missingno

They took a week off two weeks ago, I think they didn’t want to air during the Olympics. And since the dub is on a two week delay, that has reverberated to this week.

Damn, everything with Azuma hit way too close to home for me.

I’m just saying that the original is always better than dub.

To say that as if it’s universal is exactly what I’m trying to say is wrong. Especially if your justification is “it’s not 1:1 so it’s bad” - SungWon Cho, who IMO is one of the most talented English VAs out there, has a response to that that’s way better than I can ever put it.

In 2002 when Naruto first aired? Yeah, a lot of dubs were pretty bad back then, they cut a lot of corners and didn’t always hire the best talent. But today, voice acting is taken so much more seriously now, and there is a lot of equally fantastic talent in the west. Hell, there are some shows I’ve watched just because a VA I like is in them.

I feel like this kind of elitism towards dubs comes from people who grew up in that era when dubs sucked, but haven’t noticed that times have changed since then.

I’ve seen this in licensed titles too. Bocchi the Rock had several pages of notes at the end of each volume explaining references that went way over my head.

I liked the bit with the kids figuring out how to make Tag more accessible. Fantasy version of the curb cut effect.

Also damn, wasn’t expecting such a high stakes yakuza action sequence from the cute fluffy romcom.

I love riichi mahjong, and I’ve been on a quest to watch/read every mahjong anime/manga. You’d be surprised how much media exists for a board game.

Akagi is peak, my favorite anime/manga of all time, and everything else by Nobuyuki Fukumoto is fantastic too. Saki has very entertaining moments during the games… but is kind of insufferable between games. Legend of Koizumi is hilariously silly, though the manga ran way too long after the joke had run its course. Tohai starts off very strong, becomes ridiculously edgy, and then kept going until I just ironically enjoyed how stupid it was. Legendary Gambler Tetsuya feels like it was made to piss me off as a mahjong player.

But the most underappreciated manga-only hidden gem has gotta be Tetsunaki no Kirinji. This one really feels like it was written for serious mahjong players, the moment it started lampooning the differences in playstyle between online and IRL play I knew I was reading something special. Praying it someday gets an anime adaptation.

In the English-speaking world, we use the term ‘anime’ to specifically refer to animation made in Japan. Other countries do make animation, we just don’t call it ‘anime’ unless it comes from Japan.

But in Japan, ‘anime’ simply means animation. I remember seeing a video where someone interviewed random people on the street in Tokyo asking what’s their favorite anime. The most popular answer was Frozen.

Takopi’s Original Sin

The Invisible Man and his Soon-to-Be Wife is my pick for this season’s most adorable and uplifting. I have a bit of a soft spot for representations of disability in media, and you can tell the mangaka really did her homework.

DAMMIT STARK YOU’RE FUMBLING EVERYTHING.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRHzejZvD-Q

Frieren S2 ED is absolutely beautiful.

Each episode just gets cuter than the last.

Attempting to actually explain away how food disappears and how he can make his clothes disappear felt a little silly. But I suppose it’s a silly show to begin with, so I’ll allow it.

I like that they didn’t go the obvious route of pairing up Jarashi and Daichi. Now that I think about it, it’s rare to see a queer couple outside of explicitly yaoi/yuri works, just as secondary supporting characters that don’t need to be the focus.

Caught up on Spy x Family S3. This was the comfort food show I needed after a rough week at work.

Frieren S2 is finally here, and I don’t even need to say anything more. It’s Frieren.

I have a bit of a soft spot for representations of disability in media, so The Invisible Man and his Soon-to-Be Wife caught my attention. I’d heard that the mangaka worked closely with a local school for the visually impaired to research the depiction of a blind MC, and it definitely looks like she did her homework. Adorably sweet and fluffy, might give me diabetes.

Also started on Legendary Gambler Tetsuya (2000). First hand and I’m already complaining that they can somehow make complete reads just a few turns in with so little visible information on the table. But this is how every mahjong anime/manga goes, it’s an entirely different game when characters can draw whatever tile the author wants them to draw, so fine fine I’ll suspend my disbelief. But then you have the whole bit about them improperly shuffling and then keeping track of tiles that got flipped over, and that’s driving me wild because they simply shouldn’t be getting away with not shuffling correctly. You never put a face-up tile in your wall, flip it back over and gently reshuffle a bit more. Call the other players out if they do this. Can’t even use the fiction excuse for that one, just no.

I imagine it’s something that could fetch a high price to the right buyer, but actually finding that buyer might not be trivial. How long would they be carrying around their own Kryptonite before they can pawn it off?

Also, one detail that did stand out to me here is the way Frieren seems a lot more casual about it, as someone with a much more academic interest in magic she views it as another novelty. But Fern seems a lot more genuinely terrified, as someone who feels like she needs magic to survive. She’s trembling when she can’t detect mana in the cave, and when Stark grabs her she starts fidgeting with her bracelet to try and calm her nerves.

And honestly, Fern being afraid is a good enough reason for Frieren and Stark not to push the matter any further.

Peak, as expected.

I feel like the cave of mana-suppressing crystals could’ve been an arc unto itself. We just came off of an arc where Stark had to be sidelined, and in general we really haven’t seen all that much of a physical class’s role.

Loved the ED. I’m always a sucker for more doodle-y animation.

Loved the game, so this is a pleasant surprise to find out about.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is pretty much THE peak of the last decade or so. And now’s the perfect time to catch up with season two premiering in a few days.

Apocalypse Hotel for AOTY 2025. If I can convince you to just take my word and go into this one blind I think you’ll enjoy it even more.

If you liked Bocchi and Spy x Family and want more goofball comedies, try Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Dungeon Meshi, and CITY: The Animation.

Watched This Monster Wants to Eat Me. Started off very strong, the premise had me hooked, but it sorta felt like too many episodes were going by with no real development. S1 ending felt kinda anticlimactic, and it sounds like I’ll be waiting a while for any kind of resolution.