I thought Benedict was still the pope. I heard Francis died and was all "who dis?"

I also watched part of that Dark Elf one a couple of weeks ago and it's like... I thought this was a yandere, not a pedo. Gross.

Witch Watch was kind of funny but I don't like this type of female character. Something about her annoys me. I was all "fuck you" when she killed his cool vintage mug.

I've been listening to "Japanese City Pop"-ified stuff.



And, yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy in ragging on AI for a nature show when AI was used (either in whole at least in part) on this stuff.

I kinda looked into that but I'm not sure if it would be worth it for me. At least at this time.

Merla and I were able to watch Apothecary Diaries Season 1 together yesterday. She even told me that she only said she didn't want to watch it before because she thought I meant Ascendence of a Bookworm. She didn't know the name of Ascendence of a Bookworm so she had to describe it until I figured out what she was talking about. Lol, no, I dumped that show. (Although I did wonder if it ever got any other seasons and it's getting another season in 2026.)

She didn't dislike AD but it doesn't seem to be the show for her. She kept asking questions.

"Who's that guy?"
"We meet him later."

"And who's that?"
"You'll find out later in the episode."

"What happened to Maomao's mom?"
"It's explained later."

"He's not a real eunuch, right?"
"No." [I just answered that one.]

Like, woman, watch it. This wasn't written by JJ Abrams, the show gives you a bunch of the answers to the questions you're asking.  To her credit though, I think episodes 2 and 3 are actually very sloppy. I don't think it explains the interconnecting events that well. Even the remainder of the plot as presented in the anime leave a lot of questions. Like why did Fengming not think the taster would just drop dead before the soup even reaches Lishu? The better death plot would be Fengming sticking a shitload of crushed fish into the soup and then Lishu swallows the chunks and dies from her allergen. I dunno, maybe that's also stupid but I'm trying to think of a scenario where the "poison" passes the taster. Because then the taster dies and you don't touch the soup, right?

What about the ceremonial instruments? How was Suirei allowed the get those made and bring them back? I'm sure it's probably explained in the light novel. But were Kounen and the seaweed bro really the only two guys in charge of that shit?

On another note, I forgot Netflix does dubtitles. Disgusting. Also, they make the text huge and float it all over the screen.  Title of the next episode in the lower right corner? Let's put it in the middle over someone's face! Jinshi speaking on the left? Put his text in the lower left. Now Jinshi and Maomao are both in the center of the screen? Slightly off-center Jinshi's text to the left and then slightly off-center Maomao's text to the right. Isn't this shit more work? Center everything on the bottom, you goons. Do people really like to read this way?



--------------



Anyway, as far as new anime is concerned, I watched old man adventurer anime. What are they calling this shit? "From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman." People familiar with the source material insist this isn't harem, but the old guy's specifically being told by his dad (that's his dad, right?) to go find a wife. And then the first chick is all blushing and crushing on him.

I don't know what the plot of this thing is. I like the voice actor's voice. He's Sanji's VA from One Piece. The character himself is kind of ass. A Reddit thread compared him to Belgrieve from "My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer". This character is no Bel. Bel was injured, faced a powerful demon, had PTSD, has oneitis, his party dissolved, and he retired before he even had the chance to prove his rank or get his name around. He then adopted his daughter and devoted his life to being a dad and protecting the actual backwater village he settled down in.  He's a humble man. He's not comparable to this chump.

This chump:
-Still has Mommy and Daddy around to give him a sword school.
-Has self-esteem issues. Waah waah.
-Has seemingly done fuck-all except training people.
-Is able-bodied and has no injuries so why did he never do other things?
-Has no friends, I guess?
-Is not in a backwater but has a city readily nearby to the extent he could leave and then return in the evening. The fuck's your excuse for never visiting it?
-Has students that revere him so much they never come back to visit him even through he's never changed locations and lives near a major city.

Am I supposed to really believe that Dad and Mom (but especially Dad) are so desperate for grandchildren and wouldn't be bombarding this dude with women to marry? That people who sent their kids to this school and those kids grew up into success (thanks to the school) wouldn't be coming back to the village and trying to hook up their daughters or whatever with this guy? That this school wouldn't have earned some level of greater prestige by now that would have people orbiting this guy?

Nah, man, I can't with this. This is so bad.

I kind of like the hot, muscly red-head but then they do that weird thing where the shows will give her both super-defined abs but also bubble tits. So what's weirder? That her workout didn't shrink her boobs or that she's in charge of adventurer lodgings in the next town over but never checked on this man in twenty fucking years?

Whatever. Nothing in this show's world makes sense. I did kind of like how the arrogant dude who got defeated by the old man then wanted to eagerly learn from him but, damn, that character went from 0 to cocksucker way too fast. Ruined. And this show features girls but where are this guy's male students? I wish shows like this would have at least a few male students featured.

I don't know what to grade this. Maybe I'll give it another episode or something.




Also, I watched episode one of Anne Shirley. It's not bad but I really like Akage no Anne. The pacing was so much better, too. But that show had 50 episodes. What will this one get? Eleven or twelve? Little wonder it's blazing through everything.

I tried a few and they didn't really excite me so far.

