I guess we don’t get to see everybody en route to Skyland this time around and just start with everybody there. I really like that “hammoak” pun, I guess that’s a subs-only thing? (my Japanese is not great ,… at all, but I’m hearing “kaze no ue no ki no ha”). I guess Tsubasa is a bird riding on top of a bigger bird huh. What a coincidence that the members of the Dragon Tribe are all kinda the same colors as our main crew huh. I kinda wonder if the Dragon Tribe, namely the purple one, is weirded out by Ellee’s age change. Tsubasa and his complexes with flying and the Dragon Tribe and the momentary Chekhov’s leaves were a nice little bit. Does Skearhead really have a mind palace or is that just his weird way of saying he’ll remember this.

I’m a fan of goats. The last goats I remember seeing in anime were in Gundam shows and movies. I like their tendency to climb on top of things but I guess we didn’t get that this ep. That squirrel bit with it posing and having a big smile on its face after Sora sneezed was a little weird lol.

Also a fan of when anime take place in more rural settings like Gin no Saji, Sakura Quest, Non Non Biyori, Hanasaku Iroha, Yuru Camp, etc etc etc etc etc. The shot of the fields reminds me a lot of parts of California, but then again I guess those fields look like a lot of places. Anyways, I liked the backgrounds in this ep with the smudgey leaves.

alright, holding off on the otona precure for now since i haven’t seen the prequel series to it but i’m here for hirogaru sky. animation quality seemed to dip a little bit compared to previous eps? characters seem to be drawn a little weirdly, especially when they’re a little further away in the scene. Bits of the fight looked pretty good though and felt yuu yoshiyama-ish. Anyways, it was a nice episode. It’s nice seeing Ageha in her role as a nursery school teacher and how she engages with the kids.

I kinda wonder why Flea is teaching them multiplication tables but maybe I won’t question it… The face Walter did to Bocchan during the water training segment was pretty fun as well as the pencil sketch thing when Daleth said “they’re not my friends”. The ending scene framing with Alice and Bocchan was nice with Bocchan in the blue and Alice in the yellow and the shadow cast over his eyes by his hat’s brim.

• I think the anime I looked forward to most week-to-week was Genjitsu no Yohane. Yeah, the plot reused a lot of elements throughout to keep it going and the pacing was a little weird, but it was one of the prettier shows, the fantasy world was interesting, we got new Aqours jams (and the OST was great), and Yoshiko/Yohane was one of my favs from Love Live Sunshine.
• Undead Girl Murder Farce, despite it being maybe not my usual genre of preference, was probably the best overall anime of the season I watched (mostly thanks to the director from Kaguya and all the great, inventive visuals).
• Helck isn’t the prettiest anime visually, but it’s got a director who can balance humor and seriousness in Tatsuo Satou (director of Kidou Senkan Nadesico and Uchuu no Stellvia among other things) and it shows and so it’s been pretty enjoyable.
• Hirogaru Sky! Precure has been pretty solid. Not my favorite installment of Precure (been watching through Tropical Rouge and I think I like that one more, maybe because of its humor and weirdness) and it definitely has its fair share of obvious animation quality dips, but the last couple eps have had really energetic and lively animation with pretty background art so we’ll see where we go from here.
• Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid 2nd Season has been alright. Never was the prettiest show, but this season has had some nicer-than-usual animated moments and bigger plot lines are coming into play so maybe I like it more than season 1?
• wasn’t expecting that much from it (and maybe I like other Naomi Oozora demon-ish shows more than this one) but Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha was pretty fun and the longer plotlines driving the events were pretty interesting.

And yeah there’s Zom 100 which is great but is quite a bit further from done than everything else and who knows when it’ll finish…

I kinda barely remember who Battamonda was tbh, feels like his episodes were so long ago, I guess his temper was the thing that defined him (and still does). Whenever I hear “toki wa kita”, I think of Machikado Mazoku. I suppose “I wuv it so much” is a bit on the longer side for a sentence but I’m kinda giving up on tracking Ellee’s speech growth.

The use of blur and shadows was pretty nice this ep, particularly when Battamonda dropped his brush and the focus shifted from the sketchbook to the brush.

Eh, not so much of a fan of this ep. Battamonda’s expressions were nicely animated, but the back and forth thing didn’t really land with me. And it was kinda obvious with the full transformations and attack sequences they had to pad things out a bit (although yeah, the chroniclon one still looks great). Are they trying to draw parallels between Ellee’s liking Mashiron’s books and the Cure Majesty closing the chroniclon?

The folk song Beatrix had on her audio player was Sakura Sakura, which seems fitting for her character.

