Felt like it was time for a new one of these threads.

Alright, going over the list for next season, here are my takes:

Definitely try to watch

• The World’s Strongest Witch - This manga is a riot, and I can’t wait for anime-onlies to be introduced to Rona and her antics.
• Apothecary Diaries Season 3 - Absolute must-watch for me.
• Appraisal Isekai Season 3 - This is kind of like a comfort watch. I like the source, and the adaptation is fine. Despite the politics/war setting, I don’t find this one too dramatic/tense.

Watch if time allows

• Sasaki and Peeps Season 2 - The first season was a roller coaster of a story, but suffered with poor production values. I am interested in seeing more, but it isn’t high on my priority list.
• Suikoden - I have a good friend that has been trying to get me to play Suikoden 2 for years. I might just try to watch the anime version instead to troll him.
• Magical Girl Raising Project - I have heard great things from source readers. Think Shiboyugi, but with a magical girl bent.
• Magic Knight Rayearth - An oldie of an isekai. My wife is a big fan of the manga and has tried to get me to read her copies for almost 20 years now. She has pretty good taste, so I expect the story to be pretty decent.
• Reincarnated as a Sword Season 2 - I am pretty sure I am past this point in reading the manga adaptation, but this one is still a lot of fun.

Other notes

• Romelia War Chronicle - I read the very beginning of the manga for this series and enjoyed it. It is kind of a cross between kicked out of the hero’s party and a gritty war story. It’s a new studio making a debut, so who knows how it will turn out.
• A Wild Last Boss Appeared Season 2 - I binged the manga for this series a couple weeks ago and it was way better than I thought it was going to be. I haven’t watched the first season yet, but might try to get caught up on this one.
• Reborn as a Space Mercenary - I really wish there were more sci-fi isekai out there. It seems like a natural genre mix between the mecha and isekai worlds. I don’t expect much from this, but just wanted to say that I want more of this mix.

This pretty much reflects my experience as well. Though, like you, I didn’t watch Akira until relatively recently, so that probably has something to do with it. Experiencing it in the late 80’s/early 90’s might have left a very different impression. From reading retrospective reviews, lots of critics praise it these days for the impact it had on the industry as much or even more than the story it was trying to tell. Short story time…

A couple years ago, my partner and I decided to watch through all of the AFI Top 100 movies, and there were plenty on that list that I genuinely thought were pretty bad. However, in reading about them after watching them, they are on the list because of the tremendous impact they may have had on the industry; special effects innovations, directing techniques, etc. I kind of lump Akira in that kind of basket these days. It was a technical showpiece that had an outsized impact on the rest of the industry, especially the actual animators who have inserted countless Akira references into their art over the years.

Mine is probably one that hasn’t been released yet, but I read the manga source, The Moon on a Rainy Night. The funny thing is that I found I related to it a ton, but as an adult, it had nothing to do with the school setting. It deals with the issue of disability in a way that felt so real and it was easy to map onto my life’s experiences.

In general, the other thing I relate to often is transfer students. I went to more than 10 different schools through K-12 because my family moved…a lot. So I was almost always the transfer student, and almost always preparing to say goodbye. It made me really good at making new friends wherever I found myself, but it also made me really good at dropping friends from my life for little to no reason.

The stupidest fucking timeline…

I read the first couple volumes of this manga and it gets wild…

ANN calls it a “romantic suspense manga” and that is closer to the truth. However, I feel like that is still underselling it. This series is basically suffering porn, and that is why I ultimately ended up dropping reading it. This visual is a huge misdirect and gives off the totally wrong impression.

The genre that I most often see people mix up is CGDCT. A lot of casuals that I have talked to don’t realize that the target audience for these series is almost always either boys or men. Instead, they kind of lump these series in with stuff like Precure, which is aimed at girls. To prove the point, AniList only has 13 series that are shoujo and CGDCT, and a grand total of 0 that are josei.

The past couple weeks I watched a couple things that I can write about…

First up is Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi. I really liked the two anthology episodes that were part of season 1 and 3 of Star Wars Visions (especially the episode from season 1). So, getting the chance to get an eight episode season sounded great. The first couple episodes felt a little slow, but did a lot of work establishing things. Then, it delivered really well as the season went. Right as I was finishing it, Mother’s Basement released a video about the series, singing its praises. While I wouldn’t go as far as he does in his video, the series manages to feel pretty fresh with respect to its treatment of Jedi and the force. It is probably the most interesting depiction of Gray Jedi (neither pure dark or light) since the KOTOR games.

