I forgot to mention the German suplex in my Iruma-kun rundown…

The last post has impressions for Ahiru no Sora, Shinchou Yuusha, Honzuki no Gekokujou and Mairimashita! Iruma-kun. This post is for Africa Salaryman, Actors, Tokunana and Abilities Average. Next, there’s Assassin’s Pride, Stand My Heroes, No Guns Life and Stars Align (Stars Align is a last-minute addition from my anime club). After that, it’s Kabukicho Sherlock, BnHA 4 and Shin Chuuka Ichiban.

Page jumps

• Africa Salaryman
• Actors
• Long Name Tokunana
• Didn’t I Say to Make my Abilities Average in the Next Life?
• Rankings (cumulative as of this post)

Africa Salaryman

Pretty funny, although the fact it has to make a joke out of groping is…slightly concerning? It’s a real problem, y’know?

I specifically like the shot in the OP where the lion roars in his suit and crouches like a frog, although I don’t think I’ll get that early shot of rapid-fire dancing out of my nightmares…(ugh)

Unfortunately, the “Africa no JK” segments (and the sheer amount of ads I have to fight just for one episode) sunk a lot of my goodwill, but I’ll remove my ad anger (as I’ve since dubbed it) in my rankings to ensure each show gets a fair shot.

Notes:

• Animated Oyasumi Punpun (aka Toucan’s reaction face) is good, y’all.
• The 90s computer transitions are real good, y’all. So’s some of that facial animation when the characters are wigging out (Toucan flipping the bird (pun unintended) is a highlight).
• Quoting my notes: “If Beastars is anime Zootopia, then this is absurdist Zootopia.”

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Actors

Hrmm…fairly decent. I’m not quite sure what the business is with the white shadows just yet, but I suspect Nozomi dying to be a plotline this season. I worry the show is maybe trying too much with having people in all these different clubs, too.

The animation is meh but passable and the barrage of introductions means I probably won’t match all names to faces for a good while yet. Most worrying, however, is the fact Otonomiya is meant to be awesome at singing, but the so-so animation quality kind of undermined that.

Notes:

• If you want us to get on board with this show, maybe play the Vocaloid version of the song first so we know how hard it is to sing…
• The name “Uta Outa” made me LOL pretty hard at how redundant it was. Meanwhile, Sousuke Kagura is more well known to me as the guy from Classicaloid. 
• The “toast in mouth” intro was parodied pretty hard here, to the point where it was somewhat refreshing (1) the younger sister did it instead of a middle/high school student, 2) she almost forgot her toast and 3) the brother tried waking her up but got rejected…then again, 3) does occur sometimes, but we’re coming from the bro’s POV which is why I say it’s “refreshing”).
• I like archery boy and have some beef with Uta’s sleeves, because nobody can play a keyboard with sleeves that long.
• I get the feeling Inazuma Shock, the ED, might end up growing on me with more listens.
• Puh-leez…who made Asta’s VA sing? He’s decent, but not 100% convincing (but maybe I’m biased because Ume has his similar role as Teika in Magic-kyun! Renaissance), which doesn’t help the undermining I mentioned above. 

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Tokunana

I’d compare this to something like Midnight Occult Civil Servants in the spring or Cop Craft in the summer – it looks a bit off-model from the outset, but its plot and characters seem to be generally sound, if by-the-book.

Cop Craft is probably the best comparison, since it has a reliance on CGI…which doesn’t bode well for subsequent episodes.

Notes:

• I like the lady with the samurai sword.
• Maybe the show could’ve done something more with the otherworld aspect, since its predecessors – including my reigning king of supernatural cop shows, Kekkai Sensen – went all in with it.
• Did anyone else realise the masks created a demented Momotaro quartet (Dobermann, eagle (pheasant) , gorilla (monkey) and Momotaro)?

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Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!

I was suffering through some bad buffering (but it was either that or wrestling with ads on the app, because as it turns out, there is no adblocker for Android without using a dedicated browser…and I don’t want to do that, I have far too many bookmarks on Chrome). Still, the line of introductions (that’s the 3rd as of my writing this on the 16th of October, since I’ve been doing nothing but watch premieres all day today), combined with humour that was missing its mark (because the jokes were sitting too long due to buffering, I ended up spotting a character who Mile talks to and presumably will add to her party…I then correctly predicted this new encounter was going to be called “tsundere” and that was the last straw) made me hit drop at about the 4 minute mark.

Notes:

• I’m thinking about putting this on my reevaluate list (since I did manage to scrounge Africa Salaryman from the pause list after thinking about how much I enjoyed it before ad anger), so if you can make a successful case for this show, be sure to chime in through the comments.

Rankings

Since I fell behind, I ended up writing 2 1st impression posts at once (by putting Stand My Heroes before Abilities Average), so you start to see my rankings take shape here.

Watching:

• Shinchou Yuusha (1 ep) – this one’s the runaway success of the season so far
• Iruma-kun (1 ep)
• [Dr Stone would rank here with its 14th ep, but its spot is looking extremely safe right now]
• Stand My Heroes (1 ep) – see impressions on other post.
• Africa Salaryman (1 ep)
• Actors (1 ep)
• Tokunana (1 ep) – I’m giving it another episode out of goodwill, based on the post-episode scene with the gunshots (which startled me for a bit, since I left the ED running for a bit). There is such a thing as too many supernatural cop procedurals in one year, so I don’t mind putting this on hold, to be honest.
• Ahiru no Sora (1 ep) – 1 more ep.
• – [threshold of pausing/dropping] –
• Urashimasakatasen no Nichijou (1 ep): 1 more ep.

Paused:

• Honzuki no Gekokujou (1 ep)

Dropped:

• Abilities Average (1 ep, may pick back up if season is really dire – incidentally, I believe the only show in my 5 years of simulcasts that’s been saved by an overall atrocious seasonal performance (i.e. what might happen to this) is Hina Logi, which was okay enough that I could finish it – I’m about halfway through it, as of writing this post – but I’m in no hurry to)

So how’s your experience with these shows? Did I skip anything good? (For a refresher, see the anticipated anime list here.)