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On Android:
- Boost - doesn’t load.
- Voyager - plays fine
- PieFed PWA - plays fine
- Interstellar - just a link to play in the browser
- Blorp - plays fine
- Jerboa - plays fine
That’s all I have on my phone to test.
2·5 days agoI think your proposed alternate ending is actually really similar in spirit to the actual ending. A major theme of this series is how much “the industry” basically grinds these people up and spits them out, a broken version of themselves. The series ends, in broad strokes, the same place it began. So, having Aqua turn out like that still would work with the theme I think.
Seriously, this was like a season finale type of episode.
The user you are replying to is on Mastodon instead of lemmy. Those shortcodes are replaced with emoji on that platform. Specifically, this one:
It needs to be clear enough that I, as a human, can know what you are talking about. I am going to be sifting through nominations myself. The bot and formatting is mainly there so that it can organize the entries so that I can review them quicker.
For the songs, a show and song title would be fine (or just OP/ED as long as it just had one). For VAs, you can give me character + language, or show and actor name, or whatever combination of those you like so that I can look it up easily.
Correct! Make sure to keep the top line as
!nominations.
I am going to limit the nominations in each category to something manageable on my end (like 5-10 probably). So, you should go ahead and send another pm nominating it as well. If the nominees weren’t limited in the voting round, I would hit character limits in the messages.
Thanks! I learned some lessons from last year. I am going to be doing the nominations/voting just through the private messages this year as trying to set up a web service just for this was a ton more work and I kept kind of spinning my wheels and ending up in dead ends. Doing things through pm’s also vastly simplifies vote manipulation since it is trivial to tie a vote to a specific account.
Fun fact, it took me about 4 hours to write all the code to do the nomination portion of this process (borrowing some established code from rikka). I haven’t yet written the analysis or voting portions though, so that will be over the next week.
FAQ:
Is X eligible?
If the show/film initially had a wide release in 2025 and is not continuing into 2026, then yes! This applies for any show/film that is eligible to discuss in this community, meaning that it has either a MAL page or an AniList listing. This means that Chinese-produced shows like “Lord of the Mysteries” or “To Be Hero X” are eligible in these awards. Also, shows that started their run in 2024, but continued into 2025 are eligible, such as “Orb: On the Movements of the Earth.” Another peculiar case is something like “The Colors Within,” which was released in Japan in 2024, but didn’t see wider international release until 2025. In this case, I am deeming it eligible since the bulk of our community would not have access to Japanese theaters. Feel free to ask if you have questions about any additional edge-cases.
What about the manga awards?
To be frank, not enough people really participated last year in that medium to have a formal award system like this. Additionally, there is a lot less structure in the world of translated manga due to the nature of official releases and unofficial translations/scanlations in many different languages that means marking things around a calendar year makes a lot less sense. Somebody’s favorite series that they read in 2025 could be an older series that is just now getting a scanlated release in their native language.
Instead, what I plan on doing for the manga community is to have the next general discussion thread be a discussion of favorites from the past year so that both communities are having this kind of conversation at the same time.
I apologize for people that might have been looking forward to those awards, but as I was trying to think about how to run them and looking back over the responses from last year’s awards, it just seemed less and less feasible. As an example, many categories consisted of nominees with 1-2 nominations at most that I hadn’t read because it was relatively rare for two users to nominate the same series. This led to a situation where it was a ton of work on my part to try to read enough of every series to try to jury the nominations. I just don’t have that kind of time this year.
I have a question or issue with these categories!
I mostly used the same categories as last year with some changes based on the feedback from that time. For instance, the different genres have been tweaked to be a bit broader for each with fewer overall genres. Specifically, I dropped the suspense category due to lots of confusion about what could be included there last year. I also clarified that fantasy includes adventure (this would include isekai as well).
Another change from last year is broadening the musical sequence category to be either OP, ED, or insert song. There were some that asked for this category to be split up into OP and ED separately, but looking through the nominations from last year, I don’t think there was enough of both category (it was almost all OPs) to separate them.
A category that was dropped from last year is the best duo. This category led to lots of nominations that were permutations of characters from ensemble shows and basically resulted in romantic interests being the most nominated. I thought about turning this into a best couple or best ship category, but at the end of the day, I just opted to drop it so that I have fewer categories to sort through the nominations for.
Finally, I clarified that the voice acting award is for a specific role instead of all of a performer’s roles in the past year, and in a specific language.
Who the heck is kurisu? Why not rikka?
I am sure most of you are familiar with our resident episode discussion thread bot, @rikka@ani.social. I initially looked into doing this voting with her as well, but it made my life easier to utilize a separate account for this purpose so that I didn’t cross the thread request and voting streams, thus @kurisu@ani.social. As our resident assistant,
ChristinaKurisu will dutifully record everybody’s nominations and, later, their votes.I will reply to this comment with Kurisu so that it is easy to click her username and compose a message that is simply
!nominate.How do I format my response?
make sure that the first line of your reply message is
!nominations. If you followed directions and just copy/pasted the markdown from kurisu’s message, that is how the message should start. Then, each category is a heading. Just populate the bulleted lists under the heading for the category you want to nominate things for. Please don’t edit the headings as it will make my life much easier when I am parsing all these replies. As an example, the beginning of my reply might look like this (I picked some random shows):!nominations # 2025 Anime Series of the Year - Sanda - Tsuyokute New Saga - mono # 2025 Anime Film of the Year…and so on for the rest of the categories.
When will nominations close?
In roughly a week (or so). I don’t have a set time yet, but I don’t think I will leave nominations open longer than February 13th or so. I will then take a couple days to collate all the nominations and select the final nominees. Then I will open up voting (again for roughly a week or so).
