Yep. 

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3D Kanojo Real Girl Ep. 6

Ah, romances and misunderstandings… they’re practically inseparable. Except it’s not really a misunderstanding here. Hikari is just an immature child who isn’t ready to date. Even though he’s supposed to make up with his girlfriend, the vast majority of this week’s episode is about his buddy Yuto and how they first met. Great. So Hikari gets a bunch of potatoes from weeb girl Sumie, and he does what he always does: make food for people who are mad at him. Towards the end of the episode, he does finally smooth things over with Iroha, but it’s not entirely clear how. I think she just got tired of being mad at him.

Iroha decides to invite her boyfriend to her room, and the first thing he does is sniff her bed. Yeah, that’s not creepy at all. Hikari then proceeds to slut shame the girl for wearing comfortable clothing in the privacy of her own damn home. But does she ever mind his shitty attitude? Of course not. Iroha is like the impossibly ideal girl that all nerds dream about. She’s beautiful and has infinite patience. Even when she’s mad at you, she never raises her voice. She just dutifully waits for you to come to her with some half-assed apology, then she’ll forgive and love you anyways. So the guy ends trying his damndest to hold back his libido, shoves the girl to the ground anyway, then chickens out at the last second and bails. Look at him awkwardly shuffling out of her room with a boner. Yep, what a casanova.

Hikari then doubles down on shittiness the next morning. He then triples down on it by hanging out with Sumie right afterwards! It’s like he doesn’t give a shit about Iroha’s feelings at all. It’s always about what he wants. Oh, he’s uncomfortable with Iroha, so he gets to dictate how much time they spend together. He can’t apologize to her, because he doesn’t know why she’s mad. It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, but he just can’t believe that she would want to date him. My point is, this poor girl can’t move away soon enough.

Also, this is a lazily-drawn cat.

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Dances with the Dragons Ep. 5

You heard the man. Ah, it’s a shame. I watched this episode when it was first released on Crunchyroll. Nearly a week later, and I’ve practically forgotten what it was even about. You can’t convince me to rewatch the episode, though. All I remember is that our heroes manage to survive their fight against Nidvolk, but only barely. Then Gayus has yet another boring ass conversation with Mouldeen.

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Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory Ep. 4

Ahhh, our worst nightmares have finally come true. We all knew Chidori would fall into the enemy’s hands one day. It was just a matter of when, and I had been dreading it ever since. It particularly stung when she swore that she would even try to love Leonard if it was necessary to spare Sousuke’s life. Our hero will now spend the rest of the story saving her, and he will save her. There’s no doubt about that. Whether or not we’ll get our happy ending before the end of 2018, however, is a little more difficult to predict. They will need a second cour to cover the rest of the novels, but I haven’t heard anything concrete on that front. Nevertheless, this is a frustrating development from a fan’s point-of-view. After all, Chidori and Sousuke are the canon couple, and yet, they will rarely spend any time together from now till when the story comes to an end. Yeah, yeah, I know that if I want to relive their happier moments, I could always go back and rewatch the older series. But surely, dear reader, you must understand where I am coming from.

Side note: I kinda fell asleep during all the moments with Tessa.

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High School DxD Hero Ep. 4

I’m gonna drop this show from my schedule, ’cause I’m barely paying any attention when I try to watch it.

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Hinamatsuri Ep. 5

Hina muttering, “Nani? Nani kore? Ne, nani kore?” over and over cracked me up. Anyways, someone needs to bite the bullet and just take poor Anzu in already.

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Hisone to Maso-tan Ep. 4

Three more girls join the party, and they’re all weird in their own unique ways. El doesn’t see her dragon as a dragon. She insists on being as professional as possible in order to prove herself in a world dominated by men, but then she contradicts herself by refusing to follow orders in the middle of a practice mission. Hm. Mayumi is very nice, but at the same time, she looks like she’s on the verge of snapping. Since she’s built like an Amazon, she could probably break all of the other girls in half should she ever lose her temper. She seems to be the most motherly when it comes to the dragons. Last but not least, Liliko is… uh… super negative. She kinda fills the same role that Sucy did for Little Witch Academia but nowhere near as fun. Instead of turning their flaws into endearing character traits, these girls kinda just grate on you instead. Like I thought Nao was supposed to have turned a corner after the second episode, but she’s still a giant, massive bitch to Hisone.

So along those lines, El is the first of the new girls to stir up drama, but I suspect they’ll each take turns causing problems for our heroine to solve before we finally get to that big, juicy plot that the show keeps hinting at. Y’know, something about the girls being shrine maidens. But for now, we need to take care of some petty character drama first. And as a cherry on top, the men on the show continue to be sexist assholes.

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes – Die Neue These Ep. 6

Oh hey, it’s Yang’s love interest. What’s kind of interesting is how long she’s been keeping track of him and his career…

…yep, that’s her. I think she was 14 at the time, and he was 21. It’s no big deal. They’re both adults now.

Anyways, I get the impression that LotGH is very much impressed with great, young military commanders like Alexander the Great. Both men are like a wild flame, flickering brightly before quickly dying out. Neither Yang nor Reinhardt will grow old with their respective partners. What a shame that they should leave behind people who loved them so. And this is all because we prefer to remember great men as individuals that we can deify rather than mortals who will eventually grow old and slowly fade away into irrelevance.

