The only positive thing I can say about this is that after next week they will have two years to remove the current staff and get their shit together. Better yet, get another studio entirely. Is KyoAni doing something at the moment?

I reread that part. This is just yet another example of the adaptation not giving a shit. In the light novel, Lessy is on his side, and Myne stands up, with her upper body half outside the window since Lessy is only half as wide as she is tall. That’s when she gets grabbed by the light rope and is pulled out of the window. The size of Lessy is the same in the anime, so there was absolutely nothing holding the adaptation back from doing the same here. But instead, they opted to have her climb out of the safety of Lessy like some idiot. At least they are consistent, since they prove in every single episode that they neither read the source material nor understood it.

Summer '26 wasn’t a very good season for me. I had high hopes for a lot of shows, but the anime adaptations were lackluster. The frontrunner in this regard is Bookworm Part 3. But also, Livid Lady and Victoria of Many Faces were just bad adaptations. Even Grand Blue was not funny to me, but that was mostly true for the last season as well.

The only show I was looking forward to that didn’t disappoint was Frontier Lord. The animation was nothing to write home about, but at least it stuck to the pace and plot of the light novel. It might have been too slow for anime-onlies, and making the few action scenes a sakuga-fest would have been nice, but I’m happy with what we got.

For the new-to-me shows, I only really enjoyed Chainsmoker Cat and Dara-San. Those two were great, though, but in the end I would just give those 3 shows my stamp of approval. So, not the best season, and the next one looks even weaker for my taste. I hope there will be some surprise hits for me.

The World’s Strongest Witch - the premise sounds interesting and I’m hearing a lot of positive opinions. Could be fun

For what it’s worth, here is what I wrote about the first LN volume. TL;DR: don’t put too much hope into it.

#I’m Looking For a Zombie - from the author of Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu

The better Bocchi. There, I said it!.

Nia Liston is fun. I hope the adaptation will be good.

No. Execution is the only valid punishment if the retard was a fair Aub. Others get executed for less. Including children.

Realistically, the blame lies less on Wilfried than on Veronica and Sylvester, who raised him poorly.

Well, they didn’t raise him at all. That’s the problem.

From Part3, Volume 5:

The plot was fairly devious, if you asked me: Wilfried had essentially been raised by his grandmother since birth, so it only made sense that he would love her more and consider her more trustworthy than his actual mother, who had only recently been given the opportunity to regularly interact with him. Veronica had his unconditional trust, and it stood to reason that he would welcome her guidance in a situation like this.

Letting him run free around nobles of all factions? Ridiculous. Oswald should have been instantly fired for allowing this to happen, at the very least.

Oswald did have his eyes on him until he was relieved by Linhardt.

“Nothing abnormal happened while I was there,” Oswald responded, “and I stayed with him until Linhardt came to relieve me.”

Linhardt had desperately run around trying to keep up with Wilfried and his friends, but at one point, he tripped over and fell hard enough to hurt his legs. While Linhardt was being treated, Wilfried was looked after by his friends’ attendants.

It’s not being said specifically, but I assume that tripping Linhardt was also part of the plan to get Wilfried out form under his attendants eyes. I have enough problems with Oswald as a retainer for Wilfried, but in this case he’s blameless for once.

I have HanaKana’s B-bAAAKAAA!! as my text notification.

Should have executed that fucker. If it had been anyone else’ kid they would have been on the chopping block the moment they said they entered the tower. But because it’s that stupid retard’s son he gets a slap on the wrist.

I want to see the P.A.Works version of guy who gets kicked out of the heroes’ party.

When it’s good, it’s my second favorite genre, so I consume a lot of it. Sadly, it’s mostly bad. Most of the time, it’s just a crutch for the author to explain the world to the reader/watcher in modern terms and as blatant self-insert pandering. It’s very seldom that the isekai aspect has actual ramifications on the plot. Most isekai would just as well work as a fantasy where the main character just so happens to be born with a special power. The Earth knowledge of most MC’s doesn’t really play into the narrative.

As for good examples, I would recommend Ascendance of a Bookworm. I have problems with the anime adaptation (a whole different can of worms, and once I start, I won’t stop again), but it’s the opposite of a power fantasy (she nearly dies from climbing a flight of stairs), and her modern-day knowledge is her only superpower and her motivation. Without her Earth knowledge, she wouldn’t have the motivation that drives the entire plot, and she wouldn’t have the means to rise above her station.

Depends on how you want to interpret the question. Is it about adapting the story of a specific game, or is it about adapting the setting of a game into anime form. Nier would be the former, Edgerunner the latter. Goblin Slayer is something in between. So regardless of how the question was meant, I gave a example.

It’s my favorite anime. My one and only anime that I would give an 11/10. But I wouldn’t call it cozy because there is an underlying darkness and uncertainty to the characters and what’s going to happen to them. It doesn’t feel “cozy” even though nothing “un-cozy” is happening plot-wise.

Goblin Slayer, NieR:Automata Ver1.1a, and Cyberpunk Edgerunners come to mind.

And take Dragon’s Dogma and the Persona animes as a template for what not to do.

Series that lack characters acting out of malice and plots without perilous situations. On the other hand, even shows that are usually cozy can, out of nowhere, turn into the most brutal betrayal that shellshocks generations of viewers.

I have only seen the first episode of Kimi to Boku and am not familiar with Hetelia from memory, but Daily Lives of High School Boys is a prime example about how boys centric show would generally follow more raunchy themes. If the other two shows are different and genuninely show innocent themes, then I would call them outliers more than the rule. Same as with outliers to girls being depicted as innocent. Sure there are girls that play on the gap-moe bit those are the outliers (and lets be honest here, they are more often then not just there to deliver some innuendo joke).

It makes sense once you think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.

I don’t think that is the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen audience. I think the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen demographic is the perceived innocence of girls. Not in the sense of “I’m a mindless, hormone-driven beast and want to ravage that innocent girl”, but in the sense of “I’m surrounded by constant anxiety, malice, and selfishness in my day-to-day life, and watching those innocent girls do whatever lets me forget this for 25 minutes”. Girls are generally perceived as nice and free of malice (before I had two of those myself, I thought the same), so that’s why there are no “cute boys doing cute things” shows. The general expectation for a show following boys would be for it to be more raunchy. Compare K-On! to Nijiiro Days, for example.

Yeah, no wonder. It’s been 16 years, and the basic premise just screams “ecchi”. I mostly remember it especially because of the gap between what you think this will be and what you actually get. Getting a heartwarming (and tame) romance story from the show about a girl who wants to fuck a hundred guys was surprising.

Sometimes, when you really think about a well-written story, you realize that literally the only reason the protagonists are seen as the good guys is that the story is written from their perspective, and that if the story was written from the opposite perspective, you’d believe the other side was the good guys.

You have to check out Zilbagias the Demon Prince: How the Seventh Prince Brought Down the Kingdom. This series is blurring those lines in such an interesting way.

From the “I can’t believe this isn’t hentai!?” end of the spectrum, I really enjoyed Interspecies Reviewers.

For something from the other end (let’s call it “Barely Ecchi” to go with the theme here), I would choose Agent AIKa. To me, Aika will always be a Best Girl contender.

But the real gems are found right in the middle: Keijo!!!, Shokugeki no Souma, Kill la Kill, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Prison School, To LOVE Ru, … All real good shows in their own right, and you get to have fun seeing the prudes loose their shit online. Win-Win.