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Alya-san has an interesting premise that feels like it could make a great romcom. Unfortunately, it has no idea what to do with its premise and instead tries out various other things, none of which really stick. After a few romance-focused episodes, which are good but not outstanding, it suddenly becomes an imouto meme show for a bit, then switches its focus decidedly on student politics which it has no idea how to do in a remotely interesting way. Near the end it almost feels like “we have Classroom of the Elite at home”. The premise which made me interested in the first place is ... shoved aside to become more of a recurring joke than a central element of the story: “Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian” — yes, she certainly does that. And Masachika (the male lead) reacts in the same way every time. There are all sorts of interesting dynamics the premise *could* lead to, but the show never explores any of them.

The animation and the music are all solid. Especially the EDs are cool, I like the idea of Alya's VA covering a different old love song each time. There was clearly a lot of effort put into the adaptation, but the story that was presented in the end is just not very interesting.

This anime certainly has enjoyable moments. But given the abundance of good romantic comedies, imouto meme anime, and student politics dramas, I see no reason to recommend a show that half-heartedly tries to be all of them at once.

As someone who has not read the original manga, I think Uzumaki is worth watching despite its flaws. Episodes 1 and 4 are incredible; they show a very unique style of horror that is not otherwise found in anime, with high-quality, fluid animation. The use of rotoscoping adds to the unsettling atmosphere. Episodes 2 and 3 fall off in comparison, with lower animation quality and a breakneck storytelling pace that makes them feel anything but coherent. But in my opinion they do not detract from the highs found in the first and last episode. You could probably even skip the middle episodes and treat episodes ... 1 and 4 as only vaguely connected horror stories.

The soundtrack fits the show well, it accentuates the disquieting atmosphere without being distracting. The ED song also fits well but it feels more like an afterthought. In general I am a theme song enjoyer but I admit that this show doesn't really need them.

If you are already a big fan of Junji Ito's work, this show might disappoint you. But if you don't really read manga and only have a vague idea what his stories are about — like I did — I would absolutely recommend watching Uzumaki, for an experience unlike any other.

On the surface, Kimizero appears to just be a self-insert fantasy, where the unpopular guy gets the popular girl without any effort. While that is certainly how it starts off, it ends up telling a surprisingly deep and complex story. I would call Kimizero a celebration of imperfection: people make wrong choices, but that is okay, mistakes are something you can learn from! You can have one idea at one time and a different idea at another time — it's fine to change your mind! Different people have different preferences! Some parts of the show will seem blindingly inconsistent, but that misses the bigger point ... that real life is not consistent, either.

I especially like Kimizero because it dares to show happy people being happy, without those parts being boring. I feel like many other romance anime fail at this element in one way or another. The show does have weird tropey misunderstandings from time to time, but they are usually resolved refreshingly quickly.

To be clear, Kimizero is not a literary masterpiece; some of the storyline choices are definitely questionable. If you're allergic to tropes of any kind in romance anime, and are utterly bored by the thought of a happy couple without underlying drama, Kimizero might not be for you. But if you're on the fence, give it a try, you might be surprised.

Imagine watching a great political intrigue show, like LotGH, but every second episode it would switch to being a generic high-school romcom. That is kind of how this show feels to watch: I was blown away by the complexity of the negotiation scenes, and the main character must use her special abilities with skill and nuance, instead of being completely overpowered. It felt great to watch her be so smart about everything, unlike so many other isekai MCs. But then came the romance scenes, where she showed no more intelligence than an oblivious high school romance MC, which felt incredibly frustrating. The show tries to ... make the most predictable romance plot threads feel like great twists. Its setting also raised eyebrows for me — there is no reason it needs any kind of fantasy elements, let alone a magic system. I am told these inclusions are essentially required for “Korean otome isekai”, but they added no value here. The theme songs and soundtrack fit the show well but are not that interesting on their own; the same is true about the visuals.

In conclusion, this show does not really know what it wants to be. It is unaware of its own strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, it is not a *bad* show — if you weren't turned off by my description, I think you might enjoy it.

Should you watch S2 of Masamune-kun if you have watched S1 when it originally aired? I think yes. It definitely improves upon the first season's not all too special plot, by means of some random but pretty funny twists, while keeping the already good parts good, like the great MC. Moreover, it does a good job reintroducing the side characters. The theme songs are alright but can't quite match up to WAGAMAMA MIRROR HEART. Occasionally, the plot tries to be too grandiose for its own good, and I wouldn't call it a must-watch, but it was always entertaining, never boring. I am looking forward to ... S3 in 2030 ;)

People say 18if is like a box of chocolates: there are both good and bad parts and you won't know which one it is until you try. While I agree, I would rather compare it to an expensive box of luxury chocolates: all the flavours are exotic combinations, with ones such as broccoli-mango or truffle-chili. Initially you are turned off because you can't imagine these crazy combinations can possibly be good, but once you try some it becomes clear that they taste much better than they sound. Of course, there will always be some you dislike, but overall it's undeniable that a lot of well-placed ... effort and experience has been put into them, and that they're certainly worth the expensive price. (Not that the price part applies to this anime.)

