Well, that was… talky.

Fortunately, Our Drunken Russian Heroine (who’s healed up enough to fall off the wagon again) sports another hairstyle that’s more flattering than her usual look, likely because Our Left-Behind Best Friend stole the ponytail (which looks good on her, too). This week we’re in Russia investigating Our Mysterious Look-Alike Villainess, who conveniently shows up just as Our Heroines find An Important Clue to Her True Identity. Our Shy Heroine Shy is there mostly just to react to the goings-on, so I guess this qualifies as character development for Pepesha, although it’s pretty thin.

Verdict: Eye-catching new looks for Pepesha and Iko are welcome, but this is the second exposition-heavy episode in a row, and even after they suit up, it just leads to more exposition. This is a bit odd, given the series composition, script, and director credits; oh, wait, the director was also responsible for the talk-to-death ending of Astra Lost In Space.

Tearmoon, episode 7

I am shocked, shocked, to learn that a random selfish action by Our Vacationing Princess has world-shaking consequences. Which will continue next week as Our Sickly Orphan’s gift keeps on giving. Meanwhile, a blast from future-past has Mia passing out in terror, but fortunately Our Ex-Executioner’s already starting to convert to The Church Of The Accidental Genius.

Verdict: this is not the most contrived set of coincidences in Mia’s redemption, just the most contrived set so far. Bonus points for the real-life reference to the popularity of horse shampoo.

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 7

Laziest. CG Rat Swarm. Ever.

In other news, Our Former Tsuntail can barely manage to keep up her non-dere cover personality. Pity she’s also stuck in her non-dairy school uniform. And if Our Gay Bunnyboy gets any more over-the-top, he’s going to bottom. Lastly, Our Bushy-Browed Valkyrie makes a brief cameo as this tournament heads into a third episode. The credits promise she’s a major character, but with only five episodes left, she’s going to have to harem up Real Soon Now.

Verdict: Our Cute Little Redheaded Senpai is never coming back, is she? By the way, what kind of dice game is the helium-snorting ED singer on about?

(Princess Stompyboots is about as unrelated as Our Cute Little Redheaded Senpai, sigh)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 7

The way to a man’s heart is through high-end prostitutes. The way to Maomao’s stomach is through dangerous poisons. It was refreshing that her use of fingerprints didn’t turn into a completely anachronistic great-detective moment, and simply supported fairly straightforward deductions. In other news, Our Motherly Concubine really enjoyed setting up Our Pretty-Boy Not-Eunuch; it’s not often that the harem gets to poke the manager.

Verdict: I enjoy the cultural explanations that most of the reviewers skip over completely in order to misread the show through the lens of 21st-century wokeist feminism.

Unrelated,

The latest Pixiv jargon I’ve come across is 胸膝位 (kyoushitsu-i, no relation to the “classroom” kyoushitsu), which is not in any of my dictionaries. It breaks down into breast + knees + position, but most of the time, 位 as a suffix is more of a rank than a position-position (“first place”, “social status”, etc). However,体位 (tai-i) is the generic “sexual position”, leading to:

• 側位 soku-i, “side position” = spooning
• 屈曲位 kukkyoku-i, “bending position” = “Viennese Oyster”
• 後背位 kouhai-i, “behind-back position” = doggy style (no relation to "junior" kouhai)
• 正常位 seijou-i, “normal position” = missionary
• 騎乗位 kijou-i, “horse-riding position” = cowgirl
• etc.

So the Pixiv-supplied translation of 胸膝位 is “face down ass up”, which will probably not make it into JMdict any time soon. And, no, I didn’t have much luck finding a work-safe fan-art of that one…

NSFW

(cowgirl gets ~75K hits on Pixiv, doggy gets ~30K, and the rest are rarely used)

Completely unrelated, a Starfield fridge thought

There’s an early conversation between Walter Stroud and his partner-wife where he gets insecure about their relationship and says maybe she should have married a Hope or a Taiyo, owners of two of the major ship-building companies, since she’s a powerhouse in the industry herself.

But there is no Hope family to marry into, it’s just Ron himself, a former freighter captain and throughly unpleasant person who wouldn’t survive an hour with Issa. And if you happen to kill him as part of a certain quest, the employees panic about the future of the company, because there’s no one to inherit the business.

(well, it’s likely Walter is the little spoon in their relationship, so it’s not completely unrelated…)

S-Rank Daddy’s Girl, episode 8

Enter The Elves. First another naggingly familiar voice joins the cast as Our Legendary Warrior (using something very similar to his Zelada voice from the glorious train-wreck Cop Craft), soon to be followed by Our Tomboy Princess (whose previous elven princess was much curvier). Meanwhile, a chance remark sets Our Dutiful Daughter off on a quest that could change her world!

Verdict: Oh, Miri, what have you done? 😁

(Leafa-chan is unrelated, but I couldn’t find any decent fan-art of previous-elf-princess Arianne that I haven’t already used)

Frieren, episode 11

There’s a fair amount of fan-porn for Aura The Guillotine. To no great surprise, all of it requires ignoring every aspect of the character except her cleavage. Clearly some people are going to miss her.

