Anime Expo is over, so it's time to get our Summer season going, starting with voting on what we'll watch and building out the schedule. Because of AX weekend, we only have weeks 0 - 11 for this season.
Attendance:
Notes: David was back for in-person showings.
We did some initial sampling voting and ended up with a meaningful number of regular + "?" votes for Gundam Gquuuuuux. We also realized that Moonrise had been put on the schedule as a show to consider sampling more of, but hadn't been included in the voting spreadsheet, so Alan added it and we jumped into sampling episode 2.
Brian suggested we should at least sample Scavengers Reign (Max). Alan wasn't sure he was set up to stream from HBOMax, so while he checked we watched Apothecary Diaries 48 (CR). Then - since Alan could stream from HBOMax - we tried Scavengers Reign.
Then came intermission. After intermission David took off and we moved into sampling Clevatess, which he'd already checked out.
Adam popped in near the end from Frankfurt airport en route to a conference in Florence. He said he'd enter his votes for Summer shows when he was somewhere with more reliable internet than what he had access to, and ideally the ability to use something better than a phone to deal with Google Sheets.
Attendance:
Notes: We started with Turkey, then went into schedule-building. After that (around 7:25) we started Shinsei Galverse, since Sakamoto Days doesn't have a new episode show up until Tuesday. Then we went into Scooped up by an S-Rank Adventurer!
After the intermission, we watched Kpop Demon Hunters - Victor had said he wanted to see what it was like.
Our Summer planning looked a bit like this:
We built our Summer schedule last week, and it was only when we had already filled everything out that I realized Witch Watch didn't finish its initial after 13 episodes - it's still going this season. If we're fond of it I guess we'll just give it a pause in the back half of Summer and look at bringing it back in Fall.
Kinokuniya Los Angeles - the one in Little Tokyo - will be temporarily closing starting this Monday, July 21 so they can move to another location. They plan to re-open in mid-August. On their Instagram they edited in a clarification that the new location is still going to be in Little Tokyo.
Attendance:
Notes: We started with a 10-minute Youtube video examining referents from Chinese culture in Apothecary Diaries and what (if anything) they let us know about which dynasty it's based on/more-or-less set in.
Attendance:
Notes: No Adam tonight - as we recall, he was traveling back from a conference.
David remembered very little from the 1st season of Call of the Night. The first episode handled a bit of recap, but not enough for him to recall characters aside from Kou and Nazuna - not even Anko (the detective/slayer), let alone the other vampires in town.
Tonight's samplers were better than expected. Not great, but each had something to recommend it, if not necessarily to us. I could almost see Detectives These Days Are Crazy! making it onto the schedule, much like A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics did.
This Saturday we give Call of the Night a break and catch up on My Dress Up Darling season 2. We plan to keep alternating between their simulcasts like that so we get 2 episodes of the same show every Saturday. This also gives people who missed or don't remember earlier episodes (or whole seasons) more time to catch up.
Remember that series "I May be a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time" we watched last season? If you wanted the light novels for it with the original illustrations (the ones that inspired the character designs used in the show) you may want to act fast - same thing goes for the light novels of Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant (whose anime is simulcasting on Crunchyroll right now). The manga and anime adaptations are unaffected.
The Criterion Channel streaming service will be adding an anime section, but that doesn't mean they're pushing their way into the simulcast game (fortunately - we don't need to be spending another $11/month or $100/year to keep up on simulcasts). It looks like they'll be offering streams of movies which have mostly been licensed and available in the US for some time, e.g. Ghost in the Shell, Redline, Paprika,...and Tamala 2010.
Attendance:
Notes: No Gene tonight. David and Arthur left after the break.
Attendance:
Notes: David may make it on Friday 8/1, isn't likely to make it Friday 8/8. Brian will be unavailable the weekend of 8/8 and 8/9.
San Diego Comic-con is this weekend, and Otakon next weekend. Those aren't locally relevant, but there may be a number of industry announcements coming out of one or both of those events - I think both Discotek and AnimEigo have planned announcements for Otakon.
Our attendance the next couple of weeks might be a bit unusual. Alan has work stuff he needs to handle this Saturday right around 5:30 - 6, which means he'll either be late that night or remote-only. Brian expects to be out of town all next weekend (August 8 and 9), and David will be remote-only on the 8th. Alan may also end up busy on the Saturday 8/9.
