Hello! Y’all may have seen me around in every new anime thread, lol. Each season I watch the first episode of every anime as blind as I can so that I don’t miss all the weird little gems and also because it makes every new show a little surprise of wildly varying content and quality. I give every premiere a first-impressions rating, based on how much promise I think it has, though I’ll admit I can be pretty off at times. I also have a group of friends I put together an anime tasting menu for when all the shows are out, and we pick out a few to watch together.

For returning shows, this season I only have Dungeon Meshi (which I’m watching with friends), and I’m really eager to see what it has in store for us, since I’ve heard we’re entering the “what the fuck” section of the plot.

For new shows, I’ve got a lot of maybes, but I’m really excited to see more from Wind Breaker and Astro Note, both of which really impressed me.

I came back to the community a bit late for the end-of-season discussions, but I still want to shout out a couple of (imo) underrated shows that just ended:

• Cherry Magic: A lovely adult-oriented romance focused on healthy communication and personal growth. It uses its mind reading premise to tell a story about the desire to know others and be known by them, and the tension between wanting to be loved for your true self and wanting to be seen as the best possible version of yourself. And the anime community would have easily called it an aoty contender if Kurosawa had been a woman.

• Delusional Monthly Magazine: Maybe it’s just my weird taste, but this was a blast, start to finish. The adventures were wacky and fun. The plot twists were nuts. One episode had an unexplained dance number. Absolutely phenomenal.