Yeah, there's male Sabers but girl-Arthur is just the most famous one. Remember, a Saber is a class. Just like Archer, Lancer, Berserker, etc so there's a bunch of them all in the franchise.

Also, not to confuse you even more, but there's a bunch of Saber-face characters, too. Both characters that are other versions of King Arthur and other characters that are different people but have the same face. And not all of those people are Sabers. Like how Gilgamesh is best known for being an Archer but there's also a Caster Gilgamesh. I think he's also capable of being a Rider. What they can be summoned as depends on their skills in life, if I recall. So Artoria can be a Rider and a Lancer in additional to being a Saber. If you recall Fate Zero, she could ride a motorcycle like a bad-ass because she has rider skills and those skills enable her to be summoned as a Rider.

So there's a red Saber that's supposed to be Nero and there's another red Saber--known as Saber of Red--who is Girl Arthur-Saber's biological child with Morgan le Fay: Mordred. Jeanne d'Arc is also another Saber-face and she was a Ruler in Apocrypha.

All this shit gets more confusing with stuff like Apocrypha and the Samurai Remnant game having two Sabers participating in the story. But I think Strange Fake only had a singular Saber.

I saw that ep 1 sneak peek where Crunchyroll put the first ep up on YouTube temporarily. I didn't really care for it that much. I was really excited when the project was first announced but I'm not sure if I'll watch any more of it.

Moonlit Dusk or whatever is good so far. I hear it delves into a love triangle, which I despise. But it has my attention so far.

This is the title track. I mean, it's fine. Can't help thinking how much better Raymond Watts, En Esch, or Tim Skold would've sounded on this track. Also, the instrumentation needs something to feel crunchier, rawer, I'm not sure how to word this. It feels too light somehow. As in lacking weight.

Holy Grail of Eris is fine. I've read a bunch of the manga or webtoon or whatever this one is. It's been a while. I remember it being an engaging enough story but I'm not feeling drawn into this adaptation. It was a bit boring.

Gave that Gentle Noble anime another shot and finished the episode. This show is everything Frieren's sometimes accused of: walking simulator with no plot. This dude is isekai'd--albeit not from our world--and he doesn't care. I like the idea that he's so confident that his king will get him back so he doesn't worry. But, dude, you're in another world. How are you even paying for shit? He keeps gold coins on him that he pulls outta nowhere, maybe in his asshole, but wouldn't people call him out for the differing currency? He has zero concerns for necessary resources. Maybe he explained it and my ass just zoned out. So far, this is a nothing show.

I finished This Monster Wants to Eat Me from last season. I binged it, which I probably shouldn't have. I should've picked a stopping point and split this up into at least two if not three viewings. Because I ended up feeling impatient and exhausted at the end, but that's not because of the show. The show overall was good. I don't really like the info-dump monster that shows up and creates drama.  And the end is sorta... I mean, I didn't expect the suicidal girl to be cured or anything, but there needed to be some plot thread with more of a conclusion to it. A promise being broken and fixed with another promise is, kinda meh. Still have to give this one an A.

For the new season, watched the first ep of Journal With Witch, which feels weirdly cozy despite having a character becoming orphaned. I liked it. I'm interested in seeing where it goes.

Also dipped my toe into the anime with the demon boy-guy simping for the girl from the hero's party. I lost what little curiosity I had on this before I got half-way through. It's just... there.  There's worse stuff than this but no thanks.

This one's a banger. I'm cautiously optimistic for the full album.

New season, ho.

I watched Sentenced to be a Hero.  I'm sure lots of people will enjoy this one. It currently has a 4.9 at Crunchyroll.  It has a cool-ass protag design with Yuichi Nakamura in the lead role as Xylophone Forbatz. This character feels wasted in this thing. I wished this cool guy was in a badass show doing rad shit and having fun. Instead, he's in this mid show being bitchy and weepy. Maybe I'm being too harsh and it'll improve later. But this first episode was just existing and only got semi-interesting at the end.

This world doesn't make sense. These "heroes" or whatever get sent out and the knights are all "you don't get to save me, shitty baka". Then what's the damn point? I thought these heroes or whatever are expendable fodder. Why are they even there if you don't want them to be there? What's even the point of the sentence in the first place? And Xylophone here has a noted history. Why don't more people know about him? Shouldn't everyone know about him?

The pink-haired character was so goddamn annoying. I was hoping he was gonna get fridged and that didn't happen. The knight woman had a really stupid hat and was also annoying. Literally no one else got more than half a minute to try and be a character.

