I have been super busy this past week, so I have hardly had a chance to read anything. However, there was one series that I randomly saw in the MD updates that I checked out on a whim:

• Tuna Girl / Maguro-Shoujo

This story focuses on an idol that failed to gain an audience and ended up deep in debt and to pay it back, she ends up working on a tuna fishing boat. So, it is a very specific slice of life, but with the exceptionally eccentric cast of characters on this boat, it is pretty absurdist. There is a lot of heart in this one though with Haruna trying her best to get back into the idol industry and realizing that there are more important things in life, like the friends you make along the way. The series is this weird mix of extremely specific, well-researched tuna fishing information and an absurdist gag series. There are just two more chapters to translate, and it has been building up to what seems like it will be a nice conclusion.

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.

She would get along well with Chokki-chan from Journey Home After School:

Source: Chapter 1

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:

• Kino’s Journey (2017) - The first episode is excellent and really sets the tone for the kind of show you are in for. It’s really, really good.
• Heavenly Delusion - I went in completely blind to this show and was blown away. I was instantly hooked and after the show ended I binged the entire manga, keeping up with it to this day. The OP is excellent as well. Unfortunately no season 2 announcement though.
• Little Witch Academia - I love LWA and I fell in love with the world and characters right from the beginning.
• Konosuba - As somebody that has read/watched way too many isekai over the years, this show hit the humor sweet spot for me basically as soon as Aqua entered the picture.

Feels like we are approaching a conclusion soon, or at least some major turning point.

I am super impressed by the writing here. How many times have I read a harem romcom and complained about the bland MC? Here we see Hareta recognizing that he is bland and uninteresting; not really a match with these dynamic and interesting heroines. Hareta has only become interesting after he rebels against the world and pursues Misaki. It’s a really well done subversion of the standard trappings of the genre.

Thanks for these. Looks great!

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:

• You and I Are Polar Opposites - This premiere was great! I really enjoyed this a lot. I had seen it posted to the manga community a lot, but I am glad I went into this episode blind.
• Chained Soldier S2 - New studio, better quality. Looking forward to more.
• Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers - I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this episode. I was just going to check out episode one for nostalgia sake, but enjoyed it so much, I am planning on trying to keep up with it.
• Tune in to the Midnight Heart - A compelling first episode, but we will see if they can keep it up (or if I can keep making time for it).
• The Demon King’s Daughter is Too Kind - Super cute. Like super-duper cute.
• You Can’t Be in a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends - This one is a drop for me. I have read most of the manga, and I just found their dynamic more annoying in anime form. In such a stacked season, I need to make some time somewhere.

Now I’m a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon

I had kind of forgotten about this series, but I read pretty deep into the WN a couple years back (from browsing the synopses, I made it to ~LN10). I really, really enjoyed it and thought that the primary relationship between Yuki and Lefi was actually super well done (that arc lasts up through LN4 it looks like). It struck a good balance between easygoing isekai silly fluff and high-stakes action.

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:

• The stone chest that was passed onto Rafal, who died protecting its secrets
• The writings of Oczy, as preserved in tatoos, passed on past his death
• The book attributed to Jolenta surviving her
• The 10% royalty given to Potocky that ends up being the one thing that lasts through the whole series and leads to the idea intersecting with Brudzewski.

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.

I will have to binge this sometime. I remember liking the beginning portion that I read. The beginning of the show has been fun as well.

It’s great to see Renge’s positive vibes and outlook be a good influence on Sumire. I feel like Naruto kind of has his head down studying right now, so having a different character to channel her energy towards has been good for the story.

I was fully expecting one of them to start saying something just for the train signal to start blaring and cut them off. I was pleasantly surprised when they were actually able to talk to each other.

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.

Excellent chapter full of great communication! Great job by both of them to express their wants and desires to each other.

Delightfully meta and quick oneshot I came across and felt like sharing.