The springtime of life

(Crossposted from my journal.)

Out of 7 shows I was interested in checking out, 3 aren't licensed for streaming in the US. The buzz about Your Forma has been negative enough that I've lost interest in it, but I'd still like to have a look at Miru or The Mononoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei if I get the chance.

As for the others, plus one where the reactions on my favorite anime Discord server convinced me to give it a chance:

Apocalypse Hotel: After episode 1, I was amused, because the punchline was easy to guess but the exact form it took was not. After episode 2, I was clearing a spot for it on my Hugo balot next year. It's whimsical, melancholy, philosophical, absurd, and blessed with some excellent character animation in episode 2. If you thought the premise sounded even remotely interesting, you should absolutely try it.

Lazarus: Sure looks great, but the writing ranges from just plain dumb to complete nonsense. Also it turns out I still hate dubs.

Sword of the Demon Hunter: Sets its protagonist up with an origin story which is dark and edgy on paper, but avoids the gratuitous excesses that would normally go with it. Only the one person that needs to be horribly killed for plot reasons gets horribly killed, and it goes out its way to show its human characters having humanity, allowing the demons to look properly demonic in comparison. Although this was advertised as a time travel story, there's no going back and forth, it's just that a couple of characters are going to have very long lifespans.

ZatsuTabi: Yup, it's just low-key travelogues about journeys to obscure bits of Japan. It turns out that this is my kind of thing right now, but I understand if it isn't yours.

Kowloon Generic Romance: Sets up a fascinating mystery, but it's going to be a competition between my interest in that and my annoyance at how much time the camera spends ogling our heroine (although episode 3 was much better) and how the shortcut to showing us that the apparent villain is evil is to make him an effeminate gay man (episode 3 got much worse on this).

I also managed to stop watching The Apothecary Diaries in the middle of its first episode of the season, so you don't have to keep reading my complaints about it.