Plus, we have no idea what being stuck in a lich’s body does to the human psyche, so he has at least that much excuse for the evil he does do outright and knowingly.

That’s the thing that made me start thinking about this. There’s almost an interesting angle there with his body seemingly mysteriously changing how he feels, but they never do anything with it. I think some kind of internal struggle and mystery around it could have been a good plotline. I didn’t finish watching it, but there was another trash isekai about a guy becoming an evil boss from a video game he played (A Wild Last Boss Appears) and there was a bit of that going on with the personality of the real character he’s inhabiting slowly overtaking his own. Although at least for what I saw, they didn’t really do much more with that either.

I’ve been watching “A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even” separate from my group. I have a bit more room for trash in my schedule.

That said, I feel kind of odd about the show. It sort of reminds me of my issue with Overlord: We follow the protagonist most of the time as someone to root for, then they do some absolutely heinous things that feel like they came out of nowhere, then we go right back to them being vaguely sympathetic. I’d say it’s one of the problems with doing a villain as protagonist TV show because it’s hard for time spent with the protag not to make a connection. However, I feel like there have been some good examples of shows where the protag is the bad guy or becomes the bad guy either due to a “road to hell is paved with good intentions” or “corrupted by circumstances” plot devices.

The one that most comes to mind is Breaking Bad. It’s a long road from push over high school teach and family man to ruthless drug kingpin and we’re there every step of the way to see how it happens.

This show and Overlord don’t really feel like that. The protagonists just kinda do evil shit every once in a while and nobody really acknowledges how fucked up that is. The most recent episode really hammered that home for me.

idk, I’m just overthinking a trash show. It’s just that sometimes I can’t help but watch some of these and think of what they could have been with more competent… everything.

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I generally don’t take many pictures. I just have this one from the Frieren cosplay meetup.

This week I went to my first anime convention: Anime NYC. It was alright. I don’t regret going, but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go again. It’s like 90% people selling stuff. I’m more used to gaming conventions where there’s a bunch of stuff to do because companies are showcasing upcoming games.

I did enjoy seeing all the cosplayers though. There were so many. A LOT of them were either from gatcha games or really popular stuff like One Piece/Demon Slayer, but I did also see quite a few from shows I liked.

A few Jojos ones, but save for one Star Platinum, only from part 5/6. I guess it’s easier to cosplay the characters that don’t have muscles that put bodybuilders to shame.

One Violet Evergarden. I was with my mom who I recently introduced to anime and she loved this show, so she was happy to see that.

There was a Frieren meetup that we went to see. (It was weirdly difficult to find lol.) Funny thing is the character composition. There were only two Frierens in the entire group. Most were Stark or Fern, then one Himmel and I think two Eisens.

There was also a meetup for Apothecary Diaries, but it was at the same time as a panel we went to instead.

On the way over to the Frieren meetup we saw the Blue Lock meetup and I found it kind of funny because I’m reasonably sure literally every cosplayer there was a woman. I didn’t really consider it’s appeal to female audiences, but now that I think about it I guess it makes sense.

There was one person is a big Garfield mascot costume with a bikini on top of it.

One guy was David from Edgerunners.

One Megumin.

And some others, but you get the idea.

Also holy shit, I haven’t been in the Javits Center since I was a kid. I did not appreciate just how fucking MASSIVE that place is. It takes like a minute or so to walk from one end of the building to the other.

The Zombie Land Saga movie finally came out on streaming, so I watched it recently. It was super good. I love the series, but I’ve found that I dislike a lot of anime series movies because they just feel like several episodes of a TV show stitched together. This is one of the few that don’t fit that description. It feels like a properly structured and paced movie.

::: End of S2/Beginning of Movie While it’s not really a criticism, I found it odd that they retconned the ending of the 2nd season with the ship not appearing at the concert, but instead much later. I think I get why they did it. They probably didn’t even have this movie written or planned when they made the 2nd season and realized later that it would make for better pacing for the movie if we started in a calmer time rather than right after the big saga flood disaster. :::

Also I thought they did a good job with the sci-fi stuff. I was totally expecting the aliens to be generic little green/grey men in flying saucers, but they made an effort to come up with something different and fit it into the story.

