…or so I wish. Eurovision did rock on May 13th, though. It’s the one thing some Europeans, like us, British, love with all our hearts, regardless of how ridiculous it can get. Well anyway, after a hangover, it’s the cold light of day that brings me back to the dork world. This world where you hear about cool shows this season…

…like Sakura Quest, which has become a bit of a love-hate show now, I think, I’m being slowly turned to the ‘love’ side. It has gotten so much better since the very rocky start. They’re approaching the end of the movie shoot, where a house has to be destroyed for the end scene, only for Shiori to lie to the production team when she finds out the house they had in mind is one she lived in as a child. This, along with a little mini-segment detailing Maki’s desire to become a actress (from a tree in a school play to the TV detective show she starred in), shows us a more detailed and ‘human’ side to the characters. You could say it gives them an extra dimension, I guess. With the shoot a success, Manoyama becomes a name that is passed around movie production companies who want to shoot on location. These small steps won’t make the town a huge tourist attraction, but it’s a massive boost, nonetheless.

Whatever P.A Works have done with this show, it appears to be working, finally.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Little Witch Academia now. Don’t get me wrong…I love the show…I’m slowly starting to get frustrated at the slow pace that this second half is giving us. Is this meant to be intentional? Is the show mostly going to be a whole bunch of mini-stories that will culminate in one main story that spans properly over the final few episodes? Not sure whether to prefer the mini-stories idea or the one main story idea…

Anyway, it’s Diana’s turn to hit the spotlight. A crisis has hit her family (a plotline that has been hinted in the last couple of episodes), forcing her to leave Luna Nova, and Diana’s lackeys decide to turn to Akko to help them save their beloved (for some strange reason).

With her mother long dead, her sister (Diana’s aunt) has become the proxy head. She is anti-magic, and has chosen to sell the family possessions to put food on the table. Why Akko even cares about this is beyond me, and while I welcome this story that will continue next week, I’m not entirely sure if it’s even necessary. Maybe it’s some kind of sendoff before the real action takes place in the final episodes. Akko still has more Words to find, and something tells me that somewhere in the Cavendish house has one of them. This week did reveal that Diana was a hardcore Chariot fan; that desperation to protect a rare Chariot card was priceless to watch.

They recently announced the English VA list, and I’m happy to see Erica Mendez return to play Akko again. Elsewhere on Netflix, Polygon Pictures’ new epic, Blame! (pronounced ‘Blahm’), released worldwide on Friday (and in US and Canada on Saturday). This is next-level science fiction; the kind that you don’t want to share with your friends who say their limit of science-fiction only reaches to the likes of Star Wars. This is a sci-fi show that you want to fan over all by yourself…not too dissimilar from Knights of Sidonia, really. If you think the cyberpunk/dystopia genre is all about Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix and Blade Runner, then think many centuries later, where humanity is already a lost cause.

Set in ‘The City’, Blame! presents to us a world in the far future where humanity is essentially an endangered species, thanks to hostile cyborg machines who see them as vermin to be exterminated. Killy is a lone wolf who wields a highly-powerful weapon. He roams The City searching for ‘Net Terminal Genes’ where he encounters a group of human warriors who help him use these Net Terminal Genes to access the Netsphere, a computer network that controls The City itself.

Sounds complicated, right? Well while the manga received great praise, any attempts at adapting it have not fared well, as the plot is so thick and detailed that it could easily put off viewers. I see their point, as while the animation is outstanding, the plot is tough to crack. If I wasn’t the sci-fi fan I am, I would’ve had had to rewind/rewatch this to catch up on stuff I missed.

I should rewatch Knights of Sidonia though; it’s such an underrated show. Polygon Pictures can be a bit of a hit-and-miss. They released Knights of Sidonia, but got a bit muddled when it came with Ajin. They have an upcoming Godzilla project coming in November that’s scripted by Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass, Aldnoah.Zero), so that should be interesting to see. Speaking of rewatching, seeing Rakka cry and wail in Haibane Renmei all over again has given me the feels…all over again.

A month has passed now, and it’s firmly winter. Kuu is gone, and she won’t be coming back; this is something that Rakka still has great difficulty in accepting. As I said last week, the very mystery of the walled town makes us see her departure in many ways; death, rebirth or escape from some kind of purgatory world. So looking at this, while Kuu’s life is finite, we’re left frustrated in that we will never know what really happened to her. And it’s this same frustration that Rakka has. She still doesn’t know her place in the walled town, or if she even existed beyond the walls. But that’s not her most immediate worry.

Black marks begin to appear on her wings, which leads Reki to explain that some Haibane who are unable to remember their dream and their time in their cocoons are ‘sin-bound’, and are not able to have their Day of Flight. But then Reki comes out with a bombshell, something very few know; she is ‘sin-bound’ herself, and is frequently haunted by nightmares.

Sooooo, Summer is not far away, meaning the Summer Anime cour is coming soon, meaning it’ll be time to dig out a new classic/out-of-season show to watch. I picked out 4 that stand out a little for me (one of which I’ve been meaning to watch for like forever). The choice is entirely yours on what classic/out-of-season show I’ll watch this summer: