Anime

I've just implemented my news detox.

I've unsubscribed to the various news, world_news, politics, not_the_onion, /c's not through their fault, but too depressing.

I'm hoping this frees up more time for watching anime.

My irl workload continued to be crazy this week. So, that is a contributing factor to the late posting of this thread. Through it all though, I have managed to so far keep up with the seasonal shows I wanted to watch, and I even managed to watch a couple from seasons gone by:

• Spice and Wolf (2024) - I had left this with just a couple unwatched episodes for long enough and finished it up this past week. I liked the arc that it ended on probably the most of any in the show's run. So, a good end, but some middle portions of the season were slow for me.
• Squid Girl - I found some time to fire this up this past week as I was looking for something a bit mindless, and it delivered. I had tried watching this before and found it a bit too mindless (preferring the manga), but after a week of grueling days at work, it fit the bill perfectly.

Now, for this season's shows:

• My Happy Marriage - I hate that they are trying to make me sympathetic to Kiyoka's mom. Just make her evil and let me hate her, it's so much more fun. In any case, good episode this past week.
• Apothecary Diaries - The mystery kicked off this past week as we got a new character, Maomao.
• Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf - Such a nice, comfy show. Really enjoying this one so far.
• Guild Receptionist - The voice acting in this show is carrying it for me. Rie Takahashi has been fantastic.
• Bureaucrat to Villainess - Another really fun episode. I think this one has surprised me the most with how much I am enjoying it.
• 100 Girlfriends - The insanity continues...and I am here for it.

I finally managed to watch at least one episode of everything I was interested in.

Dropped:

• Link Click (just didn't, er, click with me)
• Farmagia (too much game showing at the seams, not enough depth, protag is an idiot)
• Greatest Alchemist (not good enough to survive having slavery treated as acceptable)
• Fruit Master (just mediocre all over)
• I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons (denial of the main character's agency to an extent that's downright icky)
• Magic Maker (um, dude, I don't really care that she's your sister, but you appear to be macking on an oblivious prepubescent girl. No.)
• Momentary Lily (motion sickness-inducing).

Hanging by a thread:

• Aquarion: Myth of Emotions (really ugly artwork and isn't likely to be good enough in other categories to compensate)
• Promise of Wizard (first episode felt rather bland, haven't gotten to the second one yet)
• I'm a Noble on the Brink of Ruin etc. (just really bland so far, no black marks but not very interesting either)

I'll be picking one of those three to keep watching and dropping the other two.

By the way, does anyone know what's going on with Fate/Strange Fake? I wasn't anticipating it dropping off the schedule again after one episode.

It's a bit of a weak season for new shows, but I put together a tasting menu of 4 anime for my friend group to consider watching together: Zenshu, Welcome to Japan Ms Elf, Okitsura, and Sakamoto Days. Unsurprisingly, they didn't take to any of them enough to change our original plans, so our list is still Apothecary Diaries, My Happy Marriage, and Hanako-kun.

link click and the apothecary were pretty good.

Continuing from last week, I dropped the following series:

• I'm Living With a Otaku NEET Kunoichi?! - I got bored of it
• The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World - Just read the manga instead

The ones most at risk of being dropped are now Zenshu and I Left My A-Rank Party to Help My Former Students Reach the Dungeon Depths!. Let's see how it goes.

One last thing: Sakamoto Day is slowly failing to live up to the hype for me. I think I've been spoilt by the top-tier action comedy of One Punch Man and slice-of-life comedy of Spy x Family.

Man haven't watch anime for a while now. Currently watching Shang Gri La frontier s2, that cat isekai? and the old man ojousama isekai. I still have apothecary Diaries s2 yet to watch will soon.

Rewatched My Dress-Up Darling last week. It's still good, but hornier than I remembered. It feels more ecchi than the manga does too, even though the scenes are pretty much the same. Feels like they put more emphasis on it in the anime. The later volumes are less ecchi, which might explain why I misremembered.

Also pretty close to dropping Zenshu.

Started the week off with the rest of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (Humanity Has Declined), which was great - alternately goofy, cozy and surreal.

Then I had the sort of odd experience of "discovering" a director I hadn't realized I was already a fan of - Makoto Shinkai. I just happened on Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko: Everything Flows and it was wonderful - bittersweet and heartfelt and simply beaufiful, and I liked it so much I looked up the director, and only then discovered that he had also done Suzume and 5 cm per second and Kimi no Na wa, among others. I had completely failed to notice that three of my favorite anime movies were all from the same director.

So then I went on a sort of mini binge, and watched Tenki no Ko, Kotonoha no Niwa and Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, all of which were good, though not quite as good as his certainly not coincidentally better known ones.

Then I just sort of wandered aimlessly before ending up at Tasogare Otome x Amnesia (Dusk Maiden of Amnesia). I read the manga back in the day and remembered liking it, but didn't remember much other than bits and pieces of the plot. It was good all in all - an odd but actually plot-relevant mix of school life, ecchi rom-com with a dash of harem and full-on Junji Ito style horror.

Then, as a change of pace, I dipped back into my own past and watched Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. It's one of the first anime I ever owned (on VHS), and I have no idea how many times I've watched it over the years, but I haven't seen it since I last owned a VCR, which has to have been... at least 15 years ago. And it was just as much fun as I remembered.

And at the moment I'm watching an intriguing oddity called Scrapped Princess. At first glance, it appears to be a sort of cheesy swords and sorcery adventure story, but it's been revealing surprising depth as it goes along and has really been quite good. Remains to be seen how it plays out...

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Sakamoto Days
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Solo Leveling

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma.

The big hitters of the season have premiered now and took over the top portion of both charts. One thing to note is that the phased release schedule might be hurting Sakamoto Days, especially in the reddit chart, because it has two episodes listed there, but only a fraction of people were able to watch both of them.

Random shit that YT throws at me:

pinponpanpon by Maidnight Ravers

https://youtu.be/Hf5vwt2qQFg