I hope people are settling into the new year and new season of anime well. I have gotten to watch the premiere of a number of shows. Thought I would provide some quick thoughts below.

• Delicious in Dungeon - Not fully sold on this one yet, but I am willing to let Trigger cook some more.
• Gushing Over Magical Girls - Went into this blind and was really glad I was alone and using headphones.
• Chained Soldier - Watched this after Gushing Over Magical Girls and it felt way tamer than I expected so far given the buzz before the premiere. More is probably coming though given the setup.
• The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic - Loved seeing Rose and the VA did a great job. I had kind of forgotten a bit of the setup and that Usato was isekai’ed by accident, so it was a good refresher.

I have yet to watch Solo Leveling or start catching up on Apothecary Diaries, so nothing to say about them yet. Two shows that are starting this week that I am looking forward to Tsuikimichi season 2 and Level 99 Villainous Daughter.

@ram@lemmy.ca @N3DSdude@lemmy.ml Would one of the mods be able to pin this discussion thread and unpin the old one? Thanks in advance!

@ram@lemmy.ca 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.

No idea past the previous posts to twitter. The situation is likely still unfolding. I wouldn’t be surprised if delays like this one continue. That is what has happened for past shows like Zom 100 and Nier. The delays start as a day or two and then get extended to a longer hiatus once they run out of booked timeslots for the broadcast season.

Just wanted to swing by and give an update that there is now a 1 day delay for the next episode making its way to streaming services.

Yes, that is definitely on my list to watch from this season, I just haven’t had time to pick up any new shows with my work schedule lately. I also have had to pause watching some older shows I had been working my way through (sorry Zombie Land Saga season 2, I’ll be back soon).

I haven’t seen any announcements. If I had to guess, I would expect the show to continue to come out regularly. However, if things continue to spiral over at Mappa, then the quality could decline as the show continues. Time will tell.

We are a bit more than halfway through the season so far, so I thought it would be a good chance to stop and take stock of what I have been watching and what I think about it. Like a midterm exam if you will.

• The Eminence in Shadow - Really enjoyed the first arc of the season while the second was a bit disappointing to me (a source reader). However, it seems anime-only reactions have been more positive. With five episodes left, this final arc of the season should be able to have the time it needs to make it special.
• Frieren - This is another series in which I am a source reader. The adaptation so far has been really incredible. I cannot say enough good things about this series.
• 100 Girlfriends - Another series for which I am a source reader. So far, I have enjoyed the adaptation. I think they have made some effort to keep the meta-humor in the series. Also, I haven’t gone back and checked the early manga chapters, but I don’t remember so much fan service in the source.
• Girlfriend, Girlfriend - Another series for which I am a source reader. I personally think this series works better in manga form. Naoya and company are just so exaggerated in print form and with how absurd the story is, I think the over-the-top-ness of the manga helps carry the story better. I find myself getting bored sometimes watching the series in anime form.
• The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch - I started this series in the hope it was just a feel good SOL in a fantasy setting. However, between the opening episodes featuring fan service of a character they repeatedly point out is 16 years old and then the awkward story pacing, I have mostly dropped this series. I have not read the source, but I was able to guess that it was a 4 koma based on how awkwardly told the story is with frequent interruptions and transitions. Apparently not every 4 koma series can get the Bocchi or Tomo treatment.

As always, @ram@lemmy.ca if you would please do the pin/unpin honors.

This past week I have not had too much time to watch anime, but managed to keep up with a couple airing shows.

• Frieren once again outdid itself with what is my new favorite episode of its run. It was so good that I rewatched it and made a second top-level comment in the episode thread about it.
• Eminence in Shadow had an interesting episode this past week. As a source reader, my reaction seems to differ a lot from anime-only reactions that I have seen. There were some serious bits of the story left on the cutting room floor from Episode 6 that source readers haven’t been happy about. I just hope that they were cut in order to give us something special later in the season like they did at the end of season 1.
• Helck continues its backstory exposition dump. I like backstory as much as the next viewer, but you know what else I also like? Story. About a full third of the show’s runtime has been this single flashback sequence explaining Helck’s past. I really think that instead of a solid 5-6 episode flashback chunk, it could have been interspersed with the rest of the story (see Frieren for a good example of how to mix backstory and story).

