Ya, I’ve bounced off a couple non-fromsoft soulslikes and they always seem to forget that the games are tying to build you up by challenging you rather than tear you down by defeating you. I can definitely see how those kinds of harsh dev vs player type games could feed into a mindset of “it’s everyone for themselves and i will come out on top”

It’s weird because (having only played elden ring) I’ve always felt like I’ve got support from others even though I play solo. There are so many helpful and encouraging messages, from “beware of right” to “don’t give up!” to “well done o well done”, that it always feels like I’ve got a bunch of people at my back, even though I still need to do all the work myself. Even the ghosts give the impression that we’re all going through this together.

Maybe it’s just a thing where you get out the same type of energy you put into it.

Gender dysphoria is not the same as being trans. Not all trans people have gender dysphoria and plenty of cis people do. Cis men who do steroids and cis women who get boob jobs typically do so to ease some level of gender dysphoria they feel. The only reason trans people get diagnosed and cis people don’t is the continuing view of transness as itself a disorder.

It might be a countable/uncountable noun thing, lol. Like, I wouldn’t consider Dan Da Dan s2 to be “a new show” but i would consider it to be “some new animation”, if that makes sense. “Anime” can be used in either sense and since it doesn’t change when pluralized it can be hard to tell which someone means. At the same time, I stand by what I said that “[x show] is returning and it’s still very good” and “[y show] is new and it’s very good” are statements with fairly different target audiences.

Hype!!

IMO it’s a little weird to fill a “best new anime” list almost half with returning anime. Like, they’re not wrong picks, but people are either already planning to watch them or they’re not caught up.

It’s very good, but for anyone planning on watching it: take the content warnings EXTREMELY seriously. The show does not mess around.

I’ve also heard there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s not 100% suffering. But golly gee wiz is there still a lot of suffering.

I’m pretty sure the people complaining about child sexualization in anime are not the same people supporting child beauty pageants and child marriage…

If it were a series of strategies to attempt to reduce the number of pedo/incest anime (not just outlawing them, but influencing the market with regulation of advertising and/or broadcast content), I might be tentatively on board, but something tells me it’s going to be more about censoring blood and gore, queerness, and maybe even themes of fighting against authority, depending on how ambitious they get.

I get really salty when people point at patterns in anime that are sort of objectively bad and claim that they’re fine because that’s “just Japanese culture”. Like, I’m really tired of being told I’m overreacting when I say maybe anime shouldn’t glamorize pedo shit or make characters that are racist or homophobic stereotypes. Save “it’s just Japanese culture” for when I’m complaining about the cute mascot character’s annoying verbal tic, lol.

Also, this isn’t specifically an anime thing, nor is it specifically a western thing, but I get a little frustrated with “it’s just fiction”. Fiction is constructed out of the worldview of the creator(s) and will always contain at least some of their ways of thinking. All art contains some meaning to it, and teasing apart exactly what a piece of art is trying to say is typically both useful and fulfilling.

There’s an episode of Eminence in Shadow where one of the girls has a little plushie of Shadow-sama and I was APPALLED to learn that I could not buy such a thing. Every bit of merch for that show seems to be of the girls and all i want is my own little Shadow-sama!

It’s fun, but I still don’t know where this show is going lol.

I’m with Clevatess on this one. Humanity probably should be destroyed.

This doesn’t appear to be doing anything new (at least so far) but Cloverworks’ gorgeous animation and direction really sell it regardless. Everyone’s very cute and I’m eager to see them grow. I give the premiere a 4/5.

P.S. netflix please let this out of jail, what is wrong with you

Sometimes it feels like you can just tell when an author’s heart isn’t really in it, like they don’t have a story they want to tell, they just need to be writing because it’s their job, and this definitely seems like one of those. The characters are pretty weak (their only traits are annoying ones) and the camping portions don’t feel like they’re really meant to sell the audience on the hobby the way a lot of hobby anime try to. Overall, I give the premiere a 2/5.

LLMs should be good for translation, but the thing is that they aren’t, for two main reasons:

First, the avoidable problem: CR is running them on the audio, not the script. The AI is mishearing stuff all the time, leading to inconsistent character naming and nonsensical sentences. There are a few CR anime this season that are extremely hard to follow at times because the AI subtitles can’t even begin to understand what’s happening.

Second, a more permanent problem: translation of fiction is much more of an art than a science. Translators don’t just translate words, they translate connotation and tone, as well. A translator interprets the meaning of the lines - what information is being conveyed, spoken or unspoken - and tries to put that same meaning into a different sentence. This is a task that LLMs are going to struggle with a lot. For example, how is the AI going to convey that there’s been a pun, or a reference to a well-known turn of phrase, or an innuendo using words with multiple meanings?

ETA: if you truly think this is fine (worker issues aside) I recommend giving necronomico a watch

Only watched the first episode because I felt like I’d seen what I’d needed to, lol. It’s got a bunch of the standard harem anime stuff with sort of a mean cast of girls, plus an interesting theme about the importance of family time which gets completely undercut by the fact that it’s a harem romance. I give this premiere a 3/5.

Did you finish the first episode? lol

Not really sure to think about this one, since I feel like I have no idea what to expect going forward, lol. The drama and characters are good so far, as is the animation quality. I give the premiere a 4/5 because it hooked me, but who knows where it’s headed (and that’s sort of the beauty of anime originals).