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

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.

This season's shows

LIAR GAME
Here are the things I don't like about this show:

• The animation is pretty janky.
• The main protagonist is incorrigibly naive will have your palms glued to your face throughout.
• A couple of the tricks used by the protagonists and the antagonists could easily have been foiled by just demanding that the other party show their vote before they post it, and it kind of strains belief that these supposedly sharp players don't ask for that.

Other than that, it's pretty low key enjoyable. The games are simple enough to grasp quickly but have enough depth to allow for strategy and dealing, and it's presented in a way where it's easy to follow along (i.e. with diagrams).

Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu S4
Other than the first couple of episodes which briefly suggested a return to the S1 formula of fumbling around in a world full of danger, dying and repeating, this is probably the worst season of the show so far. The plot is constantly lurching from point to completely unrelated point like S2, except without the interesting lore, character development or building up of audience investment in what the characters are trying to achieve.

Yomi no Tsugai

Rather slow paced with a ton of characters, but easy and pleasant to watch. The practicality of the protagonist and his willingness to just employ violence whenever expedient is refreshing.

Next season's shows

Mushoku Tensei S3
I'm on the fence about whether to watch this. I loved S1 and the 'sometimes events have bad outcomes and you just have to do your best to live with them' tone to the writing. S2 felt like a complete about face from that and ended up as the worst kind of school harem wish fulfilment dreck which squandered the character development built up in S1. Might give it a few episodes and drop it if it's truly awful.

Youjo Senki S2
Not sure why it took 9 years for season 2 to come out, but I remember it being a fun (if somewhat mindless) watch and will probably also watch this. Kind of surprised that NUT are still around to produce this as I've barely seen anything else from them in the intervening years.

Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku
Not entirely in my wheelhouse but willing to give this a shot since it's Kyoto Animation. I ended up finishing Hibike! Euphonium recently and enjoyed the movies / S3 a great deal.

THE GHOST IN THE SHELL
Looks better each time a new trailer comes out. Very enthused for this one.

No adaptations of any manga I'm following next season other than Thunder 3, which is completely ridiculous but good fun. I seem to remember there being a kerfuffle about whether this was actually Gantz's Oku Hiroya writing under a different pen name because it's just so similar to his style (read: incredibly pulpy sci-fi action).