Oh, good, let’s start off with all the cheesy CGI exposition we skipped last week. While they’re reciting Not The Three Laws, I’ll throw in a note that the character designer added leggings to her uniform; on the light-novel covers, her legs are bare under her short-shorts, like all good Interpol agents. Also, she’s 19, so she gets a pass for not being the hardened detective she poses as.

But how is the story proceeding? Well, we’ve got a Mad Scientist claiming Her Finest Creations are true AIs (which according to OpenAI means “profitable” and according to this show means “sapient”), a suspect who’s been ruled out with an axe, a team that’s been pulled off the case, and some sitting around talking about plot coupons.

The good news is that once we reach the halfway point, things start happening. On a technical note, when Our Spunky Heroine’s cyber implant boots up, it’s running Linux kernel 2.2.18 with a VGA console and a PS/2 mouse. Also, Our Mysterious Villain couldn’t have flipped his knife open that way. Just sayin’.

My biggest complaint is that when they get around to the brain diving that is the hook for the show, they once again run the full startup animation, like a third-rate magical-girl transformation; I’ll be very happy if they ditch it in future episodes. Just plug her in and go.

Verdict: this does not show signs of being a slow-burn romance, at least not for now, but the buddy-cop dynamic is complicated by the boy-girl dynamic, with both of them being emotionally damaged goods. In a story-promoting way, that is. Unrelated, the ED animation was apparently produced by a team that was told this was a rom-com.

(Our Heroine only acts like a zombie…)

Robo-Ho Classmate

I had to go to Teh Torrentz for this week’s Your Forma, and the trashiest-sounding series of the season was right there, so…

Yes, I just watched the first episode of Hide me! Makina-san!!, in which a ridiculously-stacked naked high-school chick showers before the opening credits with just a hint of soap and steam over her crotch, then shows more nip during the credits, then speaks kindly to the nerdiest nerd who ever nerded, and finally shows up at the apartment where he lives alone (as all high-school nerds do), which she knew about because she’s basically been stalking him.

She opens her flasher coat and shows him that she’s a seriously damaged robot. Also, she makes a complete mockery of all the fan-service up to this point by revealing that her boobs are hollow. As in cracked eggshell hollow. Once she’s fixed up, she’s equipped with sentient lightbeams and steam clouds to keep her crotch Safe For Japan, except when she gets Barbied.

He fixes her up overnight, and she wakes up (alone) in his bed the next morning, a bed that has a prominently-placed box of tissues. Boy Wonder is a wreck, between staying up all night reading her manual that’s filled with future-tech, and having a girl and a robot in his bed.

There’s “not subtle”, and then there’s this thing, which looks like someone read a badly-translated wiki article on Hand Maid May, cut the guy’s age by 10 years, and made the lead girl a willing sexbot with a gal skin. The harem’s even got a loli, according to the credits and the official site.

Verdict: shouty, of course, but unapologetic, and objectively better than Dere-Dere Dark Elf. Faint praise, but I actually made it all the way through the episode…

(unrelated, but naked and busty…)

Not the comparison I would have made…

I happened to notice that Poul Anderson’s classic Three Hearts And Three Lions was on Kindle Unlimited. That’s a good way to spend some time, I thought, and then I read the blurb:

Before Thomas Covenant, Roger Zelazny’s Amber, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the great Poul Anderson introduced readers to the Middle World and the legendary hero Ogier the Dane.

This is technically true, if you’re referring to the original 1953 3H&3L novella that ran in a magazine one year before Fellowship was released, but it wasn’t expanded into a novel until 1961, so they can’t be directly compared in scale for “introduced readers to”.

But that’s a small point. Of all the fantasy series written since 1953/1961, they put Thomas Fucking Covenant first on the list?!? Without even including the author’s name, as if it’s more iconic on its own than Amber or LoTR? I don’t think Covenant himself even has anything in common with the heroes of the others except being an adult male.

