Wow is this main character unlikable, which for a show with only one central character is a pretty major blunder. He claims that he’s making himself OP, but like, buddy, you’re just relying on the secretly OP skills and items that you scoffed at and then got forced on you. None of this is due to your efforts. There were times where it felt like the story was hinting toward an unreliable narrator (like how the different cliques at school are drawn a little differently, as if he’s making divisions that don’t really exist), but ultimately the anime feels too earnest for me to have any real hope of the story turning that way (if anyone is familiar with the source material, please correct me if I’m wrong!)

Ultimately it’s fine for what it is, which is a popcorn isekai anime with no substance backing it up. I can see someone enjoying it, but only after exhausting other, better options. I give the premiere a 2/5.

I’m confused. It looks like it’s available for streaming everywhere right now, but it just hasn’t broadcast on TV yet (I think).

The summer’s been a bit busy, so I’ve unfortunately fallen off some of the stuff that I meant to watch and fallen behind on the rest, but I think things are actually settling down now.

For our weekly anime time, my friends ended up picking:

• Senpai is an Otokonoko - an absolutely beautiful look at the complexity of figuring out gender and sexuality with some truly gut-wrenching depictions of transphobia and homophobia, both direct and indirect.
• Elusive Samurai - stunningly animated action (Cloverworks is doing the thing they do) and it has made us hopeful that some of the historical figures might finally get english language wikipedia pages (we keep complaining that there are no resources to look at about how close this comes to the real story, lol)
• Dahlia in Bloom - a bit of the odd one out because it, um, looks terrible and the story is a bit rough as well. We’re enjoying the slow-burn romance (it’s a bit too slow for me, tbh) and pointing at all the weird animation quirks (we were SHOCKED when, after episodes of making fun of horse animation errors, we got an up-close shot of a horse and learned that this world had 8-legged horses the whole time and they didn’t tell us, so those were not errors after all)
• Odd Taxi - I slept on this when it came out because the dialogue felt really stilted to me and I couldn’t get my brain to focus on what was being said, but one of my friends insisted, so here we are. It’s definitely gotten better in the dialogue department, but I don’t really see why people call it a masterpiece, at least not yet. We’ll see.

As for my own shows, I had to make some cuts and I’m still a bit behind on it all, but I’m watching:

• Yatagarasu - This one keeps surprising me with its weird twists, lol. The big one two-thirds of the way through made me go read the manga (I may try to find translations of the novels as well), and I learned that the anime blended the first two novels together into a single story (they cover the same time period, but different characters, as I understand it), and I think the story was much better for it. The manga’s pacing, at least on the ladies’ side of the story, was really janky and the tone felt all wrong.
• How to Become Ordinary - Why is this so cinematic?? I really like all the subtle character moments in this show and the extreme low stakes of (most of) the mysteries.
• Twilight Out of Focus - as far as BL anime goes, it’s fine. It’s sort of endearing how seriously it takes itself and how artsy it’s trying to be, but I don’t know that it works that well.
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian - I really liked this as a romance at the start of the season, but I’ve become more disinterested as it’s (predictably?) become a harem anime. I’ll probably finish out the season, but if there’s no romantic progress, I won’t be back for a season 2.

As always, I’m going into the season as blind as possible, though I am tentatively hyped for Ranma 1/2.

Also, I’m not sure if this counts as the new season (or as anime, since it was sort of a slideshow), but here’s my thoughts on the first(?) fall show:

A few things:

• What wisp does for herself she also does for the group. Your teammate can afford to bring a frame that’s not survivable enough normally because of vitality mote, and with very little coordination from the group.
• Because of the way reservoirs work, that strength requirement isn’t as much of a tradeoff as it seems. Wisp can afford to tank her efficiency into the ground and still function very very well in any mission where you can stay near your reservoirs.
• You compare her to arcanes, but those are a very large farming investment to get to high levels, whereas she drops from a boss fight / relics. If you’re one of the players that already has everything the comparison is fair, but if you’re looking at a new thing to acquire the two are very different hurdles.

Ultimately she’s probably rarely the best possible choice, but part of the reason that she’s considered “the best support in the game” is that she does so much with so little investment or effort (and that she was given that title before a bunch of older support frames got buffed to stand on par with her)

I am under no circumstances saying you can’t criticize art or say that the writing was bad or whatever you seem to think my position is.

Writers can and do get fired for not doing the job they were hired for and rarely get to lead the creative process (and usually if they do they’re like, writer/director, or a big name). All I’m trying to say is that a worker can do a good job within the bounds they’re given and still have the result be terrible because the bounds were terrible.

You seem to be giving a LOT of agency to writers for the stories they tell. Some stories are going to be something writers worked hard on wanted to write, and in those cases ya they should be blamed for the resulting flaws, but many times they are constrained by the instructions they’re given.

To go back to the metaphor, did the worker decide that the stuff you need goes out of your reach or are they putting it where they were told to?

