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Yeah, this wasn't very clear in the manga, but I think the anime makes it more or less explicit that she tipped off the paparazzi. Kana texts her exactly where they are going and she ducks away and makes a call right after being told they are heading to his studio.

Welcome! The Frieren adaptation is shockingly good. I kept waiting for a quality drop as the first season went, but it just kept delivering episode after episode.

I liked the 269 credits joke too. I feel like mining this Kuzumama vein is yielding some rich credit page fodder.

Saotome has to be one of the only MCs I've ever seen to have multiple girls confess and kiss him and still be so unsure about things. I am amazed that this arc is basically ending with a friendship bracelet. So much for Ushigome and Takae's efforts to move things along.

This season has been great so far...too much so. I have been pretty busy and can't keep up with everything, so dropping stuff hurts at this point:

Oshi no Ko - Absolutely outstanding episode this past week. I didn't think anything was going to top Frieren for me this season, but...idk...this might be it.
Frieren - As good as it ever was.
Polar Opposites - Such a great ensemble in this show. The main couple is great, sure...but the full cast is really what elevates this to the next tier up.
Demon King's Daughter - Another great installment of Sing-Along with Doux!
Midnight Heart - Yes, it feels a bit contrived. Yes, the animation quality is a bit lacking. However, this has managed to keep me engaged so far.
Chained Soldier - It's been fun. I am not the biggest fan of this Azuma arc we are in right now, but it's managed to keep me watching so far.

I don't claim to have a good enough memory to remember all of the series I read last year, but here are the ones that stuck in my memory as I was thinking over it:

Best Action

I Got a New Skill Every Time I was Exiled, and After 100 Different Worlds, I was Unmatched

I really, really like this series. You might see the long, descriptive title and lump it together with a bunch of other series that blend into a generic mess, but this one is different. The art in the fight scenes is excellent and dynamic and, most importantly, the story has been super engaging. I love the two leads in this series and if anything happens to them, I will be inconsolable. Highly recommended!

Best Comedy

I Became the World's Strongest Witch

Every chapter of this series is a riot. I fully expect this to get an anime adaptation someday and I can only hope it is given the comedy treatment it deserves. 60 chapters in now and each one still manages to surprise me. It is a madcap mix of meta references to internet culture, buggy game mechanics, and OP protagonist tropes. It really makes you question whether you can call yourself OP as a protagonist until you can turn the power of pop-up advertising against your foes.

IseGure: After Constantly Being Used as a Foil for OP Isekai Protagonists, the Elite Knight has Finally Had It

This series ended up as a short and sweet love letter of a parody to isekai slop. It knew exactly what it was and made fun of itself relentlessly. It is basically an isekai series all about preventing any more isekai series. The isekai tropes themselves became weapons to be wielded against the isekai powers that be. It's a quick, but hilarious read that ends just when it needs to, and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Best Romance

Journey Home After School

I have loved this series right from the beginning and it has only gotten better as it has gone. It has been a slow burn, but a satisfying one. These two goobers are so gosh-darned cute and I can't get enough of it. The relationship they have feels so natural and effortless.

The Ice Princess Wants to be Melted by a Small Patch of Sunlight

This is one of those series where the true matchmakers are the younger brothers/sisters that bring together their older siblings through shared babysitting. Nothing about this series is reinventing the wheel, but it is just really well executed. If you are looking for a dose of the "good stuff," this is it.

Best Drama

The Moon on a Rainy Night

This series has been excellent from the jump and it shows no sign of slowing down. I debated including this in the romance category, but I think drama fits it better. It is pretty melodramatic, but manages to stay grounded and heartfelt enough to keep me engaged. If you are looking for a serious yuri story, this is an excellent choice.

Best Art

Slime Saint

Look, some might think this is a crazy pick for best art, but it is one of the few series where I consistently notice the artwork specifically. I love how playful the artist is with facial expressions. Each individual chapter is a veritable scrapbook of expressions on Lady Jelly's face and each is wilder than the last.

