People aren’t linking it directly because admins have a history of removing any comments/posts that provide a link. However, you can see it if you go to a community browser like Lemmy Explorer.

I think the Helck flashbacks wouldn’t have been as bad if I was bingeing it, but watching week to week, it felt very drawn out. Since the flashbacks have ended, I have gotten more into it again.

As for Girlfriend, Girlfriend and 100GF, I have written before that I think I enjoyed the series more in manga form. I think that Shino is by far the best character in GF, GF though, so you have excellent taste in that department.

Yeah, I was reading the WN for Villainess Level 99 and dropped it shortly after the main arc. It reached a pretty satisfying conclusion and the story after that felt kind of forced, plus I just had too many other things competing for my time.

Rather than writing about what I have watched this past week, I decided to look ahead at the upcoming season of anime and check out shows that looked interesting. My first pass led me to some shows that I am debating watching, but I will likely need to cut this down due to time. I divided it into shows I am familiar with the source and those that I am not.

Familiar with the source:

• Frieren will be continuing. Definitely continuing with this one.
• Tsukimichi Season 2 - I enjoyed the source for this story and am glad to see it continuing. The story only gets better as it goes. If you thought season 1 was a bit generic, I agree with you. However, the story becomes more interesting as it goes. Not quite sure if the animation might be stepped up for season 2 or not though.
• The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic - The opening parts of this story are where it is at its best. So I am looking forward to this show and the character Rose in particular.
• Villainess Level 99 - I love the source for this series, but the character is so dense that it turns some off. If they get the humor right in this show, it could be great.

Not familiar with the source:

• Solo Leveling - Source readers have hyped this series from long before there was even an announcement of an anime adaptation. I suspect this one is going to be popular, but it might not really be my type of show.
• Dungeon Meshi - This one has been a really popular manga and it is being made by Studio Trigger. Worth a look for sure.
• Metallic Rouge - I have only seen the poster for this series and I love it. Will check it out more to see if it is worth giving a shot.
• 'Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess - I have read a couple chapters of this manga, but not enough to really call myself familiar with it. It seems like a fun little series for those times I just want to relax though.

@ram@lemmy.ca if you would be so kind as to do the pinning/unpinning, it would be appreciated.

I love a good romance as well and this season is pretty sparse. Looking at anichart for Fall 2023, I only see three shows with the romance tag. The only one of those I am watching (100GF) is more comedy-focused than romance-focused. That’s pretty light. For comparison, last season there were seven shows with the romance tag.

I think that is actually a totally fair way to look at the show. The moral implications of Kotaro’s actions are immense and dark. Also, the way he more or less threatens them with society’s reaction to zombies in order to become idols is extremely manipulative. I can totally understand why those aspects of the show would turn somebody off from watching.

For me, I have been enjoying the show after basically accepting those bits as the needed bits to establish the premise and then moving on. Namely, the premise of a group of zombie girls becoming idols. After the first couple episodes, they aren’t really brought up any more and the girls are all acting of their own will. They are even capable of doing the makeup on their own without Kotaro by the time you reach season 2.

I don’t have too much time to craft my usual tome of a comment this week, so I will keep it short. Quick hot-takes on a couple shows I watched during the past week:

• Eminence in Shadow: Return to form after fanservice break
• Frieren: BRB, dead after getting hit by Frieren’s flirting
• 100GF: Next episode is gonna be wild for anime-onlies
• Zombie Land Saga Season 2: Yep, still good. Hasn’t lost a step from season 1

@ram@lemmy.ca, if you would be so kind as to do the pin/unpin shuffle like normal, that would be much appreciated.

I mentioned it in the comments over at ani.social (as well as a lot of lore), but thought it was worth mentioning here as well that Kadokawa posted this version of the season 1 OP to their official youtube channel in which all the characters are played by crowbars (バール or bar in the credits).

It doesn’t look like it. Holo, the project that shinobu is forked from, sometimes has a hard time with certain shows. It works by parsing the sites of all the different streaming providers and a public torrent tracker to look for new episodes that are released. So, if a site changes its layout a little bit or if torrents are named in a way that it isn’t expecting, it just won’t pick up those episodes at all. I think if you were to redesign holo from the ground up today, you would probably use the AniList api instead of parsing all these things, but holo predates the api iirc.

Edit to add here that I think the reddit mods that use holo for the subreddit must do a lot of manual interventions or have codebase changes that are not pushed to the github. I have run a personal instance of holo for a while connected to a testing lemmy instance I spun up and its behavior exactly matches shinobu. So, the fact that holo does post threads for shows like JJK to the subreddit means that it has either been done/scheduled manually or they are running a modified version.