I can see excluding Narnia, despite its superior name recognition and the fact that it came out in 1950; the same logic might be applied to Prydain and Wrinkle In Time, by calling them “chidren’s books” despite their depth. But since they extended their list to the late 1970s, let’s see what alternatives come to mind: Norton’s Witch World (which even starts off with an isekai transfer), Vance’s The Dying Earth, Le Guin’s Earthsea, McCaffrey’s Pern, Moorcock’s Elric and Corum, Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Cherryh’s Morgaine, and if most of my books weren’t in boxes, I could probably list a dozen more.

Hell, Brooks’ Shannara surely has better name recognition than Thomas F. Covenant, given that it had a two-season TV show less than ten years ago.

Unrelated, Timothy Zahn has a new story out

Trap Line, and by “new” I mean “two weeks ago”.

Lazarus, next month

Turns out even Max only has the dub, and the subtitled version won’t be available for a month. So that’s a big no-can-do.

Delusional Space Virgin, held back for a few weeks

If for some reason you’re wondering where episode 4 of this show is, it’s airing on the 26th, as if the show had had a normal premiere instead of throwing out three episodes in one week.

Clueless Crafter, episode 2

Not content to dig a lit, reinforced, caravan-sized tunnel completely through a mountain in one morning, Our Super Hero also digs down several kilometers to find “decent” ore (legendary, that is), and then fills the hole in for safety. Our First Waifu thought she’d prepared herself for the impossible, but not at that scale.

On his next side job, he cleans a kitchen at superspeed, wanders the house looking for more to do, walks in on a mostly-naked cutie with an unbreakable lethal curse, and casually whips up a meal that cures her. That’s definitely a viable method to recruit a Second Waifu.

We also get an update on the party that kicked him out, which has fallen apart completely, with the leader headed for jail, the hot priestess called in by the church, and the rogue turning out to be a secret agent who has always known how OP Kurt is. She dresses for fan-service, but she doesn’t seem to be a kurtsexual haremette. More left for the other gals, I guess.

Verdict: the girls are cute, and it’s not as shouty as you’d expect from a current show. But how long can they keep escalating his powers without jumping an inflatable shark?

(show lacks animal girls…)

Smothering Dark Elf Waifu, episode 1

HiDive usually gets the uncensored version of shows, but Our Obsessed Naked Dark Elf Maiden is accompanied at all times by three giant steam blobs. Okay, there are brief moments when she’s not naked. That’s pretty much the entire episode.

Verdict: boooooooooobs, without even a hint of story.

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.

The thunderstorms are literal, accompanied by tornado alerts, for pretty much the entire week (I was surprised not to get a power outage or surge Wednesday night). The anime are showing up a few per day until the weekend deluge.

KOOTHP, OP And Clueless

AKA “The Unaware Atelier Master”. The second Spring show to premiere, since Crunchyroll quietly released Delusional Space Virgin several days early. The trailers really scream WE’RE BEING FUNNY NOW, and while the gals are agreeably gal-shaped, they also have that self-conscious exaggerated design that I associate with Pokemon quest NPCs. Which is at best a mixed blessing.

In the usual way, the hero party kicks out the person who did all the grunt work, eventually discovering that they’re helpless without him, while he goes on to enjoy life with the amazing powers nobody ever noticed. He also attracts babes like he’s been dipped in honey and wrapped in $100 bills.

This one also pulls in the tropes from the “grew up in a secret village where everybody is OP, so he thinks it’s normal” genre. So:

1. Innocently do something impossible.
2. Obliviously acquire thirsty new waifu.
3. Cut to hero party to show them suffering.
4. Repeat.

Verdict: no sign of elves or catgirls yet; are all the waifus going to be human? Now that would be novel!

(KOOTHP = Kicked Out Of The Hero Party, a genre that seems to be roleplay therapy for writers carrying a grudge about their office jobs and college group projects)

Sword Of The Demon Hunter

Well, it’s got an art and animation budget, but I got bored really fast, and didn’t make it through the double-length first episode. Tried again, failed again.

