Flipping through my watched list, here are some romance anime I liked, varying levels of drama and comedy:

• Clannad and Clannad: After Story
• Skip and Loafer
• The Dangers in My Heart
• Toradora!
• My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999
• Lovely Complex
• Taisho Otome Fairy Tale
• Tsuki ga Kirei
• Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You
• Blue Spring Ride
• Sing “Yesterday” for Me

And maybe some that might not quite be what you were expecting:

• ReLIFE
• A Lull in the Sea
• One Week Friends
• The World God Only Knows
• Amagami SS
• Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
• Call of the Night

Edit: also looking forward to A Sign of Affection, which is airing this season

Shows for Winter 2024 on my radar, that I am interested in watching:

• Classroom of the Elite: first two seasons were fun, looking forward to season 3
• Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki: first season was OK, I’m interested in where the story will go
• Mato Seihei no Slave: I vaguely recall someone saying there was something good about the source material
• MASHLE: first season was OK, I’m not very interested in S2, I might binge it when the season is complete
• Blue Exorcist: oh, another season. It’s been a while. I remember liking the first season and being confused at the start of the second season (it’s about 6 years between each season, so maybe I just forgot some important details. From a S2 MAL review: “the season does not follow the end of season 1. Episodes 18-25 were not canon and accordingly, they do not exist in season 2”, I didn’t know this, so maybe that was my problem)
• The Dangers in My Heart: first season was fantastic, excited for the second season
• A Sign of Affection: the source material is rated highly on MAL, I’ll give it a shot
• Banished from the Hero’s Party: First season was OK
• TSUKIMICHI: I liked the first season, looking forward to the second season
• The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil: I saw the PV, I’ll give it a shot
• Cherry Magic!: The source material is rated well on MAL, I’ll give it a shot
• The Witch and the Beast: The source material is rated well on MAL, I’ll give a shot
• The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash: WILDCARD, I dunno, it sounds like absolute trash from the title, but I think I’ll give it a shot anyways

Boushoku no Berserk was fairly enjoyable! It is kinda trash, but it’s good trash: there’s an actual plot, the main characters are fairly likeable and fairly believable (even if the villians are like “hahaha, watch me be evil!”) and have a touch of depth. The struggles that the MC has to deal with are actually interesting. The animation and sound design is of acceptable quality throughout. The voice acting was pretty good!

7/10: guilty pleasure for those of us who like these kinds of shows. I generally know what I’m getting into when I see the promotional art and description for these kinds of shows; Boushoku no Berserk meets or exceeds those expections.

Also Eris: “whoops, I guess I shouldn’t have gone along with Envy’s scheme.” A change of heart… but why? Because Fate won? lol. I guess just leave it up to the viewers imagination because the actual explanation would probably not be worth watching.

It is annoying that you can’t necessarily connect to all instances from your favorite instance, but this is also what makes the fediverse great compared to more centralized social media. Even though dessalines decided to delist ani.social, ani.social still exists and is still connected to instances other than lemmy.ml.

Although seemingly distorted views of reality coming from the main lemmy dev team do concern me.

It doesn’t translate to “the undertaker”, I meant that it’s a nickname like “The Undertaker” is a nickname. Or “The Red Baron”, “Jack the Ripper”. That is to say, a nickname that conveys notoriety/fame rather than a nickname for your chums.

From the Demon’s monologue the end of the episode:

“I see. I remember now. It was Frieren. The mage who contributed significantly to humanity’s analysis of Zoltraak and slew more demons than anyone else in history. Frieren the Slayer (葬送のフリーレン). One of the geniuses I despise.”

So we see that in the Crunchyroll translation (and I imagine the translation of the manga as well), 葬送のフリーレン gets 2 translations:

• Title of the show: 葬送のフリーレン ➡️ Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
• Nickname of the character: 葬送のフリーレン ➡️ Frieren the Slayer

The way Demons think in this show is a lot like LLM Chat AIs like ChatGPT work. They don’t really think too much, not in the way humans do, but they excel at producing something that humans approve of. If you don’t probe them too much, they look just like humans. But if you probe too far you see that their behavior is a facade and that their underlying thoughts are not like humans, and they don’t necessarily even understand the words they use to appease humans. What happens when their facade improves? If a demon spent its entire life perfectly acting as a nice and thoughtful human, never causing any harm, would you still call it a monster?