@ram@lemmy.ca if you could do the pinning/unpinning thing, that would be great!

This past week during the holiday I managed to catch up on several shows that I had fallen behind on.

• Frieren and Eminence continue to be my favorites of what I am watching this season. The anime-original fan-service episode of Eminence was interesting, but looking forward to getting back to the actual plot next episode.
• Helck is still going and it has been nice to not be stuck in a flashback any longer (still need to watch episode 20). I am hoping that they can build to a satisfying season conclusion.
• 100GF is an interesting one. I have loved parts of it and others feel too excessive. I appreciate that they really lean into jokes super hard (something I wish Girlfriend, Girlfriend did more of), but I feel they go too far sometimes. That line is going to be different for each person though, so it is hard for me to criticize them too much.
• Girlfriend, Girlfriend is still doing its thing. I think the adaptation has been alright, but I haven’t changed my mind that it just works better in manga form.
• The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch has been ok. It has had its ups and downs and I am mainly still watching due to inertia. Probably not one I am going to remember for very long going forward.

Finally, I had some time to start Zombie Land Saga season 2. They wasted no time picking right back up where things left off. There was a bit that happened off screen between seasons, but it isn’t too jarring. The bright spot for me in this show continues to be the voice work of Mamoru Miyano who plays the primary male character Kotaro. You might recognize his voice from some of his other roles such as Light Yagami (Death Note), Okabe Rintaro (Steins;Gate), or Pandora’s Actor (Overlord). I am only two episodes into the second season and looking forward to the next chance I get to watch more.

I have previously written about some of the issues I had with Suzume. I think it is a visually stunning movie. I just wish it was better written.

As for Usagi Drop, I really enjoyed the anime and looked up the source. However, when I looked it up, pretty much all I found was threads warning or memeing about it. So, I looked up the synopsis and realized that I was fine with just the anime.

No idea past the previous posts to twitter. The situation is likely still unfolding. I wouldn’t be surprised if delays like this one continue. That is what has happened for past shows like Zom 100 and Nier. The delays start as a day or two and then get extended to a longer hiatus once they run out of booked timeslots for the broadcast season.

Just wanted to swing by and give an update that there is now a 1 day delay for the next episode making its way to streaming services.

Here is an article about it. Basically a giant corporation is doing giant corporation things and driving the animators to work on unreasonable timelines with a ton of extra crunch. There has been some recent pushback against Mappa in the past week or two from others in the industry.

Yes, that is definitely on my list to watch from this season, I just haven’t had time to pick up any new shows with my work schedule lately. I also have had to pause watching some older shows I had been working my way through (sorry Zombie Land Saga season 2, I’ll be back soon).

I haven’t seen any announcements. If I had to guess, I would expect the show to continue to come out regularly. However, if things continue to spiral over at Mappa, then the quality could decline as the show continues. Time will tell.

We are a bit more than halfway through the season so far, so I thought it would be a good chance to stop and take stock of what I have been watching and what I think about it. Like a midterm exam if you will.

• The Eminence in Shadow - Really enjoyed the first arc of the season while the second was a bit disappointing to me (a source reader). However, it seems anime-only reactions have been more positive. With five episodes left, this final arc of the season should be able to have the time it needs to make it special.
• Frieren - This is another series in which I am a source reader. The adaptation so far has been really incredible. I cannot say enough good things about this series.
• 100 Girlfriends - Another series for which I am a source reader. So far, I have enjoyed the adaptation. I think they have made some effort to keep the meta-humor in the series. Also, I haven’t gone back and checked the early manga chapters, but I don’t remember so much fan service in the source.
• Girlfriend, Girlfriend - Another series for which I am a source reader. I personally think this series works better in manga form. Naoya and company are just so exaggerated in print form and with how absurd the story is, I think the over-the-top-ness of the manga helps carry the story better. I find myself getting bored sometimes watching the series in anime form.
• The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch - I started this series in the hope it was just a feel good SOL in a fantasy setting. However, between the opening episodes featuring fan service of a character they repeatedly point out is 16 years old and then the awkward story pacing, I have mostly dropped this series. I have not read the source, but I was able to guess that it was a 4 koma based on how awkwardly told the story is with frequent interruptions and transitions. Apparently not every 4 koma series can get the Bocchi or Tomo treatment.

As always, @ram@lemmy.ca if you would please do the pin/unpin honors.

That is a bit of a reverse harem though with more than one male character interested in Hitomi (senpai from original world, Van, and Allen that I can think of).

They really flew through LN Vol. 3 with these first two arcs. I was really disappointed by the John Smith vs. Alpha fight from last episode. I am hopeful that means they are going to slow down for this final arc of the season (first half of LN Vol. 4).