I’m kind of curious if this is the end of the series or not. It definitely seems like it could be a sendoff, but

::: ending spoiler The decision to bring things back to status quo with Tae makes me think it feel like it could get continued. Like that feels like a very “We wanted a cool development to happen but we can’t change the status quo too much in a movie” kind of decision. :::

I’d definitely love to see more of the show or at least a new thing by the same creative team. I always love good original anime and we definitely don’t get enough of that.

Maybe? Not sure. The show itself is trash power fantasy stuff, but I didn’t notice anything exceptional about it. The crazy animation and direction is a sight to behold, but it might get old making fun of it after a while. Your mileage may vary.

We’ve checked out quite a few shows at this point. We’ll probably check out some more, but with continuing and returning shows taking up a lot of space on our schedule I doubt we’ll have much room for more. Although I’ll often end up watching some of the trash on my own if it’s funny enough.

Stuff we liked:

• All Works Maid: While at it’s base it’s still a power fantasy, I do find the premise to be a fun enough twist on the formula to be amusing and there’s some decent comedy to boot. Hopefully it doesn’t get stale.

• Chain Smoker Cat: I can’t say that I’ve watched any other anime where a cat girl squats over a toilet and shits her brains out in ep1. So that’s something. Jokes aside, it was pretty funny. ’

• Goodbye Laura: Little Mermaid but Yuri? Sounds good. Also just a solid production all around.

• Grow Up Show: Is it just me or does the MC seem a bit like Megumin from the spinoff? Either way, I’m always down for a cute girls do cute author’s special interest as long as it seems well made.

• Hanaori-san Still Wants to Fight in the Next Life: Fun setup and characters so far even if it isn’t particularly original at this point. Hopefully they keep it up.

• Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia: Very different setting and style than we usually get in anime and it was just a solid episode.

• Kaiju Girl: Cute with a fun twist. Hopefully the romance part doesn’t get annoying.

• Kaikigumi: Funny premise. Weird looking character designs. An MC who isn’t the basic default HS guy protag. Also, they described the org as a business. How does one make money scaring people?

• Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games: I’m not into fighting games. Whenever I’ve played one I just button mash. Although I have a friend who’s super into them. (Ironically not part of our anime watching group because he’s usually too busy.) The setup sort of reminds me of “Rock is a Lady’s Modesty”, which we also enjoyed. Like I said, CGDCASI is usually a good time. Also maybe yuri?

• Livid Lady: Seems like it has potential to be good revenge trash. Not that that genre usually turns out any good, but honestly just swapping the protag to a woman makes it more bearable.

• Oh Boy Was I Wrong About Her: Man there have been a lot of childhood friend romcoms recently. They seem to have a fun enough dynamic. I really hope the will they won’t they doesn’t end up being torturous.

• Sparks of Tomorrow: Kyoani doing Kyoani things. Also, as of ep 1, the fall counter is at 6.

Trash that’s worth mentioning:

• Frontier Lord: Wife Speedrun any%.

• Heavy Knight: GOHANDS. We didn’t actually know the studio going into it and I’ve never seen their work outside of videos making fun of them. But something felt off, so I had my suspicions and checked and yup, it’s them.

• Rear Guard: Slave loli speedrun any%. Also, what do they mean this town is only Isekai adventurers? Who the hell runs things in town?

• Villager Lv. 999: Somehow the setting is even dumber and more uninspired than the usual I can’t believe it’s not isekai! So… this is just Japan after magic and monsters showed up and… they just decided to rebuild society in the style of Medieval Europe because… um… coming up with original worldbuilding is entirely beyond the scope of these kinds of writers.

I’ve been showing my mom some of my favorite shows which I think she would like. At the moment we’re in the middle of Carole and Tuesday. We’ve also watched Little Witch Academia, Bookworm, A Place Further Than The Universe, Frieren, Ya Boi Kongming, Keep Your Hands off Eizouken, Apocalypse Hotel, and I think some other shows which I’m forgetting.

For me, in particular I’ve really enjoyed the LWA rewatch. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve seen it and it still just very reliably makes me feel happy.

We actually tried Dress Up Darling despite me being very hesitant about it for obvious reasons. She was kind of ok with the parts I was worried about, but she got bored of it after a little while.

I’d definitely be interested in some other potential “mom shows”, whether I’ve seen them before or not.

I can’t remember. I feel like I’ve seen it on at least one other place though.

Hey, sometimes they also bring shampoo!