It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone use footage from Hyper Police and DearS. The extensive use of AsoIku came as no surprise, of course.

I don’t care for the music, but… catgirls!

As expected, they dodged the usual solution. It is a pool episode with the girls in swimsuits, but it’s not a fan-service filler afterthought.

Not only does the DanMachi Sword Oratoria spinoff anime start in a few weeks, but there’s another spinoff series starting, Familia Chronicle, in both light novel and manga formats.

The first volume focuses on the enigmatic Ryū, and to make sure everyone takes notice, her bustline is considerably more impressive than in the anime. Apparently the Protagonist package includes upgrades.

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New Kino’s Journey series coming, with the voice of Madoka as Kino. They also just launched a manga adaptation, so apparently the franchise is still pretty healthy.

In other anime news, DanMachi is getting a deluxe Bluray US release in a few weeks, complete with dub and ribbon. Cute, but I’m thinking $80 is a bit steep. (standard BD release half that price available next week)

This week’s episode followed up on the conflict with the vice-principal, ending with a scene that felt very much like a season-ender. Fortunately, it wasn’t; I can’t recall the last time I felt honest relief that an anime series was not over.

[Update: confirmed 12 episodes; I checked two different networks, and that’s the last listing they have. Since book 5 of the manga doesn’t come out for another month, they probably need to wait a season or two for more material. Two anthology comics just came out, with one of them marked “official”, but probably not useful for continuing the story.

In unrelated news, while browsing network schedules I discovered that the adventure-girls spinoff of DanMachi has a series starting in April. Apart from some brief cameos by Bell, this is focused entirely on the women of Loki Familia, dealing with events that overlap with the main series. And I completely missed the OVA that came out in December.]

First season was fun fluff. Special episode was crap. Second season was mostly the latter with brief moments of the former. Zero rewatch value; I’ve already forgotten almost everything that happened. From what I know of the light novels, the problem was definitely not running out of content.

In unrelated news, I saw Logan over the weekend. Good use of the material, and some excellent performances, but I wonder how many people would want to see it more than once. Hugh Jackman and Dafne Keen must have had on-set therapists to keep their vocal cords from scarring; half their lines in the script must be [snarl], [growl], [howl], [grunt], [scream], [inarticulate rage].

(via, and yes the game is available in the US)