Here's a series about Stride, a fictional mixture of running and parkour.

It features a bunch of guys and buddies, a team, and a girl - the team leader. There's a lot of blue skies and emotional runs, and feelings floating around up there amidst the cloud. I realized too late it was an otome anime (noooooo), which I sort of wish I'd never been made aware of, because up until that point I was thinking it seemed like a surprisingly inspiring and refreshingly different show.When you know what it's all about there are suddenly too many guys, and just the one girl, and you start wondering if everyone's really straight, but...

It was a good show. Values of friendship intertwine with a will to win, a childhood promise, feuds and friendships between crews, and one final race that closes it at a rapid pace.

I was a bit disappointing at how it all ended in the middle of the final phase, with emotion and speed rather than with a definite victory, but they did win! All's well that ends well, and if there's any one show that's inspired me to get a move on in life this year, it's this one.

12 episodes total, and I don't think this is one of those series that'll span more than a season. There's also apparently an original version of this, which I wonder... if I should maybe leave alone. It couldn't have been any better than this, could it? Good watch.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

In an alternate future, an outbreak happened that made humans able to see and interact with spirits, or phantoms, as they're called - beings that walk the line between illusion and reality. At times the lines overlap, and our main characters get dragged into parallel worlds or altered realities.

Certain people with special abilities are tasked with fighting these phantoms when they disrupt human life, and these people happen to be (mostly) students. Haruhiko Ichijou and Mai Kawakami are two such fighters, but they're not doing so well. Over the passage of the story they meet up with a few more colleagues, and friends, and get better, and fight a bunch of phantoms!

It's a bit like Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku Wo! (also considering the main character's surrounded by a group of girls), but has a more serious/professional tone to it. Well, maybe not serious, but more... polished? More reputable? There's still plenty of ecchi, but it's not as crude as with the former.

All in all the episodes open up to intriguing scenarios of the supernatural, creative ones as such, and all the while a more sinister plot brews in the background. The characters are likable, albeit a bit stereotypic, and there's plenty of entertainment value. Don't know how I stumbled back to shows like this but... so far so good!

13 episodes this season, and no second one confirmed (though good ratings make it plausible). So far this gets a...

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

This one didn't start out the best. The main character Kazuma is a bit of a dick, and a pessimist, and the Goddess he hangs out with is arrogant, and greedy. The other characters seem to have better personalities - as weird as they may be. But give it a while, it gets better!

Somewhere around the 4th episode I started to really enjoy the show. Never mind the dubious intro and first episode. Never mind the common character conflicts and crude humor. Never mind the overload of ecchi and how the main character is constantly surrounded by girls, yet can only see them as troublesome. I just don't like his attitude! Do mind the entertainment though, and the story. It's not bad.

The plot: Kazuma dies (in an unnecessarily stupid way, it should be noted), and is welcomed to the afterlife by this arrogant goddess who finds great entertainment in his misery. The divinities are having some trouble with a villainous force of evil in a parallel world, however, and since he died so young and selflessly he is given a chance to redeem himself and be born again into this parallel world, to defeat this fiend. He can bring any one thing he wishes with him as well, so out of spite he chooses... the goddess.

She's not happy with it, and he's not happy with her (apparently she's nigh powerless), and it feels like the premises could have been a whole lot more positive if things had been different, but when they do get accustomed to the new world, and start living life like it's an RPG - gaining skills and growing stronger, it gets a bit better. Silly, often unnecessary, but entertaining! The bout with the headless horseman in particular, and the bombs. It has its moments.

This season was 10 episodes, and there's a second one planned. So far...

 rated 3/5: not bad

I finished watching the first season of the Assassination Classroom today, and it was pretty great! Plenty of killing going on. Well, plenty of attempts. Plenty of trying to kill a tentacle teacher that just won't be done in - no matter what they do. It's a hate-love relationship.

As with most of these slice of life school day shows it all ends at a resort, but not really the normal kind of resort - this time it's an all for one grand assassination attempt. Of course, they don't manage to kill their teacher, and a new semester starts, a semester of life and death in the Assassination Classroom!

I started watching this show sporadically, but these last couple of days I just couldn't give it up. And now it's done. First season. More fun than I'd expected, and I'm really growing to like some of the main characters too. Will pick up season two in a year or two, whenever it's airing is over; I can marathon through it in peace. Great fun so far.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

I seem to only be choosing new animes to watch with 'Punch' in the titles lately. :) Last time it was Punch Line, and now it's this one! But in difference from the former (which was good, but not memorably good) this one show shows some pretty serious potential!

It's about a hero who looks very ordinary, but is really very powerful (you might even argue he's the strongest person on Earth), but he has one big problem: he can't find an opponent he doesn't instantly knock out with just one punch. He's getting bored. Life seems trivial and dull, to the point where he almost seems kinda suicidal in some of his battles (I mean come on! He's taking that giant guy's punches head on for what? When he could be dodging them?!).

I just finished the first episode, in which he beats up a wide assortment of strange villains, and then, plot twist: sub-subterraneans appear, destroying his house while he sleeps, after having already killed 70% of the population! He fights them off, but they're strong, and suddenly... he starts feeling a feeling he hasn't felt in so long! How it feels to have a real fight!! As he stands victorious, sweating, shivering, towering over his foes on a cliff of rubble, the King of the Underground appears and challenges him, and he runs that beast head on! And then: his alarm clock rings and be instinctively (accidentally?) punches it through the floor.

Sound like an entertaining premises for a show? Well, I thought so too! And not just the premises: but the show! Awesome idea, animation, comedic quality and plot aaand everything about it really. As seems to be the trend with modern (fighting) anime, it progresses at a super-fast pace, but of course, it's the first episode. This might've been more eventful than most just to get us hooked. And that I am.

I'm looking forward to following the show and catching up on the remaining, already aired 11 episodes (out of 12 total, just 1 left!). Here's a bunch of screenshots to give you a taste of content:

Read on...

Just watched the first 12 episodes - first season - of this pretty disturbing series. Actually, I thought it'd be more disturbing than it was. After a little initial phase of surprise you get used to it, and those 'Parasyte's' don't look so vicious any more. Migi, in fact, looks kind of cuddly... until he (she? it?) actually lashes out with those vicious metallic claws and slices a head or two apart.

More so than disturbing, this series is depressing. People around the main character die, but even so that's not the most depressing part - it's how he's losing his senses, losing focus, losing his mind, losing himself, losing his heart? Cheesy, but there you have it. He still has altruity, that one thing humans have that makes them so strange, but he can't shed a tear even when those near to him die one after the other.

In conclusion, it's not a very uplifting anime! But, it is unique, it has the occasional flare of emotion and ferocity, it's well-animated and oftentimes unexpected in how the plot quickly shocks or shifts. You follow the character's evolution and struggle not so much against Migi but against himself (same thing?), how he distances himself from the world, from those he cares about, from the very human sentiments of care and sympathy... next season's bound to be interesting!

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle