They started the season saying it was going to be a tragedy but it still got me when it happened.

Same. That episode destroys me. I rewatched it recently and it got me as much as the first time.

Plus, we have no idea what being stuck in a lich’s body does to the human psyche, so he has at least that much excuse for the evil he does do outright and knowingly.

That’s the thing that made me start thinking about this. There’s almost an interesting angle there with his body seemingly mysteriously changing how he feels, but they never do anything with it. I think some kind of internal struggle and mystery around it could have been a good plotline. I didn’t finish watching it, but there was another trash isekai about a guy becoming an evil boss from a video game he played (A Wild Last Boss Appears) and there was a bit of that going on with the personality of the real character he’s inhabiting slowly overtaking his own. Although at least for what I saw, they didn’t really do much more with that either.

I’ve been watching “A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even” separate from my group. I have a bit more room for trash in my schedule.

That said, I feel kind of odd about the show. It sort of reminds me of my issue with Overlord: We follow the protagonist most of the time as someone to root for, then they do some absolutely heinous things that feel like they came out of nowhere, then we go right back to them being vaguely sympathetic. I’d say it’s one of the problems with doing a villain as protagonist TV show because it’s hard for time spent with the protag not to make a connection. However, I feel like there have been some good examples of shows where the protag is the bad guy or becomes the bad guy either due to a “road to hell is paved with good intentions” or “corrupted by circumstances” plot devices.

The one that most comes to mind is Breaking Bad. It’s a long road from push over high school teach and family man to ruthless drug kingpin and we’re there every step of the way to see how it happens.

This show and Overlord don’t really feel like that. The protagonists just kinda do evil shit every once in a while and nobody really acknowledges how fucked up that is. The most recent episode really hammered that home for me.

idk, I’m just overthinking a trash show. It’s just that sometimes I can’t help but watch some of these and think of what they could have been with more competent… everything.

I generally don’t take many pictures. I just have this one from the Frieren cosplay meetup.

EDIT: Oh, looking close at the pic, there was one more character in there. I assume the guy with green hair is the drunk priest.

This week I went to my first anime convention: Anime NYC. It was alright. I don’t regret going, but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go again. It’s like 90% people selling stuff. I’m more used to gaming conventions where there’s a bunch of stuff to do because companies are showcasing upcoming games.

I did enjoy seeing all the cosplayers though. There were so many. A LOT of them were either from gatcha games or really popular stuff like One Piece/Demon Slayer, but I did also see quite a few from shows I liked.

A few Jojos ones, but save for one Star Platinum, only from part 5/6. I guess it’s easier to cosplay the characters that don’t have muscles that put bodybuilders to shame.

One Violet Evergarden. I was with my mom who I recently introduced to anime and she loved this show, so she was happy to see that.

There was a Frieren meetup that we went to see. (It was weirdly difficult to find lol.) Funny thing is the character composition. There were only two Frierens in the entire group. Most were Stark or Fern, then one Himmel and I think two Eisens.

There was also a meetup for Apothecary Diaries, but it was at the same time as a panel we went to instead.

On the way over to the Frieren meetup we saw the Blue Lock meetup and I found it kind of funny because I’m reasonably sure literally every cosplayer there was a woman. I didn’t really consider it’s appeal to female audiences, but now that I think about it I guess it makes sense.

There was one person is a big Garfield mascot costume with a bikini on top of it.

One guy was David from Edgerunners.

One Megumin.

And some others, but you get the idea.

Also holy shit, I haven’t been in the Javits Center since I was a kid. I did not appreciate just how fucking MASSIVE that place is. It takes like a minute or so to walk from one end of the building to the other.

The Zombie Land Saga movie finally came out on streaming, so I watched it recently. It was super good. I love the series, but I’ve found that I dislike a lot of anime series movies because they just feel like several episodes of a TV show stitched together. This is one of the few that don’t fit that description. It feels like a properly structured and paced movie.

Also I thought they did a good job with the sci-fi stuff. I was totally expecting the aliens to be generic little green/grey men in flying saucers, but they made an effort to come up with something different and fit it into the story.

I’m kind of curious if this is the end of the series or not. It definitely seems like it could be a sendoff, but

I’d definitely love to see more of the show or at least a new thing by the same creative team. I always love good original anime and we definitely don’t get enough of that.

Maybe? Not sure. The show itself is trash power fantasy stuff, but I didn’t notice anything exceptional about it. The crazy animation and direction is a sight to behold, but it might get old making fun of it after a while. Your mileage may vary.

We’ve checked out quite a few shows at this point. We’ll probably check out some more, but with continuing and returning shows taking up a lot of space on our schedule I doubt we’ll have much room for more. Although I’ll often end up watching some of the trash on my own if it’s funny enough.

Stuff we liked:

• All Works Maid: While at it’s base it’s still a power fantasy, I do find the premise to be a fun enough twist on the formula to be amusing and there’s some decent comedy to boot. Hopefully it doesn’t get stale.

• Chain Smoker Cat: I can’t say that I’ve watched any other anime where a cat girl squats over a toilet and shits her brains out in ep1. So that’s something. Jokes aside, it was pretty funny. ’

• Goodbye Laura: Little Mermaid but Yuri? Sounds good. Also just a solid production all around.

• Grow Up Show: Is it just me or does the MC seem a bit like Megumin from the spinoff? Either way, I’m always down for a cute girls do cute author’s special interest as long as it seems well made.

• Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life: Fun setup and characters so far even if it isn’t particularly original at this point. Hopefully they keep it up.

• Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia: Very different setting and style than we usually get in anime and it was just a solid episode.

• Kaiju Girl: Cute with a fun twist. Hopefully the romance part doesn’t get annoying.

• Kaikigumi: Funny premise. Weird looking character designs. An MC who isn’t the basic default HS guy protag. Also, they described the org as a business. How does one make money scaring people?

• Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games: I’m not into fighting games. Whenever I’ve played one I just button mash. Although I have a friend who’s super into them. (Ironically not part of our anime watching group because he’s usually too busy.) The setup sort of reminds me of “Rock is a Lady’s Modesty”, which we also enjoyed. Like I said, CGDCASI is usually a good time. Also maybe yuri?

• Livid Lady: Seems like it has potential to be good revenge trash. Not that that genre usually turns out any good, but honestly just swapping the protag to a woman makes it more bearable.

• Oh Boy Was I Wrong About Her: Man there have been a lot of childhood friend romcoms recently. They seem to have a fun enough dynamic. I really hope the will they won’t they doesn’t end up being torturous.

• Sparks of Tomorrow: Kyoani doing Kyoani things. Also, as of ep 1, the fall counter is at 6.

Trash that’s worth mentioning:

• Frontier Lord: Wife Speedrun any%.

• Heavy Knight: GOHANDS. We didn’t actually know the studio going into it and I’ve never seen their work outside of videos making fun of them. But something felt off, so I had my suspicions and checked and yup, it’s them.

• Rear Guard: Slave loli speedrun any%. Also, what do they mean this town is only Isekai adventurers? Who the hell runs things in town?

• Villager Lv. 999: Somehow the setting is even dumber and more uninspired than the usual I can’t believe it’s not isekai! So… this is just Japan after magic and monsters showed up and… they just decided to rebuild society in the style of Medieval Europe because… um… coming up with original worldbuilding is entirely beyond the scope of these kinds of writers.

I feel kind of dumb for taking a discount deal for a year’s subscription. The service just keeps getting worse. Missing thumbnails and episode titles, incorrectly placed skip buttons, some shitty subs, etc. I was already planning to cancel when the year is up and now they think they can charge even more for a worse service?

I’ve been showing my mom some of my favorite shows which I think she would like. At the moment we’re in the middle of Carole and Tuesday. We’ve also watched Little Witch Academia, Bookworm, A Place Further Than The Universe, Frieren, Ya Boi Kongming, Keep Your Hands off Eizouken, Apocalypse Hotel, and I think some other shows which I’m forgetting.

For me, in particular I’ve really enjoyed the LWA rewatch. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve seen it and it still just very reliably makes me feel happy.

We actually tried Dress Up Darling despite me being very hesitant about it for obvious reasons. She was kind of ok with the parts I was worried about, but she got bored of it after a little while.

I’d definitely be interested in some other potential “mom shows”, whether I’ve seen them before or not.

Gotcha.

God I’m such a weeb I’ve already seen quite a few of these lol. But there are some ones I haven’t seen. I’ll give those a watch, thanks!

Current Season: (Context: Most shows I watch with a group of friends and we cut down until we have 16. I will sometimes watch some of the cut stuff on my own. I’ll start with friend stuff.)

• Witch Hat Atelier: Enjoying this show. It’s reasonably high quality, creative, etc. I’d say that it hasn’t quite reached the level I enjoyed Frieren yet, but solid none the less.

• Short Skirt and Clutz: We’ve been surprised by how much we’ve enjoyed this. It’s still a mostly generic romcom, but it just has a good vibe to it that makes it feel different enough to have made the list.

• Always a Catch: Always down for some trashy villainess show. We had also watched May I Ask for One Final Thing and liked it. Is this a new subgenre: Vilaness who beats the shit out of people? Sign me up.

• Kirio Fanclub: One of the standouts of the season. It’s just really funny. Good character dynamics, some funny scenarios, and most importantly: Goofy anime faces.

