Although I do not put any big spoilers for the latest seasons of these shows in here, I will be putting in some pretty big spoilers for season 4 of Re:Zero, so if you haven’t seen it yet, skip that part of the review please.

Go listen to the ending of Polar Opposites by season 2. It’s one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard in a long time and it’s made me an instant fan of Mega Shinnosuke.

A little look behind the curtains for you all, but when I know I’m going to have a busy day at work, I try to schedule a piece of writing that’s a little bit easier to get through and requires less of my brain to still be functioning. Quick Reviews are a great outlet these days because I think they’re fun and interesting enough for people wanting to quickly see what the season was about while not being particularly deep, so writing them feels like a breeze. A win-win situation for everyone. I’m writing this one after I spent the entire day doing a training for mentorship in school. I might become a mentor at some point in the future so I figured I might as well take the training for it ahead of time. It’s free after all. Anyway, you’re not here for that, you’re here to see my lukewarm opinions on some anime sequels. So without further ado, let’s get into it.

Ascendance of a bookworm

I feel like this is what he ends up saying throughout this series the most. It’s got to be hard dealing with an adult in a child’s body who often just behaves like a child anyway. Not like he’s any easier to deal with himself.

And let’s start off strong with the now fourth season of this lovely isekai series about a book lover who died and reincarnated a sickly young girl. Where season 3 of this show felt a little bit slow and unassuming to me, this fourth season really managed to pull me back in with an interesting storyline, some more time spent with interesting characters we met in the last season and even a pretty interesting ending to the season. We continue to follow Myne – now Rosemyne – as she navigates her new life among the nobility. The subtitle for this season is the adopted daughter of the archduke after all. Rosemyne is trying to make a Jureve this season, a sort of elixir that will harden the mana in her body and – after a lengthy slumber – should turn her into a healthy young girl. She needs several hard to get ingredients for this elixir, but nothing is impossible if you have the head priest and several royal knights on your side. Still, getting all of the ingredients for this elixir does take some time and things even take a turn towards the end, causing the situation to become much hairier than it should have been. Still, throughout it all Rosemyne continues to love books, develop new technologies and stuns everyone in her surroundings with her vast amount of knowledge and ideas. If the third season made you wonder if this show was still worth your time – like it did for me – know that this fourth season has picked up the pace and is probably fun enough. A small bump in the road was the use of AI in the making of the first opening of this season which rubbed fans – myself included – the wrong way, but they have since then changed it. Up to you if that’s enough for you to turn away from the series or if you don’t mind. I’m fine either way.

Saga of Tanya the Evil

How much time between seasons is too long? Attack on Titan tried to figure out just exactly how much time they could get away with and it resulted in the show feeling a little bit more confusing and chaotic than it could have been. I’m sure they had good reasons to take it slow – catching up to the manga being one of them – but the damage was still there. For me, the Saga of Tanya the Evil felt similar. In this second season of the bizarre show about an alternate world war 2 after nine years without it felt rather jarring to me at times. I remember liking the first season – in big part because of how strange it was compared to other series on the market – but I didn’t remember much beyond the basic plot. A ruthless person on earth is pushed under a moving train – Gantz style – and reincarnates into the body of a young girl. There he starts a feud with god – being X – about what it means to exist and if God truly is real. All of this takes place in the aforementioned alternative reality world war 2 where the empire is still going strong, but not without costs. In season 2 the fighting continues and we spend more time on the frontlines while others are getting involved. Fictional allies, fictional Great Britain and Fictional Italy all have a part in this war and things get dicey for the Empire at times. With Tanya wanting to find her way out of this predicament, she seems to have no luck so far and we end the season in a very similar position as we started it. I don’t know, I’m not convinced I’ll watch a third season of this if it arrives, but if the setting excites you, I have no real complaints about the execution. It looks and sounds fine and there’s lots of army battles. Just not my cup of tea.

