A select audience
Your Forma, supplemental
The show can now be legally streamed in the US. On Samsung TVs. Only.
As for the content, I had forgotten the preview mentioning that the series is explicitly skipping book one of the light novels. Some of the seemingly-random remarks between Our Odd Couple, such as him commenting that she no longer wears a necklace and the “you’ve stopped hating androids” line, are Book One references. So is the friendly girl they’re saying goodbye to at the beginning, and the tabloid headline (before the viewer has any idea what an “amicus” is or what the reference to “royal” means).
By the way, I assume that page three of The Moon tabloid features an ass-shot of a pretty girl. Well, hopefully a girl, anyway.
The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 13
This week, Shisui reveals one of her small secrets and two of her big ones, as she takes Maomao and Xiaolan to the baths. The part of me that enjoys fan-service is forced to confess that it would be out of character for the show to suddenly start showing the goods, so the scenery is period-correct. Together they start a massage service for the lesser concubines, with Xiaolan hoping to make connections that will lead to a post-palace career. Shisui also points out that it’s a great opportunity to pick up rumors and gossip.
But in addition to this good clean fun, we get two new mysteries, with rumors of a mysteriously-handsome new eunuch, and high consort Lishu’s claim that her pavilion is haunted. Naturally, both are like catnip to Maomao, so that should take care of next week.
Slime-Killing Witch 2, episode 1
If you watched the first fluffy season, this episode promises to fluff in exactly the same fluffy way. There’s a brief reminder of the isekai setup and the platonic harem’s personalities, and then straight into the fluff.
After 300+ years of living in this world, Our Witchy Heroine randomly discovers that it has rice and adzuki beans, so the first half of the episode is spent reinventing manju, noticing that it looks kinda like slimes, pasting eyes on it, and turning it into a new regional specialty. Second half has a goddess working to promote herself with personal appearances, which leads to a reunion with the deity responsible for Azusa’s reincarnation into this world as a “forever seventeen”; you get three guesses who they hired to voice the goddess, and the first two don’t count.
Verdict: the ED promises to make the cast much bigger. As long as they don’t skimp on the Beelzebub appearances, I’m okay with that. Fluff, fluff.
(yes, I still have fan-art leftovers from the first season)
Bumpkin & Harem, episode 1
This one’s streaming on Amazon Prime, simul-dubbed into 8 languages. Cheaply, if the auto-play English dub is representative; 10 seconds of third-rate voice acting was all I could take while I fumbled to change it. Worse, Amazon has goofy auto-continue where in the middle of the end credits it decided I should watch the first episode of Electra Woman And Dyna Girl (the original Seventies series, not the shit-tier 2016 mini-series that has nothing in common except the title).
Take the premise of S-Rank Daughter, but instead of all the young babes seeing him as a father figure, they want a daddy. Seriously, the white-haired one who kicks off the plot lasts about ten seconds before blurting out that she dreams of being wifed. The way her tongue keeps slipping, it’s sure to land in his mouth soon.
For more fun, Haremette #3 (buff redhead variety) is one that Our Sword Daddy actually took in as a child, and went on to become a top-rank adventurer, reinforcing the comparison to S-Rank Daughter. Naturally she has a long-standing rivalry with Thirsty McWhiteHair that doubles when she sees Her Sensei/Daddy for the first time in many years.
Verdict: this is not subtle, with even Our Hero’s dad coming right out and saying “hey, why don’t you make grandkids with this hot former student?”. If they throw in some trashy hot-springs and beach episodes, I’m good.
(Holo-harem is unrelated)
A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 12
I was kinda hoping that with the Asshole baggage out of the way, we could have ordinary dungeon/harem adventures, but no, this week rapidly escalates from “gosh this dungeon is weird” to “who’s gonna save the world?”, thanks to triple exposition from the creepy old man, the rescued magical schoolgirl, and some noble guy we’re meeting for the first time who has the secret history of the multiverse in his back pocket.
The answer to the world-saving question is, of course, Our Harem Hero. That role doesn’t offer a lot of downtime for waifuplay, so I hope this doesn’t try to turn into a serious show.
Verdict: please counter this extreme plot escalation by giving Jamie an early pardon and holding all future party conferences in the bath.
(I’ll just drown my sorrows with Marina again…)
Lazarus, episode 1
Apparently there will be two ways to watch this: Toonami has a dub, and Max has the sub. So pretty much everyone’s going to torrent it. I think I can get Max free for a while through DoorDash, so maybe I’ll try to watch it that way.
Could be worse, I suppose; the sex-doll-classmate show is licensed by a company I’ve never heard of that wants $13/month without letting you browse their catalog until you sign up.
LLM Story Logic
I fed a story bible into a recommended uncensored LLM and asked it to generate the prologue for the story. The setup was simple: four female adventurers in an inn, discussing the quest they were about to depart on before going to bed, while in the background, the wizard who hired them was planning a double-cross that would end with them enslaved.
The generated scene had a plausible prose structure, with a typical mix of narrative and dialogue, and since there was plenty of room to store the entire bible as context, everything matched the request.
Based on its (horny fiction) training data, the LLM placed the villainous wizard in the scene, drilling a peephole into the girls’ room so he could watch them undress for bed, which excited him enough that he began fondling himself through his robes. Suddenly:
As if sensing his gaze upon them, Meria suddenly looked up and met Khardo’s eye through the peephole. The old wizard quickly pulled back but it was too late - Meria had seen his lecherous expression and the bulge in his pants.
This is what happens when the “writer” is just stringing sentences together. His eye is pressed to a peephole, and yet from across the room she clearly sees the expression on his face and the erection he’s tugging on before he pulls away from the peephole and runs off. The scene continues with plausible sentences about responding to a peeping tom, and yet they all go to sleep without setting a guard, and still plan to set off on the quest he hired them for. Also, in the previous paragraph he was wearing robes, not pants.
As for the wizard:
Khardo would have to act quickly to lure them into his trap before they could warn anyone or change their plans.
So he leaves them alone for the rest of the night in the well-populated inn, where they have plenty of time to tell everyone in the place about the naughty peeping wizard, and no reason whatsoever to leave town and continue his quest the next morning.
In other words, even most direct-to-Kindle shovelware writers are still safe from AI for now.
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