I keep meaning to post here and I keep not getting around to it! All I've been doing is watching things:

• Blood River - Gong Jun's latest - is finally airing, and it is so much fun. It's in the same universe as The Blood of Youth (which had great fight scenes and friendships and which I liked very much) and Dashing Youth (a poorly structured mess, that it occurs to me was probably trying to do something ambitious, but kept cutting away from the fight scenes I was more interested in). The fight scenes in Blood River are SO COOL OMG. It's also setting a cracking pace.

My expectations were for cool wuxia fights (FULLY SATISFIED!! THE FIGHTS ARE SO COOL!!) but uh also the level of homoeroticism is off the charts. Given how I know they end up in TBOY I'm mostly like 😭 about it, but I'm very much enjoying it. There could stand to be more female characters, but the ones that are there are very cool, and I'm also very much enjoying the selection of handsome middle aged men for someone of my age and tastes to appreciate.

But oh man, Su Muyu and Su Changhe sure love each other, and isn't that messed up.

• The great Gundam watch through... sort of continues. I had to admit I was just not vibing Gundam 0080 (it's fine, but I only had access to the dub and just could not stand the voices), and I'm moving on to the next on the list, which will be whichever of what comes next I have access to on Crunchyroll or Netflix, because I'm not signing up for yet another streaming service.

• What if I just... watched Kaiju no 8 again from the beginning. What if that. Well, I'm doing it, and it's honestly better than I remember. Still think it could stand to have more female characters, though.

• I don't know if I mentioned I watched all of season 1 of Chainsaw Man, but I did, because of course I did, it's about a guy who grows a chainsaw from his head. I also went to see the Reze Arc movie on the weekend, and I'm pleased that it had Mr Chainsaws himself riding a shark into a fight with the embodiment of the human fear of typhoons. I did not stay for any post-credits scene. I am too old for it. Apparently there is one, and I'll catch it when I rewatch the movie on Crunchy some day.

This series is like a fever dream someone had of merging 90s Tarantino films with cheap 90s VHS horror in a mad science experiment and animating it, and just for that reason I'm happy it exists.

Some more things I like about it

- It is a sleek 100 minutes. No time wasting, I didn't have to take a bathroom break even once. Get in, get the job done, go home. A+

- I knew I liked that 'everyone wants Chainsaw's heart, but what about Denji's heart' line from the trailer, but I didn't realise it happened WHILE DENJI IS STANDING ON TOP OF A CAR AKI IS WEAVING IN AND OUT OF BUSY TRAFFIC insane business

- Aki grabbing Angel Devil's hand to save his life even though he knows it will shorten his lifespan even more!!! All the Aki and Angel Devil scenes were so fucking good, they absolutely hit

- Honestly I wasn't sure I was vibing most of the film until Reze bit Denji's tongue and was about to gouge his heart out and Beem jumped up (seemingly out of nowhere) to rescue Denji from the scenario and kick things off

- THAT ENDING!!! Revealing Reze's tragic backstory, but of course she can't be allowed to live, and in come Makima and Angel Devil monstrously powerful to fix that problem

Chainsaw Man is certainly not without sexism, but I appreciate that it has characters like Himeno who gives cigarettes to underage boys and once accidentally threw up in Denji's mouth, and Power, who will sell you up the river to save her cat. Everyone of any gender is a ratbag and kind of charmingly shitty, and I love that. And I also love that sometimes it reminds you how truly horrific Denji's childhood of deprivation and poverty was, to really punch you in the face with a feeling when you just wanted to laugh at a dumb monster fight.

• It turns out I never gave my actual thoughts on Kimetsu no Yaiba after watching the entire anime (including the Mugen Train and Infinity Castle movies) in a week. Here it is: Kimetsu no Yaiba is equal parts (1) Wow, this sword fight looks so insanely cool! (2) but the sexism is not great (3) wow, this awkwardly placed flashback just keeps going and going and going (4) this fight has gone on so long it's no longer cool; when will this demon fucking die already.

And yet? I watched the whole thing in a week?

I think the thing is it starts off so good. I watched the first four episodes at a New Year's Eve party several years ago and was really impressed, so when I heard about the good reviews the Infinity Castle movie was getting I figured I should start again from the beginning. And it does really hit the ground running - the beginning and middle of season 1 are paced so well. And then it's never well paced again HAHAHA. It's good at making clear the stakes and has great tension; a lot of the series has fights and conflicts where if things go one way one horrible thing could happen, and if they go another another horrible thing could happen, and it threads that needle of making you believe that most of the time it comes out in the middle just fine because it works at it. And the fights are brutal! Tanjiro's loss of most of his family and his codependent relationship with Nezuko, and the people who give him a chance in the beginning, and how hard he works to train - all that works well.

But oh man, the awkwardly placed long flashbacks. The worst is in the show when the Love Hashira has that long flashback about trying to change to be marriageable and learning it's okay if instead of finding romance she has friendship & etc. etc. and that's great, I support that arc, but it came in the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with that. And I swear the flashback in the Infinity Castle movie was 40 minutes long - I went for a long bathroom break in the middle of it and missed nothing.

I'm still going to see the next movie when it comes out, though.