The anime was… alright, I’ll level with you, I have nowhere near caught up with ongoing anime. The first episodes of everything, sure, yeah, I had to review all that, but any episode twos? Well, I found time for the punch-happy shows I watch with my housemates anyway, but that’s basically it. Hell, I only found time to watch After the Rain’s finale two days ago! I’ve basically just been finishing up preview week and catching up on other projects in the aftermath, so “airing anime” isn’t really a concept for me at the moment. But hey, let’s run down what I did manage to get to, and hopefully by next week I’ll have caught up enough on writing about anime to actually watch some anime. Let’s get to it!

Megalo Box followed up on its altogether stunning premiere with an extremely respectable followup, pulling no punches (pun entirely intended) in its articulation of Junk Dog’s battle with Yuri. The show’s style clearly favors dramatic layouts over fluid animation, but the animation is still strong enough to not really feel like a drag on the production, and the show’s procession of iconic shots is so confident and compelling that it’s impossible not to be carried along. The show’s mix of archetypal but resonant storytelling, Shinichiro Watanabe-aping style, and general polish make it an extremely rewarding watch on all counts. At this point, my only real complaint is how the show’s unscale-upscale process makes all of its mid-distance and longer shots feel unfortunately blurry – the show doesn’t really need to fake standard definition quality, and its beautifully detailed backgrounds deserve better than to die for the sins of a misguided visual gimmick.

My Hero Academia’s second new episode left me significantly more conflicted, unfortunately. On the positive side, the first half of this episode was basically just one absurd anime-original bounty of gloriously animated character introductions, with basically all of the members of Class 1-A getting to demo their powers as they raced through the forest. All in all, this segment felt like a far more natural recap than the previous episode, and though I question the logic of burning through so much careful animation on such a non-conflict, I certainly can’t complain about the result. On the other hand, pretty much every moment of this episode that wasn’t dedicated to the kids fighting was wasted on either crappy spinster jokes or moments starring Mineta. I’d kinda forgotten that this arc initially foregrounds so many of this manga’s most obnoxious elements, but I’ll be happy to see that stuff disappear once we get to the action.

Meanwhile, Wotakoi finally offered this season’s first actual Me show, ending my dramatic, almost terrifying race to find a show worth caring about. I don’t feel like I really ask for much of each anime season: all I really need is one themey-wemey show and one character-focused drama, and I’m generally set. Just Because!, After the Rain, March comes in like a lion… as long as there’s at least one thoughtful and compassionate show about characters sorting through the mess that is simply living, I’m generally okay. This season was looking like a full miss on that front (and I’ve already abandoned all hope of a themey-wemey show this time), but fortunately, Wotakoi’s first episode turned out to be even more charming than I’d hoped. The two leads have an excellent rapport, the comedy offers that same style of adult nerd self-reflection that was so welcome in MMO Junkie, and the overall production manages a terrific balance of warmth and snark. I may be a starving man, but this is still a high caliber meal.