I might give Great Cleric a shot then. The synopsis has all the right things to make me interested, I just didn't really have time to add any more shows to my plate this season. Thanks for the recommendation!

My thoughts on shows I watched this season fall into a couple groups.

The Good:

• Helck: This one is still going since it is running for two cours. I have enjoyed the slow, mysterious world building they have done. It really feels like they are taking their time to build things up in a rewarding way. It has also had good comedy bits and Vermilio serves as an excellent straight man to the clowns that seem to be everywhere else in this world (I mean that in the most loving way possible).
• Isekai Vending Machine: When I started this series, I had low expectations based on the idiocy of the premise. However, it has far exceeded my expectations and has actually been really fun. If you can get past the ridiculous premise and accept a bit of silliness when it comes to combat, then there is actually a story with some heart and thought behind this ridiculous title.
• Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero: This is another that I expected to not be that great, but turned out to be a pretty satisfying fantasy story. The characters and their interactions in this show are the best part of this show. The political storyline that is happening is a bit bland, but doesn't drag the show too much.
• Horimiya Pieces: I am a huge fan of the manga for this series, so I was happy to see this anthology of cut content from the original run of the show. However, I think that viewers that aren't as familiar with the source content might not be as engaged with this run of episodes since it focuses more on side characters than the titular Hori and Miyamura.

The Bad:

• Atelier Ryza: This one was tough for me to stay awake while watching. I understand that the game is widely beloved, but the adaptation to a show just fell flat for me. I don't know how much of the game was adapted, but the whole season feels like they are just stuck in some kind of tutorial rather than undertaking some grand adventure.
• Am I Actually the Strongest: This show was just bad. I have seen/read a lot of really bad isekai and this one might take the cake. The story is incredibly oddly paced; flying through extremely important plot segments and then dwelling for an excrutiatingly long time on fluff/omake stuff that doesn't matter at all. Just steer clear of this one, it's really bad, but not so bad it is funny. It is just really bad.

The Mixed Feelings:

• My Happy Marriage: I have written a lot about this series in the episode threads already, so I will keep it short here. The first half of this season is excellent and really sets up the potential for a great period romance. However, the second half of the show is incredibly disappointing in this regard and just feels so lackluster compared to what was set up through episode 6.

The only other show from this season I am watching is Zom 100. It has been pretty great so far, but because of the delays in production, I don't want to make any final verdicts about it.

In case you missed it, there is a post-credit scene this episode. As far as I remember, it is the only one this season, so FYI.

tl;dr As written, the Usuba family served no purpose and really hurt the story.

Alright, rant incoming...

I was really hopeful for this show for a number of reasons. I think there needs to be more josei stories adapted to the anime medium. We have shounen, shoujo, and seinen fairly well represented, but josei mainly lives on bookshelves in printed form. So, I was hoping that this story, being one of the few josei to get a quality anime adaptation would really become a flag bearer for josei everywhere and encourage more adaptations in the future. Note that if it does well commercially, it still might do that, but time will tell.

My central thesis, after giving it some thought, is that introducing the greater Usuba family to the story (at this point) really squandered a lot of potentially great storytelling. I will first explain why they make absolutely no impact to the story and then what could have been done instead.

Let's look at the contributions that the Usuba grandpa and Arata made to our story. The grandpa gave an entire episode's worth of exposition dump giving us the backstory of Miyo's mother and how Miyo's powers ended up sealed; then basically disappeared again never to be seen. Arata served the purpose of being some kind of benevolent jailer to Miyo, selected by the Usuba family to protect her. He also served the purpose (through the duel with Kiyoka) to show a bit of why the Usuba family is feared by the other supernatural families. However, it's important to note that in this final episode, Arata decides to give up doing his one job just because Miyo asked nicely. I mean, what was the point of kidnapping her and dueling Kiyoka and all of that if you just let her go again? It feels like it is simply some contrivance to create artificial tension in the relationship between Miyo and Kiyoka and to physically separate them so that they can't communicate and clear up any misunderstandings.

