Sarazanmai and other Shet

Well I have reached the three episode point for two Spring shows already.

Ikuhara shows are ironically not the best to judge by it, YuriKuma and I think also Penguindrum started breaking with their initial formula right in episode 4.  Sarazanmai is pretty interesting so far.

My relationship with Ikuhara stuff is complicated, I'm far from the dick-riding association you usually see, but not as harsh a critic as someone like WhiningAboutYuri either.  When I say I tend not to like his endings I mainly mean YuriKuma there, the Yuri genre had already moved beyond what he was deconstructing and frankly what Yuri fans really want/need are unambiguous they will live happily ever after together endings.

On Sailor Moon I absolutely love most of the Ikuhara directed episodes and his Movie, what I'm not always so thrilled about are the changes he made to the overall plot as series director for R, S and SuperS, but the guy who took over for Stars wasn't a great improvement in that regard either.  I think Sato was generally the best series director even if he also made changes that annoyed Manga fans, season 1 and the Doom Tree Arc had the most solid structuring.  He then made Hugtto probably the second best PreCure series after Doki Doki.

But that's Ikuhara as an adaptor of source material, in his original works his unusual way of structuring the story tends to suit what he's trying to do excellently.  Thing is I don't think he'll ever top Utena, even if episode by episode I often finds his 2010s stuff more re-watchable.

The other show I've seen three episodes of is Wiseman's Grandchild.  This show took a bit of a darker turn in it's 3rd episode, which is not generally what I'm looking for from Isekai.  I think this show will for me be made or broken by it's fourth episode.

I also watched all ten episodes of Manaria Friends aka Mysteria Friends.  This is a spin off of the Shingeki no Bahumut franchise, I think I may have tried to watch that show once but couldn't finish the first episode and thus wouldn't have added it to MAL and now remember nothing.

But given what I look for in Anime I tend to often get pretty into these Yuri-Ish spin offs regardless of if I saw or liked the original or not, from Hidan no Aria AA to Hina Logic.  This little series was quite fun and easy to follow, only one episode had some fan service I didn't like.  It doesn't transcend being an example of this as phenomenally as Railgun does, but it still can stand it's own for a Yuri fan who hasn't watched the original.

I'm also enjoying YU-NO, and still watching Star Twinkle PreCure.  And I got a pretty good laugh out of the first episode of Isekai Quartet.  Knosuba is the only of those four shows I haven't watched, but I still know all their basic gimmicks because the community doesn't shut up about them.