Next up is Toradora!. I am currently 8 episodes in and have been enjoying it a lot. I don’t have a ton to add here, but I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much I like Ami’s character. She seems like an easy to hate character, but there is something oddly compelling in how toxic she acts.

Last but not least, I watched Asobi Asobase. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started this series, but my initial thought based on visuals was maybe a CGDCT. However, I quickly realized I was mistaken as these girls are absolutely unhinged (in the best way). The humor feels similar to something like Nichijou, but a bit more restrained due to the smaller cast and scope of the setting. My absolute favorite sequence involved an android that they programmed to speak English using just the vocabulary of one of their grandfathers. I created a clip, but I must give an NSFW language warning: https://static.wjs018.xyz/iJ2rJ45DeIOD6zZA.webm

The only example I can think of off the top of my head are the live action Rurouni Kenshin movies. In my opinion, they are excellent and the best way to consume the story.

I love this series. Really looking forward to this one being adapted. I am curious about how they’re going to depict hearing impairments.

Yeah, this series is a lot of fun.

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Yeah, you’re all good. Lemmy uses a kind of weird spoiler syntax compared to most other markdown renderers. So, sometimes some third-party apps might not display it as such. There is no way to make a spoiler render correctly for everybody. I have an old spoiler guide I wrote for the community here that is still pretty accurate.

Yeah…there is some history with anime on the ml instance. Thanks for the content! Anime Feminist is a great read and more than welcome.

I started reading this manga recently and have been enjoying it. Hardly any of it has been translated though, so I am looking forward to seeing more of the story via the anime.

If there are no comments on an episode thread before the next episode airs, then subsequent threads are not created so that rikka isn’t just filling the community with empty threads. I believe your comment on this thread came after episode 2 had already aired, so the show was already disabled for rikka.

At any time though, you can request a thread for a specific episode by sending a private message to the bot. Let me know if you run into issues.

Thanks for pointing this out. I try to fix these when I notice them, but I have been on vacation the past two weeks, so I haven’t been as attentive as usual.

This duplication happens when rikka’s attempt at making a post initially times out because ani.social doesn’t respond, or responds super slowly. This means that rikka thinks that the post wasn’t made successfully, so she will try to make the post again when she next runs. However, sometimes that first post still gets made, and we end up with a duplicate.

I am going to be posting a new weekly thread in a couple hours, so you might have some better luck if you repost this question there, but I have made a pass at some recommendations below. You have a lot of the recent ones I have enjoyed. Some others that come to mind:

• Lycoris Recoil - Imagine John Wick but with anime girls
• Villainess Level 99 - the animation quality isn’t great, but the humor is and it wraps up nicely, not some cliffhanger that will never resolve
• Mushishi - Anthology series…don’t binge this one, take it slow and let your brain chew on each episode
• Silent Witch - kind of like if you made Bocchi into an OP witch
• 100 Girlfriends - Strap in to experience the best harem MC out there - Rentaro
• Dungeon People - A great SoL about the folks working behind the scenes to make a dungeon work
• Endo and Kobayashi - a fun take on the villainess genre; if you like tsunderes, you will like this one
• Fruits Basket (2019) - one of the pillars of shoujo, and for a good reason
• Slime 300 - a very laid back SoL, basically a CGDCT
• Kino’s Journey (2017) - anthology series…if you really like this, then you can watch the older 2003 series as well for some different stories
• Love After World Domination - the red ranger falls in love with an enemy general…
• Orb: On the Movements of the Earth - an anime about heliocentrism…yeah, it sounds weird as a premise, but it works…trust me.
• Heavenly Delusion - Traveling across a post-apocalyptic Japan and things are kind of off…
• Shimoneta - a world in which even the smallest dirty talk/gesture is literally illegal, meet the brave warriors fighting back against this censorship with the power of horny (note: don’t watch this with anybody else in the room)
• Yuri on Ice - dramatic ice skating (boys version) - Medalist is the girls version, but I haven’t watched it, so I can’t vouch for it, but I have heard good things.

Wait, so did episode 7 just air? If so, I will just make this be the thread for 6-7 and episode 8 should go like normal then.