Yeah, Wajutsushi strikes me as more like Solo Leveling, except much lighter in tone and with a purely fantasy setting.

Let’s face it, an age gap of 5-6 years would be unremarkable if they were in their 30s. The problem is anyone, of any age, making the moves on a prepubescent girl. That’s where the ick is coming from. I was willing to tolerate it as long as it was just infatuation from a distrance, but the let’s-pretend-this-isn’t-a-kiss was a bridge too far. I don’t think I would be comfortable with it even if they were both 10 or whatever age she said she was.

Overprotective male relatives are doing a piss-poor job of actually protecting her.

Some series that no one else has mentioned yet:

Demon Lord, Retry! R: Somehow the artwork and animation is managing to be even worse than that from the 2019 series—guys, at least try to keep the main character’s hair length consistent, okay? Plus, 95% of what’s been shown so far has been a recap of the earlier version. As of the end of the second episode, they are finally caught up. The bizarrely chosen ecchi material, while it doesn’t make up any significant fraction of the runtime, is even more grating in the recap than the original. I found the original series amusing despite its many faults, so I’ll stick with this one for a while, but in general I don’t recommend it.

The Healer who was Banished from his Party etc.: Bog-standard protagonist-that-no-one-has-noticed-is-overpowered fantasy light novel schlock. Okay for turning your brain off, but otherwise don’t bother.

Good-bye, Dragon Life: Bog-standard protagonist-hides-his-power fantasy light novel schlock so far. Another one suitable for turning one’s brain off.

The Most Notorious “Talker” etc.: And for the hat trick, we have protagonist-wants-to-get-stronger fantasy light novel schlock. This one managed to get my attention slightly more than the others by ending the first ep. on a weak cliffhanger. I doubt it’ll come to anything, but we’ll see.

Trillion Game: Mixed feelings about this one, probably because I empathize a little too much with Gaku. Haru, on the other hand, seems like a slimeball despite attempts to depict him sympathetically. Haven’t watched the second episode yet.

I’m still waiting on several other series. There seem to be an awful lot of late premieres this season.

what, substantially, is even the difference between that and having a billion dollars, other than being top of the wealth leaderboard?

Well, a billion won’t buy out Apple or another really wealthy corporation. And it can’t cover the entire debt of a large, developed nation-state. A trillion could likely do those things. Other than that, I can’t think of any real difference.

If they continue with the attrition rate in the last episode, all of these people will be gone by halfway through the cours.

Yatagarasu - 9/10

How were more people not watching this one??

That’s a bit of a mystery to me too, although the second cours was better than the first, and the big hiatus around the Olympics may have made some people drop it out of sheer irritation.

The ones that were better than I expected:

• QA in Another World: I love the fact that they lean into this being a game (as opposed to a gamelike isekai), and that the characters exploit that fact. Other iterations of the “trapped in a game” trope in anime haven’t done that. (Shangri-La Frontier does, but the stakes are a lot lower there.)

• No Longer Allowed in Another World: Just a nice change from stereotypical isekais and stereotypical isekai heroes.

• Atri: I had really low expectations of this one going in, but it turned out . . . okay. Not brilliant, but okay.

• Slime: The last cours was sufficiently bad that this one was an improvement, even if it’s certainly not the best in the series.

The ones that were worse than I expected:

• Dahliya: It’s just . . . where’s the conflict? What little does show up gets resolved within an episode or two. There’s pretty much nothing to drive the story here.

• Tasuuketsu: Started off very strong, but the rest of the season didn’t live up to the first episode. Then again, I don’t know what could have. Not awful, but merely okay.

• Bye Bye, Earth: Interesting world, but they did a horrible job of showing it to us. A lot of things needed a couple of sentences of explanation that they just didn’t get, and the little labels that kept popping up were worse than useless.

Best of the season: NieR Automata (although I had sufficiently high expectations of it going in that it didn’t exceed them).