Then we have the issue with the characters explaining too damn much. And it's almost like they're not explaining the shit they should be explaining but are explaining other shit that doesn't need explaining or could be explained later. Because I couldn't even tell you what the story is for most of the episode. What the fuck's going on? There's a demon lord or something and monsters. And there's bitchy knights. And there's dead people called "heroes" that steal and are also bitchy and can just choose to never be heroes. And goddesses that are, uh, created or sum shit. I don't fucking know.

Like a really mid Outer Limits episode, there's no story here until literally the last ten minutes. Isn't the point of being an extra long episode that you're giving us extra story? What they gave us could've been done in half the time.

Afterwards I watched Tamon's B-Side, which managed to tell more story in its 23 minutes than Sentenced could do with 58. Bleh. For what it's worth, Tamon's B-Side is good. Don't know if I'll stick with it.

Sentenced will be one that I'll circle back to if some really cool shit happens. But right now, in terms of vibes, it's like a Temu Clevatess.

I finally finished the Monster Meat anime.  I still plan to finish fat girl anime, girl monster wants to eat girl anime, and princess chinese not-anime but haven't gotten to yet.

Overall verdict is that it's okay. It doesn't really go anywhere or do anything. It's absent on plot. It makes you think it'll be about the monster-eating girl dealing with being an outsider/outcast but once she leaves home, no one reacts to the level that it ever becomes a plot beat. Everyone's nice but just apprehensive. Then they eat delicious monster tacos or whatever and are "thanks, m'lady." So then you think it's about her relationship with the Duke. But before we get half-way through, that's resolved, too. Will the Duke's people accept her? See first point: apprehensive until they're not. Okay, what about her monster research with the potential to produce weapons? No time to address that, the show's too short. Again, this wasn't a bad show. It doesn't look good enough to feel cozy and it's not funny enough to just chill with it for laughs. It really needed something more of a plot. As much as summer's Betrothed to my Sister's Ex rushed way too fast through the story, at least shit happened.

I haven't been watching much of any anime right now because of life. Anyway, someone uploaded Riding Bean onto Youtube (not that it wasn't already there) and that upload appeared in my feed so I rewatched it. I get that it has problematic elements or whatever but I've always had a soft spot for this OVA, particularly Bean Bandit and blonde Rally Vincent. (No, I will never call her Larry.)

So that got me diving into Gunsmith Cats. The manga. I guess this part of this post goes more into the Reading thread but I don't feel like making two posts: I wish Gunsmith Cats didn't get so weird about showing bush and boobies of young girls and women. It shows us Bean Bandit's ass in one chapter, I guess, but no men get anywhere near the treatment that the young women get. I wouldn't mind the nudity if the men were also a part of it and it wasn't so skewed towards lolis. And then, it's like, let's make the prominent villain of this a creepy-ass rapey lesbian? EW.

I do kind of like brown Rally and I like Bean Bandit. The cars and the guns are cool and I like the Chicago setting and the majority of the art. I can't call Gunsmith Cats bad. But I certainly can't recommend it to anyone. Also, I haven't gotten to the ending but it apparently shits the bed.

Sonoda, just finish the Bean manga already.

And, yes, I am ignoring that Bean Bandit short. Because it was ass.

Okay, the fact that it's just a protracted advertisement for a gacha game makes perfect sense. I won't even bother giving it a second look.

Yeah, I watched most of the first episode and bit of the second yesterday. It's not the most offensive thing I've watched this season. I actually like the main character somewhat. Like someone took the "stereotypical Japanese school boy who gets isekai'd" formula and made it a bit special with a few tweaks. Too bad this character's not in a better show.

There's pretty boys. Many, many pretty boys. They are pretty to look at. They wear makeup and use pretty magic while looking pretty and are divided up in houses in their magic school. But instead of houses founded by Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw you have, like, Ursula the Sea Witch, Scar, and Jafar. The target audience being a Venn diagram of fujos into visual kei, Disney adults, and Potterheads.

The aesthetic's kinda pretty... at least until I got to the part with the cheap CGI witches and the derp ghosts. But you can't waste the budget for the pretty boys on simple things like three Temu Caspers. If you want to look at pretty boys, this is your AOTS. I might chell it out again just to look at some pretty boys using pretty magic. Like when I go to the zoo and swing by the flamingo pond.

It's clearly trying to sell that mobile game. The whole room's on fire and instead of two of these dudes combining their half a brain cell to put it out with their, uh, FUCKING MAGIC, they're all running around or standing around or some of them are even sitting around. The scene then switches from character to character, giving each of them the chance to talk during the "big scary fire" so that all of the fujos get to see their favorite boy on screen for at least a second while he recites one or two lines of dialogue.

Then Red Bitch Riddle Shittlesticks or whatever the fuck this character's name is gets all mad at the main character. You know the archetype: looks like a girl, really angry for no fucking reason, tries to kill the main character, needs a fucking Snickers, and probably tops.

