Rottcodd
@Rottcodd@ani.social
- Comment on [Episode] May I Ask for One Final Thing? • Saigo ni Hitotsu dake Onegai Shite mo Yoroshii Deshou ka - Episode 13 discussion 2 days ago:
A solid and satisfying ending to a great anime.
I love this feeling - it’s like the moment when a tightrope walker steps off onto the platform at the other end.
And Scarlet is easily one of the best characters of the year.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 51] 3 days ago:
Yeah - Nichijou is one of my go-tos too, but I just rewatched the entire run a few months ago.
I really want to like Azumanga Daioh, but I just don’t much. The manga was a simple school/slice of life comedy with only a few surreal bits (mostly Osaka’s dreams). For whatever reason though, the adaptation leaned heavily into the surrealism and ended up injecting it pretty much everywhere, and with every character. And IMO it just didn’t work - it ended up burying a lot of the comedy that made the manga great (and I suspect that that’s Kiyohiko Azuma’s opinion too, and that’s most of the reason that he flatly refuses to let Yotsuba! be adapted).
I haven’t seen any of the rest of those, but they’re all on my radar, other than Dungeon People, which is new to me but looks especially promising.
I ended up rewatching a goofy satire called Robot Girls Z. It makes fun of pretty much every super robot trope in existence, and a good number of magical girl tropes to boot, and it’s a short and simple watch.
Then I cast about for a bit before I suddenly remembered that I still hadn’t watched the most recent season of Konosuba, so that was the obvious next choice, and what I’m in the middle of right now, and enjoying Darkness getting the focus.
- Comment on What is your best anime-related song? 4 days ago:
I don’t know about “best,” but my favorite is Gekkou Revenge by Franchouchou from Zombieland Saga Revenge.
And definitely not “best” but one I just like - Sanki Tousen by Manias from Akiba’s Trip: The Animation.
And potentially actually the best - the one to which so many others have aspired in later years God Knows by ENOZ from The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi.
- [Chapter] Starting Today We're Childhood Friends / Kyou kara Hajimeru Osananajimi - Ch. 155 - Childhood Friend and Test of Courage - MangaDexmangadex.org ↗Submitted 4 days ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on [DISC] The Useless Idol and Her Only Fan in the World - Ch. 50 6 days ago:
That was wonderful.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 51] 6 days ago:
Current: The only thing current that I watched last week was May I Ask for One Final Thing, which is still satisfying. The plot twists played out well, and we’re neatly set up for the finale next week. I’ve enjoyed everything about this series.
I had also been watching Gnosia, and I’ll undoubtedly finish it up sometime, but I just didn’t feel any particular urge to watch this latest episode. I’m tired of the complete lack of any sort of overarching plot - the ever-growing pile of mysteries and complications and the increasingly awkward lack of answers. Empty stylishness and an episodic cycle with no meaningful stakes can only carry a series so far by itself (it’d be better if there was at least some comedy or some ecchi or something to break the tedium). As it is, it’s almost as tedious as the Endless Eight arc of Haruhi.
Past:
So first up from the past last week was the rest of Ping Pong the Animation, which I started the previous week. It was… pretty good. I get the concept of sacrificing artistic precision for dynamism, but there were points in that that were too much even for me - points at which the figures looked too much like they were drawn in crayon by a kindergartner. And I found Smile’s character progression a bit unexpectedly shallow - not so much as if he grew from a person with no competitive drive into a person who was willing and able to compete at all costs as he just sort of flipped an internal switch and just went from the former to the latter. That said, I did like it all in all, though I’d rate it at the lower end of Yuasa’s work.
Then I went back to the Gridman universe for SSSS Dynazenon, which was sort of unsettling and frustrating, and in an entirely different way than SSSS.Gridman was. Gridman tended to be mean-spirited and cruel, while Dynazenon tended to be capricious and aloof. I kept wondering (and still wonder) where the urgency was. Kaiju are rampaging through the city, throwing buildings around and destroying entire precincts, so certainly killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and when Yomogi is asked why he fights, he can’t even manage to come up with an answer. And when they meet the kaiju users, they don’t react to them as if they’re the people responsible for all the death and destruction, but as if they’re just someone they’re sort of inexplicably fated to oppose for some vague reason. In fact, outside of a few scattered scenes, they don’t even really seem to acknowledge, much less be concerned about, all of the death and destruction. Instead, against that mostly unacknowledged backdrop, they play out a fairly standard, though admittedly satisfyingly well written, school/slice of life/awkward romance ensemble dramedy, complete with all the tropes - beach episode (well - swim park, but still), festival complete with fireworks (and Yume beautiful in a yukata), school festival… When I gave in and adopted their lack of urgency and mostly ignored the kaiju, it was a pretty decent story really, with relatively interesting characters who develop well. When it was over though, my first thought was that the movie had damned well better tie together a whole lot of loose ends, because between the two series, there’s a whole boatload of them.