Hardest to watch: Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction. I think I’m seven episodes behind right now, and having a hard time mustering the desire to continue on. Anything that has bigotry as a major theme is a difficult watch for me right now, given what’s been unfolding in the real world lately.

Most incomprehensible art direction choice: Delico’s Nursery. The backgrounds look like tracings of photographs, or maybe carefully coloured-in photocopies of photographs, and the effect in combination with the characters is just . . . strange. Maybe it’s a carryover from the manga, which I’ve never read?

Best dragon award: I Parry Everything, but mostly by default, because I don’t remember any other dragons of significance (even bad CGI ones, which would be ineligible).

As for worst… I have one in mind but the name escapes me at this very moment. Oh right. Gibiate.

Oh, $DEITY, that thing was such a train wreck! I watched it to the end thinking that it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

It did.

A few older series I haven’t seen listed yet:

• Ergo Proxy
• Heat Guy J
• Pumpkin Scissors (note: has Unfinished Manga Syndrome, so the story stops without reaching a proper climax. Still fun.)
• Saiyuki (one of the four leads does look like a teen, so skip this one if that bothers you.)

Record of the Lodoss War (a D&D campaign turned into anime, if I recall rightly)

Mixed-age cast—the main characters are adults in the context of their society, but not all are necessarily 20+ years of age. Also be aware that there are two different versions of this, an OAV and a later TV series. There are significant differences in story between the two (the TV series adapts more of the original material, the OAV ends differently). I prefer the OAV, but it’s mostly a matter of taste.

.hack//sign (dot hack sign) is a pretty interesting one. It has several other series in its ‘canon’ if you like it. I’d say it was the adult oriented, well-presented premise of sword art online before sword art online was wet-dreamed up. A friend described it as ‘waving its dick around because they had an actual orchestra for the soundtrack’ in several scenes.

The last time I watched it (admittedly about ten years ago now), I found that it hadn’t aged all that well. The loose ends left because it was a prequel to some of the games in the .hack franchise were very noticeable. (It’s still a better version of the “trapped in a game” trope than SAO, though, because it doesn’t repeatedly reduce the female lead to a damsel in distress). And not all the main characters were adult, although some clearly were. The soundtrack is still excellent if you like Yuki Kajiura’s style, though.

And Yurikuma Arashi and Sarazanmai. Ikuhara always stays in the same vein.

The most similar anime I can think of that’s isn’t his is Princess Tutu.

Poor thing—the one time he shows some level of caution and understanding of what he’s getting into, he’s overridden by someone else having a brain meltdown. 🤣

I probably shouldn’t be posting when I feel too awful to concentrate, either. Apologies.

A skim of the article shows that it was not written from the viewpoint of a parent having to calm a hysterical crying child after having watched the movie. GotF is an emotional gut-punch even for adults. Incredibly powerful film, but that means it has to be treated with care and respect. That doesn’t mean it can’t be shown to children, but anyone who does so needs to be prepared for the consequences.

(As for me, I was in grad school when I saw it. I’m glad I did, but I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to watch it again.)

Have fun with your game of whack-a-mole, guys. Eventually, you’ll realize that the money you’re pumping into it is just wasted.

I’ve watched 200-odd episodes (plus several movies) of Detective Conan, AKA Case Closed, over the years, because sometimes I just need a mildly entertaining timewaster. So I’ve seen maybe 20% of that series as it presently stands.

Other than that, some long-running shounen nonsense (Hero Academia, Black Clover, Bleach, Fairy Tail, possibly others I’m forgetting), all of which would have been better if they were shorter. I’ve also seen most of Sailor Moon at one time or another, and it would have been better if it had ended sooner than it did.

The Slayers (104 eps) and Kyo Kara Maoh! (117? eps) were the longest I can think of that were worth watching a second time. Saiyuki (if you count all the variously-titled bits as a single series it must have passed 100 by now) might also qualify if it ever achieves a decent ending.

(I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting—I’ve seen a lot of anime.)

The anime is a good twenty years old at this point. In isolation, if you’re not familiar with the source material, it’s an okay-but-forgettable action series.