2025.9.2
Context: Megami no Café Terrace
I was slightly disappointed. Maybe it's because recent seasons has been slice-of-life heavy, I went in blind thinking it would be a slice-of-life show, but as it turns out it's a harem show just like Grisaia
(albeit with less janky rhythm and less substance in story). I don't know why this got 7+/10 when Occultic;Nine
got less that on MAL. The lucky pervert trope felt overused and way too forced at points, some of the character designs and writings are - to be honest - not very palatable, especially for those who didn't grow up with older similar shows. The first season came out in 2023 - 2023! Rare to see old era writing in modern shows.
But I'll give it one thing - it refuses to resolve the harem. One of the biggest pain point of harem shows for me is that no matter how you write your story it always sucks to look at in the end, because when it comes to the stage of "pick one", someone's going to get hurt despite not doing anything wrong; but Megami no Café Terrace
avoids resolution like avoiding plague - it's almost as if the creators were going like "huh? Which one? I just want some harem action, how the hell would I know", and that's a stance I can respect.