Legend of Mana: The art style is beyond awful, intentionally ugly. No one would be caught dead in the outfits they're wearing. All the characters are stupid and overly violent. No I mean, they literally are stupid, borderline retarded. They're plants and stuff, except they talk, but they're still as dumb as plants. Fail.
Bocchi the Rock: This series has good art and a nice premise (a lonely girl decides to become good at music so that someone will invite her to join a band, very clever of her), but it's fixated on delivering a new joke every ten seconds or so, most of which aren't funny. This really disrupts the pacing and actual drama of the story, which is its strong point. An opportunity lost. Still, it's a lot better than most of the stuff that's been coming out this season. Pass.
Fuufu Ijou: Very similar to A Couple of Cuckoos, a guy is paired with a girl in a fake relationship and forced to live together with her while actually trying to develop his romance with a pre-existing girl of interest. Unfortunately, because the fake-romance girl is so cute he finds his feelings becoming complicated over time. It's not a bad premise, it worked well with Cuckoos, but for some reason they really pushed the sexual innuendo in this one, which makes it less bittersweet and more just tawdry. Like Cuckoos, the girls are pretty enough the series becomes watchable just for their sake, but the main character is weak-minded enough that I may get tired of him before the end. It'll do for a first episode though. Pass.
Chainsaw Man: A dumb boy, through sheer bad luck, ends up in the worst circumstances imaginable. A poorly paid debt slave to a demon who has already harvested half his body parts for money but is still demanding more. The boy is too stupid to get out of his circumstances by, say, reporting things to the police, fleeing the country, killing his slavemaster, robbing a bank and paying all off his debts all at once, etc. Then, to make matters worse, the demon turns on him and tries to kill him with a zombie horde. But that's when he fuses with a chainsaw devil and gets the power to fight back in a very gory, maniacal way. yay! his sad plight is over. Fail.
Ren'ai Flops: This series jumped the shark. There were too many 'accidental' encounters with too many tsundere girls, all in a single morning. And every single time there was an embarrassing ecchi aspect to them that ordinarily would never happen even if you rolled the dice one million times. The story is expecting me to swallow too much. This show should have learned from a much better series concerning meeting lots of different girls, Da Capo. You meet them in normal, mild ways. Like with Kotori, you hear her singing in the park and walk over to hear better, and then you see each other. Something that could actually happen, and not involving panties. That's all you really need for the start of a romance. This show is a flop, if you want a real romance, go watch or read Da Capo. Man I wish Da Capo 4 were translated. . .Fail.
Urusei Yatsura: A famous classic returns with modern high definition art and high speed animation. I tried watching the original Urusei Yatsura and couldn't stand it, the degenerate Ataru combined with the awful graphics left me totally unmotivated. I read the manga and the art there was great so it was tolerable again, but I eventually lost interest in the story as it never went anywhere. But this time we have the best of both worlds -- the anime is 46 episodes long, borrowing only the best plotlines from the manga, while maintaining the high art quality one should expect from a Rumiko Takahashi work. I think this version of Urusei will succeed where the previous two versions failed. That does not mean in the slightest it's going to be some sort of legendary masterpiece, but as a huge fan of Rumiko and as a man who, like any other man, appreciates Lum's beautiful character design, I intend to see this series through to the end. Oh, by the way, Lum's behavior would be intolerable if she were human. It would be like, 'take a hint already, stop being a cockblocker and let Ataru and Shinobu live happily ever after.' But she isn't human, she's an alien, with alien customs and culture, and alien recognition patterns of affection. It makes perfect sense for her to think that Ataru likes her but is nevertheless cheating on her, and it makes perfect sense that in the alien culture it's impermissible to let things like this stand. Therefore the situation is humorous, based on a misunderstanding, instead of obnoxious, based on Lum's bad personality. Pass.
Shinobi no Ittoki had a bad second episode featuring an unbelievable setting and a reluctant hero, two things I dislike. These ninjas with their high technology, going around killing people and destroying stuff in front of everyone, would have long ago necessitated a crackdown by the government. And I don't care how skilled they are, they're no match for modern militaries with millions of men, so to simultaneously have a non-ninja government in power and ninjas running around breaking the law with impunity is unbelievable. And then we have this Ittoki guy who doesn't want to be here or do anything and somehow he's the main character. What is he going to do every episode, whine and cry? He's the polar opposite of Lelouch who took control of his own life and decided on his own goals. I dropped Ittoki early while I still hadn't lost too much time.
Arknights and 4-nin is yet to air so I'll review those eps when they finally air, but for now that rounds out the fall anime season. Shine post and dragon quest are about to end, and Yama no Susume will eventually stop being recap, so the fall season will ultimately look like this in order of excitement for the coming of each new episode:
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