fantastic first episode. Coming in blind, I kinda wonder if there's gonna be more digs at work culture with the zombie parallels. As pointed out by KVin of SakugaBlog fame on twitter, the ZLM company is a pretty thinly-veiled reference to the studio OLM that BUG FILMS split off from (down to logo and office building). Seems like a lot of folks like the resignation scene but the other string of jokes I liked from this ep was that string of opposites in the MC's narration where he mentions the employees being moved to tears, or health being a priority. It kinda feels like a lot of ground and variety was covered with different sorts of shots with everything moving at a brisk pace which was kinda overwhelming (probably the point) but also really impressive and kinda exhilarating, the energy levels kinda didn't dip the whole 24 minutes.

I liked the use of the newscast to clue us in on the timeframe. I kinda like the blurring of anime reality and fiction by not explicitly telling us that what was on screen was a movie (and I suppose John Adams is supposed to be a generic name in English but it made me think of the composers,.. then the president). The aspect ratio and the color palette of the beginning of the ED making it look like an older anime is kinda neat.

On a metanote, it seems like Shinobu isn't posting all of the episode discussion threads on this instance? Things like Shinigami Bocchan and Genjitsu no Yohane didn't make it over to this instance.

quiet zero looks like something out of homeworld, except less colorful i guess.

a swordfight in a gundam series and a character is wearing all red and another all white, don’t think i’ve ever seen that before… never ever… (suppose it also kinda does double duty and makes the utena ties more explicit).

i guess the turn on the series’s phrase “even if there’s nothing to gain, i have to move forward” makes suletta’s character growth blatantly obvious if somehow anybody missed it (there’s also suletta thanking belmeria for letting her do things out of her volition).

hey, the lagrange naming of large habitations are back from other gundam series. the orchestral dropin when suletta began her attack with caliburn kinda reminded me of those sawano moments in unicorn.

Not really sure what qualifies as underrated/overrated,.. BUT in terms of things I can find on YouTube and general sense of amount of discussion I've seen,.. I think the OPs get more attention than the EDs of these series when I've tended to like the EDs better

Seisenshi Dunbine's ED because power ballads are fun

Gundam IBO S1's ED feels James Bondy with the swung feel and the strings (incidentally Aria the Origination's OP Spirale, also great, kinda feels James Bondy to me but more for the chromaticism,.. ANYWAYS)

and yeah, this was a stacked season (with competition like Bocchi the Rock) but I think my favorite ED of that season was Do It Yourself's ED because of its ultimate comf (kinda gives me the same feel as Nichijou's first ED)

quiet zero looks like something out of homeworld, except less colorful i guess.

a swordfight in a gundam series and a character is wearing all red and another all white, don't think i've ever seen that before... never ever... (suppose it also kinda does double duty and makes the utena ties more explicit).

i guess the turn on the series's phrase "even if there's nothing to gain, i have to move forward" makes suletta's character growth blatantly obvious if somehow anybody missed it (there's also suletta thanking belmeria for letting her do things out of her volition).

hey, the lagrange naming of large habitations are back from other gundam series. the orchestral dropin when suletta began her attack with caliburn kinda reminded me of those sawano moments in unicorn.

the rain scene was absolutely gorgeous. i guess i tend to like rain scenes in anime and how they tend to be used in setting mood (haruhi's rain ep is one of my favorites from that series). i guess losing glasses is kind of tropey but it kinda feels like it has a bit of symbolism here too. i also liked the brief flashes of portrait outline throughout the ep.

I really liked the transition from the dark, deserted town streets to the lighted ones with all the banners with it floating and flickering in the sky. Also that part with Aya recounting how she lost her body, with her glowing floating head and that figure emerging from the puddle of blood was great looking too. Those two scenes sold me on following this show this season.

Susumu Hirasawa also did the OP and ED to Kon's Paprika and I haven't managed to find clips of him performing any of Paranoia Agent live, his live shows look like a trip with him performing with a laser controller

def one of my favs of the season.

mentioned last week how i liked tsubaki's confession scene and i like its continuation here. kvin from sakugablog has a twitter thread about this anime and mentions the weird way this show uses the traditional shoujo anime "sparkles" that float around the screen and act as transitions, using the beer from the beginning of the series of as an example. i liked how the tears were this episode's usage of the shoujo sparkles and in particular, there was that one tear that floated in front of the flashbacks.

how runa was animated throughout the dinner was really fun. my favorite bit was when akane was holding runa up and had her hand over her mouth to keep her quiet and runa is just hanging there.

doesn't feel like a show i should hold my breath for a s2 and things feel nicely tied up and full circle here, but it'd be a pleasant surprise. in any case, it'd be fun to see inori minase in more roles that use this voice (although i do like her usual asmr-y or lively genki voice roles).

