What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

Only following a few shows this season, so I've been checking out some Chinese shows too. They've come a long way in recent years and now feel competitive with a lot of what's coming out of Japan.

• To Be Hero X / Tu Bian Yingxiong X

  3D animation which often features overlaid 2D effects and occasionally uses full 2D animation in a variety of styles. The plot revolves around superheroes whose powers come from the trust of the public (or their fear, in the case of villains). Basically, they're kind of like gods who become whatever people believe they are, but they have to constantly market themselves in order to keep the public's attention.

  The 3D animation is quite good and the characters come across as very expressive. The quality of the 2D animation is more variable, although some of it (e.g. the OP) is also pretty impressive.

  Apparently this is just the latest series in the Tu Bian Yingxiong franchise, but it doesn't feel like you need to have seen the previous shows to follow the story.

• Link Click / Shiguang Dailiren

  Time travel thriller / drama about two friends who can enter the pasts of others through their photos.

  Haven't watched too much so far, but the story seems interesting, the animation is smooth and clean and the backgrounds have this colourful, stylised look which I quite like.

• Daily Life of the Immortal King / Xianwang de Richang Shenghuo

  Your standard shounen action / comedy about a kid who goes to magic school and is secretly the strongest but has to pretend to be weak in order not to destroy the world with his powers. The show would be terrible if it took itself seriously, but fortunately it's quite silly and filled with dumb jokes. The animation starts out a bit janky but picks up towards the end of season 1, and by the start of season 2 it's actually pretty good.

Other thoughts:

• I'm guessing this is a censorship thing, but they don't have blood in these shows. Instead, you get stuff like people spurting gold. It's very surreal. (Edit: Having watched some more, this isn't always the case and seems to vary even within the same series!)

• All of the above shows are directed by the same guy, Li Haoling. I think he does a good job (particularly given how different the tone of each show is), but I guess it also shows how small a pond the anime industry is over there at the moment.

Initial impressions of everything I started this season (mostly copied from quick thoughts I dropped elsewhere over the past couple of weeks), often just the first episode:

• My Awkward Senpai — Hair vents in this day and age? I guess this one's all about the gap moe difference between her outward behavior and inner monologue but I don't know if it's working for me.

• A Star Brighter than the Sun — Gimme that shoujo childhood friend romance.

• This Monster Wants to Eat Me — I'd let her eat me too. Some of the early establishing scenes reminded me of Aku no Hana in a good way, looking forward to more of this one.

• Pass the Monster Meat, Milady — These two dorks were made for each other, I love it. Hope it doesn't waffle on the romance front for too long, I already have another series with a nerdy red-haired girl and beast slayer with golden eyes that love to eat monsters together that's dragging on.

• May I Ask for One Final Thing? — Already mentioned in this thread, Scarlet's a fun lead.

• My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me! — Half Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?, half Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend, all facepalm.

• Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota — I'd rather have another season of Aharen Is Indecipherable or Takagi-san, but we'll see how this goes.

• SI-VIS — Oh hey mixed-gender Symphogear. That's all I got so far.

• Alma-chan Wants to Be a Family — First scene made me think Mahoromatic to start but really it's robot/scientist Spy x Family.

• Towa no Yuugure — Not a great start for an original series, the antagonists are mustache twirling levels of evil so far.

• Mechanical Marie — Instead of an android being treated like a human here's a human acting like a robot for reasons. Not deep but it's fun.

• Yano-kun's Ordinary Days — I think I saw some Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie comparisons earlier and I get it for the guy being unlucky and constantly getting injured, but seems fundamentally different in its character relationships and what it's going for.

• Ginpachi-sensei — Gintama spinoff, opening scene was fantastic but the rest of it didn't quite grab me. Haven't gotten to the second episode yet, will have to see how it does past the introductions.

• Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle — This immediately fell into the same group with Oregairu/Tomozaki/Alya kinds of light novel adaptations for me with characters that I find to be grating, not a good sign.

• With You, Our Love Will Make It Through — Average shoujo school romance leaning on the spicy side but the male lead is midway down the furry scale, curious to see how it follows the end of the first episode.

• Plus-sized Misadventures in Love — More interesting than I expected but maybe a bit too quick of a resolution for the coworker, could have been interesting to see her gradually come around rather than flipping to Yumeko's side right away.

• Forget That Night, Your Majesty — Another Broken Saintess kind of production that looks like Live2D animation from a decade ago, unfortunately. I do find it funny that they're invoking Greek myth by having a woman from House Persephone marry a Lord Hades while they seem to be in a generic medieval Europe nobility setting.

• The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess — A woman's pulled into her cringe-worthy teen fantasy story as the antagonist, pretty fun but I'm biased toward villainess series.

• Let's Play — Questionable dialogue but also maybe fun in a popcorn sense. Gonna roll with the dub for this I think since it's quite American.

• Wandance — Wanda's design feels off at times in context with the other characters. I only made it through a couple of episodes of the other dancing anime (Dance Dance Danseur and Welcome to the Ballroom) and don't necessarily expect to keep up with this one either, but Scatman playing in the first episode has my interest.

• A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace — I also dropped New Game and that's what I had in mind heading into the start of this one. After the second episode it's... okay? I can recognize that it's good at what it's doing, it's just not something I'm all that interested in yet.

That's about double what I normally finish in a season, so I have no idea how many of these I'll actually keep up with.

Recently finished a full rewatch of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End with my younger sibling (it's the first watch for them) and it's just as good as the first time I saw it. Just a really beautiful journey with beautifully developed characters and a beautiful soundtrack. Will most likely watch the second season with them as it releases when it comes out in January next year.

Currently in the middle of a rewatch of Delicious in Dungeon which my younger sibling also hasn't seen yet, and it's also just as fun as the first time. I can pay more attention to the little details like the food prep and the foreshadowing, and they get to enjoy seeing Marcille's reaction faces for the first time. Great animation paired with a somewhat zany premise that ends up feeling very natural, and a colorful cast of lovable characters. You'll want to have snacks on hand, watching this may make you hungry.

This week is about May I Ask for One Final Thing?. The poster for this show looks like a romance poster, but it is not. I suspect its audience has been unintentionally narrowed by this as the only reason I even clicked it was that my wife had read the source material and already knew it wasn't actually a romance. The show is only a few episodes in, but its in my top 3 of currently airing.

Below I've put a tiny bit of what the show is actually about, but I think it's a bit more interesting if you go in blind on the first episode. I didn't look at the poster too closely or read the description and that made the twist in the first episode much more enjoyable than I think it would've been otherwise.

I watched 100 Meters in theaters, and I lovedddd the animation style. I thought it was a great movie, and the story reminded me of Ping Pong: The Animation (one of my other favorites).

I've also been watching The Apothecary Diaries and I'm enjoying it way more than I expected, and so is my wife. Gorgeous backdrops, a relatively interesting story, and some moments that were more humorous than I anticipated to boot. I think this is going to rank relatively highly on my list.