It was nice to see a confident Shibisu that people seemed to respect as a team leader. I remember in season 1 with Hatz and Anaak basically ignored him all the time.

So, am I right in assuming that the Traveler and Endorsi were left off the ship? It seemed like the counter had reached zero before we cut back to them, but I wouldn’t put it past this show to have arranged things non-chronologically.

Alright, we seem to have finally moved on to the Archimedes and put this pregame behind us for the most part. It was exciting to see Rak show up again at the end. The best part of it was that it was tiny Rak! We saw this version of Rak last season, but it was because he was shrunk against his will. I didn’t realize it was something he could turn on and off.

Not sure what Endorsi is planning to do next now that she realizes who Viole is. Especially since she seems to have been left behind and didn’t make it to the Archimedes in time. Also, the traveler has been left behind. They are both big fans of Emily, so maybe they will get up to some wacky hijinks on their own.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to point out is that we actually had a couple impact frames this episode. When Bam activated his power, somebody decided to animate his knockout punch. It was brief, but things moved on screen, so I’ll take it. @rikka@ani.social

Edit: Updated post above, but this is going to be a simultaneous global release per ANN.

I believe that this November 7th date is (at least) the US availability on Prime. Amazon hasn’t said what other markets it will be available in yet. However, once it is released digitally, I am sure that the high seas of the internet will have their hands on it shortly thereafter.

Would there be interest among people here if I created a dedicated discussion thread for this when it releases? The 7th is a Thursday, so perhaps creating a thread on the 8th to allow people some time to watch it (or for the pirates to get it in their regions)?

The AniList api only lists a release time for the first episode of a batch. So, for something like this series, episode 1 would have a release time listed (and get picked up by the bot), but episodes 2+ just don’t have any airing time and are therefore not picked up by the bot.

I have done some quick searching around and found some other apis that I might play around with (Jikan which queries MAL, and AnimeSchedule.net has an api). I think the ideal scenario would be if a batch release would list all the episodes with the same airing time, and then I could program logic on my end to batch the episodes together into one post (the subreddit makes a series of individual posts, but I don’t think we have enough activity to support a deluge of posts like that).

As for nyaa, it is a popular public anime torrent tracker where pretty much any episode that airs gets posted quite soon. So, the main way that holo keeps track of what episodes have aired is that it parses the recent listings on nyaa to see what new torrents have been added.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Bleach: TYBW
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Dan Da Dan

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Bleach continues its dominance of the AC chart. Meanwhile it is a two-horse race for the reddit karma top spot between Dan Da Dan and Re:Zero. I was happy to see Orb break into the top 10 after an outstanding episode 3 even after two shows premiered in the top 10 (SLF and Daima).

Been slammed with work this past week, but I managed to keep up with most of the seasonal shows I have been watching this season.

• Orb: On the Movements of the Earth - This continues to be my favorite seasonal show of the Fall. I also saw that we are likely to get a complete adaptation of the source since this is running for 25 episodes. I am looking forward to more.
• Dan Da Dan - This show continues to be an absolute delight. You never know what is going to happen week to week. The gorgeous animation has been a feast for the eyes as well.
• Loner Life Isekai - This has managed to keep my interest so far. It doesn’t reinvent the isekai wheel at all, but the characters are likeable enough. Also, I have realized I don’t remember as much of the beginning of this story as I thought.
• Negative Positive Angler - Lots of potential in this series, but it is taking things slow. I really hope that this one pays off.
• 365 Days to the Wedding - Super cute episode this past week. I hope we see more of Claudia going forward and that she wasn’t just introduced this episode to never appear again.
• Villainess Who Goes Down in History - I wonder what the MC’s definition of a villainess is sometimes all the time. Of what I have been watching, this is probably the one most on the chopping block. It has its humorous moments though, so I am hoping that they come more frequently after the time skip of this past episode.
• Appraisal Isekai Season 2 - This series continues to simply be a competently executed isekai with a fairly straightforward premise. This is far from the only isekai to have an appraisal theme (this series is specifically skill appraisal). However, it proves that you don’t need some kind of novel gimmick, but just some well-written characters put in interesting situations.
• Tower of God Season 2 - What can I say about this series other than that I am still watching in spite of the studio’s best efforts. I really like the characters in this show, but the plot has been a bit confusing recently, and the animation has been quite poor. So, I am hoping that they can at least deliver on some fun character moments.

Meta note: Next week’s thread is going to be the best OP/ED thread for the season. So, start thinking about it!

Umm, Hana, are you sure about that?

In any case, I just want to shout out Tsutsujimori as probably the best friend of the season. What other character do you see chasing their bud down until they can’t move any more in order to help them? This guy paid off Sasaki’s debt, gave him a job, a place to stay, and is helping him find a new hobby. All of that without even knowing that Sasaki only has 2 years left to live. Just give him the best boy award already.

I do hope that we see the debt collectors occasionally going forward. They were delightfully goofy. Maybe they can all fish together!

I laughed when I saw them talk about FOREX. I knew somebody that did that on the side and, wouldn’t you know it, they couldn’t outsmart the collective market and lost money.

Everybody needs a friend like him sometimes. One willing to chase you down and force you to accept help sometimes. Dude’s a total bro.

This show really does execute a pretty ordinary story really well. I have said before that my biggest annoyance about this series is how Ars gets so much credit from the powers that be for things that his retainers did (and he often played literally no part in). However, I think what makes it bearable is that Ars knows this. He is constantly saying that he didn’t do anything. If he wasn’t a humble Japanese person reincarnated and, instead, arrogantly assumed the credit, he would be a lot more insufferable.

