mentality. The show never explicitly states that this would be Germany (we’re simply meant to imply it based upon the Empire’s location in AU Europe) and is set in WW1 rather than 2, so we don’t have the added complication of Nazi-ism causing us to root against the protagonist. This is in addition to a number of smart meta-decisions on the part of the show, like not wasting time with an arc about Tanya’s age – everyone takes her seriously and with few to no comments about her age or even her gender, which I can certainly get behind in a 12-episode show, as well as more wasted time aversions by cutting out intrusive fanservice and unnecessary shifts in tone. With few exceptions, this show remains a serious war story throughout, and that puts it leagues ahead of Izetta (which, yes, I’m still really bitter about). Add in very nice production value from a brand-new studio and an absolutely kickass opening theme and you have yourself a very good time.

That being said, it’s important to note that it does have a The Story Goes On ending, If a second season gets made, finishing the source material, I would consider giving it an even better score.

8/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Interviews With Monster Girls

Earlier I called this the safest show of the season while talking about how being safe wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. With this show, though, just a few changes could have brought it up a few points, and they’re all to do with the protagonist. As the show went on, it just became more and more obvious that Takahashi was going to be just an aged-up version of your standard sexless harem protagonist, which is even worse when the girls are still high school aged, and his creepiness just stuck out like a sore thumb even though he doesn’t explicitly pursue the girls. He asks them to do a lot of things that wouldn’t be appropriate for any teacher and tries to counsel them with no qualification to do so, and eventually starts referring to them as “demi-chans” (“monster girls”) rather than “demi-humans” or “students”. The show goes into deep detail about the legends behind the monsters and how being monsters affects their quality of life, which is neat, but it just gets dragged down by this weirdly obsessive teacher. Seriously, just giving Takahashi a girlfriend or a wife or having him be female would have added two whole points to my score.

His presence confuses the tone of the show and blurs it between a cute girls doing cute things show and a harem, and it just didn’t work for me. I watched it all the way through and would still recommend it for people who don’t mind these milquetoast weirdos, and I want to say that in this case the strong character building was enough to redeem it, but I just can’t look past him.

5/10. So much potential, totally wasted.

Quick Final Thoughts – Gabriel DropOut

The formula is a thing because it works. Four cute girls in high school with an exciting twist and enough self-awareness to remain consistently funny and entertaining makes for a show just amusing enough to tip the scale. Gabriel DropOut never does anything too off-kilter, and to be sure it’s one of the safest shows of the season (right next to Interviews with Monster Girls), but there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that as long as the show in question has consistency and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

On a side note, I adored Gabriel’s pink school uniform sweater design, it goes really nicely with her hair and pops out from the rest of the cast in a very pleasant manner.

6/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Masamune-kun’s Revenge

There’s definitely still room for a decent romcom in anime, and even with the ever-present harem tropes, it’s still nice to see one where romance is actually taken seriously, especially since I couldn’t watch Scum’s Wish since I don’t have Anime Strike. I really hate read-the-manga endings and I hope that we do get a second season, but even if we don’t get more, I’m happy with what we got, and I like that the premise from the first episode wound up expanding a lot and that Neko didn’t just end up being in a permanent love triangle with the main duo.  I really love the opening and I hope it’s one of those songs that sticks with me for a long time.

7/10, and Koujuurou is best girl.