Best Slice of Life

Renge to Naruto

I had no idea this series would turn out as great as it has back when I read chapter 1. It might look like an ecchi series about a gyaru infecting people with her genki-ness, and it is that, but it has managed to add so much more depth to these characters as well. This series is comfortable at this point, like a warm bowl of ramen at a table with rowdy friends.

Best Conclusion

Sometimes Even Reality Is a Lie!

It's not every day that a series that has been running for 5 years comes to a close. This series managed to keep me engaged the whole way through and ended on a high note as well. I can't speak too much about the plot without spoiling stuff, but just know that this is a great romcom and one of those rare examples of a romance that continues long after the dating starts (and stays great).

Kirio Fanclub

I might be the only person in this community that read this series, but that won't stop me from singing its praises. It was exceptionally weird at times, but I had a lot of fun. The ending that it built up to was pitch-perfect, no notes. If you give this one a shot, know that you won't be let down by the end.

Just End it Already

Yankee JK Kuzuhana-chan

This series basically spent a whole year spinning its wheels. I think it is time to take this one out to the pasture. Recent chapters have finally pushed the story a bit, but at this point, I fully expect things to reset back soon enough. I am somehow trapped in this endless loop though, so look forward to this being on my list next year as well!

On Android:

Boost - doesn't load.
Voyager - plays fine
PieFed PWA - plays fine
Interstellar - just a link to play in the browser
Blorp - plays fine
Jerboa - plays fine

That's all I have on my phone to test.

Yeah, way back when Shadow saved the Oriana kingdom, he (and Beta) got sucked to Japan. But, Beta dragged Akane back to Shadow's world when they returned (mainly so that she can share knowledge of technology and stuff). So, this is probably shortly after Shadow returned in the story. In the LNs, that is pretty much the last we see of Akane. This feels kind of too important to just be manga filler, so I wouldn't be surprised if the author was involved in this. Next LN volume is slated for release in April.

I was not expecting manga-original story from Akane's POV, so this is a pleasant surprise. I am super curious if the author was involved with this.

I think your proposed alternate ending is actually really similar in spirit to the actual ending. A major theme of this series is how much "the industry" basically grinds these people up and spits them out, a broken version of themselves. The series ends, in broad strokes, the same place it began. So, having Aqua turn out like that still would work with the theme I think.

Seriously, this was like a season finale type of episode.

The user you are replying to is on Mastodon instead of lemmy. Those shortcodes are replaced with emoji on that platform. Specifically, this one:

It needs to be clear enough that I, as a human, can know what you are talking about. I am going to be sifting through nominations myself. The bot and formatting is mainly there so that it can organize the entries so that I can review them quicker.

For the songs, a show and song title would be fine (or just OP/ED as long as it just had one). For VAs, you can give me character + language, or show and actor name, or whatever combination of those you like so that I can look it up easily.

Correct! Make sure to keep the top line as !nominations.

I am going to limit the nominations in each category to something manageable on my end (like 5-10 probably). So, you should go ahead and send another pm nominating it as well. If the nominees weren't limited in the voting round, I would hit character limits in the messages.

Thanks! I learned some lessons from last year. I am going to be doing the nominations/voting just through the private messages this year as trying to set up a web service just for this was a ton more work and I kept kind of spinning my wheels and ending up in dead ends. Doing things through pm's also vastly simplifies vote manipulation since it is trivial to tie a vote to a specific account.

Fun fact, it took me about 4 hours to write all the code to do the nomination portion of this process (borrowing some established code from rikka). I haven't yet written the analysis or voting portions though, so that will be over the next week.

FAQ:

Is X eligible?

If the show/film initially had a wide release in 2025 and is not continuing into 2026, then yes! This applies for any show/film that is eligible to discuss in this community, meaning that it has either a MAL page or an AniList listing. This means that Chinese-produced shows like "Lord of the Mysteries" or "To Be Hero X" are eligible in these awards. Also, shows that started their run in 2024, but continued into 2025 are eligible, such as "Orb: On the Movements of the Earth." Another peculiar case is something like "The Colors Within," which was released in Japan in 2024, but didn't see wider international release until 2025. In this case, I am deeming it eligible since the bulk of our community would not have access to Japanese theaters. Feel free to ask if you have questions about any additional edge-cases.

