Completely sealing off every good route for the heroine. 😏

I also don’t remember why Meili is on Subaru’s side now, and who her mom is. I feel like they have too many things to explain and didn’t have enough time.

Season 2 is wiped from my mind… I looked back to remember what happened with Meili. As far as I can tell she was rescued/captured by Frederica in episode 48, very briefly shown passed out in episode 49, and that was the last of her. There are a couple of Break-Time episodes with Elsa and Meili talking, and one with Meili looking at the burnt ruins of Roswaal’s estate. Perhaps there was dialog afterwards that explained it later, but I think not.

I’ve been looking through the wikis, trying not to spoil myself too much (though I ended up spoiling myself on the mom part a little bit, because of the way character wikis are laid out). To avoid being spoiled, it’s probably better to just stick to the Arc 1-5 story recaps and avoid character wikis altogether. The way the anime portrayed Subaru’s and Meili’s interaction made me think that I was supposed to know more, but I think most of the details around Meili – including events that happened in season 2 – are supposed to be vague at this point and we’ll get more details now that she’s part of the cast again. There was a 1-year gap between season 2 and season 3, so perhaps we’re to conclude that some development with Meili happened during that time.

It would be pretty crazy if the story gives no explanation as to why Subaru can trust Meili now.

Well now I’m properly excited for this series.

From the title I thought this was going to be about making hats for magicians. I love the world building (A+ so far, though the idea of being able to keep magic secret is little hard to accept. I doubt that the series will focus on that so I think that I can lock in going forward.) and the fascination with the magic system (B to A+, depending on how well it explains advanced magic). The pacing so far is great: fast but doesn’t feel rushed. I suspect that this will be my favorite show of the season.

I went back to look at the easy-to-see magic circles. It seems that there is a wide variety of sigils. The signs around the sigils seem to have less variety. And there seems to be some variations on the enclosing circles. The floating carriage and the forbidden spell appear to have 2-levels of nested magic circles. If this was a re-incarnation power-fantasy show, the protagonist would probably immediately aim to create 3±levels of nested magic circles… but judging from the forbidden spell, 3-levels might have the potential to instantly destroy cities.

How the magic circles function with stone formations is a little bit of a mystery for now, I guess you could just say that there’s durable special ink (or whatever the ink’s made of) in the cracks.

Catapults? 😞🫸

The show does a good job of making me to want to see the progression of Makio and Asa’s relationship (also how Asa’s mother changed after separating from Makio). I particularly liked the attorney in this episode. The Shingo-Makio pairing is ridiculously wholesome. Also, it definitely felt like they were planning to do a seamless ED transition.

As if they needed to make Kyto even more evil, lol.

So, if I understood correctly, that was a strange sequence of events.

Damn, things are really falling into place. I still don’t really understand what the motivations are in the past incident.

Oh, I read this LN series back in 2023 or 2024. It was pretty good. AND it’s a complete story told in only 5 LN volumes.

I read the LN (and finished with the WN, because the LN wasn’t fully adapted yet at the time) a couple years ago and liked it decently. I don’t recall too much about it outside the premise and the character growth exhibited in the final conflict.

After watching the PV, this looks like it’ll be a fun show. The animation looks like it’ll be good in some ways and unexceptional in others. I think I liked all the voice actors. A few memories have swelled back up from the gutters of my mind. I think it’ll be a big step up over the fantasy anime that are currently airing.

You know what, I do vaguely recall it being difficult to follow season 2’s CR subtitles. At the time, I think I chalked it up to being due to the source dialog being convoluted.

We get a new view of Gluttony’s ability from Beatrice’s perspective, like being disassembled and reassembled/rewound.

The announcement voice announcing that everything was OK was quite strange, are we supposed to accept it plainly? None of the characters seem to find it strange. They make the announcement immediately, and the announcement systems looks to be in very bad shape.

The show has hinted hard as to what’s up with Al with a few of these recent episodes. I wonder if that’s going somewhere, or if it’s going to be a slow burn.

I’m quite surprised that they want to keep Wrath alive, I guess they’re that desperate to get any edge they can against the Witch Cult.

And that ending scene with the happy-carefree music, lol. Poor dude.

why didn’t Natsuko draw Mighty Greatsword Luke to begin with?

Natsuko drew the Luke she’s drawn all her life. Throughout the show she’s been drawing existing animations. In the dark she comes to accept that drawing that Luke isn’t enough. In the end, with the emotional support of QJ, she realizes that she should draw her own Luke, the one she’s come to know and fall in love with. It’s her coming to terms with her feelings towards Luke, which is emphasized by what she says after she draws him. Or so I say. A line from Natsuko about what sparked the change would’ve been better than listening to QJ moan. Really anything probably would’ve been better than listening to QJ moan. “I know, I should’ve drawn him shirtless!”, whatever, anything else, please.

I was hoping that Natsuko would take more agency over a new ending for Tale Of Perishing after this point.

I was definitely hoping to see Natsuko draw an entire new in-canon ending for Horobiku Monogatari. Do a complete revision! That’s literally the title of the show!

Title drop! Zenshuu is easily my favorite anime of the Winter 2025 season. This is partially because the Winter 2025 season on a whole may have been weak and I’ve delayed watching a few shows that I know I will like, but Zenshuu itself is a delightful experience.

That PV got me excited, I like the vibe. Action fantasy with pretty good animation? Count me in.

The Spirit Tortoise arc, part of season 2, was particularly painful to watch. So it does get better after the tortoise, but it does not get good.

I watched Sonny Boy over the last week or two. I quite enjoyed it overall, it’s interesting on multiple levels. The ending was a little bit melancholic and upsetting, but that’s consistent with the rest of the show. I didn’t think too deeply about the philosophy and metaphors that the show put forward; it might’ve been good to reflect on and write about each episode.

I was a bit unenthusiastic going into this episode, thinking that it might be some drawn-out flashback. While the flashbacks were long, I found the whole episode to be a fun trek through Natsuko’s inadvertent romcom maneater adolescence.

Each flashback had little surprises, while also emphasizing how Natsuko is 200% dedicated to her craft.

Fukushima’s (the animation studio’s president) perspective was also interesting. Drawing a parallel between Natsuko and the director of A Tale of Perishing (who, unlike the bird, is smiling in Fukushima’s recollection), and challenging Natsuko to surpass her current limitations.

The PV linked above is from 3 years ago and is for the first novel. Here’s a PV from 10 hours ago for the anime. The new PV is mostly just review quotes.