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At this point in time, the Winter seasonal shows have mostly either wrapped up or are airing their finale this week. So, I wanted to hear your thoughts on shows you watched this season. Shows you liked, disliked, were surprised by, disappointed by? Let those opinions rip!

Please feel free to use this thread as a normal weekly discussion thread as well! Anything that would normally be in the weekly discussion thread any other week is welcome here.

As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).

  • ReluctantlyZen@ani.socialEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    Good season, with some bangers. I’ve watched:

    1. Journal With Witch: what an incredible anime. It deals with the subject material of loss so delicately and beautifully, enhanced by the nuanced characters and incredible soundtrack.
    2. You And I Are Polar Opposites: very fun romcom, with a delightful cast of characters. Reminds me a lot of Tsuredure Children, but more connected. If there’s one criticism, it’s that there’s one particular piece of the soundtrack that’s basically a corpo ad track.
    3. Frieren: great as always. A fair bit more downtime than the last one, but tbh, those are some of my favourite moments.
    4. Fate/Strange Fake: it’s Fate, so I had to watch it. It started off feeling like it was still setting up for like 6 episodes, but after that it got going properly. I like it a lot. Good visuals and interesting twists on the Fate/Stay Night formula and some FGO characters. The Sawano soundtrack is unusual for Fate and took some getting used to, but I don’t hate it. I also don’t think it’s particularly great. I like the OP though.
    5. Hell’s Paradise S2: started off fine, but ramped up quite quick. Solid action in an interesting setting. Some of the big fights kinde kept following the same formula, but others changed it up a little thankfully. It looks like it’s coming to a close, but I’m not sure it’s going to be this season.
    6. The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife: a lovely romcom with an adorable FMC. I picked this up later in the season, and I’m glad I did.
    7. Champignon Witch: first few eps I really enjoyed. Luna was an interesting character and how she dealt with the world was intriguing. Then came Lize and the overall quality dropped. Luna was a shell of her former self, Claude became even more annoying and all the intrigue was gone. Lize is a boring character and he was suddenly the new MC. The way the other characters interact with him is the worst part. Their actions make no sense given the nature of his problem. Dropped it at ep 8.
    8. The Holy Grail Of Eris: an interesting twist on the villainess genre, where the supposed villainess (who’s a ghost) works together with a supposedly “sincere” character. It was interesting at first, but the “sincere” character became an annoyance and was nothing more than a proxy that just made everything slower than necessary. Kind of like a middle manager. I put sincere im quotation marks, because they seemed to have confused extreme naïvity and letting people walk all over you with sincerity, yet they kept saying how sincere she was. It was very annoying. Not sure if that’s on the translation or if they just don’t know what sincerity means. They also kept framing her for crimes in such non-sensical ways that I couldn’t take it seriously. Dropped it after 7 eps. Shame, because I did like the villainess character.
    9. The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom: dropped after 2 eps. Nothing about it is a villainess anime. They say MC was a villainess, but what’s shown is the opposite. It doesn’t earn any villainess cred, not even through widespread manipulations, past misdeeds or misunderstandings by others. It’s just used as a jumping off point, with all the clichés, to get to what is really just a pretty shallow otome romance.
    10. Wash It All Away: couldn’t get into it unfortunately. Dropped after 3 eps.
    11. Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary: I quite like the manga and I don’t like this adaptation (or at least the first 3 eps). The direction is really whack, almost treating what’s happening as if it’s a shounen supernatural action anime. It’s too dramatic and doesn’t fit imo. Dropped after 3 eps.