First impressions: Polar opposites but terrible, and an old man bullies one of his mentally impaired former students

First up is The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt. Maybe you watched a certain show last season and thought to yourself, Y’know, I kinda like polar opposites! I want more of that! Well, Togo and Poem (yeah, that’s her name) are kinda like polar opposites, but in the least interesting way possible. The girl is your old school tsundere. All you gotta do is compliment her, and she’ll melt in your hands like chocolate. Unfortunately, she also gets very, very violent. Oh man, it’s so funny when the girl socks her love interest in the stomach. Peak 90s or 00s romcom antics! But in all seriousness, there isn’t much else to say about Poem. Uh… I guess she’s decent at math?

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Witch Hat Atelier Ep. 1 & 2: Magic has a heavy price

A few days ago, I finally cracked open the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier, which I had bought a while back when it was on sale. It’s a decent read, but I haven’t fallen in love with the series yet. Nor do I can tell if I ever will. After all, despite it ending on a cliffhanger, the first volume didn’t exactly make me jump and buy the second volume. Why? Well, a couple things bother me.

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First impressions: Anime Footloose tries to do it all, and a man can’t act until his wife gets fridged

When I first read the synopsis for Ghost Concert – missing songs, I thought we were getting some sort of anime Footloose:

In 2045, when singing is forbidden, a high school girl hears the ghostly voice that possesses her and grants great power.

You can still have music. You just have to let AI create a song for you. You’re not allowed to sing or compose music yourself. So when the episode kicked off with an idol concert, I figured I could go for the low-hanging fruit: if you’re going to lambast generative AI, please try and come up with something a little more substantive than idol slop. But no, Ghost Concert isn’t that simple. In fact, Ghost Concert seemingly wants to be everything and anything all at once.

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NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE Ep. 1: A bad trip

Even though I’ve owned the game for over a year now, I still haven’t started it. I haven’t even booted it up. After watching this opening episode, maybe I should. But going in blind for now is okay, I think, because the anime seems to be its own thing. Well, not exactly. It obviously has callbacks to the game — callbacks I can neither recognize nor appreciate — but I think I can still enjoy the adaptation without some of the context. And boy is the opening episode an information overload — an overdose, even. Blink and you’ll miss out. Is there a story? Not in the traditional sense. Instead, we bounce around like the terminally bored, clicking through various sites, looking and hoping for something to catch our attention.

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