• Slime: Oh boy, now we’re getting EVEN BIGGER MEETINGS! We still kind of enjoy this, but man it’s such a meme at this point it’s hard not to joke about it.

• Bookworm: The first anime that made me want to go read the source material. I’ve read all the books starting after season 2 and I really enjoyed it. Now that I’m a filthy source reader, I can see why some might not be completely thrilled with the adaptation. The animation is pretty basic and it skips over a lot of stuff, but I kind of see that as being necessary. It’s a LONG series. If we ever had a hope of getting a full adaptation they need to be choosy about what they spend their time on. Also one of my friends is also a source reader and the other isn’t, so it’s been kind of funny knowingly listen to him speculate or get confused by stuff we know from the books.

• Iruma: This is just such a great show. Fun, creative, etc.

• Ribdiculous Reincarnation: We were pleasantly suprised by this show. Somewhat original premise, decently fun character banter, and I’m always down for mixing up animation styles. It reminds me of Pop Team Epic.

• Scum of the Brave (Continuing): This is fine. I’m not sure if we would have definitely kept watching it if it ended and then we got a S2 later, but inertia carried it to a spot on the list. Not to say it’s bad, there just isn’t anything terribly special about it. We do get a kick out of trying to figure out what their card game is though lol.

• Marriage Toxin: Unique premise with fun characters. My only gripe with it is I don’t think we needed the stupid magic shonen battle system. It takes up way too much of the runtime to explain all of that when they could have just had him be a regular badass hitman and had a better mix between the action and romcom stuff.

• The Ramparts of Ice: I clocked this one as being from the same author as You and I Are Polar Opposites when they did the chibi bits. Really good in both similar and different ways to the first show. Solid character writing and it’s nice having characters who can more directly talk about their feelings with each other. The first one also jumped the will they won’t they by just starting with them in a relationship. This show has some of the will they won’t they, but it’s more tolerable than normal because the characters are interacting with each other in very natural ways. I haven’t even been sure who the ships would be until somewhat recently. It’s not like some romcoms where I’m just shouting at my screen: “OH MY GOD IT’S SO OBVIOUS! SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING!”

• Akane-Banashi: It’s a topic I didn’t know about. I like the character design and personality of Akane. I just wish that the show would let us see more of the performances uninterrupted. I don’t want characters telling me why something is good. I want to experience it from the action itself. The commentary can be done before or after.

• Classroom of Black Cat and the Witch: The “Wait this trash show is actually kind of good” of the season.

• Daemons of the Shadow Realm: It’s ok but kind of frustrating. The opening episode went for shock value and tried to hook us with the intrigue of the story and then… idk they’ve just been kind of fafing about. It’s driving me nuts how they’ve met Asa and they just straight up haven’t asked her why the fuck she murdered everyone in their village. It’s not even just that I want to know, it also doesn’t feel natural that the characters would be interacting the way they are given the inciting incident.

• NIPPON SANGOKU: Interesting show with cool animation, but as it’s went on, I just kept thinking “Wait, why did this need to be set in a post apocalypse?” It’s pretty much just a period drama. The story barely makes any use of the setting.

• KILL BLUE: Decent action comedy. It’s not amazing but it’s fine for what it is.

As for stuff I’ve been watching on my own:

• I ended up watching a pair of romcoms that are basically just the same premise: Nerdy guy makes friends with a blonde gyaru and black haired girl in class, bonding over some shared otaku interests. They’re both enjoyable, but my god it’s hard keeping track of what happened in which series.

• An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess: Interesting twist. Not amazing, but entertaining enough. After the pink haired girl snaps, I kind of thought it would be revealed that she is also an isekai, but that hasn’t come up, so idk why she thinks the same way as protag.

• Pardon the Intrusion: Decently fun shojo rom com.

• Warrior Princess and Barbarian King: A new entry into a shojo romance sub-genre I’ve decided to call either “Beauty and the Beast” or “Stockholm syndrome” romance. It’s alright. And then suddenly: BAM! IT’S AN INCEST SHOW!

• Dr Stone: This season has gone full “Draw the rest of the owl.” It has completely jumped the shark for it being believable that they’ve been able to reconstruct these complicated technologies so quickly. Even if Senku is ultra smart, technology is built on other technology and economics. It’s hard to build stuff without excess labor from agriculture, precision tools, machinery, etc. In the earlier seasons one basic piece of tech would be a whole adventure and now it’s just a throwaway part of an episode.

• Vending Machine Isekai: It’s still just an amusing premise with ok characters. It’s fun enough to watch though. Also I cannot believe all the different kinds of vending machines there are. I had to go look one up recently to see if it was real: They had a pizza vending machine. As a New Yorker, what kind of unholy crime have they committed against pizza? Why Japan? Then it turns out it’s actually an American company and… I’m more disappointed.

