People aren’t linking it directly because admins have a history of removing any comments/posts that provide a link. However, you can see it if you go to a community browser like Lemmy Explorer.

I have read/watched a lot of bad isekai. Reincarnated as a Sword is not one of them. The premise might be dumb on the surface, but it is executed extremely well. I think part of what makes it work is how the relationship between Master and Fran is a Father/Daughter one. It just kind of makes the whole thing work. I had dropped the manga at one point because I thought it was kind of losing its way, but then found out that the arc I didn’t like was a manga-only filler arc. After I got back onto light novel content, it was the great old Fran/Master journey that I loved.

Really glad they announced a season 2 is on the way.

I really like the manga for Tonikaku Kawaii (and several other fluffy romances like it), but haven’t ever really liked any of the anime adaptations of them. I just don’t think it usually translates to the medium well. I often end up bored and the studios don’t put enough effort into the animation or soundtrack to keep my attention that way either.

Heavenly Delusion was probably my biggest surprise this year. I had never heard of it before, randomly picked it up, and it was outstanding.

tl;dr:

• AOTY - Frieren with honorable mention of Oshi no Ko
• Worst AOTY - Am I Actually the Strongest?
• Most Mid AOTY - Atelier Ryza

If you had asked for my anime of the year prior to the Fall season, it would have unquestionably been Oshi no Ko. However, Frieren’s adaptation has been so excellent over this past season that I am hard pressed not to give it my AOTY. I know Frieren is still airing for a second cour, but it has a full cour’s worth of episodes to compare to other seasonal shows, so I think it is fair for now. I think that Oshi no Ko has definitely left a strong impression on me though and I will always remember the first episode and episode 6 as extremely impactful. Few anime have ever had me as invested in a character’s story as episode 6 of Oshi no Ko did for Akane.

As for my worst anime of the year, this one is tough. I watch my fair share of bad anime so it is tough to pick. I think I will have to award it to “Am I Actually the Strongest?” The show was horribly paced and narratively confused. Large sections of important story were seemingly glossed over almost nothing was explained. Having watched 12 episodes of the anime, I still don’t think I can give any kind of explanation for the MC’s abilities. Just avoid this one, it isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s just bad.

Finally, in my quest to pretend to still be young, I thought I would also give a mid award. This one goes to a show that was so bland and generic that it wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it just exists. That goes to Atelier Ryza for me. I have heard that the game series this show was based off of is actually quite good. I have a friend that has played a ton of them and was hyping up the show to me because of it. However, watching the show being unfamiliar with the source at all, it was extremely boring. Things happened extremely predictably. I actually felt that watching the show was like being stuck in an unskippable, long tutorial cutscene in a game. Things were overexplained, drawn out, and the game’s quest -> reward structure was very obvious. There were never really any stakes it felt like. I don’t know if the entire game was adapted or not, but I certainly hope there is more to the game. The show felt like it was adapting just the tutorial levels.

@[email protected] or @[email protected] if you could pin the new/unpin the old discussion posts, that would be greatly appreciated.

I think the Helck flashbacks wouldn’t have been as bad if I was bingeing it, but watching week to week, it felt very drawn out. Since the flashbacks have ended, I have gotten more into it again.

As for Girlfriend, Girlfriend and 100GF, I have written before that I think I enjoyed the series more in manga form. I think that Shino is by far the best character in GF, GF though, so you have excellent taste in that department.

Yeah, I was reading the WN for Villainess Level 99 and dropped it shortly after the main arc. It reached a pretty satisfying conclusion and the story after that felt kind of forced, plus I just had too many other things competing for my time.

Rather than writing about what I have watched this past week, I decided to look ahead at the upcoming season of anime and check out shows that looked interesting. My first pass led me to some shows that I am debating watching, but I will likely need to cut this down due to time. I divided it into shows I am familiar with the source and those that I am not.

Familiar with the source:

• Frieren will be continuing. Definitely continuing with this one.
• Tsukimichi Season 2 - I enjoyed the source for this story and am glad to see it continuing. The story only gets better as it goes. If you thought season 1 was a bit generic, I agree with you. However, the story becomes more interesting as it goes. Not quite sure if the animation might be stepped up for season 2 or not though.
• The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic - The opening parts of this story are where it is at its best. So I am looking forward to this show and the character Rose in particular.
• Villainess Level 99 - I love the source for this series, but the character is so dense that it turns some off. If they get the humor right in this show, it could be great.

Not familiar with the source:

• Solo Leveling - Source readers have hyped this series from long before there was even an announcement of an anime adaptation. I suspect this one is going to be popular, but it might not really be my type of show.
• Dungeon Meshi - This one has been a really popular manga and it is being made by Studio Trigger. Worth a look for sure.
• Metallic Rouge - I have only seen the poster for this series and I love it. Will check it out more to see if it is worth giving a shot.
• 'Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess - I have read a couple chapters of this manga, but not enough to really call myself familiar with it. It seems like a fun little series for those times I just want to relax though.

@[email protected] if you would be so kind as to do the pinning/unpinning, it would be appreciated.

I love a good romance as well and this season is pretty sparse. Looking at anichart for Fall 2023, I only see three shows with the romance tag. The only one of those I am watching (100GF) is more comedy-focused than romance-focused. That’s pretty light. For comparison, last season there were seven shows with the romance tag.

