I’m keeping up with a handful of shows this season, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm ranging from “I can’t wait for the next episode” to “well, I might as well see how this reaches a conclusion.” With a month and some-odd left to go in most of these show’s runs, it’s time for some thoughts.

(Note that I’m leaving out the long-running, continuing Apothecary Diaries, which remains one of the finest shows of this decade and looks destined for all-time-classic status. We love Maomao in this household.)

Let’s get into specifics.

Alphabetically by official English show title? Sure, why not.

Apocalypse Hotel

Humanity has departed Earth for the stars to escape a global calamity, leaving behind a number of their robot servants, including the crew who staff a hotel with no guests. I’m not giving away spoilers there, that’s literally the premise established in the first few minutes. It’s hard to pin down exactly what kind of show this is, because sometimes it’s funny (watching the robot staffers try to keep the place in good upkeep just in case there’s a guest) and sometimes it’s deeply sad (watching the robot staffers, particularly the concierge Yachiyo, contemplate the fact that there are no more guests) and sometimes it’s just amazingly pretty. How do you sustain that for an entire season? Well… I’ll spoil one thing: After a while (decades/centuries) there are guests. Just not, ya know… humans. Overall this is one of the top shows of the season.

The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl

Yes, I’m alphabetizing this under “G” for “Girl-illa.” Deal with it. So the worldbuilding (such as it is) is one of those “when you reach a certain age you are blessed by an animal spirit” things, and what spirit blesses you pretty much determines your future. Okay, great. And this pretty, but withdrawn, girl gets the blessing of the Gorilla God, which results in super-strength (and occasionally super-speed… look, consistency is not this show’s strong suit). This leads to wacky hijinx… which are rarely shown on screen. We’re talking about a no-budget show, I’m afraid.

For example: In one of the first episodes there’s a group of thugs attempting to waylay one of the pretty-boys that Sophia Reeler, our superpowered protagonist, ends up surrounded by. (Yes, yes. It’s one of those. I fully support a girl rounding up as much pretty eye candy as she wants to, let’s be clear.) Her gorilla powers come into play… off-screen. Now, I’ve enjoyed a fair number of shows forced to stretch a thin budget as far as they can, I’m not knocking it for that.

Instead I’m knocking it for being the kind of show that if you stop and think about any part of what’s going on, you get yeeted right out of the experience as if thrown by a gorilla. Internal consistency and worldbuilding be damned, the show says that “everyone” gets one of these animal spirits but nothing about the rest of the show outside our handful of lead characters reflects that. Oh, and they’re trying to thread some kind of political intrigue plot arc into it, and I sincerely doubt they’re going to make that work. Not in this show.

In the end this is a by-the-numbers romance (with vague shadings of “reverse harem” but there’s never one second of doubt who’s the intended couple) with some amusing elements provided by the otherwise-ignored worldbuilding stuff. It’s… not terrible, but it’s also not terribly good.

A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof

“NinKoro,” to use the abbreviated form of the title, is a profoundly weird comedy. Yes, comedy. The entire premise is that a ditzy ninja escaped her (ridiculous, fantastical) ninja tribe’s home and now lives in the big city with a stone cold killer of an assassin who basically… just uses the ninja for her ability to turn dead bodies into piles of leaves. I said it was profoundly weird, didn’t I? The plot, such as it is, centers on a string of ninjas coming to kill the escaped ninja girl but they end up a pile of leaves in mere moments. For the rest of the run time of each episode we get attempted comedy (with some success) due to the shenanigans of the lead pair.

Problem is… the assassin is kind of a jerk and the ninja is extremely a nitwit. There’s very little to glom onto here except the rather dark humor. Which, if that’s your thing, great! I honestly am sticking with this out of morbid curiosity to find out if either of these women ever, ever, become less of a disaster (together or separately).

Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty

I vaguely remember an old comedy routine I heard in my childhood about the settings on a blender, from “mix” to “puree” all the way up to “liquefy.” So, take these ingredients:

1. Your prototypical upper-crust “Class S” setting, an all-girls school for the rich elites, where appearances are everything.
2. A coming-of-age story about a teen’s family unit breaking apart and a couple of the pieces being grafted onto another existing family, and the drama that can ensue.
3. The classic schoolgirl band show where a handful of young misfits find one another and make beautiful (or at least peppy) music together.

Pour them all into that metaphorical blender and don’t even bother with any setting lower than “liquefy.” The show often referred to as “RockLady” (or “RockMod”) doesn’t want anything to do with subtlety… except when it does. The “Class S” stuff always has a bit of a bite to it, pointing out how vapid and pointless everyone’s pretending to be. The family drama stuff… is actually kind of dark at times. And the band? They’re loud. And sweaty. And profane. Seriously, the moment I fully fell in love with this show was toward the end of the first episode when Otoha, the drummer, is flipping off Lilisa, the guitarist (the young lady featured at the top of this post). They censor the gesture with a silly animated sticker… and then the camera swaps to looking at Lilisa from a point over Otoha’s shoulder and the censor sticker is still there, in “front” of the finger!

I mean. What. C’mon. I can’t not love that level of commitment to the bit. While there’s room for serious debate about whether this or Apocalypse Hotel is the best thing airing this season… RockLady’s what I look forward to most week after week, and nothing else even comes close.

The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom

Yeah, yeah, yet another light-novel title from hell. I know. I know.

This one’s another mixed bag, I’ll tell you that right up front. But there’s a genuine hook in here so if you’ve given this show a pass, maybe I can convince you to watch a couple or three episodes to win (or fully lose) you.

So there’s a Saint, because that’s become an entire subgenre lately. And she purifies the land, defeating monsters, etc. But… she doesn’t have an easy time interacting with people. Add the strain of her job and, well, she thinks nobody likes her and it’s in certain folks’ best interests that everyone believes she doesn’t like anybody and… you get the second part of that lengthy title. Half of this show is Philia, our “too perfect” Saint, learning to become more comfortable in her own skin in her new home kingdom, which isn’t run by selfish jerks.

Great, fine, okay. But here’s the hook: Philia has a younger sister, Mia. Also trained for the job of Saint. She doesn’t know (at first) why her sister suddenly went away. Now she’s got the job and is working for the same ungrateful jerks that sold her sister off for money. (Money that the formerly-affianced prince is using to… erect a golden statue of himself, because what a guy, right?) And you might think, oh no, they’re going to take advantage of Mia and possibly pit the sisters against one another.

But Mia’s better than that. Honestly, the most compelling thing about this show for me right now is waiting to see how Mia handles what’s going on in her home country. She’s smart, she’s cunning, and she’s driven. And since the show usually splits its time between each sister, we get regular updates on her progress.

To be clear, this show has some issues. There’s not a lot of subtlety or nuance to most of the characters. At one point a stereotypical anime-style ninja is introduced to this vaguely-European fantasy setting, and we’re supposed to just roll with that. Sure, okay, fine.

But I’ve gotta see how Mia deals with Prince Julius and the other troublemakers. That’s what I’m here for.

It seems like each season I glom onto a couple of shows that everyone’s watching, and a few where I’m pretty much their only champion (to greater or lesser extent). What are you watching this season, if anything?