I liked the look of the opening sequence, especially with Mashiro's little glowly light. Are pumpkin ghosts actual things? They look great in their costumes anyways. I guess overall the animation looked a bit more lively than the last couple weeks. The kids are trick-or-treating during the daytime though? Wait, is Pretty Holic a Precure thing in general? Because I remember it from Tropical Rouge i think... Not a big Battamonda fan but I liked his henshin into Cure Pumpkin (also now that I look his VA up, I did like KENN in Uchuu Kyoudai and it looks like he has a main role in iDOLISH which I've been meaning to get to...). Cure Majesty getting the baby treat and having to eat it when she turns back just raises more questions for me in terms of her mental age going back and forth... but also it was a pretty funny gag.

I like the modern/future-ish kinda fantasy setting. I guess that tends to be a relatively common JRPG setting,... also Shadowrun (except Shadowrun is more cyberpunk). Was kinda half-hoping the fantasy setting meant we'd get acoustic instrumental backing tracks, but this works too. I wonder if Yoko Hikasa being Laelaps means Laelaps gets to sing too [Sunshine S2] ::: spoiler spoiler also, guess that dog name got ported over from the original series ::: .

Could listen to Shuuchi Ikeda narration all day. Speaking of VAs, Mikako Komatsu is killing it and also noticed that she was also the MC in one of director Tatsuo Satou's previous series in Mouretsu Pirates (slightly more composed and less screamy role though, also I still need to watch the movie). Comedic timing is still on point and I loved the stingers revealing Azudora's health. The expression on the face of those ouroboros-y looking deep green rings are fun.

It looks like Tatsuo Satou (the director of Kidou Senkan Nadesico, Uchuu no Stellvia, and Mouretsu Pirates) is directing this so yeah, I'm in. Also, Shuuichi Ikeda (aka CHAR) is narrating,... and then Akira Ishida (Athrun Zala among many other things) is one of the characters?! alright alright.

Anyways, not knowing anything about this coming in, this first ep was a lot of fun and Tatsuo Satou is a director who I like for the worldbuilding in their series and the balance of seriousness with good comedic timing so looking forward to the rest.

Hah, I would recognize Mamoru Miyano's voice anywhere (well, almost. he's a little harder to pick out in his more subdued roles). Makoto Furukawa's voice I have more trouble with (like he was in Gundam NT, what?) but I guess he's pretty recognizable here.

It's fun seeing all the zombies in different getups, I kinda wonder what's with the guy in the sailor fuku. Kencho's speech kinda reminds me of some themes in recently airing anime... I guess the sun dimming as it passes by buildings and then coming out, the literal leaps of faith, the stripping off of formal clothes, and the helping hand were kinda,.. on the noise, but it was a fun and pretty sequence.

Should rewatch (and reread) YKK one of these days, both are great and I think about the sort of mono no aware-related themes presented in them every now and then. Maybe it's a bit harder for me to separate YKK and Aria in my head because of the mentioned Choro Club OST overlap and the watercolor sort of look they both take on at times.... Although the post mentions layers with respect to Quiet Country Cafe, that actually brings to mind some of the bits of the first OVA series that I found the most memorable in ::: spoiler YKK first OVA series the insert song bits that layer Alpha on top of various post-apocalyptic Yokohama scenery. :::

Meteos for the DS. Never got the Disney sequel but the original was great and probably my most played DS game.

• 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...

thought it was a 13-ep season so was half-expecting a next episode.

as an anime-only, hopefully ririka pops up again in the future. feels like she's just getting started in seriously processing that whole ordeal for whatever reason: whether it being due to being in her position/expectations of her/people around her, not having the maturity quite yet to deal with it, or just not being able to process these sorts of things as well as her peers (definitely relatable things). would be interesting to see where she goes from now.

I can't imagine the mental whiplash of being non-toddler Cure Majesty (who doesn't seem to act like a toddler) and toddler Ellee and kinda hurts my head to think about, like things she would only understand as a non-toddler but still somehow remembering in a way as a toddler? In any case, it's fun having Aoi Koga using a non-toddler voice for Cure Majesty because it's easier to imagine Kaguya saying all the lines.

Was kinda half-expecting "ora-ora-ora" or "muda-muda-muda" with punch flurries from Ellee but I guess "da-da-da-da-da-da" works too (and I guess we got "muda muda muda" in a way from Minoton later). The colored-pencil-ish coloring with the thick outlines was a neat aesthetic. Also, I guess the blurry hands she did next was a Bruce Lee reference?

Schwarzette’s bits are pretty cool. Funnels/bits are always cool though.

“I don’t want Mom… to become some evil magician!” Thanks for pointing out the Tempest parallels, Suletta.

I guess it wouldn’t be Gundam without a big freaking laser. Now with organ soundtrack (reminds me of Yamato 2202’s OST). And it’s always fun when Gundam does evil Haros.

Whenever I see Quod Erat Demonstrandum, I always think of Candide,… namely the Bernstein operetta adaptation. I’ve studied math in the past so I dunno why Candide pops into my head first, I guess squares are more common than the actual letters. QED kinda feels a little on-the-nose to be at the concluding steps of ideologically-based (well, ideology and revenge-based) plot but eh.