The lighting at the beginning was quite nice with the long shadows and everything, feels like this show doesn’t show off lighting like that often. I wanna see Bocchan in a skirt, why not show us that in a Viola’s imagination scene smh. Nico’s and Flea’s hair remind me of Kirika from Symphogear.

The intro was quite pretty, but mb I would’ve liked more of that worldbuilding sprinkled into the rest of the season, feels kinda weird tojust put it in the last episode. The transitions to the performances are kinda abrupt in this series, particularly in this last ep. It kinda makes me want the performances in less usual idol-garb and their fantasized stages and stick closer to the theming in the rest of the show, but eh.

I liked this show and it’s been a show I’ve been most looking forward to watching week-to-week , it’s on the prettier side of shows and more aligned with my usual preferences as a SOL. Yeah, pacing throughout the show has been a little weird and the same sorts of events to push the plot forward was a little annoying, but the fantasy world is pretty interesting (and wouldn’t mind seeing another season or two of), both the OST and new Aquors tunes were nice, and I’d say Yoshiko ahem,… Yohane was probably one of my favorites from the original series. Yeah, the themes of finding yourself and finding your place in the world and how that relates to everybody else aren’t super unique, but the way the show tied it to expressing yourself and putting yourself out there through song and also tying it to the whole “kokoro no oto” thing and Lailaps was pretty nice.

I guess being Cure Majesty is rubbing off on Ellee’s speech abilities? “Descend, mystical nobility! Cure Majesty!” seems pretty complicated for a toddler to say. Or maybe the scriptwriters are abandoning trying to organically develop toddler speech patterns… I kinda like how Ellee’s patty-cake affinities paid off with opening the ruins, which are incidentally reminding me of Link to the Past. Also, I guess we foreshadowing again with Ellee saving Mashiro in her play fight at the beginning of the ep. I wonder if Ellee could’ve figured out the hands thing like Cure Majesty did.

Anyways, I’m pretty sure Minoton wanted to defeat the Precures even before the undergu energy shenanigans? I still can’t unhear Kaguya with Cure Majesty. Nice that we got new music cues this ep. The fight scene animation looked nice and energetic too. This episode’s themes were pretty nice with the ideas of trust and protection and how they intermingle. Majestic Chroniclon kinda feels similar to Mix Palette (whatever that’s supposed to actually do) but whatever, the animation is really cool and they get to do Majestic Halation, which of course inevitably reminds me of Snow Halation, which is good.

If that really was Flea in the anime, why was he wearing a shirt?

I kinda wonder if that little gold bird sculpture was there in previous episodes and/or has any significance, other than giving something with the characters to play with and to give some dynamism to the scene by falling off the fireplace.

Mentioning killing Sade seemed a little too inconsequential? There’s probably more to that whole situation.

It seems like Lailaps and Yohane’s staff have a tendency to get lost in this series… Quibbles about plot structure repetitions aside, I liked how this plotline has played out with connecting Lailaps’s talking (and Yohane being the only one being able to hear her talk) with growing up (and the breaking of the “spell”). Plus, I liked how Lailaps got connected to the titular mirror and showing Yohane the magic (and sunshine) she had in her all along. It was nice having a little parallel to the Lailaps/Yohane plot event with Sakura too.

The animation when Yohane first cast her “spell” on Lailaps was nice and the music was too, think that was my favorite scene if this ep. The lyrics were probably important to the whole emotional climax and I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere as to what they were…

I can’t imagine the mental whiplash of being non-toddler Cure Majesty (who doesn’t seem to act like a toddler) and toddler Ellee and kinda hurts my head to think about, like things she would only understand as a non-toddler but still somehow remembering in a way as a toddler? In any case, it’s fun having Aoi Koga using a non-toddler voice for Cure Majesty because it’s easier to imagine Kaguya saying all the lines.

Was kinda half-expecting “ora-ora-ora” or “muda-muda-muda” with punch flurries from Ellee but I guess “da-da-da-da-da-da” works too (and I guess we got “muda muda muda” in a way from Minoton later). The colored-pencil-ish coloring with the thick outlines was a neat aesthetic. Also, I guess the blurry hands she did next was a Bruce Lee reference?

I think the piano + reversed piano bits are my favorite cues in the series, I’m a sucker for the sparseness.

All the lighting this ep was nice, especially when Yohane woke up from her dream and there were the shadows cast by the moon from the window. Also apparently auroras (aurorae?) are part of the ominous fog in this anime, but as somebody who has never seen them irl but is a fan of them and aurora-infused anime, I appreciate it.