And… the movie, Gridman Universe opened up with the Gridman characters, and immediately went mean-spirited and cruel and crushed Yuta’s heart, and I turned it off. I’m not in the mood for that sort of shit.
So I switched to the second season of Love, Chuunibyou and Other Delusions, and only then realized that both series not only each have a Rikka, but each Rikka is involved with a Yu(u)ta. That can’t be a coincidence.
But anyway - I had been sort of tempted to just leave Chuunibyou alone after the first season, because I was quite satisfied with the way it ended. And in retrospect, I probably should have. The second season was… not good. I didn’t actively dislike it, but I really didn’t like it much either, and the season-ending special was rage-inducing (the pictures weren’t the point - Yuuta made a promise to Rikka, then broke it, and NOTHING excuses that. Asshole.)
I had planned on watching the movie, but after that maddening 13th episode, I lost interest.
So entirely burnt out on tedious sort of vaguely romance-ish entanglements and emotional manipulation, I switched to one that I had actually been sort of saving for just such a situation - when I needed a palette cleanser that was smart, low key and funny - Joshiraku. And when the first episode opened with one character declaring that we should just go read the manga because this is a dialogue-heavy series and it’s a dumb idea to adapt something like that, which led to a warning on-screen that says, “This anime is full of ordinary dialogue so that viewers can fully enjoy how cute the girls are,” I was sure it was a good choice. And it so very much was. The characters are great, the dialogue was witty and amusing and it never lost that meta edge. The only thing that was sort of disappointing about it was that it was one of those series that I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed that much more if I understood Japanese, so I could’ve caught all of the puns and wordplay and dialect shifts. I liked it so much I think it holds a solid third place on my list of favorite CGDCTs, behind only YuruYuri and Gabriel Dropout.
Then, refreshed, I went back to Gridman Universe. It did provide some answers, but not “Ah - I get it now” sort of answers, but more like “Sure - okay - whatever” sort of answers. It was pretty much just the rule of cool expanded to movie length and big screen size, which I guess is sort of appropriate for super robots vs. kaiju. And at least it finally stopped toying with Yuta’s heart, though the pay-off felt more like an addendum than an actual part of the story. It was okay all in all, but could’ve easily been better.
And… I’m not sure what’s next. I’m burnt out on romance, burnt out on action and burnt out on emotional manipulation. I’m sort of craving something that’ll let me just switch off my brain and coast…
- Comment on [Episode] May I Ask for One Final Thing? • Saigo ni Hitotsu dake Onegai Shite mo Yoroshii Deshou ka - Episode 12 discussion 1 week ago:
More or less what I expected from this episode, though with some interesting twists here and there. I was even fairly certain Scarlet and Julius were going to end up fighting each other, since they do in the OP. Curious to see how they’re going to work that out though, since it’ll have to be a way that not only keeps them in balance, but if anything ultimately strengthens their bond.
All in all, I found the voice that appeared to come from Rex the most interesting part of the whole thing, but I suspect that we’re not going to learn much if anything more about that in the next and final episode - that if I want to learn more about that, I’ll have to hope for a second season or read the LNs.
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- [Chapter] Starting Today, We're Childhood Friends / Kyou kara Hajimeru Osananajimi - Ch. 154 - Childhood Friend and Independent Research - MangaDexmangadex.org ↗Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on [Chapter] Wakaba-san'chi no Aoi Koi - Ch. 34 - Excuse - MangaDex 1 week ago:
!
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 2 comments
- Comment on [Discussion] Which character is the cutest for you? 1 week ago:
Tsukiko (Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko)
Anna (Makeine)
Erio (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko)
Ayano (YuruYuri)
…plus dozens more…
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 50] 1 week ago:
Maybe I will have to track it down.