What about the manga awards?

To be frank, not enough people really participated last year in that medium to have a formal award system like this. Additionally, there is a lot less structure in the world of translated manga due to the nature of official releases and unofficial translations/scanlations in many different languages that means marking things around a calendar year makes a lot less sense. Somebody's favorite series that they read in 2025 could be an older series that is just now getting a scanlated release in their native language.

Instead, what I plan on doing for the manga community is to have the next general discussion thread be a discussion of favorites from the past year so that both communities are having this kind of conversation at the same time.

I apologize for people that might have been looking forward to those awards, but as I was trying to think about how to run them and looking back over the responses from last year's awards, it just seemed less and less feasible. As an example, many categories consisted of nominees with 1-2 nominations at most that I hadn't read because it was relatively rare for two users to nominate the same series. This led to a situation where it was a ton of work on my part to try to read enough of every series to try to jury the nominations. I just don't have that kind of time this year.

I have a question or issue with these categories!

I mostly used the same categories as last year with some changes based on the feedback from that time. For instance, the different genres have been tweaked to be a bit broader for each with fewer overall genres. Specifically, I dropped the suspense category due to lots of confusion about what could be included there last year. I also clarified that fantasy includes adventure (this would include isekai as well).

Another change from last year is broadening the musical sequence category to be either OP, ED, or insert song. There were some that asked for this category to be split up into OP and ED separately, but looking through the nominations from last year, I don't think there was enough of both category (it was almost all OPs) to separate them.

A category that was dropped from last year is the best duo. This category led to lots of nominations that were permutations of characters from ensemble shows and basically resulted in romantic interests being the most nominated. I thought about turning this into a best couple or best ship category, but at the end of the day, I just opted to drop it so that I have fewer categories to sort through the nominations for.

Finally, I clarified that the voice acting award is for a specific role instead of all of a performer's roles in the past year, and in a specific language.

Who the heck is kurisu? Why not rikka?

I am sure most of you are familiar with our resident episode discussion thread bot, @rikka@ani.social. I initially looked into doing this voting with her as well, but it made my life easier to utilize a separate account for this purpose so that I didn't cross the thread request and voting streams, thus @kurisu@ani.social. As our resident assistant, ~~Christina~~ Kurisu will dutifully record everybody's nominations and, later, their votes.

I will reply to this comment with Kurisu so that it is easy to click her username and compose a message that is simply !nominate.

How do I format my response?

make sure that the first line of your reply message is !nominations. If you followed directions and just copy/pasted the markdown from kurisu's message, that is how the message should start. Then, each category is a heading. Just populate the bulleted lists under the heading for the category you want to nominate things for. Please don't edit the headings as it will make my life much easier when I am parsing all these replies. As an example, the beginning of my reply might look like this (I picked some random shows):

md

    
!nominations

# 2025 Anime Series of the Year

- Sanda
- Tsuyokute New Saga
- mono

# 2025 Anime Film of the Year

...and so on for the rest of the categories.

When will nominations close?

In roughly a week (or so). I don't have a set time yet, but I don't think I will leave nominations open longer than February 13th or so. I will then take a couple days to collate all the nominations and select the final nominees. Then I will open up voting (again for roughly a week or so).

I was not expecting so much fluffy romance after that dad arc was over. A very welcome chapter.

I really like this series. It covers some really serious stuff but manages to inject just enough levity with the characters to keep it enjoyable. If you are looking for a more nuanced depiction of human/demon relations than in something like Frieren, this is a good candidate series.

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.

I haven't had a lot of time to read much this past week, but I was able to read the conclusion of Otr of the Flame. Overall, I was enjoying it, but it was very obvious from the ending that it was axed waaay before the author intended. It was fun, but I don't think it will be that memorable. I did really enjoy the art a lot.

One of the few other series I was able to keep up with this past week was Akira Failing in Love and the past couple chapters have been excellent. The series is really on a roll right now and it has quickly become a series that I really look forward to each week.