Finally, a bit of a meta comment. If you haven’t seen, the lemmy.ml admins decided to remain defederated from the ani.social instance, home of the episode discussion bot. I have thoughts on this, but setting those aside, I just wanted to let people know that the bot is still making posts like before, but over in a different community on the ani.social instance. If your account is on an instance that federates with ani.social, then great! Go check out the community over there and you can see the discussions that happen on those threads. If your account is on lemmy.ml, then you will have to make and use a different account to access that community. That can either be an account on ani.social or an account on an instance that still federates with ani.social.

@ram@lemmy.ca if you would be so kind as to do the pinning/unpinning, that would be lovely. Mod of my heart!

The lemmy.ml admins don’t seem to intend on re-federating with ani.social any time soon. I don’t know what @chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org (the bot maintainer) intends to do, but I moved my episode discussion contributions over to the home community for the bot here. Note that because of the defederation, you won’t be able to use your lemmy.ml account, but will have to use an account either on ani.social or another lemmy instance that does federate with ani.social.

I have opinions on how this has been handled on the part of the ml admins and they aren’t positive, but I don’t want to fill up this thread with them.

It sucks. Here is the docs page about lemmy markdown. It consists of a bunch of colons and needs to be on its own line (can’t be in-line).

::: spoiler Label here
These are the spoilers you are hiding
:::

produces

So, this past week saw the defederation of ani.social from lemmy.ml. If you aren’t familiar with ani.social, it was an anime-focused instance and the host of the episode discussion bot that used to make the episode discussion posts here. I don’t want to rehash things that have already been said in other threads other than to bring it to people’s attention that may have missed the original posts about it.

This past week has been very busy with irl work for me so I have only really been able to keep up with Eminence in Shadow and Frieren. If you aren’t watching Frieren at this point, I am not sure what I can say to convince you, but the animation of the most recent episode was absolutely amazing and completely elevated the manga to new heights I could not have imagined.

@ram@lemmy.ca if you would be so kind as to do the pin/unpin shuffle once again.

Tae Yamada became even more legendary once I found out that she is voiced by none other than Sailor Moon herself, Kotono Mitsuishi. Legendary indeed.

I just finished season 1 of ZLS, and have enjoyed it so far. Looking forward to season 2 and glad to hear that it held up in your viewing.

If you are talking about absurd SOL series, then you can’t really go wrong with Nichijou. It’s as absurd and slice of life-y as you can get. An older, slightly less ridiculous version of that would be Azumanga Daioh. I would also add Bocchi the Rock in here as an absurdist SOL (even though it is usually referred to as a CGDCT).

If you are looking for fantasy flavor in your SOL, then you could check out Campfire Cooking (isekai, but moreso a comfy SOL), Bofuri (VRMMO fantasy land), or Little Witch Academia (this isn’t technically a SOL I don’t think, but most of the episodes are pretty tame, self-contained stories).

If you don’t mind some romance in your SOL, you could check out Wotakoi, Horimiya, or Komi Can’t Communicate.

Some shows I have not seen that seem like they might scratch the same itch would be Akiba Maid War, K-On, or the show that ZLS was largely channeling in its idol segments, Love Live.

We can only hope that this form continues. Frieren is a pretty big commitment at 28 episodes with this quality. So I am really hoping that it doesn’t drop as it goes. If they can keep delivering shows that look this good, it’s hard to complain.

Well, if we are talking about currently airing shows, Frieren is likely to supplant Oshi no Ko for AOTY for me so far. It is a very different kind of show, melancholy, slow, thoughtful, but it is an excellent adaptation of an excellent manga. Also I have been enjoying Eminence in Shadow, but that one, being season 2 and a parody of the isekai genre, is very hit or miss with people if they connect with the humor or not. I have heard good things about Shangri-La Frontier, so that one might scratch an action itch for you.