I was fairly certain that things were happening for mostly unrevealed reasons - that the characters didn’t just happen into that world, but were deliberately brought there and deliberately slotted into specific roles in order to fulfill some greater purpose - and I do still want to know what those reasons and that purpose are…
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 50] 1 week ago:
I knew I’d find you here - as if your Masahiro Anbe alarm went off.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 50] 1 week ago:
Funny that you mentioned it - I just tracked SSSS.Dynazenon down because I’d about decided that it was going to be next after Ping Pong, since I keep thinking about it and I need answers.
It’s a sort of perversely attractive universe. As I mentioned, Gridman, to me, had this constant underlying air of cruelty and mean-spiritedness. And the parts that stood out in contrast - like Rikka’s interactions with both Anti and Akane - weren’t so much positive as just not quite so negative. But somehow it drew me in anyway.
Jirai Kei aesthetic
And that’s exactly on point - just what I should’ve expected.
Yeah - Dynazenon is next.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 50] 1 week ago:
Current:
May I Ask for One Final Thing is still going strong, and ended on quite a cliffhanger last week. And I really enjoyed the dynamic between Scarlet and Alflame. Broadly, I still have no notable criticisms of the series - everything about it is at least good, and the characters in particular are excellent.
And Gnosia is still piling on the mysteries without resolution, though it was sort of interesting to see the game from the gnosia point of view. I continue to hope that we’ll get some answers before this is all over.
Past:
For one reason or another, I ended up watching a lot of anime last week.
First up was SSSS.Gridman, but I didn’t stick with it for long. I liked it well enough and wanted to watch it, but it’s oddly unpleasant. It somehow seems mean-spirited and cruel, and that just wasn’t what I was in the mood for. So I switched to Dandadan. I read the manga for a while early on, so I knew basically what it was about, but I also expected it to be sort of disappointing, and for the same reason I ended up dropping the manga. And sure enough - it was fun and stylish and intriguing and had great characters and I mostly enjoyed it, but the problem is that if you strip away all of the oddity and style, it’s really just that plain old shounen action perpetual motion machine - introduce the new villain, fight and lose, regroup, regain inspiration from the power of friendship etc., get a power up, fight and win, introduce the new villain… It was fine all in all, but that endless loop inevitably bores me and even in spite of everything, I had pretty much lost interest by the time it ended.
Then I went back to SSSS.Gridman. It never really stopped being mean-spirited and cruel until the last episode, when it finally eased up a bit. I liked it all in all though - it’s an interesting world with interesting characters (and crassly I have to admit that Rikka’s character design is an anime dream come true for me). I plan on watching the second season, but not quite yet.
Then I bounced off of Gakkougurashi I was sort of ambivalent about watching it in the first place - I followed the manga from beginning to end, and even had the good fortune to read the first chapter on the day it was posted, when it didn’t even have spoiler tags, which was an amazing experience, and there’s just no way that an adaptation could match that. But even with my lowered expectations, it was too disappointing. The biggest problem to me was that the anime leaned too heavily into the whole cute girls doing cute things thing. The manga had a reputation for combining CGDCT with drama, but the reality is that it was always drama first and foremost, and CGDCT only sort of peripherally. The adaptation unfortunately focused more on emphasizing the CGDCT than on telling the story the way it was originally told. But oh well.
Next up was one that I noticed back when it was first shown, but had since forgotten about and just happened to stumble across a couple of weeks ago - Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? I thoroughly enjoyed it and especially liked the way they expanded such a simple concept into such an enormous and convoluted plot, but that enormous and convoluted plot was, as I began to suspect about halfway through, sort of a problem. It’s one of those light novel series adaptations that takes the route of telling its story in detail rather than condensing it, and that meant that it didn’t really manage to finish anything before it ran out of episodes. It even ended on multiple cliffhangers. I’m tempted to read the LN, just because I really did like the story and the worldbuilding, but unfortunately it’s probably more likely that I’ll just forget about it again.
Next was a very pleasant surprise - Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai That’s been on my TBW pretty much from the moment it was released - I wasn’t watching much anime then, but I was online, so I couldn’t help but know who Rikka was (funny that I watched two different series with very notable Rikkas in them last week). I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be as good as it actually was. There’s just so much more to it than I would’ve thought possible. The story is terrific from start to finish and the characters are top-notch, and I just loved everything about it.
And at the moment, I’ve dived into one that’s been on my TBW since it was released - Ping Pong the Animation. Sports generally does nothing for me, but Yuasa has never let me down, so I figured it was worth it. And it very much has been. And unexpectedly, I’ve found a sports protagonist I identify with in Tsukimoto. Like him, I have no competitive drive (which is probably a lot of why sports anime/manga have never done anything for me). So it’s been a particularly interesting experience.
- Comment on [Chapter] Only I Know / Boku dake ga Shitterun daze - Ch. 13 - Chill day - MangaDex 2 weeks ago:
Waku is such a great MMC. He has all of those standard, cliched adolescent-boy-in-a-panic reactions, but then he just takes that extra, and unfortunately rare, step of steeling his resolve and overcoming his immediate reactions. And it’s so satisfying.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 2 comments
- Comment on [Episode] May I Ask for One Final Thing? • Saigo ni Hitotsu dake Onegai Shite mo Yoroshii Deshou ka - Episode 11 discussion 2 weeks ago:
What a cliffhanger.
But we have hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream to look forward to.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 1 comment
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 2 comments
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 49] 2 weeks ago:
Current season:
May I Ask for One Final Thing is still going strong. It feels like the story’s a bit compressed, but since it’s a light novel series adaptation, it’s pretty much either that or the story is told in detail but can’t reach a resolution before the anime run is over, and of the two, I much prefer compressed.
And after a week off for a filler episode that was basically just a grab bag of venerable old anime tropes translated into surreal science fiction, Gnosia is back to adding new layers of mystery to the ever-growing pile without actually resolving anything. The clock is ticking…
Past seasons:
The highlight of the week was definitely Kyoukai no Kanata, which I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish (the series plus both movies). I liked everything about it, and particularly Mirai and Akihito.
Then I knocked around a bit and ended up stumbling across one of the most awesomely bizarre and goofy things I’ve seen - Henkei Shoujo. It’s a set of five one minute shorts, each of which has the same unnamed girl finding herself in some situation in which she encounters another girl who then transforms into a vehicle. That’s it, and it’s great. The situations are funny and the transformations are epic, satirically fan-servicey and ultimately entirely pointless, all at the same time. It’s just good stupid fun.
Then I started SSSS.Gridman. It’s okay, but it just didn’t quite grab me, and over the holiday, I wasn’t willing to invest enough effort to get into it, and instead just looked for something familiar and comfy with which to wind down, and ended up rewatching Honey Lemon Soda. This was my fourth time through the series now and I still couldn’t say exactly what it is that I like so much about it - I just do. Even with its flaws.
And I think I’m going to go back to SSSS.Gridman. At least for another episode or two.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on [Episode] Gnosia - Episode 8 discussion 3 weeks ago:
So at this point, I’m just hoping that this series pulls a Mappa (even though it’s not a Mappa), and after 10 or so episodes of adding ever more complexity and mystery, it somehow manages to tie it all together in the last episode or two.
- Comment on [Episode] May I Ask for One Final Thing? • Saigo ni Hitotsu dake Onegai Shite mo Yoroshii Deshou ka - Episode 10 discussion 3 weeks ago:
Almost a filler episode - just a bit of comedy getting the monsters out of the way so things can move on to the more central threats.
That said, it was still good. I expected that Scarlet and Rex were going to get a chance to do their thing, and that’s just what they did. And Alflame is an oddly appealing character. He’s actually very earnest and sincere and thus admirable - it’s just that he’s also a gung-ho moron who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, but that’s okay, since everyone knows it, including him. And he and Scarlet are actually sort of well-matched, since he shares her pure love for battle. And the fact that he can’t keep his mouth shut and ends up irritating her keeps him at arm’s length, so while they connect in some senses, he’s not really in contention for her heart, which makes him a good secondary male character - someone for whom Scarlet can feel some (grudging) affection without introducing the threat of a love triangle.
The story’s still moving along at a good clip. I presume what we’re getting is a condensed version of the light novels, which is fine. Adapting a light novel series generally requires either condensing the events of a story to fit them into 12 episodes or going into more detail but not managing to tell a complete story, and of the two, I much prefer condensation.
- [Chapter] The Girl Who Can Properly Say "I Love You" is Unstoppable / Chanto Suki tte Ieru ko Musou - Ch. 3 - Versus the Ice Princess - MangaDexmangadex.org ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments