lvxferre

Most of it [Japanese food] is uncooked seafood with vinegar rice

Yeah, sure. Because karaage, teriyaki, yakisoba, gyōza, gyūdon, katsudon, they’re all uncooked, right? And someone gotta dump all those pigs and chickens in the sea, so they become seafood.

…just shut the fuck up about things you’re clearly an ignorant about.

I blame PIX for that! Poor macaws, tamarins, jaguars and groupers! I barely see them any more! [/joke]*

Serious now. I think most people are aware monoculture is bad, but the text highlights yet another problem: every time the monoculture changes, the local fauna adapted to the previous culture gets wrecked. Specially given the situation, since those cacao farms relied on the local flora, but coffee farms don’t.

And I bet that coffee isn’t even for local consumption, but for exportation.

Angelica, you bloody muppet.

I’m a fan of Wakana (Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru). For two reasons.

One of them is that he does not start as a protagonist; he develops into one.

People often conflate “protagonist” and “main character”, but they’re different:

• The main character is the one you share the view with, as if they were telling the story
• The protagonist is the one moving the story forward through their actions

At the start of the series, is Wakana the MC? Yes; we typically experience his point of view of the story. But he is not the one moving it forward, like a protagonist would; that’s only Marin, with Wakana only reacting to what she comes up with.

But as the series evolves, we get to experience increasingly more Marin’s point of view and, at the same time, Wakana stops simply reacting to Marin. Late Season 2 already shows signs of that: the one who decides to play Coffin all night is Wakana, but we get to see Marin’s frustration. (Without giving you guys spoilers, this tendency only grows stronger in the to-be-animated manga chapters.)

So Wakana stops being “just” the main character, and Marin stops being “just” the protagonist; at the end they’re both protagonists and both main characters. And this plays so nicely with the theme of the story (people who live in different “worlds”, that got intermingled by chance, and their lives becoming richer as a result) that I don’t think it’s coincidental.

The second reason I like Wakana as a protagonist is that, although he’s introverted, he is not a misanthrope, a failure in life, or cold, or whatever. He’s shy, and his rather unique hobby/profession gives him a hard time relating to other people. That’s it. He’s still helpful to the others (this is shown since the beginning), and he craves relationships as much as anyone else.

The first two episodes focused on Eris, so I guess this counts as the “first” episode for the main character? Peaceful life, a prothesis, school. Events shown might not be too flashy, but they’re important for later on.

The “shift” from Eris to Rudeus might look weird, for people who only follow the anime series, but it’ll make sense later on.

Thank you — I’ll crosspost it there today!

“Jar” originally could be used for larger containers too, like amphorae. It’s just nowadays people “defaulted” it to those small glass containers with (usually metal) lids.

…I want a jar of cookies. In the old sense of the word.

It shouldn’t be so bad… right?
/me checks comments
Holy fuck. Yes, it’s cancer. Almost as bad as Reddit.

On a lighter side, while checking the comments, I found this link in the site, with a blocking game from 200 CE. Played it a bit against the CPU, and it seems fun.

Yeah, it gets worse over time. Way worse. I love the series but I must admit it’s the sort of stuff I only watch if I’m really in the mood to do it. (Like Evangelion [inb4 not isekai]. Amazing series, one of the classics, but it has some psychological toll on the viewer.)

There’s stuff like Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi and Isekai Nonbiri Nouka to flush out the bad feelings. Those are mostly slice of life fluff: in one it’s a guy cooking for a giant wolf and a slime, in another it’s some guy farming and building a settlement in the middle of nowhere.

“Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!” is the real title. “KonoSuba” is a really common fan nickname. I’ll reformat the list to be a bit more clearer.

About Re:Zero, the story being replayed is part of its gimmick. Like trial and error.

Subgenre of fantasy, where the protag goes to another world. Extremely popular, and extremely diverse, so this leads to a lot of less-than-inspired authors writing isekai. It’s really fun, though, at least in my opinion. [Disclaimer: I watch a lot of isekai.]

The Log Horizon series I recommended is IMO really good; a bunch of players of a game are trapped inside the game they were playing, and trying to come back to Earth. Other popular isekai series are:

• Overlord — it’s a single person reincarnated into the game. As the undead that used to be his player. It’s a mix of kingdom building and slowly watching someone’s morals fading away, as the habit makes the monk
• Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken* (aka That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime, aka TenSura; abbreviated names are common) — also “kingdom building” like the above, but there’s no game. Just some guy reincarnated as a slime. Mostly uplifting
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (aka HameFura, aka Bakarina) — the protagonist got reincarnated as the villainess of a game series she loved, and is trying to avoid the bad ending. Except she isn’t very smart.
• Re:Zero — the protag goes buy food late night, and suddenly another world, and he doesn’t know why. He has a weird “gimmick” though, he can return from death. The traumas pile up.
• Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! (aka KonoSuba) — slapstick comedy. Protag kicks the bucket, and as he’s getting reincarnated the goddess can’t stop mocking him. He forces her to go to the other world with him. They build a dysfunctional adventurer party: he’s mediocre, she’s dumb, and they got a masochist and a mage who only knows a single wide-area spell in the party. [Note: not recommended as an introductory series for isekai, given it relies a lot on poking fun at common tropes of the subgenre.]
• Ascendance of a Bookworm — protag is a bookworm, dies crushed by books, and reincarnates in a world where books are extremely expensive and she’s dirty poor and has poor health, but she’s still obsessed with books at the expense of everything else.
• Saihate no Paladin (aka The Faraway Paladin) — protag dies as a shut-in, and gets abandoned when reincarnated as a baby. A ghost, a skeleton and a mummy raise him. Solid adventure, and rather good worldbuilding.

Culture: I mentioned cooking because it’s one of the things I enjoy the most, and it gives you a rather good grasp on a culture. Which ingredients do they use? Are dishes typically made for small or large groups? Are techniques intended for everyday cooking, or for more laborious festive events? What about culinary influences? etc.

Depending on where you live, if there’s a Japanese descendants community, odds are they celebrate some festivals, and they’re often open for outsiders. It’s a great way to interact directly with some of that culture.

That said, textbook history helps a lot. As well as Wikipedia; sometimes you learn a lot by stumbling upon some page about lacquer pictures, pottery repair or even cherry trees. It’s all about how you “parse” it together.

There’s a site called anilist.co you’ll find practically any anime series out there.

Since anime is a medium, don’t be surprised if someone loves a series you hate or vice versa. It’s like books, you know? And for recommendations it’s often useful if you list some series or genres you enjoy.

Unboxious’ recommendations look fairly good IMO. I’ll add a few ones:

• Suspense: Uzumaki
• "Innocent" fantasy: any movie from Studio Ghibli, specially Sen to Chihiro (Spirited Away), Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka (The Boy and the Heron), and Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro)
• Darker fantasy: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)
• Mecha (big robots): Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
• Isekai (transported into another world): Log Horizon
• Mystery/“detective”: Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries)

Remember to have fun. Watching anime is supposed to be enjoyable; if for some reason you aren’t enjoying a certain series, there’s no shame on dropping it.

Usually it’s said three episodes is enough to know if you’ll like a show, but sometimes a single one does it.

Also, watch out for people shitting on the others’ tastes in social media, it’s simply better to block those.

In some cases you enjoy the story and characters of a series, but the production sucks really bad. In those cases, it’s worth to check the manga or light novel series the anime is adapted from. (Hoshi no Samidare, I’m looking at you. Such amazing manga series deserved a better animation.)

It’s worth to dig into Japanese culture. It makes you enjoy what you see more. And if you’re into cooking, making the dishes you see in anime at home can be a really fun way to experience a bit of that culture.

The “no life weeb” stereotype doesn’t hold true any more. A lot of us have jobs, children, social life etc.

Some people flip the shit out if you use a plural -s in “anime”, “manga”, or “pokemon”. You can either avoid this or to pre-emptively use it to detect and block pass-aggro people from social media. (I never did the later in Lemmy, but it works).

Obligatory reference material, desu.

So that’s what made Emilia into the witch of envy!* Rem might as well not leave the coma now.
Congratulations Patrasche, Barusu!

(*inb4 that’s fan speculation, not spoilers)

While Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles has its own rich lore, it is made even more enticing by its connection to the series xxxHOLiC. Both series were developed by Clamp and are set in the same multiverse. Characters are shared between the two series, and the interdimensional witch Yūko Ichihara plays an important role in both stories.

This. So much this.

You can enjoy them individually, but once you enjoy them together, both become far richer. It isn’t just about the TRC gang visiting the witch, everything is connected.

Mushishi and Hellsing also have great worldbuilding, but TRC/xxxHolic is more like a fractal of worlds tied together.

Can’t say about the other series, as I didn’t watch them.

With that out of the way, for people who want an isekai series with good worldbuilding, I’d recommend Log Horizon. AFAIK it was one of the first “trapped in a game” isekai series, and it goes great lengths to explore how game logic interacts with reality. Such as food only having a taste when made by people with a cooking skill, or where the money from loot comes from, or what it means to “die” in the world, etc.

And if you don’t want isekai, there’s The Ancient Magus’ Bride. Sure, younger than things mentioned in the list (the first season is from 2013), but worldbuilding is top notch.

Frefox? Freefox? Wait, that’s actually a good name (unlike, say… Clbri).

Yeah, nah.

It’s already bad enough that they waste dev time with this shite instead of, you know… improving the browser for the users. Bloody slopbrowser, your only redeeming quality is to not be Chromium.

I’ll probably watch it but it lost the shine from s1.

Yup! Frankly it isn’t a really great visual novel, but the soundtrack is fire.

Every time that people talk about Chrono Cross’s soundtrack (it’s great by the way, I agree with you), this reminds me a little SNES game called Radical Dreamers. The soundtrack - largely shared with Chrono Cross - is perhaps its biggest selling point.