“Just following orders” absolutely does excuse bad writing as long as it’s not harmful. I wouldn’t get mad at a writer of a thing a studio ruined just like I wouldn’t get mad at a grocery store worker for rearranging the shelves for the fifth week in a row. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean doing a stupid and pointless job makes them a bad person. If the writing is racist or whatever, sure, they’re complicit, but writers have to eat and it’s not morally wrong to write a boring script if that’s what your boss is asking you for.

The problem is, nazi is a political ideology, but Russian is a nationality and ethnicity. I agree with your point about gay nazis, but would you say the same thing about gay germans?

So guys who say stuff like “I prefer natural looking girls, not ones with caked on makeup” or “I’d only date a virgin. I don’t want any roast beef” or “no fatties, I only like thin girls” are what? All secretly gay or ace?

ETA: my point is, people do comparisons all the time when talking about how one person is more attractive than another or than most other people (some more mean spirited than others). It often isn’t right or cool, but being mean doesn’t mean you’re not attracted to the person you’re contrasting.

You seem to be saying no one attracted to women would ever denigrate them? Have you seen straight men before?

Additionally, what about ace/aro people? Het trans people? Cis/het gender-non-conforming people? And the one stated previously that really stood out to me: what about those questioning?

There’s no hard line between Us and Them and trying to draw one only hurts us. If there are people causing problems in these spaces, kick them out, but gatekeeping isn’t the right move here.

I’m pretty sure it’s dysmorphia rather than dysphoria. Dysphoria is rooted in an accurate picture of yourself and dysmorphia in an inaccurate one. If a guy starts going to the gym because the idea of not being able to bridal carry his girlfriend makes him feel unmanly, I’d agree that’s some flavor of gender dysphoria. On the other hand, someone like the liver king thinking he still doesn’t have enough muscle is definitely body dysmorphia.

But I’d agree that (similar to dysphoria) the so-called alphas often have dysmorphia of more than just the body - they worry they come across unmanly in all ways of their presentation, regardless of how much “masculine energy” they’re already putting out.

The point is never that we need more democrats. The point is always that we need fewer Republicans. Democrats refuse to make things better, but they typically block things from getting worse, which is a better starting point than anything the GOP would give us.

So please, organize, protest, do whatever activism you can do, but on voting day take the little bit of time and effort to block Republicans from undoing all that hard work, even if it means voting strategically for a pile of shit.

The left will always be fighting against the administration to some extent, and through voting we get to pick our enemy, and the dems are going to be an easier fight and on fewer fronts.

It’s not explicitly trans (like atkion said), but it is hosted on blahaj.zone, an explicitly trans instance.

OP is implying gender transition. Do you know where you are right now?

Yes. People say it outgrows its premise but I’m really not sure that’s possible, and I noped out after the first episode so I wouldn’t personally know. Explanation point I think does a good job of exploring both the problem and why people still defend it

For sure, I’d take this style of storytelling over the handholding we get in many other shows any day. I just typically look for a show to exemplify its own strengths early on, which includes its ability to pay off things it’s built up.

The best case for me is when a story weaves a smaller version of its larger arc within the first episode, giving us a taste of what the show is aiming for, be that twists and turns of intrigue, cathartic payoff of some tension it’s built up, or the solution to a mystery. Obviously it won’t hit as hard as later events will, but it proves that a show is capable of following through on its promises. (which helps spot shows like Lost, who keep promising and never deliver)

And it can be fun to watch characters and try to figure out what their motivations are, but it would be nice to get a bit of something for any of our characters, even if it’s incomplete or even false, because as it is I feel a bit adrift in the story without anything to hold onto.

But I’m still hopefully my issues with the show get resolved soon. I do want to trust Bones on this one, even though the premiere didn’t wow me.

Impeccable vibes on this one, but the story felt a bit jumbled and hard to follow. I’m all for show-don’t-tell, but I think it could have benefited from trimming down the number of unfamiliar elements to throw around, at least to start with. I couldn’t really get a read on any of the characters’ motivations or goals, either. It feels like the selling point is supposed to be “tokusatsu, but make it cyberpunk”, but I’ve got no personal attachment to either of those genres, so it didn’t do much for me.

But it’s always good to see original anime, so I’ll give Bones some time to cook before I give up completely. Judging just from the premiere, though, I give it a 3/5

CGDCT is not my genre and mahjong is not a game i understand, and the extremely predictable result was that this anime flopped for me hard. It doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything particularly special or interesting other than those reference-humor faces the girls make. For CGDCT-enjoyers it’ll probably be a comfy and familiar ride, but without an affinity for the genre all I can give this premiere is a 1/5.

Wow this show is doing a lot of things at once, lol. At first I was pretty confused about the hour-long premiere, but they had a lot of twists to pack in. The lore is definitely interesting (like ram said, having two conflicting magic systems is definitely cool), but I just couldn’t get myself invested in the characters. I’m sure the people this vibes with will have a good time, but for me the premiere was an underwhelming 3/5.