I might skip the tedious backstory and try again next week.

(unrelated, not boring)

Your Forma, episode 1

“I’d like it if you don’t behave outside of my expectations.”

Dude, this is clearly your first time interacting with a woman.

Not licensed in the US yet, as far as I can tell, so I watched a multi-subbed torrent. There are claims it will be available next week, somewhere.

The show drops you into the world and the characters, gradually adding in facts as it goes, almost like they’re trying to tell a story. The ubiquitous heads-up display that everyone seems to have implanted is so annoying that I’m sure there are frequent self-inflicted icepick wounds happening offscreen, but for the viewers it’s conveniently-timed supplementary exposition, potentially saving us from some as-you-know-Bob moments. Negative points for having the robot sidekick come right out and say “I see you’ve stopped hating androids”, with her responding like a high-school tsundere.

Our CyberDiving Heroine spends this episode covered from neck to ankles, except for an inexplicable upper-chest window in her uniform (definitely not a boob window); her street clothes are missing the window. All of the female characters have pretty faces, but apart from a few “interesting” camera angles, they’re not on display. Almost like they’re trying to tell a story. Unless they all end up bathing together for some reason…

A non-subtle point in the ED animation is Our Heroine reading a book called “The City of Steel”, a very obvious reference to Asimov’s robot-detective novel “The Caves of Steel”, which ties into both the plot and the general three-laws setting. Almost like they’re trying to tell a story.

Verdict: Are they telling a new story? Not so far; I can think of at least three SF murder mysteries that share the basic tropes, and could come up with more if I thought about it for a minute. That doesn’t mean it will suck, simply that it may play out as just a mashup of material familiar to print-SF fans.

(no fan-art to speak of, so detective is unrelated)

Isekai Prime, fin

“Instead of banging you, your majesty, could I have some old furniture instead?”

The cast picture in the OP just added three new women, two of whom are dressed. The third is a sexy mage gal with boob tassels on her dress, and she’s introduced right away, with Our Shopping “Mage” ordered to duel her in front of the royal family. She summons a dragon, apparently from a Seventies cartoon, and it’s game on. Magical Loli does the heavy lifting (sure, let’s make it a family duel!), and yes, he ends up killing the dragon with his remarkably nimble bulldozer. Wow, that really hurt to type. Almost as much as hearing him go full chuuni again.

Then he gives Our Manipulative Princess a pearl necklace (not the kind he’s been giving the other gals), and Her Wicked Busty Step-Mother demands equal treatment, which she rewards with the key to the kingdom her bedroom. Which he rejects in favor of vintage furniture.

I’m surprised she didn’t throw in the kitchen sink. The writers certainly did, in a walk-and-talk exposition-and-flashback scene that goes from soup to nuts. Then Tassels asks Daughter how she learned magic, with the not-at-all surprising result that she’s so good at magic because her mother was the mage who wrote her favorite grimoire.

Then Our Hero gets a real reward: title to the land he’s been squatting on, with a noble title to go with it. He also gets Spoiled Princess and Her Willing Maid.

Verdict: it had its moments (including one LoL moment this week, with the catgirls mesmerized by the windshield wipers on his van), but wow what a load of crap was mixed in.

AI and the barn door

I was listening to an overview of securing LLMs with other LLMs, and the speaker was talking about his real-world experience helping companies give an LLM unrestricted access to confidential customer information and then “secure” it by having another LLM classify natural-language queries into “safe” and “forbidden”. He gave copious examples of how hard this is to accomplish, how fallible and trickable such systems were, and handwaved away attendee concerns with “our clients’ customers are demanding this!”.

Spoiler alert: customers aren’t demanding AI chatbots, they’re demanding customer service, which they’re not getting from overseas contractors reciting cookie-cutter scripts in a language they’re not fluent in.

