Piacevole 05 – Sangria

Hello everyone and sorry for the lack of posts last week. We’ve been having a run of extremely hot weather, which makes me feel really ill and exhausted and makes it hard to write. I’m going to have to see if I can be a bit more proactive about scheduling posts if I want to keep up a reasonable rate of content on my blog until summer is over (and as it’s Australia, sometimes very hot weather can run well into March). I’m hoping to get some thoughts on the final episodes of Long Riders as well as some overall thoughts on the series posted this week, although this is a bit dependent on the weather.

This episode is a continuation of the events of the previous episode, where Sara talks about how much she dislikes Italian food. Morina asks about the differences between Italian and Japanese food and is told that both types of cuisines were developed using the different locally available ingredients in order for people to have a healthy lifestyle. I think that this is slightly odd because as an Australian we barely use natively available ingredients at all, but I also think it rings true. While it’s fairly easy these days to get all kinds of different foods, regional cuisine was just meals made with the sorts of ingredients that were available to people locally.

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Piacevole 04 – Spring Roll Caponata

In this episode, the staff of Festa are thrown into a panic because of an important customer; Teiri Niza. He is the owner of a high-class Japanese restaurant but likes to come to Festa to eat sometimes. It seems like owing to the easy-going way the restaurant is run, Morina wasn’t aware of his coming or his importance until she arrives at work that day, but she gets caught up in the bustle.

Piacevole 03 – Tiramisu

This week, Morina talks to a man who she sees in the restaurant frequently, but it turns out that this man, Oreki Ei is actually the dessert chef for Festa. I’m not sure why he wasn’t introduced earlier, but it seems like the Festa is an unconventional business in many senses, and if Ei isn’t in the kitchen when Morina is working, it is possible that they may have not been introduced. He’s shown to be fond of spending time with ladies and that’s why he likes being in charge of desserts; he can prepare his dishes for the day and then spend time interacting with the customers.

Piacevole 02 – Penne Arrabbiata

It seems like a little time must have passed since the last episode since Morina appears to have settled into her job somewhat. The episode opens with Morina studying some information about the different cuts of meat which can be obtained from a pig. It seems that she’s trying to learn as much as she can about food preparation in order to do her job better.

Piacevole 01 – Iberico Ham

I’m thinking that my episodic posts for this show will generally be late in the week as the show airs mid-week, but I was waiting to check out all the shows I was interested in to see what I was excited about and would like to write about. So my episode 2 post will probably out later this week! Or it might not, there is a major heat wave where I live at present and it makes it quite hard for me to blog. If my posts disappear, they’ve probably evaporated into some kind of weird heat haze.

In this episode, we meet Nanase Morina a high school student who is looking for a summer job when she stumbles across the help wanted sign at the Trattoria Festa. She’s taken with the restaurant as it’s cute and close to home so she decides to apply.

First Impressions of Winter

While there are a few straggling shows, I’ve had a look at everything which I think that I would be interested in which is readily available, and a few things which I didn’t really expect to be interested in which were readily available, and I’ve put together a few thoughts on each show. This post does contain a brief synopsis of each first episode, which could possibly be considered spoilers for some people, so please be aware of that prior to reading the post! I’ve organised the titles of what I’ve seen alphabetically.

Seasonal Thoughts Winter 2016/2017

Once again, shows are wrapping up and new shows are coming out. Once again being in the southern hemisphere my seasons are actually the reverse of the majority of the world’s population and it’s summer here, but if I call it the summer season everyone will be confused, so winter it is!

I don’t plan to use this post as a comprehensive list of everything which is coming out. There’s lots of good resources with fairly updated information on all the shows which are being released (I’d suggest Livechart or Anichart or if you’re super keen, you can look at both, they sometimes have slightly different info). I’m not in a place where I can really comment on studios or staff for projects, or know much about the source material, so I’m just going to use this to showcase a few titles which grabbed my eye. Everything is organised alphabetically as this seems like as good a way to sort things as any other.

