I just finished watching Toradora. It's a highschool romance comedy about a guy and a girl trying to help each other with their crushes. It takes every single twist and turn you'd expect it to and there really wasn't much that was surprising. It's a stupid show with a stupid plot and it's just stupid, but you know what?... I enjoyed every last moment of it. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys those types of shows, the characters were well written and memorable and the story, while a little generic and predictable was still memorable and worthwhile. I don't know why I love it so much but it honestly is a great show.
I finished rewatching Toradora already and I can honestly say it was just as good, if not better the second time. The plot is pretty simple but the characters and the way everything was done was just perfection. I honestly have no complaints about it whatsoever.
I also finished Anohana and boy was that an experience. The premise of the show is that the main character, Jintan, was the leader of a group of kids ten years earlier. Back ten years before the show takes place, one of the girls in the group dies. Cut to when the show takes place and suddenly a ghost of sorts shows up, but can only be seen or heard by Jintan. The show is about reuniting all of the old friends again so that they can properly set the dead friend off to the next life. Much like Toradora, you can see pretty much exactly where the show is headed from fairly early on, however that doesn't do much to reduce just how emotionally impactful this show is. On the outside I only cried a little, and that was just because I watched it with my girlfriend who was already crying. Had I watched it with nobody around you can bet there would have been major waterworks. There were a couple of small things that I think it could have done better but it was still an amazing show, a solid 95/100
Then I watched Corpse Party. Corpse party is like the polar opposite of Toradora and Anohana. It's about a group of highschoolers (and one of their little sister's and a teacher) that get teleported to an altered reality where they have to appeal the spirits of some murdered kids or else they get brutally slaughtered themselves. The story was slightly intriguing but anything good about it was, like most of the characters, butchered to death. The entire story was just a cheap setup so that they could kill people in gruesome ways. However, like many shows focused on gore, it was laughable at times. A bit of the ceiling colapses? That's a clean decapitation. It was only 4 episodes long and just enjoyable enough so that I don't regret watching it but I doubt I'll make an effort to watch it again.
I recently finished Tales of Zestiria the X. It's based off of a pretty terrible game, Tales of Zestiria but somehow manages to make that horrendous game even worse. It assumes that you've already played the game, then butchers the two or three things that the game actually did right with it's story, not to mention the endless amounts of contradictions between the game and the show, and even just in the show. The entire plot was just one Dues Ex Machina after another. I would avoid watching this show at all costs as it is quite possibly my least favorite anime of all, and that's saying something
