I thought they were going to bring in bard girl to sing and lift everyone’s spirits, but I thought this worked better.

What happened to “Don’t tell the Sin Archbishop your name?”

Maybe now is the right time?

@rikka@ani.social

Mildly interesting: The subtitled version that I watched had a “mistranslation for clarity” for the benefit of the English reading audience.

The subtitles said:

Teacher Q: “Who knows what one plus one is?”

All A: “Me!”

The verbal Japanese dialogue goes:

Q: (implied What is…) “One and one?” “Ichi to ichi wa…?”

A: “Ni!” (Japanese for two)

I don’t understand the point of this new Kokoa character. Okay, she’s a spoiled rich girl, but what is her interest in Fossa Magna, Berry Blossom, Chrome, etc? Is she just bored?

My midseason tierlist (after 6-7 episodes)

S Tier

• Raise wa Tanin ga Ii/Yakuza Fiance - Still good.
• Dan Da Dan - If this anime season had a 1st place champion, it would be this show.

A Tier

• Shangri-La Frontier - Sunraku’s attempts to cheeze the game mechanics are still fun to watch.
• Re Zero - I think this season is following the same pattern as last season where Subaru is falling into a seemingly insurmountable tangle of problems, and he’ll have to figure things out later somehow. This makes it really hard to watch right now. I can’t argue with the understated production values though.
• Blue Lock (+1 tier) - Okay, back to the action! Powerpoint animation and crazy exaggerated footballing powers go!
• MF Ghost (+1 tier) - It’s stupid unrealistic car racing, but it’s fun! Playing weekly new eurobeat soundtracks in the background helps. Similar to Blue Lock, it doesn’t have great animation or depth, but it manages to be hype nonetheless.

B Tier

• Wajutsushi (-1 tier) - Annoying assassin bimbo sidekick isn’t working for me. Lead character not making enough morally questionable decisions. Leading me to question what is the point of this show…
• Maou 2099 (-1 tier) - The whipsawing between being a streamer, and combat, was notable. MC Demon Lord Veltol is making intelligent decisions by enlisting the help of his former foe, The Hero, but the story feels predictable.
• Acro Trip - Hugh the “real” villain mastermind was fun, but I feel like they’re running out of ideas because things are getting somewhat random.
• Trillion Game - This is somewhat difficult to watch. The crazy MC’s antics to get ahead are borderline unethical, in fact, their team gets disqualified for cheating, but I do find myself wondering what he’s going to come up with next.
• Chi - Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite - Still hard to watch. The subject is very relevant and I want to keep watching this, but…

C Tier

• Tower Of God (-1 tier) - Incomprehensible story, poor animation are putting this series on the brink for me. I loved S1, and I feel like there’s a decent story in there somewhere, but this… I dunno. I don’t know whether it’s a problem that’s in the source manhwa, or a rushed production, or what, but the net result is not good.

F Tier (dropped)

• Magilumiere (-2 tiers) - Stopped watching this because of a busy schedule, and I don’t miss it
• Negaposi Angler - I actually did watch 2 episodes of this, but I’m not feeling compelled to continue.
• SAO GGO2
• Danmachi S5
• Ranma 1/2

I feel like I should be watching:

• Villainess Who Goes Down In History
• Dragonball Daima

Watching randomly:

• Kengan Ashura S2 - I hate Netflix bombing me with a whole season all at once.

I think Re:Zero is following the same episode structure as last season, where Subaru is thrown down the pit of despair into a seemingly insurmountable problem, and then he’ll find some way to get out of it.

That’s why it’s really hard to watch right now, and honestly it’s about the same time when I quit watching last season. I haven’t even watched how that ended, but it looks like he survived the rabbits okay.

Yeah, maybe take a break from torturing yourself, then wait until all the episodes are out and find out how he survives this time…

To get around Macrovision, you had to have a gadget called a genlock or time base corrector that repaired the video’s frame signal so that a VCR could record it properly.

Genlocks and TBCs were also very helpful when dubbing unprotected anime tapes.

They didn’t entirely solve the video signal degradation to the copy, but they did make the copies much clearer.

Generally pre-record original anime tapes from Japan weren’t copy protected. I seem to remember that one or two that were, but I can’t remember the titles.

What a great article!

I always thought the annoying dimming was some kind of copy protection scheme, like the old Macrovision from back in the days of VHS.

Even if you don’t want deign to give Trump himself credit, he’s got very smart lieutenants working for him, like that Susie Wiles who co-managed his by-all-accounts “disciplined” campaign and was named Chief Of Staff a couple of days ago.

It’s probably most famously the name of the lead heroine in the Sailor Moon anime and manga, hence it’s a girl’s name, and on the hurricane/typhoon name list.

