So, wow, did not mean to take two weeks off before Katsucon (I had only planned on one) but with all of the stress from still getting used to my new job and cosplay I thought it was best to drop reviews until I could focus on them. I mean, I didn't want to short either Concrete Revolutio or Wings of Honneamise with reviews where I forgot to put in half the things I wanted! I did honestly plan on putting out a book review this week as well but the book, aptly titled Unremembered, was one I barely remembered even reading and figured it was better to just skip it (and I hadn't thought enough about the next title on my list to jump into that review instead, I haven't been reading as much recently so right now everything I'm reviewing I was reading around Thanksgiving). And over on OASG I talked about Samurai Drive before Katsucon (which is the rare manga where the pilot one shot was better than the actual series, by a large margin too!) and then wrote about another series with swords in it this week, Ga-Rei (yep, the series that inspired the prequel anime Ga-Rei Zero!).
I also wrote up an entirely too long post on Katsucon (search "industry" if you want my thoughts on the Aniplex, Crunchyroll, and Vertical panels) and I also put my mid-season anime thoughts until the jump.
A lot of folks started putting out mid-season write-ups last week and since I think they all jumped the gun by doing it on week six instead of week seven I had been thinking about this as well. With Katsucon I got behind on some shows and that's a surefire way to figure out what you don't feel like watching. Honestly it's Dimension W of all things I'm least excited about, the first three episodes didn't thrill me and since it apparently followed those up with a gross two-parter, well, my interest has been diminished. Curiously enough even though Akagami is starting to get repetitive and it's still in the material I've already read I'm still looking forward to it each week (50% of it is the Bones visuals honestly but that's a fair reason!) and somehow Grimgar has really grown on me. I mean, I'm happy about that but I'm not sure how it happened!
On the lower end, I don't really have a reason to keep watching Luck & Logic since I was using it mostly for background noise while sewing but I still kind of want to watch a few more episodes since the costumes are cute. Active Raid is muddling along with a weak sixth episode (so which staff member has a raging boner for old-school giant robots? Because only a super-duper hardcore fan could've made a robot episode that even I found dull), IBO is faltering a little bit with both letting it's characters do things and trying to remember that their characters are only bit-characters in a larger universe so far, and Utawarerumono makes me shake my head even at the "good" episodes, the game sounds so much better so I'm wondering if the anime staff just wasn't told about a lot of character and plot details that would've been more interesting!
Finally, Haikyuu, Rakugo Shinjuu, and Erased all continue to be fun and engaging in their own ways, it's a surprisingly full season for me and it looks like spring is going to be absolutely insane at this point so I should finish this all now as it's airing so I can brace myself!