If we are opening up to not currently airing shows, Samurai Champloo is one of my favorites when it comes to creative sword fight choreography. Lycoris Recoil is excellent at gun fight action. If you are looking for feel-good SOL like spy family, you could try Buddy Daddies (though I haven’t seen it) or Usagi Drop (the show is good, avoid the manga). Tengoku Daimakyo might scratch a mystery, adventure itch. It isn’t explicitly a mystery, but there are lots of mysterious things going on.

This past week, I didn’t really have too much time to keep up with seasonal stuff. I still haven’t watched the latest episodes of Kanojo mo Kanojo or Dekoboko Majo. Also, I haven’t yet had a chance to check out either Pluto or The Apothecary Diaries. I have time off around Thanksgiving (in the US), so hopefully can catch up on stuff then.

For non-seasonal stuff this past week. I did manage to finish the first season of Zombie Land Saga. Overall it was really enjoyable. I do think it started the season off stronger than it ended, but there was a nice plot reveal pertaining to Kotaro to end the season that makes me excited for the second season (when I get a chance).

Finally, I am still slowly working through Rurouni Kenshin 2023. Just got to Sano’s introduction and really feel like they are taking their time with the pacing. I am not really sold on whether it is a good thing or not, but the show feels unnecessarily slow sometimes. I am torn on whether this is a good thing or bad thing though. I suspect that it just feels slow right now since it is still early in the story and this beginning portion is just not very strong. But that the slow pacing will pay off later in the story when the action picks up. Time will tell!

@ram@lemmy.ca if you would be so kind as to do the pinning once again.

I didn’t realize this was getting a second season. I haven’t watched the first season. The premise sounds like a decent hook for a fantasy story, but the ratings don’t inspire a ton of confidence.

Definitely deserved for Frieren. Episode 7 was probably my favorite episode yet. The Kingdoms of Ruin dropping entirely off the chart is surprising considering that it premiered at number 1 on the chart and stayed high until suddenly its gone. Also interesting to see Undead Unluck and Dead Mount Death Play jumping up the chart so much.

This past week saw probably my favorite episode of Frieren yet (Episode 7). That show keeps delivering each and every week. I went back and re-read part of the source to see how far it has adapted so far and the current episode ended partway through chapter 15. So, that means that they have only adapted 14.5 manga chapters in 7 full episodes. For some perspective, the most recent Frieren chapter published was 115. Incredible show with probably one of my favorite EDs in recent memory. If you have yet to check it out, I cannot recommend it enough.

The other thing I watched this past week I wanted to mention is Suzume no Tojimari. I am a bit late on checking it out as I wanted to wait and watch it together with my wife and our schedules don’t often align in a way to watch a whole movie together (she works more on weekends while I work during the week). I had two main takeaways I wanted to discuss. First, the movie is absolutely gorgeous. If you are a fan of animation as an artistic endeavour, then this movie is right up your alley setting everything else aside.

The second thing is that I felt the story really let down the rest of the movie. Keeping this general and spoiler-free, there are too many things the story was trying to accomplish in too little time. So, it never really spent long enough on any particular story beat or explained things enough to make the viewer get invested. I have lots of thoughts about this, but don’t have the energy to write it all out. Overall, and this might sound harsh, I thought Suzume was kind of like the anime version of Avatar (the movie). Everything about its production was stunning, but the plot didn’t live up to the rest of the audio-visual sensory experience happening on screen.

I know that second take is kind of spicy given the overwhelmingly positive reception the movie has received, so happy to elaborate behind spoiler tags below.

@ram@lemmy.ca, @N3DSdude@lemmy.ml would it be possible to pin again?

It’s been ages since I have last played Minecraft (beta probably, yes I am old) so it blows my mind that people are making mods centered around anime. As long as you enjoy the show, that is all that matters. Honestly, what anime doesn’t have 1-2 troublesome elements (brocon, siscon, inappropriate fanservice, etc.)? If you dismiss every show that has one problematic thing, then you aren’t watching very much and would miss out on some great characters and stories.

They are really making Rose look like a villain here. Which…thinking about it, isn’t entirely wrong either.

