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I've been watching plain unhealthy amounts of anime lately, both by myself and with my GF... Not all of it worth talking about, but there were a few interesting ones too. First, the amusing disasters. Psychic Wars and Dark Cat are two legendarily bad old anime movies and both are hilarious in their own ways. Psychic Wars is a story of a surgeon that becomes magical shinto superman and punches demons. It's also so horribly edited it's barely comprehensible and the fight scenes are so dumb and cliched I nearly died from laughter on a few occasions. Utterly horrible and taking itself so seriously it's histerical. 1/10, highly recommended. Dark Cat is a story of two magical shapeshifting brothers fighting demons straight out of Maggot Baits. I'm not even joking, it's an unironic mix of Saturday morning cartoon (the dialogue, the villain and general story setup) and visuals straight out of guro hentai. Also, it was dubbed by a hentai company completely clueless on how to deal with proper anime and the dub is the only version I was able to find online. Quite a glorious combination. Also, I think Big Order is absolutely hilarious too. I understand that people watching it expecting anything half decent were extremely upset, but the kitsch postapocalyptic world, stupid edgy protagonist, chaotic storytelling, awful CGI and bonkers fanservice wasting tons of already too-limited runtime are an incredible mix. When it goes to full series anime, I haven't seen anything this comically inept since Hand Shakers, which means Big Order too will hold a very special place in my heart. When it goes to more ambivalent stuff, Elaina's Journey was quite a letdown for me... Really weird anime when it goes to tone and pacing. The idea of somewhat aimlessly exploring a vast fantasy world is definitely my jam, but the morals and structure of the story are arguably awful. Elaina is theoretically taught early on that despite her powers as a talented witch she's just one person and it's not her role to save the world... But there's no consistency whatsoever in what she does. She can be passive when all she needed to do is say something (the early episode about a slave is particularly jarring, with Elaina narrating the problem to the audience but not doing anything at all), or get herself in life-or-death situations without much need... It's just bad writing. It's also not the kind of travelling anime that focuses a lot on the episodic stuff and slowly develops the protagonist in subtle ways... It establishes Elaina as this rather obnoxious brat, gives her tons of screentime and doesn't make her grow in any meaningful way. On moment-to-moment basis, the anime isn't exactly awful, but as a whole, it was very meh... 6/10. Adachi and Shimamura, the adaptation of one of the most-celebrated yuri LNs... Is pretty solid but also very much hurt by being a single season affair. It establishes the characters quite well, but never gets to the point that could be described as payoff by any reasonable definition – it'd either need to be a 24 episode anime for that, or at least 13 episode one with a movie/long OVA. With the 12 we've got... I kind of understand why it's rated so low. You have Adachi, who is isolated and extremely awkward, which turns her into a walking dumpster fire when she has to confront with her feeling for Shimamura and realization of being gay. The main content of the anime is her suffering through episodes of gay panic, and Shimamura being confused with what's happening. A rather tropy affair, but not something I'd label "unrealistic" or "bad" by any measure. Shimamura is maybe the more interesting part of the story, as she is much better adapted than Adachi, but also having her own set of issues. She's a kind of person that lost her way, not being motivated to do much and just going with the flow most of the time. Her social interactions are mostly empty pleasantries, she cannot dedicate herself to her studies, doesn't have meaningful hobbies... When she meets Adachi while they're both skipping classes she doesn't give much thought to the time they spend together. She has a hard time deciphering the ever-increasing attention she's getting from Adachi and her drive to deepen the relationship. It takes a lot of time and minor subplots for her to start noticing that there's something different about their bond and what it could bloom into... But you don't get to see much of that, as the anime just ends. Some people complain that the relationship dynamic in this anime is unhealthy, but hell, it's not like people only get together in a well-adjusted and straightforward fashion. The real problem is that the series do not get to the point where they work through their issues. Also, fuck, gay dating must be scary with all the ambiguity and the low chance of your random crush being available, and in an environment like Japan it must be a nightmare. Still, the series has a lot of warmth, hopefulness and excellent attention to detail. I wish there'd be enough of it to give anime viewers closure, but still, I'll give it 8/10. Oh, and I finally restarted watching Kaguya-sama, which I paused early in the second season. I easily get burned out on romcoms because unless they are short and close-ended stories, the just never move forward and never give you a resolution. The only way that can be tolerable is if the comedy or writing in general is really that good... And while I still probably needed that break, Kaguya-sama is just excellent enough of a comedy to justify narratively standing still and just having fun. Shame that we'll probably only get a proper conclusion in the upcoming movie and not the season 3 finale (I'm in the middle of season 3 now)? Still, hard to dispute the universal acclaim it gets. It's just so full of fun and charm, it's hard not to love it.

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The incessant yuri baiting (with your typical "weird girl obsessively in love with the protagonist" trope) likely didn't endear me to it either... But yeah, I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone, the ratings it gets are generally high, but it falls apart if you actually pay attention to what the episodic stories show you. Plus the tone shifts in some of them are borderline-comical and the show hardly earns the really heavy drama it occasionally tries to pull off.

Yeah, I've seen some similar criticism for the LN. I used to be interested in this title, but these points make me think that it's probably not worth watching/reading.