Oof, this one lands a bit close to home. Teachers can be amazing, but comments like these with the best of intentions can sometimes hurt given the context of a person’s life.

That’s a good point. When I am making okonomiyaki at my table, it is just for me. I am not making it for the person that sits at the table after I leave. At the very least, I don’t think gyoza vouchers are an acceptable form of compensation in Japan (how do you pay taxes on gyoza?). It’s fun to riff on, but overall I have been really enjoying this series so far.

As for random downvotes, it happens everywhere occasionally. I suspect it is people seeing things they might not like when they browse the “all” feed of their instance rather than “subscribed”. They are just random internet points, they don’t matter at the end of the day.

I think that is actually a totally fair way to look at the show. The moral implications of Kotaro’s actions are immense and dark. Also, the way he more or less threatens them with society’s reaction to zombies in order to become idols is extremely manipulative. I can totally understand why those aspects of the show would turn somebody off from watching.

For me, I have been enjoying the show after basically accepting those bits as the needed bits to establish the premise and then moving on. Namely, the premise of a group of zombie girls becoming idols. After the first couple episodes, they aren’t really brought up any more and the girls are all acting of their own will. They are even capable of doing the makeup on their own without Kotaro by the time you reach season 2.

This series keeps showing us how to break workplace safety rules. I mentioned it elsewhere already, but this week it is touching things with gloved hands after handling uncooked meat. When will our protagonists learn proper procedure?

Edit: I had to think about having customers cook, but I don’t think that would break any rules. There are plenty of hot pot places that give you trays of raw meat and let you cook it in the broth at your table. Similarly, I was at a restaurant in Tokyo that gave you raw batter for okonomiyaki and let you cook it on a griddle built into the table.

I don’t have too much time to craft my usual tome of a comment this week, so I will keep it short. Quick hot-takes on a couple shows I watched during the past week:

• Eminence in Shadow: Return to form after fanservice break
• Frieren: BRB, dead after getting hit by Frieren’s flirting
• 100GF: Next episode is gonna be wild for anime-onlies
• Zombie Land Saga Season 2: Yep, still good. Hasn’t lost a step from season 1

@[email protected], if you would be so kind as to do the pin/unpin shuffle like normal, that would be much appreciated.

Great to see a scanlator actually on the fediverse! I did a double take when I got to the credits page and realized it was your username as well.

I mentioned it in the comments over at ani.social (as well as a lot of lore), but thought it was worth mentioning here as well that Kadokawa posted this version of the season 1 OP to their official youtube channel in which all the characters are played by crowbars (バール or bar in the credits).

It doesn’t look like it. Holo, the project that shinobu is forked from, sometimes has a hard time with certain shows. It works by parsing the sites of all the different streaming providers and a public torrent tracker to look for new episodes that are released. So, if a site changes its layout a little bit or if torrents are named in a way that it isn’t expecting, it just won’t pick up those episodes at all. I think if you were to redesign holo from the ground up today, you would probably use the AniList api instead of parsing all these things, but holo predates the api iirc.

Edit to add here that I think the reddit mods that use holo for the subreddit must do a lot of manual interventions or have codebase changes that are not pushed to the github. I have run a personal instance of holo for a while connected to a testing lemmy instance I spun up and its behavior exactly matches shinobu. So, the fact that holo does post threads for shows like JJK to the subreddit means that it has either been done/scheduled manually or they are running a modified version.

@[email protected] if you could do the pinning/unpinning thing, that would be great!

This past week during the holiday I managed to catch up on several shows that I had fallen behind on.

• Frieren and Eminence continue to be my favorites of what I am watching this season. The anime-original fan-service episode of Eminence was interesting, but looking forward to getting back to the actual plot next episode.
• Helck is still going and it has been nice to not be stuck in a flashback any longer (still need to watch episode 20). I am hoping that they can build to a satisfying season conclusion.
• 100GF is an interesting one. I have loved parts of it and others feel too excessive. I appreciate that they really lean into jokes super hard (something I wish Girlfriend, Girlfriend did more of), but I feel they go too far sometimes. That line is going to be different for each person though, so it is hard for me to criticize them too much.
• Girlfriend, Girlfriend is still doing its thing. I think the adaptation has been alright, but I haven’t changed my mind that it just works better in manga form.
• The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch has been ok. It has had its ups and downs and I am mainly still watching due to inertia. Probably not one I am going to remember for very long going forward.

Finally, I had some time to start Zombie Land Saga season 2. They wasted no time picking right back up where things left off. There was a bit that happened off screen between seasons, but it isn’t too jarring. The bright spot for me in this show continues to be the voice work of Mamoru Miyano who plays the primary male character Kotaro. You might recognize his voice from some of his other roles such as Light Yagami (Death Note), Okabe Rintaro (Steins;Gate), or Pandora’s Actor (Overlord). I am only two episodes into the second season and looking forward to the next chance I get to watch more.

I have previously written about some of the issues I had with Suzume. I think it is a visually stunning movie. I just wish it was better written.

As for Usagi Drop, I really enjoyed the anime and looked up the source. However, when I looked it up, pretty much all I found was threads warning or memeing about it. So, I looked up the synopsis and realized that I was fine with just the anime.