Given how many premiere I’ve watched (despite traveling and being stretched beyond all reason), I thought it would be good to share some snap reactions to some of the shows that didn’t make the Season Preview post. These are the ones that made the strongest impression on me from that bunch…

Champignon no Majo (Champignon Witch) – 1-2

Spoiler – this was my favorite of the bunch. In fact I liked this double-episode very much indeed. To be honest I didn’t notice that Champignon no Majo was by Higuchi Tachibana, the mangaka of Gakuen Alice, until one of my social media followers clued me in. If I had I 100% would have previewed it, because her Gakuen Alice is a series I really liked a lot. It was even sort of formative for me both in anime and manga terms, and remains one of my favorite shoujo. I was totally charmed by the first two eps of Champignon Witch, and it completely took me back to that Gakuen Alice feeling even if the themes are totally different.

This is a fairy tale down to its DNA. It’s a story of a “black witch” in a world where the white witches control the levers of power. Luna makes medicines which only the apothecary knows come from her, and poisonous (though there’s more to it) mushrooms sprout in her path wherever she goes. She mostly stays in the woods with her family of adorable animal and mushroom friends, and is watched over by the crow familiar of a powerful sorcerer. Luna has never known love but still has her human emotions, and winds up falling for a scamp of a bishounen named Henri who loves to break hearts.

This evolves into a bit of a Romeo and Juliet retelling, as Henri is from a powerful white witch family. And besides, no human can safely touch Luna (even her best friend, the bookseller, disinfects himself and his shop after he leaves despite being a spirit himself). Another interesting twist is that we meet the narrator only at the end of the second episode. This is all totally charming – adorable but with an edge. It follows my old adage about the best desserts delivering something to cut the sweetness. The music is great, too. I’m very invested at this point and I suspect I’ll be writing about this series again.

Tamon-kun Ima Docchi!? (Tamon’s B-Side) – 1-2

Another shoujo, this time about a high schooler and part-time housekeeper who winds up getting assigned to the idol guy she’s obsessed with. I liked the first episode better than the second, but on the whole I found Tamon to be fairly amusing. Any idol-themed series is going to pull its punches about how messed up the whole idol thing is, so I don’t really hold that against this one. I just don’t see enough of a match with my tastes to keep me hooked. But it’s objectively a pretty good show, I think.

Arne no Jikenbo (The Case Book of Arne) – 01

Arne no Jikenbo is a mystery based on a game, with a manga adaptation sandwiched in-between. I quite liked the premiere, which had a halfway-decent mystery but a more involving human story. It also has quite the twist ending, which I’m not sure how to take given the nature of the series’ promotional materials. In any event the protagonist seems to be the titular vampire, who walks around in shota form until he ingests blood at the key moment for the case (seemingly). The range of outcomes for this one is huge but for a week at least it works both as a mystery and a drama, so I’ll stick around and see how it develops.