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Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori Ep. 5

I didn’t love this week’s episode all that much. The first short story features a reporter who is too embarrassed to walk into a cafe populated predominantly by female customers. He’s also too embarrassed to order desserts.

Look, it’s just not the sort of thing I can have any respect for. Even if he does correct himself in the end, it’s already too little, too late in my eyes.

Then we get to the second short story, and it’s like… a woman going through a weird dream sequence? All she does is eat a bowl of soup! Lame. But since we’re on the topic of Japanese-inspired desserts, I need to get my hands on a matcha mousse cake one of these days. I mean, just look at this slice of heaven:

It’s gorgeous.

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Shokugeki no Soma S3 Ep. 17

Christ, how long are they content to milk this stupid match between Yukihara and Akira? We’re two episodes in, and Akira still hasn’t officially presented his dish. Seriously, we spent an entire episode just to have the hero present his bear cutlet to the judges (don’t even ask me why two of the judges are loli twins). I also think it’s hilarious that Azami wants Akira to join the Elite 10 and further his vision of fine-dining. So what does the guy do? He makes chicken-fried bear with gravy. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m also not saying I wouldn’t eat it. But it kinda goes against Azami’s whole philosophy of refined cuisine, does it not? Ah, whatever.

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Toji no Miko Ep. 17

Christ, talk about an exposition dump. The show finally clues us in on what’s happening in this second cour. Unfortunately, the writers have no clue how to tell this story without boring us to death. As a result, characters just sit around and talk our ears off. Basically, aradamas are not inherently evil (which is something we already figured out in the first cour). The three princesses are just personifications of their complicated feelings for humanity. Princess Tagitsu wants to kill us, but Princess Takiri wants to rule over us. Last but not least, Princess Ichikishima wants to become one with humanity and usher in a new stage of their evolution. Oooh, synthesis. Unfortunately, I have to fight just to stay awake during all these conversations. It’s still not quite bad enough for me to drop the show entirely, but the execution continues to leave me wanting.

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Tokyo Ghoul:re Ep. 6

Seeing these two like this, I was hoping for a real mental battle between Ken and Haise. Unfortunately, what I got was a whole bunch of stupid fighting. Action is great. I love action. But action still has to serve a purpose. It needs to properly externalize the conflict between the characters, but Tokyo Ghoul:re throws so many faces at you that it’s hard to care about any of them. And even if we could care about them, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. It’s mostly battles, battles, and more battles. It’s not even 50/50 when ideally it should really be like 75/25 in the favor of character drama.

Anyways, Hina endangers herself in order to protect the person she knows as Ken, so Haise is forced to confront his former self. In doing so, he realizes that Ken is just as afraid of being erased by him as he was afraid of Ken erasing him. Whether or not this means he’ll fully accept his former self, however, remains to be seen as the episode ends on yet another cliffhanger. Well, not really. We know Haise/Ken won’t die. Still, any hopes of him reuniting with Touka by the end of this adaptation looks grim at best. Maybe they will, but it’ll probably be one of those maddening last seconds of the last episode thing.

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Here are pictures from the one time I got to visit The French Laundry:

Warm gougeres.

Their famous salmon cornets. The cone is filled with sweet red onion creme fraiche.

Veloute de topinambours. That’s just another word for Jewish artichoke.

Oysters and pearls (read: caviar).

Shirako. In other words, fried cod sperm sack. And yes, it needed that many plates.

Hen egg custard.

Salmon Creek Farm pork belly.

Salad of Hawaiian hearts of palm. For some reason, there’s always hearts of palm on the menu. Thomas Keller just loves that damn vegetable. Personally, I find it rather flavorless, and this was probably the least enjoyable dish of the entire meal.

A very blurry shot of moulard duck foie gras en terrine. The restaurant likes its foie gras to be as smooth as possible, because it is accompanied by…

…this majestic piece of brioche. I didn’t care for the foie gras, but I could probably gorge myself to death on the toast alone.

One of the many breads you’ll get throughout the night.

Your choice of salted or unsalted butter.

And if you need more salt, here are six different kinds…

Sauteed filet of Gulf Coast red snapper. Obligatory fish course.

Sweet butter-poached Maine lobster mitts.

Hand-cut tagliatelle with copious amounts of black truffle. The best dish of the entire meal.

Devil’s Gulch Ranch epaule de lapin. Rabbit shoulder.

Elysian Fields Farm lamb ribeye.

The composed cheese course (Acapella). I generally prefer a cheese cart so I can pick and choose what cheese I want to eat.

Ruby red grapefruit sorbet. The palette cleanser.

Some sort of float? Another palette cleanser.

Alpaco mousee du chocolat.

Caramelized macadamia nuts.

Coffee semifreddo. This is one-half of The French Laundry’s famous “coffee and doughnuts” dessert.

The other half.

And the obligatory chocolate truffles at the end of the meal.

Self-explanatory.

Here’s the view from across the street. Anyways, I would obviously like to go back someday, but it’s not exactly the most convenient restaurant to revisit. Yountville pretty much has nothing but The French Laundry. You can pretty much say the same about California’s infamous “Wine Country.” There’s wine… and… well, more wine.