Gabriel Dropout
This show is about an angel who is the top of her class but when she comes to earth in pursuit of knowledge turns into a lazy dropout and spends all day lazing around. While lazy people can be really infuriating in real life, they can definitely be funny in comedy if the show is written well. I’m definitely planning to watch this one.

Hand Shakers
I actually feel like the title should be in all caps for even more dramatic impact; HAND SHAKERS. It’s about pairs of people with special powers who are battling towards a supreme goal. It’s an anime original series with action and some sci-fi or supernatural themes. As an anime original, I’ll probably check out at least an episode or two, as I like action and sci-fi. If nothing else, it will let me write HAND SHAKERS on Twitter a few times.

Kobayashi San Chi No Maidragon
This show is about a regular office lady who one day helps a dragon in distress and the dragon decides she’s going to become Kobayashi’s maid in order to pay off her debt of gratitude. It seems like it’s going to be the sort of comedy where there’s one totally grounded person reacting to everyone else being absurd and over the top. Judging by the character designs which have been released related to the show there’s going to be some more supernatural beings who end up in the mix. The manga this is based on was written by the same author as ‘I Can’t Understand What My Husband Is Saying’, and I very much enjoyed the anime adaptation of that. It had a great mixture of comedy and heartwarming moments. Hopefully this will be just as fun to watch.

Minami Kamakura Kokou Joshi Jitensha-bu
More cute girls riding more cute bikes? Sign me up. I don’t know if it’s going to be my pick for blogging episodically this season, but you can bet I’m along for the ride.

Nyanko Days
It’s a comedy series about a girl and her anthropomorphic cats. I’m not big on real cats, but I loved Bananya so anime cats are a bit different. It’s not a top priority with all the other cute slice-of-life shows which are coming out this season but I’ll maybe check it out.

Piace Watashi No Italian
A high school girl starts working part time at an Italian restaurant and learns more about cuisine and herself. It has the magical pair of tags; comedy and slice of life which pretty much guarantee that I’ll at least give the show a look. The show has Italian food in it so I feel it is my duty to see if the pasta is up to scratch.

Reikenzan
I was weirdly disappointed as more news has gradually shown up about this show and it turns out that it is a second season and that the first season was not picked up by any official English sources. Comedy, fantasy, and action are all genres I like, and the fact that it’s based on a Chinese webnovel meant that I was curious to see how the storytelling differed from the usual anime tropes. The lack of first season availability gives me low hope for the second season becoming available.

Urara Meirochou
It’s a comedy series about a group of girls who are learning to be fortune tellers. It looks like it has the usual things of each girl having a different personality and them spending time together doing fun things. I’m hoping to watch this show.

Yowamushi Pedal: New Generation
It does have cycling in it, and I like cycling, but I actually haven’t watched the first series of Yowamushi Pedal. I think I’m going to have to edge myself into boys in sports anime by watching some more cute girls in sports anime first.

Continuing
These are shows which are ongoing and I’ve been watching from last season. You’ll probably already know about if you’re interested in them or not.

Classicaloid

Monster Hunter Stories – Ride On!

Ninja Girl and Samurai Master

I’ll chat a bit about my thoughts on these series so far in my season wrap-up, which will be coming up in a couple of weeks.

Of course, this is all totally subject to change and I may decide to not watch things I’ve mentioned at all, or end up watching some totally different shows. It also depends on what ends up being available in Australia. I haven’t got a clear pick for my episodic posts, so I think that will depend on how I feel about the first episodes of what I watch. I’m still planning to blog about one ongoing series next season. I feel like I wouldn’t mind watching something which isn’t just the magical pair of tags ‘comedy’ and ‘slice-of-life’, but these are invariably the things that grab my attention, and the shows which I consistently like watching. Hopefully by seeing some other people’s opinions, I may be able to find some other shows I’ll like as the new season progresses.