Ooh Dou finally hurt someone, albeit unintentionally.

Also, Dou seems pretty smart for her age. She has shown that she is capable of thinking outside the box previously, and now she casually drop a profound line:

Banner: little red riding hood?

@rikka@ani.social

Someone’s on a roll!

Good catch! I completely missed this detail!

The first line is a good take but the second line is too reductive IMO.

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Mephisto is so. fucking. good

It’s been a while since I have learnt about Power Law in Network Science, but was recently reminded about its prevalence thanks to Veritasium.

When I examined my music library, I noticed the number of times the songs were played follow Power Law too. Standing at the very top is Mephisto with more than 1057 plays, dwarfing Avid (86) and Monster / Kaibutsu (Beastars) in second and third places with around 617 and 580 plays respectively.

All this to say that: yes, 100% agree; Mephisto is just that great.

I want to hear about your favorite OPs and EDs for the season (alternatively, your least favorites!)

OPs

Best opening has to Oshi no Ko’s TEST ME (by CHANMINA) hands down. There’s just no contest this season.

It is kinda edgy and reminds me of Mephisto. Its visuals are incredible too.

EDs

I’m somewhat cheating here (since it was actually released last year, but it is the second ending song of the anime and the second half of the anime is airing this season) but my favourite ED is Gnosia’s Floor Killer (by Umeda Cypher). I enjoy how it sounds.

post questions/comments/recommendations like any other week.

Roll Over and Die

I gave up on Roll Over and Die. It’s not too bad, but it’s just not good enough. Somehow, the dialogue and whatnots don’t seem to flow smoothly. Maybe its direction is no good? I’d rather just read the source material or its manga adaptation. My understanding is that the story is still ongoing and won’t be ending anytime soon though, so it would be a while before I pick it back up.

You and I Are Polar Opposites

The anime that replaced the freed-up time is You and I Are Polar Opposites. Its synopsis made it sound like a typical romcom which is why I have been brushing it off, but the numerous praises it has been receiving and its high rating on AniList made it hard to ignore. So I gave it a chance.

For the first half of the first episode, I was convinced this anime is going to turn out like most other romcoms and was ready to drop it once the episode ends. But there was a development - one that’s not done frequent enough in romcoms IMO - in that episode and that was enough to get me hooked.

Beyond that, I like the characters. I also like how the anime build-up the characters and their personalities by showing us their thoughts.

It has been surprising enjoyable. I would be following it as it airs now, so hopefully it would continue to deliver.

Cosmic Princess Kaguya

One last update: I completed Cosmic Princess Kaguya. It is very well-produced, with high quality animation and art. Its story feels lackluster by comparison though.

There’s hardly any time for manga lately while clearing a heavy anime backlog. All that I read nowadays are the ones that I’ve already been following.

Having said that, I would check out manga on the front page of MangaDex from time to time, and pick some up on a whim. The lucky candidate this time is A Mom Adventurer Awakened The Skill [Housewife] From Her Login Bonus. She’s Doing Her Best At Adventurer Life Using The Weekly Flyers She Gets!. It’s premise is nothing new and reminds me of Bofuri and Guild Receptionist (the Alina Clover one), but its easy junk food for the brain, so I’m in for the ride, for now.

I find it interesting that there’s an influx of parental figures being the MCs of these adventure-fantasy stories recently. My theory is that fans of such settings have reach the age of parenthood (and may even have became parents). Whatever the case, I am all for it - better to have more grown-ups instead of childish protagonists.

Tani is based. The lines that he dropped are just too smooth:

I liked the maturity that Suzuki showed too:

The cast kept bringing up the fact that these two are polar opposites, but honestly, they’re a pretty good fit for each other.

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Such a great game; I completely fell for Racqio’s trap. That was the best induction from Yuri - that Remnan is sus given that Chipie is not; then turning the situation around by lying about his investigation? Mad respect for that. His last line was so cold too.

I was thinking the trap is that Kukrushka is actually the Gnosia, but became clueless after she got eliminated. In hindsight, it was fallacious to assume that Jina - who was eliminated early - is an ordinary human.

At least I managed to guess that:

it is a big-brain play, where the Gnosia team coordinated this and planned to sacrifice Comet

Jonas - AC Follower

On another note: Sha Ming seems to have a thing for dogeza. He’s the kind of person who would get persuaded by dogeza, which explains why he thought he could persuade others by doing dogeza in previous episodes.

Me when Medalist is finally airing:

In fact, there are so many funny moments worthy of reaction/meme material. And this is before we even get started on the competition proper!

Banner: nuclear drama incoming?! (nothing happened)

@rikka@ani.social

Looks like we have different interpretations of the word “spoiler”.

Spoiler of? What’s going to come next?

These specific screenshots don’t provide enough context to reveal the plot IMO.

It doesn’t feel like a scifi IMO.

Are our MCs asexual or something?? 💀

How can two teens in their prime be completely clueless when it comes to romantic feelings?!

Still a fun episode regardless. The best moment has to be the “she’s my girlfriend” declaration from Tamon.

New Message Function: A new message function will be added to the app’s trade feature on Jan. 29. Players will be able to choose between set messages, allowing them to share whether they’d like to trade for a wishlisted card or a card in an alternate language.

This is such a huge QOL win. Unironically, thanks Dena.

Edit: Maybe not such a big win at the moment, but hopefully they would improve upon this feature.

Also, here’s a quick prediction of the competitive meta: Suicune-Greninja would still be the top deck. None of the cards revealed so far look game-changing.

I wasn’t expecting a boob joke in a wholesome show 💀

(But to be fair there has been a surprising amount of non-wholesome moments, just that Dou made it wholesome in the end).

First half:

The lore behind their in-universe Santa Claus is quite clever. I like how they start off from a base form - as Santa’s helpers - before evolving into full-fledged Santas. I wonder what’s the condition to trigger their evolution; perhaps to make a certain number of children happy?

Second half:

Dou reminded me of those kids presented with the trolley problem, but instead of optimising for minimum utility, she is actually trying for the best outcome - and succeeding at it!

This may be copium but maybe, just maybe, she won’t do too badly in a Takopi situation.

The Demon King’s Daughter is Too Kind

Episode 3 comes with a third sing-along segment. I hope they keep this up.

I certainly wasn’t expecting these Disney-like / kids’ cartoon-like singalongs.

This is one of the most creative use of the animated medium IMO. You can’t have such segments in printed form, but can easily do so in anime. The studio / director / etc understood the assignment when it came to this adaptation and did so in a way that not only value-add to the underlying story, but also captures the essence of it.

I am so glad that it was adapted as well as it was so far.