But not the town they just saved, which honors both their dead and Our Heroes, before the Graf gives them a grateful sendoff. And a warning that Frieren needs to renew her driver’s license mage certification in order to progress much further.

Speaking of new elves, we get yet another naggingly familiar voice as Koyasu himself turns up. It should come as no surprise that an elf is a touch eccentric, but they quickly warm up to him, literally in Stark’s case.

Verdict: lots of fun little character moments this week.

(only decent fan-art I’ve found of Flamme so far)

In which Our Wounded Sober Russian Heroine looks really good in civvies while acting her age, and Our Shouty Healing Heroine and Our Always-Relevant Best Friend deliver enough boob shots to make all the exposition go down easier. Meanwhile, Our Shy Heroine Shy’s reward for holding up through all that is to confront her worst nightmare: a public appearance. Fortunately she’s grown enough over the past few weeks that even Pretty Cure cosplay can’t defeat her.

Verdict: Ponytail Pepesha is best Pepesha.

Shy:

Not Shy:

NSFW

Dear Amazon,

This recent Tim Powers novella should not be linked to the author page for Aldous Huxley. That is all.

Tearmoon, episode 6

Our Rival Princes are very lucky that Our Outstanding Retainer came equipped with a spider-sense, as well as the ability to politely strong-arm Our Over-Ambitious Young Ladies into making food that’s edible and at the proper scale. Special points to Our Adorkable Maid for managing to out-clueless her mistress about what was wrong with the giant horse bread.

On that note, while it was nice to see Mia accidentally get Abel to conquer his insecurities, I really wish Yoshitsugu Matsuoka was able to vary his performances at least a little, so that he didn’t sound like every other boy hero he’s voiced. Every time he opens his mouth, I wonder why Bell is cheating on Hestia, Kirito is cheating on Asuna, and Masamune is cheating on Eromanga-sensei.

While I’m whining, I’d like to say that “desu wa” makes a terrible catchphrase, especially when embedded into a major earworm of an OP song.

Verdict: …and yet I keep watching the OP rather than hitting the skip button…

Potion Loli, episode 6

Fun fact: an army of 20,000 men only needs about six wagons worth of supplies for an extended march through enemy territory. It also looks remarkably like an army of 20 men. With no sentries or scouts. Things go downhill from there.

Verdict: everything that happened in this episode killed brain cells by the dozen. Bye now!

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 6

Thank heaven for little girls… who like poison. And recognize allergic reactions and the type of people who deliberately trigger them.

Verdict: “did you like the soup?”

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 6

Perhaps the Blue Moon Party should stop recruiting members based on their unique hairstyles. Just sayin’. Meanwhile, Our Reformed Twintail is gaily gleeful about Our Gay Bunnyboy’s gay crush, while forgetting entirely about her desire to figure out Our Foreknowing Hero’s smug secret. Our Bushy-Eyebrowed Valkyrie throws down the thigh-high stockings gauntlet and announces that she will not underestimate the rival she’s still underestimating.

Verdict: it looks like they’re restricting the tournament to two episodes, the first of which is nearly all setup. Good.

Next season possibles?

Frieren and The Apothecary Diaries are both carrying over, which will automatically make it one of the best seasons we’ve had for a while. Other than those, I’m not too excited about most of what’s been announced so far.

• Solo Leveling - the promos are currently focusing on the unleveled version of Our Hero, so I have no idea how they’re going to pace this, or how many episodes they’re making.

• McPharmacist and Waifu 2 - Red and Rit return, but after the first season chopped the story to bits to race to a stopping point, can they paste it back together? There should be decent eye candy, but the only reason I’ll give it a chance is for Best Assassin Tisse and Best Spider Mr. Crawly-Wawly.

• Dungeon Meshi (“Delicious In Dungeon”) - dungeon-delving food porn, which is a fairly lightweight premise, but not only have they committed to 24 episodes, they’re serious enough to hire Bump Of Chicken for the OP song. Of the core cast, the one with the highest recent profile is probably blonde elf Marcille, whose voice will be familiar to anyone fond of a certain overpowered slime’s favorite shrine maiden, but the most naggingly familiar voice will be the dwarf Senshi, who’s been in basically everything since The Legend Of The Galactic Heroes in 1988.

Book cover FAIL

A common problem on Amazon is Kindle books whose covers are incoherent at thumbnail size. Choices in fonts, color, and pictures often lead to the elements getting mushed together in ways that make them difficult to distinguish. This one, however, surprised me in a new way:

At full size, the title is easy to read, but as a thumbnail, at first I thought it was called “The Villainess ASS-Rank Adventurer”, which made perfect sense for the genre.

(that’s “Houkyou No Fern-chan”, for the kanji-allergic)

Fern’s full breasts are two of the most popular characters for fan-art this season, to the point that they can easily fill a full cheesecake post. Honestly, you’d think they were the leads, when they barely get any screen time at all.

more...

S-Rank Daddy’s Girl, episode 7

In which Our Stalwart Daughter plays a bullet-hell game to win, Our Vengeful Loli is defeated by Deus Ex Elf-Juice and Dad Power, The Maltese Doughball gets what he deserves, and Our Daddy-Hungry Countess rises to the occasion.

Verdict: Helvetica is dangerously close to overtaking Miriam for Best Girl status.

(cute dragonette foodie is unrelated, as usual)

Frieren, episode 10

Do not meddle in the affairs of Frieren, for she is subtle and quick to anger plays the long game. As she was taught.

Verdict: I am now officially Hot For Teacher.

Why I don’t really like Baldur’s Gate 3

So I made it to Act 3, started to accumulate side quests so that I could finally get into the titular city, and… went off to read a book instead. I just didn’t want to do the things they wanted me to do, and there was nowhere else to go. It’s made very clear that you’re in a Race Against Time to Stop The Bad Guys and Save The City, but you have to run around talking to pretty much every named NPC in each region to make sure that you stumble across half a dozen plot coupons to get the thing to do the thing that unlocks the thing that opens the door to start the fight to see the guy to get the other thing, and half of it isn’t actually necessary but you won’t know that until you finally trip the flag that lets you progress the plot.

Meanwhile, most of the people I helped in Act 1 died horribly in Act 2, and the ones who didn’t are worse off, and most decisions I got to make ranged from Kinda Evil to Mostly Evil. And for all the apparent freedom in experiencing the content, you’re welded to the rails of this story, unable to even revisit the earlier areas if there was something that you missed.

For instance, in Act 1, you have the opportunity to rescue a young tiefling girl who stole something (for a pretty good reason). If you do so, you reunite her with her loving parents. If you stumble across her in Act 2, she’s been separated from her parents and asks you to find them. If you don’t find them before moving to Act 3 (and they’re hard to find even if you know what building they’re in), that quest gets auto-closed with a poor outcome, because you can never reenter the region and locate their tortured-to-death corpses. But you want to find them and shatter her hopes, because then you can recruit her for a plot fight later.

Honestly, the most positive thing I was able to do recently was tame a flesh-eating monster so that I could pet it at my camp. It still goes out and eats anything and anyone it can find, but who am I to make moral judgements, some kind of hero?

The most annoying thing that happened in Act 2 was that I didn’t talk to everyone on the first floor of the inn before going upstairs to see the Very Important NPC that I was specifically directed to speak to right away. As a result, one significant quest chain was closed off by the ensuing massacre, but I didn’t find out until several hours later when I groveled over the map searching for things that would be closed off by advancing to Act 3. There’s even a special cutscene where you lament the fact that you couldn’t make the world a better place.

Oh, and when I met the little girl, well after the massacre, I could tell her to wait for me at the inn with a friendly NPC. Who was dead, along with most of the people she knew from Act 1.

I’d like to play a game that used their D&D engine but had completely different writers and less grimdark epic railroading.

(true story: I gave up on the original Baldur’s Gate for a long time because I missed one tiny little corner of the map that contained a flag I needed to trip in order to enter the titular city; there was literally nothing left for me to do until I found it, and it was boring)

Tearmoon, episode 5

In which horses are freedom, but the road to lunch is lined with traps.

Verdict: four girls who’ve never cooked? What could possibly go wrong?

Potion Loli, episode 5

At this point, I think Our Potion Loli’s surprisingly-effective Office Lady Logic is as likely to lead to long-term positive outcomes as the phrase “at last C-ko will be mine”.

Verdict: …and next week she’s setting forth to destroy an army. I think I’m about done here.

(Coffee Loli beats Potion Loli)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 5

Eunuchs, you say? With muscles like that? If they hadn’t already made it obvious that there was something fishy about Our Harem Manager and His Number One Man, the opening scene of this episode would have done it.

Then again, the OP animation has Our Painted-Lady Medicinal Heroine looking glamorous while dancing sexy in a very non-period dress, so it’s not like they’ve really been hiding things.

Verdict: slow-burn romance, eh? I can go with that direction.

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 5

The Tale Of The Purloined Rapier went pretty much as expected, with Our Hero-Worshipping Bunnyboy learning the true worth of his legacy and getting a chance to show off his sword-bunny skills. Meanwhile, Our Obnoxious Twintail has trained herself into a better person, and Our Beefcake Asshole Noble reveals the trauma that made him that way (the asshole part, that is).

On that note, it appears the school fears the power of Gainax, which is the only reason I can think of that Romantica’s formerly-bouncy bust is so much smaller and well-restrained than in her initial appearance.

Verdict: one more, but if the tournament turns into a tournament arc, I’m outta here. Hopefully they’ll spend some time on Our Giant Blonde With Weird Eyebrows, who’s been hanging out in the credits without much screen time.

Shy, episode 6

For Those Who Came In Late… our first several minutes will be a recap, accompanied by a brief villainous monologue.

Following that, Our Shy Heroine Shy will be pulled away from a chat with Our Best Friend to become one of Santa’s helpers, without a chance to find a winter wardrobe or learn to use her fire powers to stay warm in the arctic cold. Also featuring Our Drunken Russian Heroine, and introducing Our Chinese Femboy Kung-Fu Hero, who’s kind of sensitive about that.

Verdict: the silliness is starting to clash with the dead-serious villainy, but I’m still rooting for our gal.