The one with the cute witch who g'un die looked Ghibli-esque but it's more like someone took visual cues from Ghibli and meshed it with Little Witch Academia. It's not terrible or anything. It's a decent show. Meg Raspberry is wacky but good-hearted. But the beginning of the episode was jarring. The episode gives you about a minute before it jumps into "yo, you gonna die." I kinda wanted to spend more time with Meg and see her normal life a bit. Like I said, it seems okay. I just don't find myself caring that much.

The Too-Perfect Saint or whatever, on the other hand, wastes your damn time. This one and Meg's show needed to split the difference. Where Meg's show is too fast, this one draaaaags the opening. I swear, we spend, like, five minutes in one scene letting the villains twirl their non-existent mustaches. The villains in this type of show are the weakest part. Let them cackle for two minutes and move the fuck on with the story.  First ep was kinda meh. I like the manga for this one so so I want to stick with it. But, man. I hope the entire show isn't like this.

Then I saw the rock girl one. The one with those weird sweating girls. The anime kinda added more to the first ep than you get with the manga. Made it feel a bit fresh. I still don't know about this one.


Also, the Apothecary Diaries came to American Netflix. I'm only kinda mad because I've been trying to get Merla to watch it with me. I finally got her to say yes this past Saturday and then my mp4s wouldn't work at all on my BluRay player. They work just fine on my bedroom TV but whatever TV and BluRay player we have in my living room hates the files. I spent hours trouble-shooting and then needing to remove an audio codec--might be the wrong word/term, I don't fucking know --from each and every file I have of the dub with Handbrake just so it'll play. Got them all sorted out and trouble-shooted and everything so she could watch it with me this upcoming weekend. Just needed to load them on a USB stick and pop it in my BluRay player. So I did all of that shit over last weekend and then American Netflix added it April 1st. Fuck you. I took that personally.

Man, everyone likes Kaiji more than Akagi except me.

I got Merla to watch Frieren since it's on Netsux and she went through the whole thing. Waiting until 2026 for more is kinda sad though. Production didn't get the jump start Apothecary Diaries S2 did.

I need to go through some of those trailers. Not sure on new Anne of Green Gables. I hope it's good and cozy.

Last ep of Zenshu. Thoughts? Overall, I give it an A. It looked good, it had good music, it told a story and it tried to stick the landing. It really needed one more episode though. It spent so much of the latter episodes on depair and not enough time bringing the viewer along with it back to a happy place. It's like Natsuko got there before the viewer did and it feels very jarring.

We needed an episode of everyone settling in, being cute and happy, and of Luke accepting that Natsuko was going to part from him again. I mean, he turned into a void because she died. Isn't her leaving like she died again? I guess all of his friends are back so that fixes things but HOW does it fix things? Wouldn't the original world's creator go right back to fucking up this world again? What's stopping her from doing it? How does she do it? Does she even control it? I don't really need all of those things answered but we don't so much as get a hint. Something like "all the soul futures are back so nothing can ruin this world again!" I needed something.

But yeah, there needed to be time to become chill again. Maybe Luke makes Natsuko one more meal and they talk and laugh together before they part. Then I needed a bit more of Natsuko settling back into her world. Isn't part of these stories that the asshole comes back from their adventure a changed person and people are "wow! Natsuko's so nice now!" or some shit like that? Show a couple of scenes of everyone working together and celebrating that their film's a hit. There's needed to be, I dunno, more of a catharsis, I guess.

But the bar for anime endings is low for me, especially anime-only stuff. They gave everyone a happy ending and left it open-ended for everyone to meet again so I guess we can't ask for more than that.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, I forgot... Y NO KISS THO? 

Yeah, I nuked that bottom bar after I posted that. But I'm just annoyed I had to do it in the first place. The default options are like a three-sided picture frame.  There's a sidebar, there's a top bar, there's a bottom bar, there a bunch of stuff in the middle. I don't like clutter. Do people really browse this way?  Close the window and expect all of their tabs to reload? Like, when I close a browser window, I'm done with the browser. Don't reload that shit with the 20 tabs I'm finished reading. I've already found the option to correct that, too.

What I haven't figured out is the wallpaper on the home page. It treats wallpaper in a strange way. No matter what I do to the image, it refuses to orient it how I want it. I found the options to repeat, center, or fill. But I can't shift the picture left, right, up or down. Which is not the end of the world but still a tad annoying.

Yay, two sassy twinks. 

This dude's supposed to be 18.

People in the comments promising this one's good. This one's not like the other girls. But I can't trust a show that gives the main character three-quarter gloves and then thinks they can get away with depicting said gloves but not even drawing gloves: they just color part of the guy's hands black and call it a day. Not seeing the edge of this dude's gloves killed my immersion. I'm not joking. It really bothers me.

Meanwhile, mine gives me five or six videos that are all "I watched Snow White so you don't have to." Like, no, I rather you didn't do that at all.

Oh, lawd, there's a bottom bar. Yes, Vivaldi, tell me the time. Because it's not like everyone's computer already has that feature.

Okay, I shouldn't be mean. Someone out there likes that feature.

She was laughing about it and I was all "you walnut! You have any idea how much trouble you caused me trying to fix that shit?" And she was all "oops, sorry." And then I think we got ice cream or something. I don't remember. It was years ago. To be fair to her, it wasn't like she intentionally did it. She threw the box and then I think she read the label that it was a computer. So she was all "oh, shit, I threw Beck's computer" and kept her mouth shut about it.