Now, let's think about what could have been done instead. There are a few story beats we need to hit in the second half of the show:

• We need some way for Miyo to learn about her mother and her powers
  • I think this could have been done better if we got to learn about Miyo's parentage slowly over a couple episodes through her dreams. She had touched her mother's tree, breaking the seal on her powers at this point. Grandpa Usuba did say when he was explaining her power that she can see the past and the future in her dreams. This also would help the viewer gauge her developing her skill at controlling her power; as she better controls it, she can see and learn more.
• We need Miyo to begin confronting the trauma she has had in the Saimori household since her mother passed
  • The bonus potential for these dreamwalking segments is that she can confront different parts of her psyche and acknowledge and begin to deal with the trauma that the Saimoris inflicted on her. We got a little bit of that in this final episode, but it could have been done much better. In the show, she basically overcame her trauma by hugging it out with herself. In my alternate version, it would take time and repeated dream confrontations. These confrontations would be the best way to make Miyo's physical condition decline as she struggles to deal with her past trauma.
• We need some way to foster a closer relationship between Miyo and Kiyoka
  • I think this could be done by keeping the grotesqueries storyline. Have Kiyoka consistently in the field, fighting battles to protect the city. Meanwhile Miyo is struggling at home trying to control her powers. You could even keep the bit where Miyo collapses in the city. However, instead of Arata inserting the Usubas into the storyline at that point, have Kiyoka rush to Miyo's side and give our main couple a bit of R&R while they talk about all the things they haven't been able to lately. This allows them to share a common goal, understanding and controlling Miyo's power, and it brings them closer as partners.
• Ideally, we would like to have some kind of climax to end the season on.
  • This episode works pretty well for that purpose. The main difference is that she won't need Arata's permission to help Kiyoka. Just make her be a badass on her own instead.
• A hook for season 2
  • This is where the Usubas can best fit into the story. Have some ominous scene at the end of the season with the Usubas talking about needing to remove her for her protection or something to those ends. Perhaps the events of the grotesqueries storyline and Miyo's ability very publicly saving Kiyoka is what alerts the Usubas to her true powers.

/end rant

I am glad I watched this show, rant aside. I will likely stick around for season 2 since I still think there is a lot of potential in this story. Like I said up top, I hope that it is successful and is something that can help more josei story adaptations to get made in the future. Time will tell.

Honestly, it's deserved. Much worse shows have had multiple seasons. The premise is so stupid that a lot of people aren't going to be able to get over it, but if you do, I think there is a decently written story underneath it all. Lots of the world left to explore, so I am looking forward to it.

Welp, this show was better than it had any right to be. It's not going to be on anybody's AOTS lists, but it was far from the worst isekai this season. I didn't have a vending machine kissing scene on my bingo card for this show, but here we are. All in all, this was a pretty satisfying conclusion. They teased future content if there is enough interest for a season 2, but the story also feels like it is at a good stopping point in the (likely) case that season 2 never happens.

Edit: Season 2 confirmed

RIP Piwi, taken from us too soon.

This show continues with its slow, cryptic lore building. This time, we see a glimpse of nega-Helck and there is something weird about his sword. I feel like Helck is similar to playing an RPG but using cheat codes to max all your stats. There isn't anything he can't do if he puts his mind to it.

Others in the thread have already given some good suggestions. In particular I will add another vote for Wotakoi and Horimiya if you haven't seen them yet. Some more that I enjoyed:

• Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!: I would classify this one as more comedy than romance, but it is a pretty good mix. Focuses on a former chuunibyou (during middle school) that has a new neighbor that is a current chuunibyou (in high school) and the relationship that they form. Along the way they pick up a crew of chuuni-adjacent friends.
• Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de: This one is more comedy than romance. The basic premise is that the leader of a sentai group of heroes falls in love with one of the generals of the evil organization they are fighting against. I adore this series and it always breaks my heart that the manga didn't perform well enough to keep it going.
• Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita: This one is not as strong as the others I have listed in my opinion, but if you are a connoisseur of the genre you might appreciate it. Basically, two data scientists try to mathematically prove through statistics/experiments that they are in love with one another. So, the comedy focuses on replicating a lot of tropes from the romcom genre and then collecting data about it. This one has two seasons, but I personally think the first season is a pretty good standalone season. The end of season 2 was...a choice...but it kind of ruined a lot of the good work done elsewhere in the series.