I had to look up Yuzuki Family as that show was not even on my radar for this season. There are so many shows coming out each season that it is hard to keep up. On the flip side, that usually means that you can always find a couple shows that really click with you each season. It certainly sounds wholesome from the synopsis. Might be one to queue up when it’s been a while since I talked with my brother.

This one is on my to-watch list purely because it comes from Takahiro Oomori and I love both Baccano! and Durarara. Good to hear that it is being well-received. I think I am planning on waiting for its run to finish and then binge it.

I haven’t watched too many older shows this past week as I have been busy with work and trying to sample a lot of the new season’s shows. I am still in awe of the VA work for Kotaro in Zombie Land Saga. That character is so off the rails and the voice work really lends to the air of insanity that surrounds him. Plus, it is the same CV as one of my other favorite characters, Okabe Rintaro from Steins; Gate.

As for this season’s offerings, Frieren and Eminence are both really hitting for me. They are probably my favorite manga and LN series respectively, so I knew I was either going to like them or hate them, but I am so happy that the adaptations are of amazing quality. I also loved the premiere episode of 100GF, another great manga, so I am hoping that the quality stays high as I am planning on putting on episode 2 after I finish writing this post.

My wife and I started watching the new Kenshin (only two episodes in so far). We are both big fans of the original series, but the new one just isn’t really doing it for us. It feels like it doesn’t have the silly humor of the old series, but it doesn’t compensate by doing something like upping the action sequences. It just kind of falls in this boring middle. People that have been watching it, does it get any better?

As a meta comment, I would like to thank those that have already and encourage those that haven’t yet to participate in the survey about episode discussion posts. It is valuable feedback to help design the tools to help the community grow in a healthy and desirable way for us.

@N3DSdude@lemmy.ml @ram@lemmy.ca Any chance of pinning this and unpinning last week’s thread?

I know AC has a reputation for being unpredictable, but I hadn’t heard anything about The Kingdoms of Ruin. Surprised to see it jump out to the top of the chart like this over some big hitters (JJK, TEIS, Frieren). Time will tell how it shakes out as the season goes on.

There are already some good recommendation in this thread and I will second some of them in my list:

• Baccano!
• Kino’s Journey: Yes, the main character is not an adult, but it handles very mature themes and is similar in feel to Mushishi
• Ghost in the Shell
• Samurai Champloo

I hadn’t heard of this one before until I pulled up a page and saw it also goes by Ranger Reject, which I am aware of. I am not quite sure what to make of this one. If you read the synopsis of the source manga, it sounds like a straight-forward sentai series. However, if you read the anime synopsis, it sounds like a subversion of the genre. Might have to give this one a try when it comes out to see what the deal is.

@N3DSdude@lemmy.ml @ram@lemmy.ca any chance this might get pinned so it doesn’t get buried?

Yeah, the show was frustrating to me. I actually feel like it could have been good, but the pacing felt way off. You can see a previous rant of mine on an episode discussion thread, but the adaptation’s pacing felt super inconsistent. Props for having one of the best little sister characters in a while though.

It has been quite a while since I last watched Bebop, I might be due soon (this season is pretty packed for me though). Earlier this year I went back and rewatched Gundam Wing to see how it held up to the version of it that was in my head from watching it on TV after school. I still think it is a really cool series, but if you try to follow the actual plot it is all over the place (13 year old me just didn’t care).

Yeah, sometimes you know right away if a show is going to be good or not. I should have heeded those feelings when I watched Am I Actually the Strongest last season. I got like 10 minutes in and was already kind of tired of it…then proceeded to watch the whole season. This season I am getting those vibes from The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch. I am three episodes in and it hasn’t really gotten much better. I am just terrible at dropping a show once I have started.

I have recently finished watching Campfire Cooking in Another World and it was a way better adaptation than I had expected. I am up to date on the manga, but had written off the anime as I figured it would be a fairly sub-par isekai adaptation (like most of them are). However, I was really surprised at how nice the animation was, especially the titular cooking sequences. It actually inspired me to make chicken katsu curry (it was delicious). Also, I love the OP. Like, it is a regular in my daily listening now it is so good. Really…check it out (long version).

