Excited Alina was adorable.

Beyond that though, things were a bit too murky and possibly contrived. I got a bit of that sense that the writers were following an outline and just filling in blanks - “introduce villain here” or “reveal secret quest here.”

Mm… I like this one. Wheels within wheels…

“They are shining so brightly.”

What a great chapter.

And Chokki-chan even found a sword.

Himemiya makes me laugh every time.

And… yeah. It was pretty much a given that it was going to end the way it did, since Ichinose is just naturally everything that Nagisa so desperately wants to be.

Started off the week with Noragami, which was really pretty good all in all, and I’m not quite clear on why. On paper, it doesn’t seem particularly promising, and there’s nothing that really stands out about it, but it was still good, in a sort of quiet, slow-burn way. I suspect part of it is that the characters are well developed and mesh notably well and the story unfolds at a natural pace - it doesn’t seem particularly forced or contrived. It was just solid if unexceptional.

I wasn’t inspired enough to watch the second season though, and ended up finally tackling DanMachi III. I watched the second season of it a few years ago and was so exhausted that I just couldn’t steel my resolve to watch any more then, mostly because I didn’t want to go through another round of some utterly loathsome villain being utterly loathsome while Bell indulges in another round of being sad and weepy and weak. But I like the series and especially the characters overall, so it had to be done sooner or later.

And this one followed that same pattern, so it reached the point at which he was just schlepping around with his head hanging, tearfully going, “Boku wa… Boku wa…” and I wanted to reach in the screen and kick his ass, but it… somehow it wasn’t quite so bad this time. I think he didn’t collapse quite as much and recovered a bit more quickly and surely, and potentially the ever-expanding cast served both to help him and to spread the focus of the story out a bit. However it was, while it was still irritating and I still wanted to kick his ass in the middle of it all, it wasn’t as frustrating and exhausting as season II. And it did seem to make some pretty good progress on the overarching story of Orario and the gods and the dungeon and the point of it all.

Then I knocked around for a bit and bounced off a few things and caught up with the current series I’m following (Honey Lemon Soda, which is still charming and satisfying if unexceptional, Guild Receptionist, which is still on track to be awesome, and Zenshu, which seems to be pulling out of its recent nosedive), then ended up, to my own surprise, starting DanMachi IV. I’ve just started it, but it already feels better than the past seasons. I suspect it wasn’t an accident that it started out with Bell leveling up, plus the focus is much more spread out than it was in the past, since he’s now surrounded by a substantial, diverse and interesting party. Hopefully it’ll hold together…