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What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
This week I watched Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You.
This is the only romance anime Ive ever watched that I actually enjoyed for the romance aspect. Granted, I dont watch a ton of romances in general, but I still think this one is quite enjoyable.
Corporate wage slave Sasaki lives a depressing life, with his one small joy being his daily trips to the supermarket where the cute grocery clerk Yamada will smile warmly at him at checkout. One day Sasaki ends up taking a smoke break behind the store and strikes up a friendship with "Tayama", who is in fact just Yamada in street clothes and not using her customer service voice. The fake name and personality difference causes Sasaki to be unable to recognize the two as the same person. Thus begins a love triangle between Yamada, Sasaki, and "Tayama".
I really enjoyed watching. Yamada is a great female lead, her character design is really nice and she has a nuanced personality that isnt dominated by anime tropes. I also like that in the "hot/cold" personality between Yamada/Tayama, the "cold" personality is never mean or offputting, just relaxed and casual. More of a "warm/cool".
Sasaki is a bit more limited in this regard, because the plot hinges on him being pathologically oblivious and easily flustered, but he is otherwise a good guy with decent character moments and his dynamic with Yamada/Tayama is fun.
The main thing that might put people off from this show is the age gap between mid 40s Sasaki and mid 20s Yamada, but I think this works well here. Often times animes will have a male lead who is a total gooner but is somehow allergic to the thought of a girl actually liking him, even when he has a veritable harem following him around. But here it makes perfect sense that Sasaki is going out of his way to not sexualize a girl half his age in his mind.
Also, this is a rare anime where I actually knew the end credits theme before watching. They used Night Dancer by Imase, which I have been listening to a lot the past few months, so that was a neat coincidence.
From what I understand this was just a miniseries to promote the upcoming release of the full season, so Im looking forward to watching the whole thing when it comes out. I might even see if I can find the manga so I can read the whole story. Highly recommended.
This week in Witch Hat Atelier, we see Richeh being our ✨ neurodivergent queen 👑 I love her being so blunt, independent, defiant, and creative -- making her own way instead of following the "correct" answers is inspiring... and relatable. The series' portrayal of differently abled individuals and how society treats them is so kind-spirited and moving.
As much as I'm excited for the season finale next week, I'll also be sad -- it hasn't officially been renewed for season 2 yet, and even if it is, it may take another 3yrs. I encourage them to take all the time they need to make it right, they've done us justice so far. And if they worked much faster, they'd risk outpacing the manga any way. I think this season has already covered like 5 of 16 volumes?
We started Frieren recently too.