To be honest, I wasn’t too willing to get back on the seasonal treadmill this time around…

The reason I say the thing on the top of the cut is because I’m waiting for fall 2023 (…if you know me well enough and if everything stays on schedule, you’ll know why that is). That said, I’m aiming to increase my outreach and I can do just that if I put out more timely content, so…here we go again! Let’s speedrun this preview thing and get down to business.

• Undead Girl Murder Farce: I’ve been pretty intrigued by this series ever since I saw the woman with the head in a cage some months ago. However, I sometimes wonder where the word “girl” in the title disappears to, because it does in some coverage I’ve already seen around. Also, rumour has it Mamoru Hatakeyama – responsible for Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (my favourite anime of all-time) is attached to this.
• Helck: I’ve been hearing about this manga for a while. It reminds me of a manga called Oretachi no Party wa Machigatteiru which I like, but has a somewhat different premise.
• Reign of the 7 Spellblades: According to my notes on the source light novel, this is “‘Harry Potter as an over-the-top action series’, which is what I wanted from Harry Potter in the first place”. I’m going in cold, but it’s better to have a wrong impression than none at all (like Ayaka below)…right(?)
• Zom100: I’d heard of this anime way back when Viz was promoting it as something to get on the bandwagon of in the late 2010s – early 2020s. (Sidenote: I used to think it was originally published in English for some reason – blame works like Devil’s Candy and Tokyo Tribes for that.)
• Horimiya Piece: With the original Horimiya out of the way, Piece should do just fine.
• Masamune-kun’s Revenge R: I slogged through the original some years ago and apparently this series got hit with a COVID delay, so now it’s a race between me and it to see who’s the slowest…I guess(?)
• AI no Idenshi/The Gene of AI: Sounds…okay. AI is topical enough in this day and age, where ChatGPT is the word on everyone’s lips. I don’t have any experience with the source material, but I’m slightly cheating, as I did read the Anime Feminist preview before sticking it here.
• My Happy Marriage: Uhh…romance? It doesn’t light me up, but it’s still worth a shot.
• Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon: As soon as I start seeing the now-prerequisite isekai on the seasonal charts, I sigh and start to regret I ever bothered with this season at all. The vending machine isekai has been brought up time and time again as a weird example of a thing to be reincarnated as and it…stands out, even with all the other isekai around it. I’ll give it that.
• Ayaka: Ume! (Unfortunately, noting how packed this list is, that might not be enough to care about it this time.)
• Sweet Reincarnation: A dude called Pastry?! Sign me up…to laugh at it!
• Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence: The only reason why this made it to the list is…the fact I keep confusing it with Spice and Wolf, which also happens to have a main guy by the name of (Kraft) Lawrence and a fantasy bent. D-Don’t get me wrong on this! (/only half-tsundere)
• Rurouni Kenshin (2023): Once upon a time, there were many series – particularly Shonen Jump titles – I failed to get into which either became huge hits (such as Mashle or Jujutsu Kaisen) or were already established as huge hits (such as Bleach and Naruto). This, despite its relative age in comparison to the works I’ve just listed, fits in the latter category and its creator being established as a criminal doesn’t help matters. However, I do see the need to look at it with an objective lens – heck, the anime of Recovery of an MMO Junkie/Netjuu no Susume is rather maligned for much the same reason and I love that! – and that’s how it squeaked on to the end of this list.

Things That Would Have Topped the List…If I Was Up-to-Date

(Cue Fairly Oddparents meme.)

As someone who dropped out of the simulcast system over the past few years, this is becoming a graveyard of Anime I Will Get Around to Someday (see: Parkinson’s law, but applied to Dororo (2019), JLPT cramming and all the other things in my life).

• Hataraku Maou-sama!! 2nd Season: One of my all-time favourite anime got back on the airwaves without me last year…and yet, here I am, older, not any wiser and with the first half still on my PTW. I actually wanted to watch season 1 (again) before tackling season 2, too…
• Bungo Stray Dogs season 5: Likewise, this has had a season without me, even though it means a lot to me.
• Sugar Apple Fairy Tale Part 2: I was interested in this when season 1 rolled around…not just for Ume, but on its own merits.

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Now, normally, this is where I would sign off. However, because a bunch of stuff has come out without me but Dororo is still my top priority right now, I will try out Undead Girl Murder Farce and add my impressions below. (I was only going to try the top 2, but as of the time of writing, Helck is within my access, but I can’t watch it because it isn’t out yet.) I will try out other anime if I find either of them not to my liking, but I still have about half my anime list waiting for me, even not counting dropped anime, so I’ll be fine until October rolls around either way.

• Shizuku (I learnt the name of the maid from the synopsis and AniList page) reminds me of Ranko (from Akiba Maid War).
• “Shinuchi” is borrowing from rakugo.
• “I have the body…”
• …that was fun…except the bit at the end. I mean, why is Aya’s saliva basically orange…? (Just fancy work with the colours again…?)

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