These are shows I probably won’t revisit next week, so I may as well get them out of my system now. Oh yeah, the screencap above is from Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, but I didn’t watch it at all. It’s about some girl who has a crippling social anxiety. Nevertheless, her only friend (who goes to a different school) suddenly suspends their friendship until the heroine can somehow befriend everyone in her new class. Sounds cruel to me, but honestly, I don’t really care. So I didn’t watch it.

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Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

Didn’t we just get a series about a dorky dude tutoring a bunch of hot girls? Well, here’s another one. There are a few twists, of course. First, the main character isn’t smart. In fact, he’s downright unremarkable. One of the first things we learn about Nariyuki is that he doesn’t excel at anything. He’s just a jack-of-all-trades. Nevertheless, like most anime protagonists, he tries hard. He also comes from a poor family, so he’s gunning for some special VIP recommendation thingamajig. As luck would have it, the school is happy to give him one! All he has to do is to try and help two geniuses get into the universities of their choice. Here comes the second twist: unlike that other show, these girls aren’t dumb. They’re just… well, highly specialized. Very, very highly specialized. And apparently, they have very poor learning skills. When certain subjects come naturally to you, I suppose you don’t develop the right habits for tackling other subjects.

Rizu is a genius at math and science, but she’s utterly hopeless when it comes to the liberal arts. She can’t understand human emotions, apparently. That would put her somewhere on the autism spectrum, but since this is anime, she’s perfectly normal. The only real difference is “Haha, I can’t understand the main character’s feelings ’cause I’m literally a stupid storytelling gimmick.” But despite all her talents in the hard sciences, she insists on attending a liberal arts school and becoming a psychologist. Why? So she can, uh, understand human nature. Next up, we have Fumino. As you might expect, she’s the opposite of Rizu in every way. She’s a great writer (her essays can bring her teacher to tears), but the anime makes it sound like she can’t even put 2 and 2 together. Nevertheless, she wants to be an astronomer one day. Why? So she can, uh, look for her late mother’s star?

Alright, this is what I don’t get: what these girls desire does not require them to pursue a degree in fields that they have no aptitude in. Let me introduce you guys to a thing I call a hobby. A hobby is something that I do in my spare time. For instance, like Rizu, math and science has always come natural to me when I was growing up. No, I was not and have never been a genius. But certainly, writing is not something I’m good at. So what did I do? Did I pursue a degree in literature? Of course not. But writing is my hobby. That is why Fumino’s star thing confuses me. A real astronomer does more than just look at stars. First, I don’t even know what it means to find her late mother’s star. Second, amateur astronomy is a thing. Amateur astronomers find new stars all the time. It’s almost as if there are hundreds of billions of them in our galaxy alone. Shrug, I dunno, maybe I’m just missing something, but this show seems wholly unremarkable.

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Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin

The first 60% of the episode is practically all exposition, so I nearly fell asleep. It was just so boring. Anyways, this is like a spiritual spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Instead of just your traditional Japanese youkai, we have angels, pixies, and a big ol’ Cu Sith. Normally, they are invisible to the human eye, but certain individuals (like the main characters) have no problems spotting them. Arata, our protagonist, joins a department in charge of handling any issues that arise as a result of these invisible youkai. So in the first episode, we have a bit of a Romeo & Juliet situation. An angel and a tengu are in love, but their respective clans have never gotten along. A big gang war pretty much breaks out in the middle of Shinjuku. When one of the angels accidentally lands on Arata, his new coworkers are about to jump to his defense and beat down some angel and tengu ass. Luckily, he is unique in that he can understand the youkai, so he prevents the situation from escalating any further. At this point, calmer heads prevail and both clans finally realize that Romeo and Juliet (not their real names, obviously) are not in danger. They’re just in love.

Honestly, I didn’t find this episode very interesting. No remarkable characters and the whole youkai thing isn’t very unique. I’ll probably pass on watching anymore episodes. But hey, one of the main characters looks like a trap, so if that’s your thing, knock yourself out.