It was okay. The show's okay.  I don't care about these characters. They're pretty to look at it but they're fucking boring. Story?  Is there supposed to be one in a giant commercial?

I started watching This Monster Wants to Eat Me. This one had been on my list but I didn't make time to get to it until a couple of days ago. It seems decent. It's supposed to be yuri. I'm not sure if I see the yuri yet or I'm just dense. The first three episodes were pretty good but the last two made me feel a bit meh about this show. They aren't bad episodes but they change some of the context of what I've been watching and I don't vibe with this. It still seems like a good show overall but I liked the plot better when the focus was on a single yokai integrating into her life.

Also, the main character's family is dead and she's severely depressed. Not a spoiler or anything. Just stating this because there's an understandable sense of profound sadness to this show with this main character. I imagine a lot of people won't want to sit through a show with a main character that feels so bereft she wants to unalive to join her family. At the same time, this element is what makes the show feel so gripping.

I looked into the manga and it gets worse. Dog boy wearing a muzzle and feeling some boobies is somebody's fantasy and good for them. They, uh, got theyselves an anime.

Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills?!
Welcome to generic info-dump anime fantasy world #2934.

The class system of this world is stupid.  The kids get in line and get told their class:
"You are a blacksmith."
"Yay, Dad, I can follow in your footsteps."

What the fuck? So are you telling me that if that kid didn't get told he was a blacksmith, it wouldn't have been possible? Is his dad forced to apprentice outsiders? If they take over the business, do they kick out the old blacksmith's family? How do you get blacksmiths in this world if the crystal ball or whatever says none of the kids are blacksmiths? Will things just stop being made? Is learning not a thing?

The main character, as the title states, is classless and people look down at him. Except, not really. The story tries to present him as a hard-working humble lad passed a bad lot in life by being declared classless. Except, not really. This is because our main character is Kirito Coldsteel and he's the best. I mean, that's not his name, but fuck what his name actually is.

This character doesn't care he's classless. He doesn't suffer for it at all. He's not immediately ostracized when the town finds out nor thrown out of his home. His parents don't care except when his mom cried once. Only the bad or dumb or WRONG people care, you see. But Kirito's strong and he'll show them. He learns everything by watching it. What? You hit him once? Good job, but you won't hit him next time. He'll tell you all of this before **teleports behind you**

Also, Kirito's parents are a swordmaster and an archmage for crying out loud. No one was gonna seriously bully this kid and you can't convince me otherwise. The "worse" we see is that two kids wanted to bash their swords on him. The exposition kindly informs us this action won't actually hurt Kirito Coldsteel or anyone else involved. This world has some sort of Divine Protection that can be applied, which is an interesting concept but also nerfs any stakes or tension from anyone possibly being injured. It happened one time so far and they had holy water, a thing everyone just carries around, I guess. So they're fine. Everyone's fine.

Kirito Coldsteel sucks. He tells us he works hard but fuck if we ever see it. He's arrogant and stuck-up and does it with all of the expressiveness of a plank of wood. He keeps commenting on girls' chest like some weirdo and his sister wants to make out with him. Because you can't have a sister without having incest, amirite? I mean, the child-like blonde in the guild wants to strip for you, Kirito. But Kirito's not a bad guy. You see, he dodges whenever the thirsty child jumps at him. #notallmen

And all of this leads me to wonder: what's this show's fucking problem? Kirito making remarks on chests are bad enough but then some dude basically tells a woman she's dressed like a whore only for the both of them to just fuck off and never come back? What was the point of that interaction? It wasn't done as a joke either, the dude was being hostile for no fucking reason. Leading me to ask again: what's this show's fucking problem? 

See, I initially thought it was just the regular Japanese school setting but with this kid who's descended from Santa. But, no, we're post-apocalyptic. We're running out of food... and of children. The headmaster is made out of botox and clearly evil. Also, people don't believe in Santa but they also believe in Santa and, I guess, want to kill Santa. And Evil Botox Man apparently has these people on speed dial.

The whole "children are treasured and could murder a man" is wild. Not to mention it feels too close to the whole predator/prey aspect of Beastars where one chunk of society has a disproportionate level of powet over the other.

Also, the children are kept in some sort of boarding school to, uh, protect them?  Then where are all of the guards? Surely there'd be guards or at least monitors around at all times if children are this valuable. It's like Jyu-Oh-Sei all over again: "children are rare and valuable." "Also, we're leaving a bunch of these children out to die."

I think the story has so much craziness with just Sanda's character alone and him turning into Santa that it literally didn't need anything else above. It could've gotten away with being set in a relatively normal (or close to normal) highschool and let us experience different "normal" situations in Japanese life with the aspect of either turning into Santa or being Santa.