Instead of solving real problems, the clients are just replacing a call center with a data center.

Solo Leveling 2, fin

Not only is it Our Solo Hero’s finest moment (saving Second-Best-Girl from certain death, that is), but Our OG Shoulda-Been-A-Waifu from the first season reveals her secret Gainaxing power. Related, Schoolgirl Hunter manages to walk rack-first into a video phone call, but needs to learn the secret art of bouncing to up her game. Assorted plot coupons are dropped for a future season (which has not been announced), and they didn’t forget about Missing Dad.

Verdict: overall a pretty good adaptation, but it needed more Esil.

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 11

While traipsing through the new dungeon, Our Hareming Hero has a brief moment of PTSD related to That Asshole. We didn’t need the reminder, but at least it led to a lap-pillow nap and a group cuddle. The dungeon itself seems to be stuffed with plot coupons, and as if that weren’t enough, Our Legal-Loli Healer And Head Waifu receives an ominous letter that threatens to ruin her life but ends up with her living the dream. Hopefully we get a time-skip soon or some other excuse to get Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch out of detention and back to work.

Verdict: pity the all-girl party dropped out of the dungeon-crawl; they’d have added some nice eye candy to the show. Anyway, this will be a welcome fluffy refuge next season if the lineup is really as dismal as it seems.

(I thought it was time to put a Marina LoRA to work and give her a few drinks to loosen up…)

Shangri-La Frontier 2, fin

Nothing happens. It’s setup for the just-announced season 3, dumping exposition so they can go right into the fighting tournament whenever they get the show made and scheduled.

Verdict: sadly, this messed-up pacing and other-game whiplash is faithful to the source material.

New stuff this week

I’ll watch Slime-Killing Witch 2, and try the first episodes of Sword Of The Demon Hunter, Your Forma, and From Old Country Bumpkin To Master Swordsman. The middle-aged grumpy guy in Bumpkin doesn’t have a voice that feels right for the part, but at least two of the platonic haremettes have very experienced actresses (1, 2).

The other two were Aria and Stella in Three Behemoths.

Apart from Isekai Prime, the only shows I’m watching that aren’t ending this weekend are the ones that continue into next season. Next week will be stuffed with new shows, most of which I won’t bother with.

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, fin

Lips! Houston, we have lip-lock!

Honestly, I figured that’d be at least two seasons away. Anyway, all that setup for a dungeon crawl in the other world will have to wait for a future season, if any, because the big finish is Our Confirmed Couple holding hands as they walk off into the Tokyo sunset.

Verdict: best fluff of the season.

(I prompted Stable Diffusion to draw something that would give Our Sleepy Hero a nosebleed)

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 12

WARNING: the payoff is a true ROFLMAO moment; okay, several of them. Next week, bathing beauties.

Next week also officially starts the second cour, and the preview trailer confirms that the OP/ED music continues its downhill slide. Also, that the Shisui is about to hit the fan.

(not Shisui, obviously, but she is in next week's bath scene)

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, fin

After 15 minutes of talk-fighting the big boss, ass-pulling new abilities, and pretending that having their internal organs pulverized is just a flesh wound, Our Heroic Receptionist And Friends win the day and switch back to wacky hijinks, whipping that lash one last time.

Fully aware that they’re never getting another season, the writers wrap everything up while hoping you forget about things like Junior Receptionist dropping an ominous line implying she Knows Things She Shouldn’t. (spoiler: she knows pretty much everything)

Verdict: calling this show “uneven” really really understates what a mess it was. They even went so far as to give us the show’s one-and-only panty shot during the final battle, with Legal-Loli Healer flipping her skirt while being punched into the air so hard she should have been a thin smear on the wall.

Delusional Space Virgin, episodes 1-2

(aka “I’m The Evil Lord Of An Intergalactic Empire”)

Turns out Crunchyroll quietly streamed the first two episodes on Tuesday, with the third coming out Saturday. I guess they want to get it over with quickly.

Episode one flashes forward to show some of our never-gonna-be-a-harem gals chatting with our hero while he casually slaughters a space armada, pretending that he’s an evil warlord attacking innocents. Then it cuts to a flashback of his life going to shit, with him losing his wife, kid, job, money, health, and eventually life before meeting up with a reincarnation guide who offers him a better life in another world.

Naturally The Guide is lying, something that’s immediately obvious to the viewer even without casting Koyasu for his voice. Speaking of high-budget voices, also in the cast are Solo Leveling’s Second-Best-Girl as Robomaid, Bodacious Space Pirates’ Captain Marika as Lovestruck Blonde Mech Knight, and SAO’s Double-Lovestruck Sister/Cousin as Red-Underrim-Wearing Sales Engineer.

Episode 2 continues his origin story, expositing its way through a crapton of setup. Note that Blondie’s attack on a pirate fleet is either contemporary with L’il Villain’s new-world origin or a flashback, completely separate from the first episode’s flashforward where she looks the same age. Way to keep the timeline clear, eh?

(maid is unrelated, organic)

Unrelated, Grubhub sucks

You can get a nice discount if you have Amazon Prime (they’re part-owner these days), but it always defaults to non-contact delivery like it’s permanent Covid season, and drivers don’t even notice when you change it to “deliver like a normal person”. As a test, I added a delivery note: “additional tip for delivering to me directly”. I watched through the door as the driver set my food on the ground; that cost him $5.

Also, the restaurant sent the wrong dessert, so I won’t order from them again anyway. Also also, in theory I had a 35% discount, but the clear instructions in the email were rejected by the web site. Pretty sure they only tested clicking the link from smartphone email and opening the app, despite claiming other methods would work.

“Hey, Princess, you shouldn’t take candy from strangers. I might run off with you.”

“Cool!”

(bonus mental picture…)

This week, Loli Princess is a force of nature, and if Her Busty Step-Mom’s typical for the King’s tastes, she’s sure to grow up to be a full-figured heartbreaker. Speaking of busts, Her Head Maid is lush enough to catch Our Shopping Hero’s ever-wandering eye, despite the presence of His Current And Future Wives and Their Hair-Trigger Jealousy.

Speaking of which: “Dude, you realize your catgirls are going to smell that maid on you, right? And realize that Our Surprisingly Sophisticated Princess was watching the whole time? Also, did you actually buy sex toys as Princess suggested? Asking for a friend.”

Verdict: character art was off about half the time, but it was still a lot of fun. One more week of silliness to go.

(“Daddy, the new sex toys are here!”)

OpenAI finally has a killer app!

…and it turns out to be “draw me like one of your Ghibli girls”. 😁

Fucks given? None.

For the dozens of people around the world who might still care, there’s a trailer for a new Doctor Who season. Spoiler: no writers or actors were involved, just CGI artists and a Phil Collins song.

Literal Dream Girl Elf Waifu, episode 11

Our Slow-Moving Couple spends this week in the real world, taking a trip to Our Hero’s hometown, smuggling Our Foodie Dragon Mama along in the form of a cat. Cheaper than trying to buy an extra shinkansen ticket and explain her presence to Grandpa, although I’m sure he’d have been impressed to have Kazuhiro bring two hot gals home. Next week will likely be spent dungeon-crawling.

Verdict: Cat-Wridra needs to be more aggressive at helping out with matchmaking duties, but hey, at least they’re holding hands more often now.

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 11

Jinshi suffers through half an hour of teasing by Gyokuyou in order to “borrow” Maomao for a hunting trip, with the intention of revealing his true identity and status. Her well-practiced density allows her to avoid figuring it out, until gun-toting assassins leave the two of them truly alone together. Finally. Next week’s episode title reveals all.

Hammer Of The Guild Gal, episode 11

Monologing. Not a great way to spend your next-to-last episode. Blech.

