I hope that those who were able to go to AX this year had fun; I’m very sure I will when I go next year. A bigger deal for me, as I have a return flight to Los Angeles, a hotel for about a week, and heaps of spending money to cater for. For now, I just have more anime to watch!

I’ll say it here and now: after already watching episode 1 of Love & Lies, I can see that it’ll look very hokey throughout the whole show. Not totally contrived but unnecessarily sentimental.

Nejima is a bit of an average nobody, who has been in love with fellow classmate Takazaki for about 5 years…although it is a little bit creepy that he has been effectively stalking her for this long. But it turns out that the feeling is mutual (in that Nisekoi way). It’s just predictable then that he gets the message on who his assigned partner really is, and it’s someone he’s never heard of before.

The first episode hasn’t really given us much meat on the bone so far; I really hope it will though, as I want to see more in this show aside from ‘boy-meets-girl’. Coming back to the creepiness part, I’m sure all of that negativity has gone now that the two of them have revealed their true feelings, only for those feelings to be immediately shattered when two government agents arrive out of nowhere at midnight to hand him the details of his future wife. And that saliva-sharing moment…ew…

I’m also prepared to go on some mad Tumblr rant on how the idea promoted in this show (life partner automatically selected at age 16, in order to fix national population problem) is anti-homosexuality. You like boys instead? Tough. You’d be living a lie yourself. Although a part of me is telling me that Love & Lies isn’t going to be as shallow as it looks so far, and might well touch on topics like that…perhaps not homosexuality, but it could bring up the mental states of the 4 main characters in this show…how they really feel, what they think of this system, etc.

There is a live-action film of this manga coming soon as well, however the love triangle is to be switched completely, with two boys fighting over a girl instead (which sounds even more atypical of a romance story).

At least there’s nothing deep about Tsuredure Children; in fact, this could well be the show I will grow to…not like. In this episode, we are given 4 separate stories on how a schoolboy and a schoolgirl hook up. None of them are in anyway exciting though. We begin with the dull boy who receives a confession from an even duller girl. We then move onto the lazy class rep girl who only took the post to spend time with the cynical boy with high grades. We then move onto the rebellious girl out of school uniform trying to stop the advances of a rather sadistic school council president. Finally, it’s the airhead in the Astronomy club who is always telling the jerk club president she likes him.

Told you it was boring.

I’m rather delighted that these aren’t full 25-minute episodes, at least; 12 full-length episodes would have probably killed me. Although I’m pretty sure we will see these 4 boring couples again (if not for the entire show). I’m bracing myself.

Sakura Quest begins its second half, and it has now turned onto something I didn’t think of. Now that the summer is winding down, a more immediate problem has arisen: getting people to move to Manoyama permanently. Yoshino, Maki and Sanae decide to take some time off and return to their hometowns, leaving Shiori and Ririko to concoct an home-sharing idea that sounds like something Airbnb people would do. Their plans are scuppered though by the rumor of suspicious people wandering around the town though.

Meanwhile, Yoshino, Maki and Sanae all return home with sour faces. Maki is pondering why she decided to quit acting, Sanae gets envious of her working friends in Tokyo who all have fantastic jobs (or own their own businesses), while Yoshino is stuck in a rut wondering why she even signed up to be Queen of Manoyama in the first place, when she has family and friends who all want her to move back home. If I were her then I would move back home, but that’s something someone without courage (like me) would do. She still has her contract to fulfil, and with the prospect of getting a sustainable job and to have family/friends close by when you need them, it would be hard not to turn down. She said it herself; it’s hard being an adult…well it is hard. Very hard.

No New Game!! (ie. season 2) just yet; that won’t start until next week. At least I’ll have another cool show to watch, to sort of nullify the monotony that is Tsuredure Children. And part 2 of Owarimonogatari won’t be on until mid-August. Even I, a fan, am beginning to get tired of that franchise now.

Moving onto another franchise, Squid Girl (my classic/out-of-season show) hasn’t been quite what I expected so far. Upset and angry that humans are polluting her ocean, Squid Girl comes to the surface with the intention of invading humanity, only to be pushed around by two rather sadistic beach-house owners and their incredibly stupid younger brother. Maybe I’m not seeing something that others have seen in this; the first episode hasn’t really left a good impression on me at all, and I don’t really like any of the characters.

It could get better after a few more episodes, but Squid Girl’s first contact with humans this week made me cringe. But in not-quite-related news, news of Splatoon 2 came out. It did a tie-in project with Squid Girl in the first game, so I wonder if they’ll do the same for the sequel…