18if is a mostly episodic series, where each¹ episode is directed by a different director. The first 10 episodes are fully episodic; you can watch them in any order if you want, or skip episodes you don't like. The last three episodes consist of a short continuous arc that explains questions raised during the first 10 episodes. Note that if you skipped episodes before, you won't understand the references to these specific episodes.

The premise for the episodic episodes is as follows: In every episode there is a different witch, representing a real-world person with Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, and Haruto and Katsumi have to help the witch get back to the real world. In addition, every episode (more or less) showcases some kind of real-world issue that serves as a theme for the episode — ranging from classic themes such as the idol industry to obscure ones such as Cambodian history. I thought all of these stories were quite interesting, but given the nature of the show there will probably be ones you won't like.

Apart from the director of each episode, there is also Kouji Morimoto — known for staff roles in Majo no Takkyuubin/Kiki's Delivery Service and Akira, for example — as the co-director in every episode². This combination leads to the anime being overall very well directed, despite the fact that the episodic directors tend to be relatively obscure.

The music in the show is overall very good too; of particular note is the OP song which I would consider excellent, combined with the unique OP visuals. The ED is different each episode, with the songs being of varying quality. The ED visuals are usually just simple credit rolls with flashbacks to the episode, over varying backgrounds, but the rest of the show's visuals are engaging enough that a flashy ED animation doesn't feel necessary.

The animation quality is hit-and-miss, but it's always at least alright, with some episodes being exceptionally well animated (episode 7 comes to mind). I haven't played the source game, but the anime is strange enough that if someone told me this was adapted from a puzzle game I would just assume they're joking, so I wouldn't expect it to be a very close adaptation. If you've played the game and got a similar feel as what I'm describing, then you probably know what you're in for.

Overall it's difficult to give the show one single score because it varies so much, but I enjoyed it enough that I feel a 9 is adequate, and there are certainly some 10 elements in my opinion.

¹: Episodes 1 and 2 were directed by the same director, but otherwise this applies.
²: One episode was exclusively directed by him.

Love Kome is not a traditional comedy: it doesn't thrive on jokes, gags/skits, or character stereotypes like most comedy series; nor does it have a "dry" sense of humour like some others. For one, it has lots of puns; but its main way of being humorous is by being extraordinarily bizarre. The story is so absurd that you will rarely think anything else other than "how the hell did anyone come up with this?!". It is also not the slightest bit self-aware: every single thing, however crazy it may seem to the viewer, makes perfect sense in the characters' minds. Together, this makes Love Kome ... a very unique series, that, while I wouldn't consider it "good" in the usual sense, certainly doesn't deserve to be this ignored either.

In short, the story is about a group of five schoolboys to achieve fame in an event called the Harvest Festival, which involves different groups of (or individual) entertainers showing off their skills in so-called Harvest Shows. The catch is that the five schoolboys, and everyone else in the school, are actually anthropomorphised rice. Apart from rice, bread is also represented in the Harvest Festival; this gives rise to the show's largest conflict, which is, of course, rice versus bread.

Apart from the overarching story with the Harvest Festival, which isn't *too* absurd so far, it also shows off various problems that rice plants have to deal with in a more episodic nature: there will be some bizarre event that happens to the boys, and later it turns out that it was actually a metaphor for some disease rice plants get, or for resistance to a particular environmental parameter, or something else entirely. Here the show uses the different characters to show the differences between various strains of rice (each character belongs to a different strain and thus has different properties).

The characters are mostly male with bishounen aesthetics, and it's pretty clear that the show's target demographic isn't heterosexual men (occasionally a group of three fujo-looking women shows up and they react to something), but this fact isn't really that important in the show, and it certainly isn't sexual in nature or has any ecchi parts.

In other aspects, the show can actually be considered good: the art is surprisingly well done, and the sound, while not exceptional, isn't bad either. At the end of each episode the ending is shown, consisting of the (fairly generic) ending song set to a video of someone preparing a rice dish, different each episode, in "gif recipe" style: the working area is filmed from above and you only ever see the cook's hands while the dish's preparation is being shown significantly sped up. This way, the viewer learns about new unique rice dishes: in my opinion, this is a very nice idea and fits the theme of the show well.

I wouldn't really consider this show "slice of life" (fun fact: at time of writing, Love Kome is the second worst rated slice of life series out of 967 to have received an actual score). You won't be able to relate to this unless you are rice.

Overall, the show seems like a commercial for rice aimed at fujos. Don't let this turn you off, however: watch the show, then laugh about how bizarre it is (and if you understand enough Japanese, laugh about all the puns). You don't really have much to lose, given how each episode is only four minutes long, and in the worst case you learn some recipes for rice dishes you probably haven't known.