It’s not a bad idea, but I just don’t know of a good way yet to catch these shows before it happens. I can’t keep track of every show in my head to know which ones are getting a batch release, and the AniList api doesn’t flag them in any way. I might try exploring some alternative apis to see what they are like, but it’s a nontrivial thing to swap out the backend of the bot.

I know that the reddit bot, holo, does some parsing of nyaa where it tries to match up torrent filenames to show titles to figure out which episodes have released. I might take a look at how that is implemented since rikka started out as a modified version of holo.

Cleaned up the mixup by the bot that created a thread for All-Guys Mixer too early. Episode 4 should be requestable now.

Yeah, that is an oopsie on my part. I will clean things up. Apologies!

War has begun and it’s time for Ars’s first battle. Fortunate for everybody involved, the army doesn’t need him to actually do anything except stand back and let his retinue do their thing. Impenetrable barrier? Time for some explosion magic from Megumin Charlotte. Worried about a pincer attack? Devise a counter-strategy with Rosell and Mireille. Outnumbered 5 to 1? Let Rietz loose. Ars? You stand over there and look cute. I would be worried about what Licia would do to them all if they let Ars get hurt.

@rikka@ani.social

I have read the beginning of the manga for this series and there wasn’t any slavery in it.

I got so excited when I saw that they changed the OP to match the change in main character after the unfortunate end of Rafal. Our new main character, Oczy, is a bit of a piece of work. He has some serious hangups about how corrupt and gross the Earth is while he is obsessed with heaven and the afterlife. I am curious how he is going to handle his partner’s newfound curiosity with heretical thinking.

Just a quick aside, when Oczy asked about whether anybody died looking satisfied, I was reminded of Rafal in the last episode. So, I kind of expected that the story we were seeing this episode to be happening while Rafal was still alive and that Oczy was going to see Rafal’s death. Alas, that is not how things worked out. Instead, we are left wondering who this heretic on the cart is and how he got Rafal’s necklace (the true main character it seems).

Science time! The main scientific topic this week was the planets and specifically Mars. So, let’s learn together!

• Planets

The term planet actually comes from Ancient Greek. I don’t know Ancient Greek, so I am going to copy/paste this bit from wikipedia:

In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky, as opposed to the “fixed stars”, which maintained a constant relative position in the sky. Ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες (planētes asteres) ‘wandering stars’ or simply πλανῆται (planētai) ‘wanderers’ from which today’s word “planet” was derived.

So, now you know where the series Planetes gets its name as well!

In any case, if you have never had the chance to observe the night sky in a relatively dark part of the world (away from civilization), it is truly breathtaking. It is also very easy to pick out a couple planets in the night sky. Specifically Jupiter is usually pretty easy to spot as it is often the brightest object in the sky other than the moon. Venus is actually slightly brighter, but because of its orbit, it is always very close to the sun in our sky. So, you will only see Venus when the sun is either about to rise or has just set while Venus is above the horizon. This has given Venus the nicknames “morning star” and “evening star”.

Another easy planet to pick out is…

• Mars

On a clear night in a dark sky, Mars actually does appear distinctly red, even by eye. This has given Mars an association with fire in many cultures. Mars is actually written in Japanese as 火星 (kasei). When you look at each of these kanji individually, it would translate as “fire star” (actually all the planets end with 星).

Mars has been incredibly significant in the history of astronomy. It is a planet that is observable most of the year, moves relatively quickly, and is bright enough to spot and track easily. It was actually the motions of Mars in the sky that led Ptolemy to develop his geocentric model in the first place. Then, later, it was careful observations of Mars by Tycho Brahe that allowed Johannes Kepler to derive his laws of planetary motion and describe the planetary orbits as ellipses rather than circles.

@rikka@ani.social

• Retrograde Motion

In this episode we see Gras become dismayed when he observes Mars slow down and move the opposite direction in the night sky. This phenomenon is called retrograde motion and all the planets in the solar system do this. To help visualize what brings about apparent retrograde motion, wikipedia has a handy, dandy video (sadly not embeddable). To just see what an observer on Earth would see, here is a neat gif showing the track that Mars appears to follow:

If you compare the track in the gif to what Gras has in his observation log, you can see the similarities:

Gras comments that it has been about 2 years since he started observing Mars. Well, each of the planets has a very regular cycle with which they undergo retrograde motion. For Mars, that is 25.6 months and it spends 72 days moving retrograde. So, he must have started observing Mars just after it had last completed a retrograde cycle. It turns out the author did their homework and the timelines work out!

are reviews by publications OK to share? Or should we share them in discussion threads?

That is a good question, and one that I hadn’t thought about and made a rule for. I think that this one is fine to stay for now (you could also consider crossposting to !dragonball@ani.social). I will give a bit of thought about posts like this going forward.

My initial thought is to probably keep reviews for individual episodes confined to the episode discussion threads, but allowing dedicated posts for reviews of a whole season/cour/arc. I will think about it and am open to feedback!

Level 99 also cut a lot of corners (lots of chibi Yumiella, really bad CG monsters), but I think they were smarter about when they did it. Also, I think Yumiella as a character works better for that since so much of her character was internal dialog anyway. So, it made sense to invest in the voice talent more than the animation (and Ai Fairouz was a great choice).

And you just made me realize that I forgot about Rak! How could I forget about him? He wandered off on some kind of training vision quest before as well before passing the test in the first season. So, hopefully he comes back stronger than ever.

The Workshop Battle is a looooong story arc, at 100 chapters

Oh no. This is not inspiring me with confidence. Are they really trying to finish this up before the end of the season?