Grand Blue Dreaming

This is a show about diving. I think.
Anyone familiar with this anime or manga will know that this is technically true but also a meme. Grand Blue Dreaming is about a college club called Peekaboo that goes diving. Iori has been living with his uncle and cousins above their diving store for a while now, and has fully embraced life in college away from home. Their club does more drinking than diving, although they are truly passionate about diving too. In this season, we finally get a bit more romantic development between the characters but also a growing feeling of responsibility as they all get a little bit older and their seniors are even trying to get jobs because their time in school is almost over. The atmosphere changes although there is still room to return to the silly toilet humor we’ve come to appreciate throughout the earlier seasons. In this third season we see a return to Iori’s home where we meet some strange foreigners, some hijinx with Iori and Kohei’s classmates, a stint into becoming influencers and we top it off with a trip for just Iori and Chise which doesn’t quite go the way they expected. Throughout it all, the series is loud and proud of its humor and there’s even jokes in there about the censoring having grown by a certain percentage to keep up with the rules and regulations. There’s honestly not too much to say about this show. If you like dumb comedy shows this one will be great for you and even if you’re not big on comedy in anime – which I really am not – you will still have a good chance of enjoying this one. The jokes definitely land at times and the show can be surprisingly tender when it wants to be. At the very least do yourself a favor and watch the first season, just to get a taste of how silly this show is.

Re:Zero

When it comes to Isekai anime, Re:Zero has always been an interesting one to me. At some points in the story it feels rather generic in its plot and worldbuilding and sometimes I get the feeling that the story is a little bit all over the place. But then the core mechanic of how this world works and how Subaru’s suffering eventually makes him grow as a character is really interesting. Not only did he suddenly find himself in another world, but he also keeps returning to an earlier point in his life within this new world every time he dies. This is obviously quite traumatic and with Subaru not being the bravest person to begin with, this is tough for him to deal with. In this fourth season, we leave the city of Priestella behind us and start making our way towards the tower where the sage is located. We still haven’t found a way to get Rem back, and the same is true for Julius. Both of them have been forgotten, but at least the latter is still conscious. I personally thought that the first half of this season was rather weak and had some jarring tone shifts. Subaru’s behavior was off throughout and it wasn’t really explained why this happened.
One thing – and this is where the spoilers come in – that really got me curious from this part of the story is what happened to Emilia at the top of the tower. I still remember how she introduced herself as Satella in the very first loop, which then made her very shocked when Subaru called her that in the next loop. This is a question that set up the mystery at the start – which I think was a great hook – and seems to be built upon here. The dragon Volcanica refers to her as Satella as well but gets angry when she mentions the witch of Envy. Maybe there is more truth to the fact that Emilia and Subaru were in the tower somewhere in the far past. But then again, Shaula only recognized Subaru and she would have recognized Emilia too if she had been there before or if Satella had been there before. After all, the few visions we get of Satella tell us that the two look very much like each other. I’m definitely back to being hooked on this series again and can’t wait to learn more. Hopefully we get a fifth season somewhat soon.

You and I are polar opposites

I love all of these silly little goofs. But most of all I want each of these fictional characters to be happy.

When I talked about this show after the first season finished airing, I already made it very clear that I loved this show. The characters are great and the pace is very solid, making for an enjoyable experience. Although I think some of the early episodes of season 1 as well as the opening theme and its beautiful animation added some depth to this show, I think the second season kept going strong. Where much of the first season was focused on Tani and Suzuki, we spend a larger part of this second season on the relationships between Taira and Azuma as well as Yamada and Nisshi. This gives us three relationships with very different dynamics that each play out very differently. It reminds me a little bit of Horimiya with that, because in that show we ended up focusing on a lot of different characters as well and it really made the show a lot better. A relationship can be very complex and we see some of that in the different ways these kids develop their feelings.
There were some moments where I was a little bit worried about where the plot was heading, but by the end of the season, I felt completely satisfied with everything I’ve watched. I have a soft spot for the Taira and Azuma relationship because it comes from a place of hurt for both of them, but evolves into something very healthy. I bought the manga after the end of season 1 but specifically waited for the anime to finish before diving into it, so I still have that to look forward to.

And with the exceptions of Bleach and Yomi no Tsugai, I have now more or less said everything I wanted to say about this past summer season of anime. Those two anime will get their own dedicated post in the near future because I have lots to say about Yomi no Tsugai and I don’t want to talk about the Bleach season yet with 2 episodes still not having aired yet – as of writing this. And then it’s time to start looking ahead again to the future. I better start thinking of things to write about. I’ll go do that, so thanks for reading.