Solo Leveling 2, episode 12

After the obligatory “Thank God The Hero Has Arrived” reaction shots by everyone who’s had a speaking role this season, it’s time to go mano-a-hormiga in a… fistfight? Yeah, let’s have Jinwoo and Badass Ant punch each other for a while. Fortunately this isn’t an old issue of Marvel Team-Up, so they eventually get down to the serious business of killing each other.

Lots of CGI ant-movement that sticks out badly, and some weirdly bad animations of the spear-carriers (for a moment I thought TV Guy had jello arms as a superpower), but the actual fight was pretty good. Naturally they had to end it on a Second-Best-Girl cliffhanger, with Our Mangled Blonde Hunter Gal at that very specific level of too hurt to cure but too tough to have died ten minutes ago.

Verdict: no, she doesn’t die next week.

(fan-artist headcanon I can get behind)

A-Rank Adventure Harem, episode 10

Aside from the lengthy travel montage and walk-and-talk exposition scenes, this was fun, as the show casts aside the Asshole Party baggage and leans into harem/adventure goodness. Our Little Blonde Titty-Witch had to sit out this adventure, but she did at least make it into the OP animation as an official haremette. Pity she didn’t make it into the hot-springs bath scenes with the rest, although they were shorter than the travel montage and showed no signs of Buy-The-Bluray advertising.

Unrelated, they went seriously old-school for the new-town guildmaster’s look.

Verdict: new waifu-focused ED animation to celebrate a new asshole-free era. I’m not counting the brief encounter with some foreign chauvinists, since that led Yuke to accidentally proclaim that he’s a proper harem lord, thrilling the educated haremette who spoke the language.

(I didn’t even have to ask the LoRA to give me some special costumes for Silk…)

Shangri-La Frontier 2, episode 24

Fish fight! Our Bird-Brained Hero spends pretty much the entire episode figuring out how to defeat the giant electric whale, and then executes the plan (and the whale) with the help of Our Friendly Fishman NPC. While all the other NPCs sleep and the other players are off living their real lives.

Verdict: …which means that all the character interaction is getting crammed into the final episode of the season next week. …which means that they’d better announce another season already in production, since we’ve got two cliffhangers.

Mistakes Were Made™

They’re pushing an accelerated rollout schedule for the Veterans Administration’s New Thing, despite its poor track record in current deployments, delays, cost overruns, near-universal negative reaction from health-care professionals and IT staff, proven risks to patients, and lack of trained staff to handle the transition even before the push to RIF thousands of employees.

Based on what I’ve heard from insiders, the correct response should be to have Team Elon dispatch an anal-probe software forensics team to thoroughly investigate New Thing before it kills more veterans, with major penalties to the vendors for their failures.

Transdependency

I have a lot of open-source packages installed on my Mac through Homebrew. 16 of them are now cannot be upgraded because I pinned Perl at a specific release. Most of them are stuck just because someone once wrote an optional Perl script that’s included in the repo, and it’s still there years or decades later.

(I originally pinned Perl because the person who maintains the recipe didn’t understand how to set it up to preserve installed modules across minor releases, and Perlbrew simply didn’t work on my M2 Macbook Air when I bought it)

Back in black…

Glen Cook’s original Black Company trilogy was really good. Several of the later books were interesting, but never recaptured the magic. So I wasn’t terribly interested when a new book came out seven years ago that was set between the first two, especially since it seemed to incorporate Cook’s interest in anime that made the final Garrett book such a disaster. And they still want $13 for the Kindle edition seven years after release, so I’m still not interested.

And now he’s got another one coming out in November. What’s it about? No idea, but apparently he signed a contract to write a whole new BC sequel series, since it’s titled “Lies Weeping: Volume 1 of the Black Company Saga: A Pitiless Rain”. I doubt I’ll pick it up.

(loli dragon gal is very loosely related, since she’s from a show called Dungeon of Black Company…)