Where are the blogs???? (Anime Blog December 2021)

Do any of you remember how I mentioned in July that I was going to have a beautiful website for anime rankings? Well, that went down the drain. I can still do it, but my motivation in upkeeping a blog has gone down quite a bit. It will still be on the horizon, but I have decided I’ll just announce when I inevitably finish it rather than putting unrealistic expectations on myself.

Additionally, a solid 3 months out of the past 5 months has been an anime hiatus for me. I’ve just been busy with other things that cut into anime time. However, those things concluded with the end of the school semester last week, so I’m hopefully getting back into the swing of things for the foreseeable future. I do still have a few anime to discuss here today, but this will not be nearly as extensive as other blogs.

I’m not going to copy-paste the grading rubric I have for anime, but essentially A Tier is for great shows, B tier is for good shows, C tier is for average shows, D tier is for so-so or slightly unenjoyable shows, and F tier is for shows I quit partway through the season. And S tier is my handpicked favorites out of the top of A tier.

Teasing Master Takagi-San is a really fun anime, and just about every guy’s fantasy when they were in middle school. A cute girl that likes to talk to you, so much so that she teases you just to see your reaction. It has a very comfortable feeling and it is very apparent that this isn’t bullying, which is the one thing this kind of show could come under fire for. We see that with Nagatoro and Uzaki-Chan with their shows, but even they usually fall under teasing. This show has teasing in its name and is much clearer than the others that this is two childhood friends having a good time. This anime is best spent watching over a few weeks since it can become slightly repetitive if you decide to binge it. But it is extremely good at what it does, which is providing us that wholesome slice of life experience we all wish we lived.

Verdict: A

So what happens when you get a bunch of nerds who are all horny on main together? You get Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it. This show is corny, a little bit dumb, and clearly just comedy from a largely untouched topic, researchers, but that’s part of the charm. In some ways, overdone shows when not in Isekai format have a bit of identity to them that makes me enjoy them for reasons I shouldn’t and this show is a clear example. It’s an OK at best show, but I had a much better time with it than I have any reason to. There isn’t much else to let you in on though, most of this show is just nerds trying to quantify love, with all of the standard stereotypes. If you’re into that though, this show will be a good time.

Verdict: B+

So I finally got around to watching The Promised Neverland and wow, it is an amazing show. Well, mostly amazing, anyways. Season 1 is up there with the original Stein;s Gate as one of the best executed seasons of anime ever, with lots of suspense and dread building up in each episode. We follow orphaned kids who discover something cruel about the world, and I’m going to leave it at that because literally anything else will be a spoiler, and this is an amazing show to go in blind like I did. Lots of suspense, drama, cunning, planning, terrible deeds done in the past, the whole 9 yards. So why was this show mostly amazing then? Well… season 2 was a mixed bag. It started off pretty good honestly, showing the kids after the horrible events of season 1, but quickly dragged onto a much, much worse plot. If I had stopped at episode 3 of season 2, this would have easily been an S tier show, but alas, here we are. There aren’t many times when I say this, but you can genuinely skip season 2 and not miss much at all. As a whole, A-, but if we only consider season 1, S tier. However, it is “Season 2” and not a new series, so I’m counting them together.

Verdict: A-

While I technically haven’t finished it yet, I watched 3/4’s of Nisekoi and will be picking it up again soon. It is honestly a really interesting story, with a cool premise and featuring one of my favorite things about 2021: Yakuza. I got into the game series in January and have come to really appreciate how cool and diverse Yakuza culture is in Japan, and the main character has to deal with some Yakuza-related antics, so I was hooked. For the actual story, it’s a bit of a wishy-washy run-of-the-mill romance, so it’s alright. Not particularly great, but also not offensive at all. For the record, I stopped watching anime for unrelated reasons, though I probably would’ve gotten back to watching quickly if it was something a bit more engaging.

Verdict: B-

So yeah, a short list this time around. A lot of recent anime like Komi-san, My Senpai is Annoying, Kobayashi Season 2, Arcane, and Takagi-San Season 3 have gotten me wanting to get back into watching stuff regularly, so expect more in the future. If you are interested in creating a website for me, either because you enjoy reading these or you just need something to do, let me know. I definitely want to get off medium since it makes tier lists like this awkward, and my willpower to do that over some of my other projects is pretty low right now, lol. Anyways, hope everyone has a great New Year!