I…think I’m ready to come back…?

Talking with my anime club at their biannual barbeque made me realise something: I’ve been working through the spreadsheet so long that I’m starting to miss simulcasts. I also have less time on my hands overall now, due to the job I mention in this post. So I’m sitting on 121 episodes to finish on my spreadsheet, but I will make this list anyway because 1) I caved for HiDive, now I have the means to pay it off, and 2) maybe getting back into the swing of things will force me to finally kick some anime off my list.

To tell you guys the truth, my anime watching has gone down since the consolidation of Funimation and Crunchyroll, not only because of what I say above, but because I’m still sore about the loss of my sublicensor, even a season out from it. That’s probably the only time where corporation shuffling has really hit me where it hurts post-my move to streaming services for good in 2014 or so.

As usual, from most to least hype and accurate as of this post. I’m automatically throwing anything on Netflix and Disney Plus off the list.

• Paripi Koumei/Ya Boy Kongming!: I was so excited about this fish-out-of-water anime that, aside from Saiyuki Reload Zeroin, it was the reason I got a HiDive account. I even got some manga volumes of it off Japanese Bookwalker after they had a promotion. One of my favourite anime is, as you might know, Hataraku Maou-sama!/The Devil is a Part-timer! and while what I’ve seen of the manga doesn’t have the same romantic plotlines as that does – Paripi‘s focus is more on comedy and music – it seems like the two will fill similar niches…Oh, and the entire reason why I was motivated to write this post? This anime will debut in 2 weeks. (Can you tell I was motivated to get a job partially for the sake of sustainably watching it while it’s hot? *sweatdrops with hand behind head*)

Sidenote: Paripi is short for “party people” and “Kongming” is the Chinese pronunciation of the guy’s name…(so now you know why the English and Japanese titles differ so much, haha…)

• Spy x Family: This season’s other hot and presumably popular-like-wildfire release, which I’ve been following since its early days (…aside from recently, where I fell off the map – I promise, now I can sustainably afford SJ+, I will catch up…when the month flips over in a week or so). A little something for basically everyone here, you can’t go wrong with it.
• Healer Girl: Magical girls?…Sort of???

There’s a huge gap in hype between the entries above and the ones below:

• Mahoutsukai no Reimeiki/Dawn of the Witch: Grimoire of Zero was a pleasant watch…albeit one I barely remember these days. Only time will tell if you need to watch one for the other.
• Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato De/Love After World Domination: The ecchi tag makes me hesitant, but the tokusatsu parody makes me go for it.
• Yuusha, Yamemasu/I’m Quitting Heroing: Seems fairly interesting. It’s worth a shot.
• Dance Dance Danseur: Looks…okay? It’s a fairly hot release, according to what I know, including the fact this is the first of the author’s works to be adapted to anime.
• Tomodachi Game: I know nothing about this series, but the LGBTQ+ Issues tag on AniList makes me curious. It’s probably going to be bad rep regardless and it most likely won’t cater to me, but… *shrugs* I might get a good psychological anime out of it, at least…?
• Estab-Life: The synopsis grabs me, the art does not. (To be fair, I was courted by the Anime News Network previews of this anime…and have now forgotten why I wanted to check it out in the first place…maybe it was the synopsis that did it(???))
• Otomege Sekai wa Mob ni Kibishii Sekai desu/Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games Is Tough for Mobs: The synopsis (and surprisingly, the mecha tag! On a series with a light novel title!!!) grabs me, the look of the animation does not. This one’s on a real knife-edge for me.

I actually outright hate Aharen-san and Shikimori‘s adaptions from seeing them around in Japanese-speaking spheres (JPN Shonen Jump+ for the former and Magazine Pocket for the latter) and I don’t think I’ll like A Couple of Cuckoos, based on the synopsis/look of it, so it’s going to be sparse pickings on the romance front, but that’s okay – I left all my romance/dramas from previous seasons on my list to finish later.

I’m also throwing a bunch of the anime out because they didn’t grab me as I was writing up this post…which is what I usually do, except for the fact there’s a very high quantity of anime locked to me for whatever reason (mostly s2s and things I didn’t catch up on in my time away from simulcasts), so I might have to go between the anime on my spreadsheet and my new ones. It’s been a while, so a small reminder I don’t obligate myself to fill in all 6 of my available simulcast slots from the get-go – it’s easier to sit on them for a few weeks, in fact.

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So what are you guys looking forward to?