The stage show Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon the Super Live is streaming for free on Youtube for a limited time: according to ANN the London performance will stream August 1-3, and the North American performance will stream August 8-10.
Attendance:
Notes:
Attendance:
Notes: Alan was remote-only tonight due to a last-minute weekend task for work.
Another week of unusual attendance:
Otakon is this weekend. There will be a pre-recorded video "stream" of Discotek's announcements starting this Saturday, August 9 at 12:15 Pacific time. No such stream for AnimEigo, but they plan to make their announcement on "social media" (presumably Bluesky and maybe FB?) as well as at the convention.
The stage show Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon the Super Live is streaming for free on the official Sailor Moon Youtube channel through August 10 - this is the "Team US" performance from New York.
Attendance:
Notes: David decided we might as well make Saturday showings remote-only this week.
Attendance:
Notes: Alan didn't make it at all tonight, but looked briefly on Discord to see who was present at that time. Later we all found out that David left after intermission, and then Arthur and Adam did as well, meaning that nobody watched the shows scheduled after intermission.
No anime-related events this weekend (except Shin Godzilla 4K, which is in theaters for at least a few more days). If you want to catch up on last week's announcements from Otakon, here are AnimEigo's (including an HD release of Alien Nine), and here are Discotek's (including Naoki Urusawa's Monster in HD).
We're getting close to finishing the first half of our Summer showings: Witch Watch, Kowloon Generic Romance, and Your Forma also wrap up next week. We'll also start Dr. Stone and Apocalypse Hotel then.
Last Saturday showings ended after intermission, so this Saturday we're cutting back on samplers so we can catch up on our simulcasts.
Attendance:
Notes: Neither Brian and Alan had caught up on Saturday samplers, so they were asking David about his impressions. Since David had taken off after Saturday intermission, none of the 3 had caught up on Moonrise or My Dress-Up Darling; later discussion with Adam and Arthur revealed they'd also logged off after intermission, so this Saturday schedule will be adjusted from what was sent out in the email.
Attendance:
Notes: We were previously scheduled to watch 3 samplers, episodes 9-10 of Moonrise, and Call of the Night 18-19. However, last week nobody had watched episodes 7-8 of Moonrise or My Dress-Up Darling episodes 16-17, so we pushed back 2 samplers from this week to make room for catching up on Dress-Up Darling, and made sure to watch Moonrise 7-8 this week. We likely need to reduced the number of episodes of Slayers Try we plan to watch this season in order to fit in everything else we have scheduled.
We bailed on New Saga about halfway through the episode. David said he'd watched at least a few episodes and it didn't really go anywhere interesting unless this was your first time loop story. We'd started around 15 minutes late, so we didn't really end up with enough spare time that we felt the need to squeeze in a fallback sampler.
This week we start some new Friday shows and finish out some that we've been watching - or at least the portion we committed to for the season, in the case of Witch Watch (their simulcast continues through episode 26). Overall, then:
As for Saturdays, we have a couple more weeks of going through samplers before we free up the timeslots for Slayers Try.
Attendance:
Notes: Gene let us know he wouldn't make it tonight due to "family stuff".
Witch Watch changed openings at episode 13, which means we probably should have scheduled our watch of the first season to only go through episode 12. Well, it's a bit like starting off our watch of the season having already seen the first episode as a sampler.
Attendance:
Notes: We bailed on Dealing with the Mikadono Sisters about halfway through the episode, but since we'd started a bit late we didn't try adding any fallback samplers. Dekin no Mogura seemed different enough from more common types of shows to at least potentially be interesting, but we'll see if anyone remembers it when it's time to vote on our Fall schedule.
Todaybor Day is Labor Day! Oh wait, that's Monday - correct weekend, at least. There are a number of things going on this weekend:
(Next weekend seems more interesting: it features the return of Anime Lockdown)
As for us: Dan Da Dan season 2 takes its place on the Friday schedule, pushing Dr. Stone after the break. Because of our compressed season, we're going to have a few weeks with 3 episodes of Dan Da Dan instead of 2.
Attendance:
Notes: Gene told us he'd also be unavailable this Friday.
Attendance:
Notes: Alan found out Nukitashi was a lot closer to outright porn than we had expected, so we dropped it and went to our first fallback sampler Tougen Anki.