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Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine

Cute girls play baseball. Sports anime aren’t very interesting by themselves, and I don’t want to make it worse by spending a billion episodes watching this meek girl’s friends try to build up her confidence just to chase after a damn ball. Nothing to see here. The animation is subpar, and the characters are basic.

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Amazing Stranger

Real girls are intimidating. Let’s get into a relationship with a doll from one of my favorite anime instead. Even though each episode is only twelve minutes long, that’s still…

…twelve minutes too long. Plus, what is with the main character’s two-tone hair? It looks dumb as hell.

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Senryuu Shoujo

A series about a girl who is too shy to speak, so she communicates solely via haiku or gestures. Sounds gimmicky, right? That’s why each episode in this series is also only twelve minutes long. The girl also seems to be very fond of an ex-delinquent — yes, another one — which is only fitting ’cause he also has trouble communicating with his peers (albeit for different reasons). Whatever, there isn’t much substance here. It’s just one of those feelgood shows that some people might wanna veg out to after a long day or week. I mean, the girl’s cute, but no onion-hater in my book can ever be waifu material.

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Midara no Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

Another 12-minute thing. When Ao was a kid, she told everyone how her father came up with her name. Since then, she’s isolated herself from everybody and devoted herself completely to her studies. Unfortunately, a popular guy in class takes an interest in her. Worried that Takumi might interfere with her studies, Ao plans on telling the guy outright that she hates him. Unfortunately, when she tries to do so in private, her weird, cartoonish father — he’s apparently an erotic novelist and a popular one too — uses a fishing pole to yank the girl’s shirt up without being noticed. Haha, creepy dads perving on their daughters are so funny. Anyways, Takumi surprises Ao by not ravishing her right there and then. Instead, he tells her that he already likes her, so she doesn’t need to try and seduce him. The next thing she knows, she’s on the train home. She doesn’t even remember if she replied to Takumi’s confession.

If you put this and Senryuu Shoujo together, you might get one normal anime. Instead, we get 1) something that is too wholesome and thus probably boring as hell, and 2) a wannabe sex romp that just stops short of doing the actual deed. I know Midara no Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but I really want to know how this thing ever convinced a woman to let him stick it in her.

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Nande Koko ni Sensei ga

Speaking of finding yourself in perverted situations with the opposite sex, here’s yet another anime series with half-length episodes. So this show is a bit more risque than I thought it would be. What you see in the screencap above is the hot teacher reacting to her student sticking a suppository up her ass. So I took a brief glance at the manga, and the only thing keeping this series from being straight-up hentai is its lack of penetrative sex. From what I could see anyways, but who knows? Maybe there is penetrative sex in the later chapters. In the meantime, however, you’ll have to settle with wacky hijinks like full-on nipple rubbing on a crowded train. Let’s just say that the hot teacher pictured above is not the only hot teacher at her school. Needless to say, if you like this sort of thing, the heavily censored anime is a waste of time. I’m told that the main character and his sensei eventually start dating, so yeah…

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Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma

Speaking of inappropriate teachers who should be fired from their jobs, these episodes just keep getting shorter and shorter. This show’s episodes are just seven minutes long! A 14-year-old girl from the Sengoku era literally falls into this middle-aged teacher’s arms. Mistaking him for Oda Nobunaga, she starts demanding his man seed. So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Can’t fuck a teenager in this day and age, but what if it is a teenager from the past? Back then, you could screw all the teenagers you want! Plus, she’s gotta be hundreds of years old by now!

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Joshikausei

Finally, a show that is only three minutes long. Hell, it doesn’t even have dialogue. Those seiyuu must have been paid big bucks for this for this project. It looks like the animators weren’t paid very much either.

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Sigh, my day still isn’t over. I still gotta watch Mix – Meisei Story. I don’t really care for sports anime, but I’ve mentioned before that I liked H2. Well, they share the same author. In fact, I think the guy just writes the same story over and over. But who knows? I prefer my sports anime to have a little drama. Not too much like that badminton show, but just enough. Maybe Mix – Meisei Story will scratch that itch.

I should also sit down and watch Shoumetsu Toshi, but the day is short…