My thoughts on shows I watched this season fall into a couple groups.

The Good:

• Helck: This one is still going since it is running for two cours. I have enjoyed the slow, mysterious world building they have done. It really feels like they are taking their time to build things up in a rewarding way. It has also had good comedy bits and Vermilio serves as an excellent straight man to the clowns that seem to be everywhere else in this world (I mean that in the most loving way possible).
• Isekai Vending Machine: When I started this series, I had low expectations based on the idiocy of the premise. However, it has far exceeded my expectations and has actually been really fun. If you can get past the ridiculous premise and accept a bit of silliness when it comes to combat, then there is actually a story with some heart and thought behind this ridiculous title.
• Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero: This is another that I expected to not be that great, but turned out to be a pretty satisfying fantasy story. The characters and their interactions in this show are the best part of this show. The political storyline that is happening is a bit bland, but doesn’t drag the show too much.
• Horimiya Pieces: I am a huge fan of the manga for this series, so I was happy to see this anthology of cut content from the original run of the show. However, I think that viewers that aren’t as familiar with the source content might not be as engaged with this run of episodes since it focuses more on side characters than the titular Hori and Miyamura.

The Bad:

• Atelier Ryza: This one was tough for me to stay awake while watching. I understand that the game is widely beloved, but the adaptation to a show just fell flat for me. I don’t know how much of the game was adapted, but the whole season feels like they are just stuck in some kind of tutorial rather than undertaking some grand adventure.
• Am I Actually the Strongest: This show was just bad. I have seen/read a lot of really bad isekai and this one might take the cake. The story is incredibly oddly paced; flying through extremely important plot segments and then dwelling for an excrutiatingly long time on fluff/omake stuff that doesn’t matter at all. Just steer clear of this one, it’s really bad, but not so bad it is funny. It is just really bad.

The Mixed Feelings:

• My Happy Marriage: I have written a lot about this series in the episode threads already, so I will keep it short here. The first half of this season is excellent and really sets up the potential for a great period romance. However, the second half of the show is incredibly disappointing in this regard and just feels so lackluster compared to what was set up through episode 6.

The only other show from this season I am watching is Zom 100. It has been pretty great so far, but because of the delays in production, I don’t want to make any final verdicts about it.

Massively disappointed in dreaming boy is a realist. Garbage ending and plot but decent mc.

I’ve watched four this season:

• Seven Spellblades: I assumed going in it would be fairly generic, but it’s turned into my overall favorite, mostly on the merits of the story itself. It does a surprisingly good job of maintaining a relatively large ensemble of MCs. (Also, given that the setting is kind of “dark anime harry potter”, I can’t help but appreciate the implied “fuck you” to JKR in one subplot.)
• Helck: not all the humor lands for me, but enough does that I really enjoy the show! The slowly unfolding plot is kind of neat too.
• Undead Girl Murder Farce: I really like the sense of humor and style in this one. At the start it seems like it’s going to be a bit like In/Spectre in terms of slow-paced mystery solving, but the action starts to pick up ~half way through the first cour.
• The vending machine iskei: I wouldn’t say it’s exactly a good show, but it’s been watchable enough I made it to the end of the season!

Not many shows for me this season, but two 10/10 standouts! The Hibike OVA was excellent as expected, and It’s MyGO!!! surpassed all expectations.

It’s a very slow season compared to other seasons from Winter 2022 and later (when I started watching anime in earnest). I struggled to find shows that are compelling to watch over the season. That’s not a bad thing. There’s bound to be slow seasons from time to time. Compare this to Fall 2023 where I have three shows I like to watch but I have to choose two.

Link Click S2: Massively thrilling and well-written like S1. I preferred the episodic format of the past season though.

The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses: This was almost a miss with a relatively rough first few episodes, but I’m happy I stuck with it. There’s one episode left, and I’m looking forward to a great payoff.

• I think the anime I looked forward to most week-to-week was Genjitsu no Yohane. Yeah, the plot reused a lot of elements throughout to keep it going and the pacing was a little weird, but it was one of the prettier shows, the fantasy world was interesting, we got new Aqours jams (and the OST was great), and Yoshiko/Yohane was one of my favs from Love Live Sunshine.
• Undead Girl Murder Farce, despite it being maybe not my usual genre of preference, was probably the best overall anime of the season I watched (mostly thanks to the director from Kaguya and all the great, inventive visuals).
• Helck isn’t the prettiest anime visually, but it’s got a director who can balance humor and seriousness in Tatsuo Satou (director of Kidou Senkan Nadesico and Uchuu no Stellvia among other things) and it shows and so it’s been pretty enjoyable.
• Hirogaru Sky! Precure has been pretty solid. Not my favorite installment of Precure (been watching through Tropical Rouge and I think I like that one more, maybe because of its humor and weirdness) and it definitely has its fair share of obvious animation quality dips, but the last couple eps have had really energetic and lively animation with pretty background art so we’ll see where we go from here.
• Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid 2nd Season has been alright. Never was the prettiest show, but this season has had some nicer-than-usual animated moments and bigger plot lines are coming into play so maybe I like it more than season 1?
• wasn’t expecting that much from it (and maybe I like other Naomi Oozora demon-ish shows more than this one) but Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha was pretty fun and the longer plotlines driving the events were pretty interesting.

And yeah there’s Zom 100 which is great but is quite a bit further from done than everything else and who knows when it’ll finish…

Dekineko and Saint Cecilia were both a lot of fun!
Gohands might have lost some people with their animation style, but I think that they did a good job of bringing the characters to life.
Yukichi best boy.

The Gene of AI is underrated and it’s a really good show, it’s a shame that I only see few discussions about it. Despite the source being written in the past the topics that they tackle are very relevant to today’s ai boom and what could happen in the near future.

I’ve loved “Undead Murder Farce”. It feels like that 2010ish BBC Sherlock Holmes meets supernatural creatures and I love it for that. Vending Machine was goofy fun but not the best show of the season for me.

“Helck” is probably my biggest miss. Went in blind and each episode felt pointless in terms of pacing or episodic resolution. The jokes weren’t landing for me either, but that was me.