Now that I’ve read Dogsred (same mangaka) I really want to get into Golden Kamuy but unfortunately I just don’t see myself catching up by the start of the season - or even the end of it tbh.

Things I’m excited for this season, in descending order:

• Medalist S2
• a pretty wide gap tbh
• Frieren S2
• Jujutsu Kaisen S3
• Oshi no Ko S3

So why the wide gap? I liked the beginnings of those last three shows quite a lot, but I’ve read the manga for all of them and IMO they all go downhill as they go on. Frieren begins to feel more like a generic battle shounen. Jujutsu Kaisen focuses too much on the fights and the magic system and not enough on the characters. Oshi no Ko’s author is really good at writing fun characters and character moments but kinda bad at writing the serious drama he seems to want to write. Also, Medalist really is just that good. It’s a great story with a decent adaptation and I’ll take that over a decent story with a great adaptation any day. And who knows, maybe Season 2 will fix some of the minor issues Season 1 had - in particular I’d appreciate it if they could make the spins look better. Guess we’ll find out!

I think the first half of the episode would’ve been really fun if they’d spent more than $8 making it. I liked the diegetic piano though!

As for the show overall, it was okay. The only part of the adaptation I liked was Marie’s and Marie 2’s voice acting though. Apart from that I mostly wish I spent that time on the manga instead.

Last time I tried using Duolingo I ended up concluding it was a waste of time. There are better resources these days.

Sanda seems cool, but I’ve only seen the first few episodes and I don’t think it’s on CR or Netflix. Same goes for Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26. Apart from that my fall 2025 recommendation is to get caught up on other stuff. Here are a few of my favorites that are on Crunchyroll:

• Yakitate!! Japan
• Akira
• Dan Da Dan
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• Gurren Lagann
• Kaguya-sama: Love is War
• Skip and Loafer
• Brave Bang Bravern!
• Mobile Suit Gundam
• Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack
• Mobile Suit GUNDAM Iron Blooded Orphans
• Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam
• Ping Pong the Animation
• Record of Lodoss War
• Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars
• STEINS;GATE
• Ouran High School Host Club
• Apocalypse Hotel
• Gunbuster
• Eureka Seven
• Mob Psycho 100
• Nichijou
• Code Geass
• Cowboy Bebop

Finished my Gundam 00 rewatch. Overall it holds up well. I might be the only person who likes season 2 more than season 1 though! I also watched the Gundam 00 movie for the first time. I’d say I liked it about as much as the TV series. I would go into details on why but that’s spoilers and spoilers are a massive pain on this platform so I won’t bother.

Since I was in a Gundam mood I also watched the SEED Freedom movie. I thought it was kinda bad. Not as bad as SEED Destiny because that would take some real effort, but still worse than SEED itself. Gotta admire the director’s dedication to horniness. Never gotten such a view of a woman’s ass while she was sitting in a chair before. How does that even work? Anyways, decent action but horrible plot. Also, I could’ve sworn the guns that shoot green lasers were also making Imperial Tie Fighter laser noises. I need to do a side-by-side comparison.

I felt like doing more anime things, so inspired by the Quest for the Best podcast I watched my first Uma Musume thing: the Beginning of a New Era movie. It was really well-made. The characters were fun. The story was well-written. Absolutely no complaints about the animation. I think I just fundamentally don’t care even one iota about horse racing or idols, so the movie fell a little flat for me. I still enjoyed it, just not nearly as much as some others seem to have.

Edit: Forgot to mention I also got caught up on Mechanical Marie. Forgettable really is the word for this show. It was definitely better than the SEED Freedom movie but it can’t stand up to anything else on this list. The story and characters are fine, but if I’m being honest it’s barely animated.

Wow, he really just dumped her in the bathtub with her towel. I know that was supposed to be a serious scene and I guess there are important modesty reasons for doing it (but then why have this happen in the bathroom in the first place) but I was distracted by the sopping-wet towel the whole time.

Anyways, I wasn’t sure what I expected Marie to do here but infiltrating the ranks of the assassins wasn’t even on the list!

The translator would have to know enough Japanese to not just step in, but to verify every word that gets translated. At that point you’re not really saving much on either skill or time by using machine learning tools.

Any 2-bit translator can crank out what they are putting out with raws, screenshots, and voice to text

Have you tried? These tools might not be up to the standard you think. Not even Youtube’s autotranslate stuff is actually any good.

I only ever watched the original series. Is any of the rest of it any good?

Honestly N1 is probably unnecessary. I think most people who’ve passed N2 could do a great job with most shounen stuff. It’s not like they need to do it in real time.

Now that Thanksgiving is past, it’s properly Christmas season - and that means it was time for me to pick up Sanda. Seems properly unhinged, and perfect for the month of December. I’ve only watched the first episode though, so who knows whether it’ll be able to keep that up.

No, it’s you and the soulless husks in charge of Amazon!

Now, LLM localization is the greater challenge. I highly doubt those, including the classic machine-learning models, can reach N1-level localization quality.

There’s no chance it’s happening any time soon. Many manga and anime lean heavily on visual context as well as the context of the story in general to clear up situations where the language would otherwise be ambiguous, so until the translation software can also use all of that context it’s basically impossible.

You may be underestimating how bad these AI dubs are.

Sick, looks like that’ll be a good season for fantasy.

I don’t see a date here. Is there a date?

The biggest issue with Eureka Seven is that it starts really slow, but unfortunately plenty of people have bounced off because of that. Very unfortunate.

Redline is one of my favorite anime, but I’ve never seen it described as “emotional” before.

Medalist (sports comedy)

I always looked at it as more of a sports drama with some really good comedic moments. Either way, top-tier show. Looking forward to Season 2 this January!