After finishing that, I started watching Zombie Land Saga. I actually picked this one completely randomly from my library and went in completely blind. I must say, the cold open of episode 1 caught me completely off guard. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this show before I started, but it has turned out very different than I expected. Other highlights include the performance in episode 2, and the VA work for Kotaro (really, it is incredible).

Finally, on a meta note, I just want to thank everybody for engaging in the thread about episode discussions over the weekend. There were a lot of great ideas and points raised in the course of that discussion.

Enjoyed the first episode a lot. It’s good to see that they have kept the meta-humor feel to the series. In the manga, there are lots of meta-jokes referencing things like panels, the artist, chapters, etc. So, I am glad to see that during the conversation with the god, that the meta-jokes remain strong when he talks about getting lines cut from the manga and then we literally see a skip button and a mouse click it like its a game or something. This one looks like it will be a lot of fun. Kind of funny that this is airing the same season as Kanojo mo Kanojo.

I kind of like the voting before a season idea!

I see what you are saying. The one thread/season would definitely cause some spoiler issues unless there were some strict moderation. Your idea caused me to think of something like a pinned megathread with actively airing shows and their episode thread links in a table. Then, you could have the bot post the discussion threads to a separate, dedicated, bot-run community that houses all the automated threads. This would leave /c/anime more clutter-free, even if there is little activity on a lot of shows.

For example, the megathread could have something like this for the actively airing shows:

Also, just found out that this table does not render correctly in Jerboa on mobile. So, that might be an issue for something like this.

Personally speaking, I appreciate the automated posts as a standardized format for the posts to be made. Having consistent post titles makes searching for previous discussions easier and the posts (after some tweaking for lemmy vs. reddit) include a table to make looking at previous episode discussion threads very easy.

That being said, I sympathize with people that don’t want the community or their feed filled up with episode threads that don’t have any comments/activity in them. While the community remains small, it might be better to limit the number of shows that the bot is used for rather than let it rip on everything it finds. The anime subreddit can do that because of the larger userbase more actively voting popular things to the front page, but in this community, all posts spend some time in the front page.

The bot also definitely has some issues. There are some shows that it seems to not be able to pick up new episodes for. As an example this season, the bot missed making a thread for Tearmoon Empire (thanks @lvxferre@lemmy.ml for stepping in). Last season, I remember several shows that also never really got threads either. I am not a dev, so I can’t really dive too deeply to figure out why, but the problems are there.

I really liked the manga as well and I would say it is pretty faithful to the manga in spirit. To be honest, I don’t remember all the details of the early parts of the manga to tell you what exactly they may have changed here or omitted there. However, the main thing I like in this series are the characters, and they definitely embody them well. Mirika is still Mirika just like Naoya is still Naoya and everybody tends to shout everything they say just like in the manga.

I think that the show gets a lot of flak from people based on the premise/genre. But, if you liked the manga, then you would probably enjoy the show too. Just set your expectations. This isn’t cinema by any means, it is a turn your brain off (just like the characters) and enjoy kind of show.

I understand that this show is not the most beloved or best story by any stretch, but I really love the characters in this show. It is like having a cast full of Aquas from Konosuba. They are all so stupid, but likable in their own ways. This episode probably features the most controversial part of the whole story when Mirika kidnaps Naoya. I do really like the OP for this season, but the visuals in the OP give away a lot of the story that is yet to happen. The manga might be over, but at least we still get to spend a bit more time with these goofballs that can only seem to speak with capslock stuck on.

It’s great to see Frieren recognizing that she has changed since the last time she fought one of those monsters and illusory Himmel was such a bro to make it easy for her to blast him. I think it is a bit unfair to criticize Fern for freezing up fighting a monster when she did just fine against Qual when he was unsealed. Looking forward to seeing the party fully assembled and some action next episode.

Also, the OP has grown on me a bit since last week. It’s not my favorite ever, but it is pretty good, especially paired with great visuals. The ED is amazing though.