I have no idea how many Japanese girls are actually named Usagi.

Maybe an anime fan had input to the name list, and we can expect Typhoon Madoka some time.

You do realize why Trump is doing these wild nominations is to distract from whatever else he will have cooking when he takes office.

Less flashy, but more consequential things like even more tax cuts for billionaires, pardoning himself for anything and everything, installing corrupt MAGAts in place of career civil servants, Supreme Court nominations, gutting securities/education/food/communications regulators, gutting the State Department and other instruments of our foreign policy, anything else in Project 2025, etc.

Trump could care less whether it ruins life for the 99% of us.

Haha, point taken.

Back in 1991, when the first Civilization game came out, Madonna wasn’t the “elder statesman” that she is today.

This reminds me of that feature in the first Civilization game where the portraits of your advisors change, depending on what type of government you have: Democracy, Republic, Communism, etc.

Under Anarchy, your foreign minister was Madonna, your military advisor was a banana republic general, science advisor a drug dealer, etc. https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Advisor_(Civ1)?file=Advisors_(Civ1).png

This is like that.

I don’t remember seeing Yoshino having girl talks with alleged BFF Tsubaki, so it’s good to see that here.

@rikka@ani.social

And once again we the audience see that Kirishima has multiple girlfriends on the side going waaaaay back, even though Yoshino suspects doesn’t really know that for sure.

So that casts into doubt what exactly he wants from Yoshino.

Is he being honest with her about his feelings for her, while he’s definitely committing the sin of omission about the rest of his social and sex life.

The OP “Under and Over” by The Oral Cigarettes is growing on me…

It’s a subtle detail:

It would have been clearer to show the twirly toy in its intact form, and place this scene closer to episode 4 so that viewers’ memories are fresh, but I appreciate the writing not shoving the links to every little detail in my face.

If that kind of thing isn’t your bag, then that’s fine.

We’ll be lucky if term 2 is just like term 1. That would mean the ACA would survive, no detention camps would be built, and they don’t find a way to deploy the US military to go grab the immigrants and any effective political opposition put them into camps.

Fixed that for you.

@rikka@ani.social

In case you were wondering, like I was…

This was the twirly copter toy/bamboo dragonfly that Noel taught the mayor’s daughter to make, as explained back in episode 4

Can’t wait to see Bilac’s face when he shows up with the Gold Crystal Scorpion parts!

It does make me wonder. Usually in a game like this, loot shows up as small items with neat labels saying it’s loot, but we’ll have to stay tuned to find out if the game can actually do any crafting with random monster parts…

Yet again, the pacing was terrible, and the story was confusing.

Far too long on the uninteresting, poorly animated, and worst of all, ultimately meaningless Anaak/Khun Ran fight that immediately abandons all the rules about not falling off the platform and dropping their boffers, not to mention the goal of planting their boffers in the 3 sockets in the middle of the platforms.

They’re fighting for some kind of tickets?

So 25th Bam/Yoru/Jue Voile Grace is a Living Weapon now?

Unexplained FUG Slayer candidate was bad enough.

I preferred weird undefined Irregular with an unknown potential high ceiling better.

And why is Sword/Pipe Telekinesis Guy wandering around the Archimedes?

And Lero Ro, administrator guy for the 2nd level exam shows up?

Endorsi is in full glamor mode one moment, then being incognito the next?

Forget this Jue Voile Grace guy. Even he can’t knock out both a Jahad and a Khun with one attack!

I mean sure “show instead of tell” is better, but tell us a little to help us understand what’s going on…

I think I’ll have to catch up in the manhwa to figure things out.

Awrighty, the game is underway at last!

Here are the sides, with the U-20s fielding a 4-3-3 formation, and Blue Lock in a defensive 4-5-1

They answered the question of the Blue Lock substitutes, so here is BL’s bench, from which they can use 3 subs.

WTF is this mascot supposed to be? @rikka@ani.social

I hope he dances better than he looks…

Here’s a list of the U-20 lineup. We have no idea what their individual soccer super powers are

I love it! It’s romcom, through the woman’s POV, but warped through the lens of yakuza subculture.

The female romance protagonist’s constantly changing facial expressions, at the awkward and strange situations she finds herself in, are the key feature in the show for me.

Another fun feature is the visual dissonance of sparkly-eyed bishonen and bishojou characters engaging in shady yakuza crime and politics.

The race director can thank his lucky stars that nobody died or was injured in both fog and slippery conditions, and Kanata is also very lucky that he didn’t rear end somebody who was driving at a more responsible speed.

But I’d be surprised if the director can get insurance for next year’s race without some changes.

Re: Angels. This show definitely fails the Bechdel Test