When watching a show like Wooser’s Hand-to-Mouth Life, with its consistent style and 4 minute episodes that have barely any continuity, my first instinct to treat all the different seasons as a single amorphous blob, because rating any particular season lower would have to be a coincidence of worse episodes being grouped together, or simply the concept reaching the end of its course. Something about the Phantasmagoric Arc exists outside this. It’s less referential than the Awakening Arc, my favorite of the three by a thin margin, and its perversions are much more verbal than based on actual actions, which I would possibly consider an improvement given that the show has stepped a bit over the line at times. And yet maybe that’s indicative of the issue: rather than performing actual comedy in the Wooser style of eccentric, high energy adventures of the unlovable little yellow furball Wooser, the characters sit and talk about how that style is funny and works. It is only a slight difference from previous seasons, and doesn’t feel like a signaling of the show’s decline, but it was a nudge at the back of my mind, telling me that this was singing the same song as Wooser always sings but the notes were just a bit flat.
Granted, I’ll never get tired of hearing Miyano Mamoru’s tirades as Wooser, and at the length of an average anime episode for the whole season I don’t regret watching the Phantasmagoric Arc. One particular episode explores the game Werewolf, always a fun party game for huge groups who know each other well, and Wooser’s thought process throughout the game is hilarious to anyone who has ever played, as are the small notes that pop up talking about the psychology at play. As always I’m looking forward to another season to pass a few minutes every week. But when I go to rewatch a show like Wooser I inevitably pick out my favorite episodes from across the franchise and stick to those. I would take a number of episodes from the first season and possibly the second season in its entirety. I can only think of three or four episodes I would take from this season, and I would probably start with them as a way to build up to the real gems.