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.
I feel like that has to have been a Doctor Who plot before.
Alright, the winter season is fully underway this week. Some impressions:
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.
It’s hard not to feel for Kana. She still manages to rock some stylish hats though. On the other hand, it is nice to see some of Miyako (by far best girl in the whole series) and Mem. I think that Mem is sometimes lost in the Akane/Kana/Ruby star power, but she seriously puts in the work and gets shit done. Good start to the season and a great tease at the end (as is tradition for this show).
I am going to exclude any shows for which I had previously read a manga or novel version of the story. There are a couple shows I can think of where I knew after episode 1 that I was in for a good time:
I will second the Apocalypse Hotel recommendation others have offered.
Mushishi is pretty much my favorite anime ever, so I have often tried to chase that same high. Here are two that I think scratch similar itches, but are a bit different:
Kino’s Journey - This is an anthology series like Mushishi where the titular Kino goes around exploring a new city-state each episode with their own rules/culture/etc. The series can get pretty dark (like Mushishi), and happy endings are not guaranteed. This is probably my top recommendation that is the closest to Mushishi. There are two series adapting these novels. I recommend starting with the 2017 series and then watching the 2003 version only if you are really into it. Some of the episodes adapt the same part of the novels, but many are different.
Natsume’s Book of Friends - This is mostly an anthology series, but there are elements that act as story throughlines. Basically, Natsume is a student that is able to see and interact with the yokai that are all through the world, but most people can’t see (this show’s version of mushi). This ability is something that he inherited from his grandmother, along with a powerful book containing the names of yokai that she met in her lifetime. He then goes around trying to return the names of the yokai that his grandmother took and learn more about her and his own past in the process.
Winter shows that I have watched so far and my impressions:
I have a lot of thoughts on Orb. I had some initial impressions in last week’s general thread, but this is one of those shows where there is a lot to say, and even more when you think about it some more. Obviously…spoilers ahead…
The author, Uoto, went to school for philosophy, and it shows in this work. I think we are meant to take all of the events in “The Kingdom of P” as some kind of alternate history more or less just constructed to make us think. It’s what philosophers do best. If you actually try to map the events of the narrative onto our real world, the timelines and people just don’t match up quite right. As an example, you mentioned the Reformation in the 16th century…but at the end of the show, we are still in the 15th century (1468).
When I was watching this show week to week and making posts about it, I tried to map the different scientists onto their real life inspirations (I made it through episode 8 at the time), there were very clear real-life astronomers a lot of the characters were based on. However, the timelines here don’t really match up either. A lot of these scientists were actually contemporaries of one another, but in the show’s timeline, they would be gone long before Copernicus comes along.
I think more than anything, the show is really meant to convey the power of the written word, or more abstractly, the power of an idea. At the end of everything we see Brudzewski have a simple thought: what if the Earth moves? Throughout the story, we see the repeated transmission of this idea beyond the scope of their own life through writing:
I work as a professional physicist (if you couldn’t tell from my posts on the discussion threads for this show), and in our field we often throw around the phrase that we are “standing on the shoulders of giants” (I always thought this was a Newton quote, but I guess it can be dated to before him when I just looked it up now). This show is basically the perfect encapsulation of that idea: the pursuit of scientific truth is not a solo endeavor, it is a never-ending relay race in which the exchange of ideas takes place over generations and are always building on one another. Every now and then an idea comes along and acts causes what Popper would call a paradigm shift. Heliocentrism is certainly one of those ideas that fundamentally changes our understanding, but it wasn’t developed in a vacuum and many contributed to piecing it together.
Back to the show, I think that the choice to have an alternate version of Rafal at the end of the show ends up being confusing from a narrative perspective if we look at this series from a story being a sequence of events perspective. However, I think the alternate Rafal at the end is really meant to show that absolutes taken too far are dangerous for the pursuit of knowledge. In the early part of the show, Rafal (and others) die to an absolute faith that suppresses any kind of dissent. In the end part of the show, Rafal ends up killing others when they don’t share his radical openness viewpoint. In both cases, the actual research is impeded and researchers are cowed. It wasn’t until there was a more open exchange of ideas in the university that Brudzewski attended, that heliocentrism could be fostered and grew.
Overall, this is one of those series that is going to stick with me a long time. Just like any piece of philosophical work, there are countless ways to interpret it and none of them are wrong.
Mostly a recap/intro episode to start the season off. The new studio has paid off and I think the shuuki are looking less janky than last season, though that is an admittedly low bar to clear. This season is really going to focus a lot on the dynamics between the unit captains, so it is nice to see them so heavily featured right off that bat as well as in the OP/ED.
Also, casting Kana Hanazawa to play Ren Yamashiro has turned out to be inspired casting. I am so used to hearing her play these romcom love interests that hearing her voice Ren really adds to that sense of something being wrong. Really looking forward to more of her this season.
These episodes were painfully cute. I read the beginning portion of this manga before, and this lives up to the promised cuteness entirely. I was not expecting there to be songs in the series as well. It really felt like a kid’s sing-along or something like that. Also, I am not fluent in Japanese by any means, but I did notice that all the lyrics are written in just hiragana, just like children’s programming or books would have. Lots of fun here and I am looking forward to more!
This series feels very Quints-coded. Though, as conceited as he might be, the MC is actually a lot of fun. I will take an MC that knows he is hot shit over a bland, boring MC any day. He isn’t afraid to use the power of money to pursue his goals and he seems like he has a good head on his shoulders. Also, it turns out he has a healthy gut! @rikka@ani.social
Alright, I had a ton of fun with this episode. I was not expecting this to be a sequel to the original series (from the late 80’s). I don’t remember too much from when I watched this back in the 90’s, but this first episode did enough to set things up that I was able to follow along enough for it to fill in the blanks as we go.
I am super curious to see what they do with Gai. It’s not every main character that starts out the series with slaughtering innocent women and children. So, I wonder how they are going to turn him into the red warrior. Speaking of slaughtering, there was a lot of it! This was way more brutal than I remember the first series being.
I was just going to check out this show for some nostalgia, but I am so on board after this episode. Looking forward to more!
Just watched this episode and this is actually a direct sequel to the original series instead of a remake like I thought it was. It was a hell of a lot of fun.
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.