Demons and LLM Chat AIs differ in what their underlying thoughts are. LLM Chat AIs generally want approval. On the other hand, Demons want to survive and eat humans. They use language to manipulate humans and get what they want.

I find it a little sad that the double entendre of the title was lost in translation. From the beginning I understood the title to refer to Frieren watching her friends pass away of old age. Then this scene comes around and lets us know that 葬送のフリーレン is not just the title of the story; it’s the nickname for Frieren, like The Undertaker or something like that; a name that conveys the destiny of demons that cross Frieren’s path.

When does the pain end!?

From my experience: never. A lot of shows stop airing before they reach a significant resolution, only to be replaced next season with more shows with new problems. You gotta drop the take-your-lumps, horror, thriller, and melodrama shows if you want a respite from the pain.

I’ve now checked out the 3 available episodes of Berserk of Gluttony. From what I’ve seen I don’t expect it to tell a particularly interesting story, but it has been fun to watch.

Update: I’ve now watched the available episodes of Berserk of Gluttony and Ragna Crimson. Both are good fun.

Berserk of Gluttony so far has not been much more than an edgy fantasy power-fantasy. But it’s executed well and has been enjoyable. I think it’s a little darker than the typical power-fantasy. The bad-guys are laughably evil and I’m not sure if the plot is going anywhere interesting.

Ragna Crimson is more story focused. I supposed this show also has the makings of a power-fantasy, but it has not leaned too heavily into the wish fulfillment aspect. The characters are more interesting. The bad-guys are also laughably evil here, but in a way that’s more pure (literally being monsters helps, I guess), and thus a bit more horrifying. Every reward has a price, and you often do not know what that price actually is.

Anime Corner rankings have always been strange. That being said, I was pushing off watching episode 2 of Spy x Family because I just wasn’t interested for some reason. I did get around to watching episode 2 and it was great.

Hm, I had written off Ragna Crimson and Berserk of Gluttony based on instinct, but it looks like they might be worth a try.

I did it, I made it all the way to the end. It wasn’t easy, but here I am. I probably should have dropped it, but I didn’t. There’s really not much to praise this anime for, but it had a positive tone and there were mildly interesting events happening. They also definitely made it feel like a fantasy world; the idea that everything comes from dungeon drops is in itself interesting, but the exploration of this concept was just wacky. I guess maybe I was supposed to laugh at all the lukewarm wacky stuff.

The fact that they had an episode summary at the start of most episodes was pretty crazy.

I’m almost happy for Getou, at least he looks happy now. It looks like we’re done watching Gojo and Getou’s past and are going back to the main story timeline.

It was nice to get an overview of all the airing anime.

I can confirm that Jujutsu Kaisen and Mushoku Tensei are bangers.

I just watched the first 3 episodes of Reign of the Seven Spellblades because he was enthusiastic about it, but I didn’t find it particularly good. I’d definitely place it lower than Bungo Stray Dogs. I’ll continue watching it for now.

I want to give Undead Murder Farce a watch, but I have a feeling it’ll be better to binge it once the season has finished.

I wasn’t even aware of Zom 100 or Link Click, some more to watch in the future.

I haven’t watched Dark Gathering. I’m skeptical, but I’m willing to give it try.

I can confirm My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even At Level 1 is trash and mildly enjoyable. Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero sounds like it’s worth trying out.

As for The Duke of Death and His Maid, I didn’t find the first season interesting enough for me to watch the second. I didn’t even think the CGI looked that bad, I just never felt particularly interested in the contents. The OP song for season 1 was great, though.

Masamune-kun’s Revenge R is a show I thought I’d watch, but then I saw that I had actually rated the first season a score of 6 on MyAnimeList (which is a barely-not-dropped score for me). So, I decided to hold off. I’ll watch it if it has favorable reviews when it finishes.