Kinda felt weird pacing-wise to go back to the cheer up Yohane bits (esp after the threats of imminent danger that ended last ep/started off this one), but the talent show was fun (I particularly liked Mari’s magic show).

I kinda liked the designs for Hugo’s old “buddies”, they kinda look like they come from a different anime.

Interesting translation of “gyaru” to “trendy girl” (wasn’t there a “trendy guy” in one of the original Pokemon games or something? I forget, it’s been a long long time).

Looks like we have drawing on windows/longing for two episodes in a row.

Ellee the princess starts glowing purple and then an mysterious 5th Precure appears conspicuously with Ellee’s purple colors and calling herself Cure Majesty 👀? And all of this after the whole first bit of Ellee dressing up as all the Precures and then deciding on this purple dress instead 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀? And the ep begins with Ellee drawing herself into the picture with purple 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀? Cure Majesty’s identity is truly a mystery…

In other news, the show seems to be speedrunning Ellee’s talking abilities, now with saying everybody’s names and “I hate you” and “I love you” and cheering on the Precures. The (obviously not foreshadowing things are about to happen) reflecting of Sora on their situation and the temporality (is that even a word) of it all was nice (also, I’m pretty sure out of everyone she’s the one most able to watch Ellee grow up… or maybe all of them will be able to see Ellee grown up 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀👀 👀 👀 👀 👀👀 👀 👀 👀 👀👀 👀 👀 👀 👀👀 👀 👀 👀 👀).

The animation took a big step-up today. The lighting in general was quite nice like during the car scene and Cure Majesty’s hype arrival and the background art for the scene of the fight was quite detailed. Also, the fight included some angles to the Precure moves that I don’t think we’ve seen before (could be wrong on that though). It was kinda funny to see Skearhead bring his hand to his head when he was fighting off Cure Majesty (although I suppose his sphere already turned gold so he already lost).

You being the source of rumors smh. The Yohane pan with the face and Yohane’s face matching was pretty fun (Love Live is probably going to actually make them for a special event, aren’t they). The cloud covering the sun with Yohane expressing her doubts (the cloud floating away when she gets help with them) felt a little on the nose hah. The music during that scene was nice (with the ocarinas it sounded like? and the golden hour sorta tint to everything was pretty (and the music at the beginning of the party with the slide guitar was nice too).

Looks like the “kokoro no oto” plotline is back. There’s the thematic connections (at least with the words themselves) to what’s been going on in the series (particularly with Yohane) but it’ll be interesting to see to see if and how it plays out more tangibly with actual plot events.

The lion looked pretty cute with a bow. Mb the 4D joke was partly because of the 3D animation (well, I guess the characters’ anime world would be 3D to them too which makes more sense). That was a nice fuzzy ending to the episode (and the piano was nice too).

i guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a skylander can’t swim (although i guess sora has seen lakes before? skyland has lakes? do they float in the sky and i guess letters aren’t mixed up for geographical figures like everything else in skyland. also the following scene answered my question already). why does tsubasa swim like salmon jumping from rivers? how do feathers and water work for non-waterfowl?

now ellee can even walk in water. sora getting thick outlines during the floating segment was fun animation-wise (also the beach ball hitting). the fish swimming weirdly half to the side not so much. minoton’s shading looks better this ep though (and having watched a versailles on bara ep right before this, the sunrays looked vaguely dezaki-esque). sora got the newtype flash (similar sound effect too? i guess it’s mb an intended reference?) when locating the watermelon.

the ocean added nice variety to the fight and it resting on the ocean was pretty fun (and also all the rarararararas). probably one of the best ranborg fights of this iteration thus far and plus the non-fight events like sora not being able to swim actually played into the fight which was nice. also i’m not quite sure what the mix palette does anymore hah.

Are huge pigs pulling carts a thing? Hanamaru’s cart and Shinshinoshin remind me of the traveling cart from Stardew Valley.

The transitions in the finding Lailaps montage were fun, especially the one from Kanan’s eye to Chika’s eye. “We’re going to be together forever and ever. Right, Lailaps?” Why’d you have to ask that smh.

The OST was nice again today, I kinda wonder if the piano + reversed piano bits at the end were the same music as Episode 6. The use of saxophone in this series reminded me of Revue Starlight and so I looked up who was credited for music and sure enough Tatsuya Katou is credited for this, a lot of Love Live (including the LLS main series), and Revue Starlight (alongside Yoshiaki Fujisawa) among other things. Anyways, the lighting was nice this episode (as it has been throughout the series) and it was a nice episode overall.