The comparison to Bunny Girl Senpai is a really, really good one actually since they do have an extremely similar storytelling structure. I watched that show+movie just recently, so it is fresh in my mind. I think the main thing that kept me engaged with Bunny Girl as opposed to Clannad is the characters. I really enjoyed the characters in Bunny Girl whereas in Clannad, whenever certain characters showed up (iirc, mainly the guy friend that keeps challenging a girl to a fight), I just found it annoying and took me out of it.

I think there is a lot you could compare/contrast between these two shows and it is making me think critically about what made one work for me and the other very much not work. Thanks for the food for thought!

There are a bunch of long-running series that make (or made) heavy use of filler content of, let's say, variable quality (Naruto, Bleach, etc.). Other than those, I have a couple that spring to mind:

• Recency bias might be factoring into this one but Ryza no Atelier. I just watched the final episode literally within the past hour and it feels like such a let down compared to the penultimate episode. We go from a huge boss battle to a peaceful scavenger hunt. It just seems like you had an obvious place to end the show on a climactic moment in which the protagonists overcome adversity and realize the beginning of their heroic ambitions; but instead we devote the entire final episode for some kind of moral lesson about farming and friends? Don't get me wrong, just cutting the final episode won't make this show actually good, but it would at least be improved; meeting the requirements of the post.
• Carole and Tuesday: I really liked this show, but I feel like the story could have been more focused. In the final third or so of this series, I feel like it rapidly expanded the scope of the show to the detriment of being able to focus on the main cast's story.
• Planetes: I might make some people mad with this one, but I really liked this show when it focused on the space garbage disposal bits and much less so when it forced a romantic relationship between two main characters. It didn't really feel earned and, frankly, the relationship focused a lot on reinforcing traditional Japanese gender stereotypes and left a bad taste in my mouth.
• Clannad: If I didn't make people mad with Planetes, I have certainly made some mad with this one. Full disclosure up front, I have not fully watched this series, so if some Steins;Gate level twist makes all the rest of the show great, then so be it. I just felt like the story would focus entire episodes on people/things that just ended up never mattering again going forward. I remember after a couple episodes just thinking, "What was the point of all that?". It has been a couple years since I gave it a shot, so I don't really remember specifics, but this one could really have used some editing. I imagine the movie version helps this problem, but I haven't seen that after what I experienced with the show.

I ended up enjoying this show way more than I thought I would at the beginning of the season. It ended up at a pretty satisfying end, but it looks like there is enough source to keep going if they choose to. The chemistry between Max and the Maou was really nice, we even get to see them have a genuine moment when they are leaning on each other this episode. We also found out that the girl Max plays badminton with was Yuria's oldest this whole time. It adds so much knowing that even though she hasn't been on screen until this last episode, that Yuria has remained important in Max's life. My one complaint is that the ghost in Max's closet that only Fred can see is completely unexplained...like not even any kind of hinting that I can discern.

Agreed entirely. It really shows how little they think of the viewer/reader that they feel the need to explicitly state it. Add it to the pile of poor storytelling choices in this show (my previous rant about this). I am not familiar with the source material, so I can't pinpoint where the issue lies, but it continues to disappoint.

The obvious outlier this week is Rent a Girlfriend. I wonder what part of the story triggered the jump in votes. I would check it out for myself but I already hate-read the manga, so I don't think I can handle any more of that story in my life.