Thank you,

The new season of anime has started. This is my watch/try list:
Steel Ball
Agents of the 4 Seasons
Food Diary of Miss Maid
Classroom of the Elite
Always a Catch
Doctor Stone
Ramparts of Ice
Killed Again Mr. Detective
Snowball Earth
Bookworm 4
Iruma-Kun 4
Akane-Banashi
Daemons of the Shadow
Needy Girl Overdose
Kusunoki’s Garden of Gods
Nippon Sangoku
Magical LuluttoLilly
Ghost Concert
Observation Records of my Fiance
Witch Hat
Liar Game
Even a Replica
ReZero
Gals
Warrior Princess and Barbaric King
Drops of God
Kill Blue
Black Cat and Witch
So far Steel Ball Run was fantastic and Agents of the 4 Seasons is a fascinating start to slice of life fantasy.

That's a lot!

I liked the Liar Game JDrama, so it's cool to finally see it get an anime.

I'm excited for the new Ghost in the Shell.

I only got to see a little of the Liar Game JDrama before it got taken down so I'm grateful for a second chance.

We saw a few episodes of "How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend" a while back and probably should finish it eventually, because it seemed pretty entertaining. A group of high schoolers decides, under varying levels of consent, to create a visual novel as a group project.

I laughed pretty hard at how it opened with a scene of the main girls complaining to each other about how modern anime has too much fanservice... while they are bathing naked in a steamy hot spring.

I watched the first ep of that a long time ago and wasn't that impressed. We seem to have very different tastes. It's neat. I look forward to seeing what else we share in common or find different.

Yeah, we all like different things. I think I've got a few more in the watched list that I'll have to remember and post too.

I watched a bit of Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie some time ago, and honestly I can say I had mixed feelings about that one. There's nothing wrong with having a low-stakes story (in comparison to some, I mean) where the protagonists are just allowed to be happy, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who take comfort in it. The general idea is that a massively unlucky boy happens to be dating an energetic pink-haired girl who is constantly helping and protecting him. There's no real explanation, it's just sort of a side thing that happens as we explore other parts of their cute relationship.

Except here's the thing... I swear it hints at something much bigger and/or darker, and it never gets explored or followed through on. The boy is so dangerously unlucky - to the point of fatally heavy things nearly falling on him - that it's almost like some higher power wants him dead. The girl is quite literally superhuman, and saves him before he can even react to the danger. And when he asks how she manages to protect him so impossibly well, she just shushes him with a finger to her lips and sweeps the issue under the rug.

So... is she some sort of god or angel assigned to protect him, because he needs to be kept alive to fulfill some unknown purpose?
Is it really just a series of coincidences, and a really capable girl who's just determined to keep her boyfriend safe because she loves him?
Or... could she have planned it all in advance and "saved" him to make him helplessly dependent on her out of fear for his own safety without her?

I realize this is a solid case of "complaining about shows you don't watch," but as someone who loves digging into lore, it just bugs me that there are signs it's going to get dark, and then it just never happens.

Full disclosure: I'm sure many of the things I did watch and recommend here could be subjected to picking apart in a similar way, and as someone who sometimes just wants to watch cute anime girls over dinnertime, I'll fully own up to that!

All right, now I seriously wanna know if any of you have heard of a certain badminton-themed anime called Salaryman's Club.

Because if not, y'all are gonna laugh when you find out the name of the guy on the left here:

Spoiler

Mikoto Shiratori.

It gets even better too. From the wiki page on him:

Spoiler

https://salarymans-club.fandom.com/wiki/Mikoto_Shiratori
"At first, he refuses to play doubles due to emotional trauma following an incident involving his high school best friend and doubles partner Azuma Tachibana..."

Honestly I have never watched this and don't even know if it would interest me, but I sure did laugh when I made that discovery.

For what it's worth I have seen that series and it's REALLY damn good as sports/grown-up slice of life.

That's interesting - I might have to actually check it out sometime!