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How are you doing people? I haven't been around lately but strangely enough,I'm still alive and even watching trash-tier anime! First, I've finished The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent which, sadly, fell more into cheesy romance tropes more than the isekai power fantasy in the second part of the season. It's quite an interesting specimen in general, as it does with josei tropes basically the same thing trashiest isekais usually do with shounen tropes – the world is just so convenient for the protagonist it's laughable, but at the same time, the female fantasy is infinitely more wholesome and gentle, so I kind of enjoy it. It's a slow-burn, pleasant series where conflict is barely existent and no forms of malice seem possible outside of natural disasters... But it's all heartwarming enough to justify its existence. Maybe it'd be less so if such shows were common, but this specific spin on isekai wasn't something I've seen before and felt fresh enough to not bore me. Than, I fell into the trap of watching Love Tyrant which I knew was a shit anime, but still seemed amusing enough from clips. The clips, sadly, were the best part about it. Bad comedic timing, poor writing, flat characters without charm, plot that for some reason tries to transition from episodic comedy to emotional drama and immediately falls flat on its face... From average ratings you would not think it'd be horrible to watch, but I consider it one of my worst anime experiences to date: not good enough to actually be fun and not bad enough to make for a good ironic watch. It's not "so bad it's good" or outrageous enough to keep you engaged, just a tone-deaf pile of utter mediocrity. And possibly going even further down the drain, I've started watching The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter. And well, entertainment value is at least infinitely higher than Love Tyrant (that is, higher than zero). In a way, it might be my new favourite perv anime – it has this utterly charming quality of being full-on ecchi and being consistently mild in all it does. The premise is basically the protagonist being OP and regenerating his mana through pleasure – all kinds, like good food and drink, but primarily through mildly sexual acts with a small cast of willing heroines, with a very obvious main girl. And he has to recharge often, as he will die if he overspends his power. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but what makes Hidden Dungeon enjoyable to me, outside of being generally a somewhat-competent trash fantasy show, is that it's not over-the-top juvenile – it's just the right, mostly believable levels of juvenile, with surprising attention to detail in both how the world is built and how the ecchi is done. And it's not even a tease, like, you have a fully consensual kissing scene in the first episode! What anime does that? I dunno, I might be crazy, but I respect what this show does.

A few days ago I finally finished Muramasa. My feelings towards it are complicated. It seems like Nitroplus applied their own law of balance where for each brilliant idea in the game they had to put in a bad one as well. To name one example, one of the core ideas Muramasa poses is how using violence / killing someone evil for the sake of good actually makes you evil as well, making the case that those one considers evil have different ideals for which they deem using violence justified, like you do for yours, putting you on the same level morally. While I personally don't agree with the conclusions the Muramasa draws from this seeming contradiction, I admit it makes its case well and in a nuanced fashion, at least for the most part. It would be easier to accept these ideas though if the "villains" our "heroes" are supposed to be morally equal to weren't either There are a lot of really interesting concepts like how the individual mecha (which are sentient btw) and their powers are basically the manifestation of the violent form of the ideals of their masters. I know it's not exactly revolutionary to have a character's personality match their fighting style but imo Muramasa handles this aspect especially well, turning fights into battles of ideas with stakes that go beyond "will the protagonist survive". To balance this out, a few of these mechas Speaking of H-content, I'd even say most of these scenes involving the protagonist are handled relatively well. There's pretty dubious consent in most of them and I totally get if they cross the line for anyone but at least for me they kind of work in their thematic context. Then again there are numerous rape scenes that just exist to show you how evil a certain character is. There is a lot more stuff (good and bad) I could write about. But overall I'd say Muramasa is worth checking out, at least if you can stomach a few rape scenes, an extremely gloomy protagonist (don't get me wrong, I think he's well-written and his overly literal and honest character makes for a few very funny scenes, I just wish he wouldn't take himself so seriously sometimes) and some pacing issues in the first half. I would say Muramasa has too many flaws too be called a masterpiece, but it's definitely one of the most ambitious "mainstream" VNs out there, and when it gets good, it gets reeaally good. It actually has some depth to its themes, the fight scenes can be extremely suspenseful and it has a strong main cast. I gave it an 8/10 on vndb. Without all the bad stuff I might have landed on a 9 or even 9.5, but even so the bad stuff can get quite annoying at times but at least to me not distracting enough to award Muramasa anything close to a low rating. But I totally get how it could ruin the experience for someone else.

Right, what I didn't mention is that I actually enjoyed the drama around the second saint and the way her story was resolved to a decent degree. While in a normal series indeed either her or the prince would simply be villains, here it's probably the most nuanced and emotional part of the plot. And overall, what I said about the final act is kind of a minor complaint, although...

Well... For some reason I was mildly interested in the original novel without knowing anything about it. Now I'm not interested anymore. Oh, yeah, after I recommended it to you I decided to go and see how the anime is compared to the source material. I'm not sure if I actually watched it to the end. I think, there were still one or two episodes left. I think it gave the source material justice, as far as I can tell, considering that I read it years ago, before it was officially picked up for translation. They completely got rid of the game-like level system, but, honestly, it was only mentioned in the novel a few times anyway, and the anime pretty much showed everything that it implied in a different way. I believe I mentioned it in the past, but the story being very wholesome is exactly the reason why I enjoyed it so much. I understand what you say about the world being convenient and the romance being cheesy. And, truth be told, I probably won't finish the novel since I pretty much got enough sweetness from this story already, and it's time to move to something else before it gets bad. On the other hand, I'd say that the fact that the conflict is nonexistent is a massive advantage this series has compared to many other "wish-fulfilling" female-oriented isekais. Honestly, I find it extremely annoying how many of isekais, both female and male oriented, add cheap badly written angst and drama just for the sake of there being drama, and to make the later "healing" parts seem different. Usually, the protagonist is literally the kindest and the most gentle person ever, but everyone bullies them and hates them just because they are assholes or idiots, and etcetera. Actually, this novel/anime manages to subvert many cliches typically associated with the stories like that. It's has an extremely common beginning, with two people being summoned, and the MC being neglected after that. On the other hand, the MC quickly found her place in the world; the other characters realized her worth and didn't try too much to make her life miserable due to their stubbornness; and, finally, the fact that the other summoned person didn't turn out to be a literal Hitler in a body of a schoolgirl. Overall, this story is still very cliche, but the fact that it skips these particular tropes, in my opinion, just make it feel more tasteful. Sure, it's a wish-fulfillment story, but it doesn't pretend to be something else, and it does the job it takes extremely well. I'd watch this series after a difficult day or when I feel bad. I wouldn't recommend to watch it if you want something epic or something like that, but it should be given. Well, since I read a lot of female-oriented isekais in novel and manga format, I pretty much got to the point where it's hard to impress me, and I find many of the common tropes extremely annoying. On the other hand, for some reason not many of them go this particular route. And, like we should probably expect from something that originates from web-novels, the writing in most of those is a lot worse, so I'd say Seijou still stands out.

Hmmm, I'm adding 2/3 to the list...