• Re;Zero: I bounced off watching it with friends sometime in S2 because I just found it was way too bloated with characters yapping about lore and I had forgotten enough from S1 that I just kind of zoned out after a while watching it. I decided to give it another chance with a rewatch to see if maybe we could watch S4 together since friends have kept up with it. It was a bit better on second viewing as a binge watch from S1, but I think I still stand by S2 not being that great. It’s just not as colossally bad as I thought it was. I ended up continuing but didn’t get to S4 before we decided what shows we were watching. It’s been alright. I am kind of annoyed about the memory loss thing that just happened. It feels like something to just kill forward momentum when we were maybe getting somewhere interesting.

• Wistoria Wand and Sword: We can’t remember if we actually watched S1 or not, so I ended up rewatching it before catching up on S2. Oh my god this show is so fucking stupid. It’s definitely making for a good trash watch.

• I watched through Overlord, rewatching S1 and going on to the rest. It was suitable trash.

• I’ve been showing my mom some anime. She’s been enjoying Bookworm, Eizoken, Little Witch Academia, A Place Further Than the Universe, Kongming, and I think one or two more that I’m blanking on at the moment. In particular it’s been really nice rewatching LWA. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve watched it. I love that show.

First time posting in one of these. Before I get into the current stuff: I’m looking for some anime recs. I always watch stuff when I exercise and at the moment if there’s no current episode out I’m out of stuff to watch.

In general I like a mix of stuff. Comedy, slice of life, romance, action/adventure stuff can be fine as long as there’s something more interesting about it than typical shounen, some shojo, and some weirder things. I’m also fine with some trash recs as long as they might be funny.

Not a complete list obviously, but here is a sampling of shows I’ve liked over the years in no particular order: * on things that I especially liked.

• Most Trigger shows. *
• Most Shaft Shows.
• Most Kyoani shows. *
• Zombieland Saga *
• Hinamatsuri
• Bookworm
• A Place Further Than the Universe *
• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
• Konosuba *
• Frieren *
• Apothacary Diaries
• Spy x Family
• Jojo’s *
• The first 2 Fate shows + The cooking show.
• Dress Up Darling *
• Dan Da Dan
• Bocchi the Rock *
• Ya Boi Kongming
• Apocalypse Hotel *
• Catcher in the Ballpark
• Call of the Night
• Slime isekai
• World in Colors
• A Sign of Affection
• Train to the End of the World
• Goblin Slayer
• Zom 100
• Iruma
• To Your Eternity
• FMA
• Mob Psycho 100 *
• First season of One Punch Man
• Magical Index/Scientific Railgun
• Machikado Mazoku *
• Kakegurui
• Death Note
• Golden Kamuy
• My Hero Academia Vigilantes
• Oshi No Ko
• You and I are Polar Opposites *
• Let this Grieving Soul Retire
• Campfire Cooking isekai
• Bakarina
• Dr Stone
• Witch Watch

I’d go on but this is getting long and I’m getting into the newer stuff I’ve watched with friends and we don’t always label the shows with their actual names lol. So hard to remember.

I guess in the interest of formatting I’ll just put the current season discussion in a comment.

Maybe the show that you could make the most references to while watching other anime? So JoJo’s.

It was my first thought. I feel old.

The fact that people couldn’t tell the difference between a human and an AI made isekai is hilarious. This genre is just a sea of slop.

I happened to read this recently. It’s mostly slice of life with a little “what weird things can my body do now that I’m part dragon?” I wouldn’t say there’s any action from what I’ve seen.

It’s kind of funny though, I don’t read much manga, but this is the second time in a row where I happened to read something only to find out Kyoani was going to adapt it not long after. Last one was CITY.

I don’t know what to expect with this. Probability of it turning out good feels low. It looks like it’s just gonna be a lot of action. I didn’t get much personality from the trailer. I’d hope they add in the weird stuff. Although I guess Sekiro had less of that than Souls or Elden Ring.

It’s impressive how much the show can mix up its art style and level of detail. Lower res for the anime bits. Super high detail/realistic lighting for the camera bits, etc.

It’s been interesting getting to see more of Marin’s life/friend group and how they look in on their relationship. There’s that contrast between Gojo’s fears of how people judge his interests with how relatively reasonable everyone has been. It feels like that girl from his childhood was the anomaly, although it could also be that it was more common and most people just grew out of it after a certain point. That was kind of my school experience. By sometime in late high school the people who used to be bullies just kind of stopped. We didn’t suddenly become friends, but they didn’t go out of their way to cause problems for me either.

It makes me wonder if that girl is going to show up again for some character arc that reckons with their past or if that’s just not something the show wants to tackle now that it’s settled into a groove.