Thursdays have way too many shows that I want to watch this season. It really needs to just chill a bit.

I have liked this one as well, but I am not fully caught up yet.

As for the downvotes, instance admins can see who up/downvoted any posts. I actually host my own instance for bot testing and monitoring for vote manipulation in the communities I mod. I agree with Kadath that you just occasionally see some user that has never commented or posted in the community downvote a bunch of posts and then never show up again. Lemmy is weird about anime/manga stuff.

I don’t know how to feel about this hero’s family. They are particularly odd. I did like how Mira views the hero as basically an NPC though, even being pixelated in her memory.

I also ran across a music video featuring everybody’s favorite paranormal pair of JKs.

I really liked Gorou reaching up from the depths to exact his revenge on Hikaru. It actually mirrors some of the visuals from the anime’s season 1 ED in which Aqua is plunged into water and is held down by red threads:

After it is all said and done though, Hikaru has not really lived up to the villainous figure that we have imagined for a large chunk of this series from Aqua’s POV. I guess there is some symmetry with Ai there if you think about it.

When Aqua/Gorou got to know Ai in real life and then even more closely as he investigated her after her death, it turned out that she was just a talented person, but still a person at the end of the day. He had initially built her up inside his head as this unapproachable prodigy, but that was shattered after Akane was able to channel Ai so well in the dating show, causing Aqua’s perception of Ai to start to come back down to earth. Similarly with Hikaru, he is built up as some kind of supervillain inside Aqua’s head. However, the reality is that Hikaru is just a dude with an unhealthy worldview and obsession with Ai.

Edit: looking back through the chapter now, the full page spread is eerily similar to the season 1 ED. Compare the spread to the screenshot I grabbed above. It almost has to be intentional.

I believe that the first two episodes of this show released at the same time. The AniLIst api used by the bot never handles this well, so the thread for the second episode wasn’t made and likely won’t be requestable like a normal show. If anybody wants me to make a thread for episode 2, just let me know here or via pm and I can make it manually.

Ok, I was confused about the test that they traveled to as well. I guess that picture of them looking happy alongside the invite was taken after they passed the test?

One thing that I liked about this first episode is that it spent basically zero time setting up the premise. It was self-aware enough to know that viewers of this show are likely to already be familiar with the trappings and conventions of the otome isekai genre already. The game that this world is based on is as generic and prototypical as you can get. Additionally, we spent absolutely zero time talking about the MC’s previous life other than that she played this game and liked the Villainess. Sorry all you truck-kun lovers out there.

This first episode is a bit of a speedrun of the origin story behind our young Villainess. She studies a lot, practices good manners, gets crazy strong for an eight year old, and has a hell of a sweet tooth. I thought it was funny how she viewed things as a Villainess test, like when the king was asking her questions:

Speaking of, her plan of inciting a revolution for independence in a neighboring region so that her Kingdom can profit is a very Villainess-y move for sure. No saintess is going to advocate for stoking the fires of war, leave that kind of thing to the Villainess.

I am going to try to give this a couple more episodes time permitting, and I look forward to skipping ahead in time a bit to see how the school life goes, as that is usually the setting for the otome games. I suspect that these roses are going to be important. Our MC keeps getting portrayed alongside a black rose in the OP and ED (and her mom was carrying it in the beginning of the episode). So, I suspect that the MC is also a special rose person alongside this golden rose protagonist. We’ll see how it all plays out. @rikka@ani.social

I love this series after just a couple chapters…but it comes out so slowly. I wonder how long this series can even run since all its chapters so far have been based on real abandoned roads. There can only be so many of them, right?

If this new girl falls in love easily, does it also mean she becomes enraged with jealousy easily? I kind of doubt it. Frankly, it’s too early in the series to solve anything.

Spreading the gospel of pudding, one supernatural horror at a time.

The bit about driving narrow mountain roads is so true. I was on vacation once in Ireland and spent a couple days driving through extremely narrow roads with super sharp, blind turns everywhere. It’s frankly terrifying. I was also driving on the opposite side of the road from what I was used to.

On the one hand, they are sadly still playing out this Sakurai can’t control himself story arc. On the other hand, it at least doesn’t seem as traumatic for Uzaki as it was previously.

Good Lord these two are so damn cute together. Their chemistry is just so natural and delightfully weird at the same time. Chokki-chan is like scientifically perfected moe.

Hopefully. I kind of wish we got more out of that conversation with the rival character. It seems like he is the one who knows how things are going to go down.

You chose two fantastic shows to catch up on. LycoReco really surprised me. I didn’t really have many expectations going in, but I ended up really, really liking it. I cannot wait to see what the LycoReco Cafe is cooking up next. I too want to see what is going on with the LIlyBell group.

As for Oshi no Ko, I couldn’t control myself and binged the manga after the first season. Now I have to wait in pain for each new chapter to come out. I feel like this season in particular has really taken the adaptation to a whole new level.

This is just for anime. The !manga@ani.social community is entirely user-created posts.

I hope not. When you have the main pair as the literal title of the series, introducing additional complications like that feels pretty pointless.

I am hoping that this new girl is just looking for some fun company to hang out with and rediscover her youth a bit. We’ll see!

Even the principal is helping out by upending the school schedule to fit in a prom. He really puts the pal in principal.

I love the dynamic that Alvin and Karla have.