I have really liked this show so far. It does move super quick to start out with the main pair. I haven’t read the source, but I think it is likely going to be a bit slower now as the ensemble is introduced and establishes itself. So far, the cast has been a bunch of fun and I have enjoyed it.
I wouldn’t compare it to Rent a GF at all. Having read way, way more of that series than I should have, the character in Polar Opposites are actually likeable and endearing. Nobody in this series is frustrating in the way that Kazuya or Chizuru are.
Meta Update
2025 Awards are going to open up for nominations this week! I will be making a post about it, so start thinking about the shows of last year. Any show that aired episodes last year is eligible, including shows like Orb, that had a continuous run starting in 2024 that ran into 2025. I am going to finalize the list of categories hopefully by Wednesday or so and make a post. Overall, I plan on having nominations open for a week, and then voting open for a week.
I think the title being full of hashtags caused a lot of downvotes and the fact it is a youtube short. Not lots of love for short-form video a la TikTok in the threadiverse.
I am going to add my usual disclaimer that I tend to judge an OP/ED much more on the song than the visuals. I have called out below where that is different. I have divided this into shows I am watching vs. not, as well as some fun superlatives.
Shows I am watching
- Oshi no Ko OP - TEST ME by CHANMINA - This OP is scary good. I am especially impressed with the visuals of both this OP as well as the special OP from the first episode. Just remarkably good foreshadowing and symbolism as well as some great songs.
- Frieren OP - lulu by Mrs. GREEN APPLE - Really great OP that fits the show so well.
- 'Tis Time for “Torture” Princess OP - Sunday Morning by ILLIT - This OP might be prettier, but I don’t think it is as good as the first season OP (which I still regularly listen to), but I still really like this OP and it instantly got stuck in my head.
- Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers OP - YOAKE by blank paper - This premiere really impressed me, but I haven’t really been able to keep up with it since. In any case, big fan of this OP.
Shows I am not watching
- Fate/strange Fake OP - PROVANT by Jean-Ken Johnny, SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] & TAKUMA - I don’t know a damn thing about Fate, but I liked this OP a lot
- Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord OP - Okirakuzation by Rei Nakashima - This one had a bit of a tongue-twister feel to it that I enjoyed. It reminded me a bit of the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.
- The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife OP - Ding-dong by Mao Abe - This was such a cozy OP. This show looks like it is cute as a button.
Superlatives
- Rage Against the Rage! - honoring those that excel in the art of the scream
- Roll Over and Die OP - Liberator by PassCode - There was stiff competition in this category, but I felt this one really set itself apart.
- Be True to Yourself! - honoring those that know what they are and never change
- MF Ghost OP - TIMELESS POWER by MOTSU and Yuu Serizawa - You want more Eurobeat? Well, here is more Eurobeat.
- Running Horse Award - honoring those that make use of a zoetrope (sorry, this doesn’t have to do with Uma Musume)
- Polar Opposites OP - Megane wo Hazushite by Noa - This OP opens with a zoetrope, but makes use of lots of visual tricks both digital and analog in a neat visual display and a mix of the old and new.
I feel like that has to have been a Doctor Who plot before.
Alright, the winter season is fully underway this week. Some impressions:
- Frieren - We are so fucking back. Glad none of us got too emotional when season 1 ended, otherwise this reunion would be awkward…right? Great start to the season.
- You and I Are Polar Opposites - Fantastic series so far. I have super enjoyed the main couple, but I think the cast of side characters have also been great. I love how supportive they have all been, no questions asked. Also, the VA for Suzuki is killing it; probably my favorite voice performance so far this season.
- Oshi no Ko - Great start that sets the stage for what is to come. Looks as gorgeous as ever with a great MV in the premiere as well.
- Chained Soldier - So far so good. Yuuki continues to be an object of interest to everybody.
- The Demon King’s Daughter is Too Kind - Episode 3 comes with a third sing-along segment. I hope they keep this up.
- 'Tis Time for Torture, Princess - The second season is just as needlessly well-produced as the first. I really enjoyed the first season and I am looking forward to more.
- Samurai Troopers - Episode 2 was a big drop-off for me compared to the premiere. The story just isn’t making a lot of sense. They are trying to redeem the main character (red warrior), but everybody just seems to be ignoring what happened in the first episode.
- Tune in to the Midnight Heart - Episode 2 kind of showed the formula for this series. The MC does his best to help a girl solve some problem or overcome an obstacle, and in return gets some affection points with said girl. However, the MC is the most interesting character by far, setting itself apart from most other harems out there.
If you are interested in a manga that is kind of similar (gimmicky, plot-heavy), but with a better story, you might want to check out Isekai NTR: Sullying My Best Friend’s Women with the Strongest Skill. I never thought I would be rooting for the MC to seduce his best friend’s crush before, but the first major arc in this story actually tells a pretty compelling story and gets you to cheer for it as well. I swear that the MC is a good guy (-ish) despite the titular NTR.
Also, check out !manga@ani.social.
I have read a good portion of what has been translated for that manga. It was fun at first with the silly-ish premise…but then basically just turns more and more into hentai while the actual adventuring part of the story takes on a smaller and smaller role.
So, I think the title cards that come up are likely manga chapter titles? The Liar one kind of caught me off guard in the middle of the episode. I think they are doing a good job of walking the line between making the MC insufferable and making him endearing. Yes, he is arrogant as can be, but he also is genuinely trying to help all these girls to the best of his ability and with all his resources. I look forward for the other girls to get some focus time.
This season has been great so far…too much so. I have been pretty busy and can’t keep up with everything, so dropping stuff hurts at this point: