The summer’s been a bit busy, so I’ve unfortunately fallen off some of the stuff that I meant to watch and fallen behind on the rest, but I think things are actually settling down now.

For our weekly anime time, my friends ended up picking:

• Senpai is an Otokonoko - an absolutely beautiful look at the complexity of figuring out gender and sexuality with some truly gut-wrenching depictions of transphobia and homophobia, both direct and indirect.
• Elusive Samurai - stunningly animated action (Cloverworks is doing the thing they do) and it has made us hopeful that some of the historical figures might finally get english language wikipedia pages (we keep complaining that there are no resources to look at about how close this comes to the real story, lol)
• Dahlia in Bloom - a bit of the odd one out because it, um, looks terrible and the story is a bit rough as well. We’re enjoying the slow-burn romance (it’s a bit too slow for me, tbh) and pointing at all the weird animation quirks (we were SHOCKED when, after episodes of making fun of horse animation errors, we got an up-close shot of a horse and learned that this world had 8-legged horses the whole time and they didn’t tell us, so those were not errors after all)
• Odd Taxi - I slept on this when it came out because the dialogue felt really stilted to me and I couldn’t get my brain to focus on what was being said, but one of my friends insisted, so here we are. It’s definitely gotten better in the dialogue department, but I don’t really see why people call it a masterpiece, at least not yet. We’ll see.

As for my own shows, I had to make some cuts and I’m still a bit behind on it all, but I’m watching:

• Yatagarasu - This one keeps surprising me with its weird twists, lol. The big one two-thirds of the way through made me go read the manga (I may try to find translations of the novels as well), and I learned that the anime blended the first two novels together into a single story (they cover the same time period, but different characters, as I understand it), and I think the story was much better for it. The manga’s pacing, at least on the ladies’ side of the story, was really janky and the tone felt all wrong.
• How to Become Ordinary - Why is this so cinematic?? I really like all the subtle character moments in this show and the extreme low stakes of (most) of the mysteries.
• Twilight Out of Focus - as far as BL anime goes, it’s fine. It’s sort of endearing how seriously it takes itself and how artsy it’s trying to be, but I don’t know that it works that well.
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian - I really liked this as a romance at the start of the season, but I’ve become more disinterested as it’s (predictably?) become a harem anime. I’ll probably finish out the season, but if there’s no romantic progress, I won’t be back for a season 2.

As always, I’m going into the season as blind as possible, though I am tentatively hyped for Ranma 1/2.

Also, I’m not sure if this counts as the new season (or as anime, since it was sort of a slideshow), but here’s my thoughts on the first(?) fall show:

A few things:

• What wisp does for herself she also does for the group. Your teammate can afford to bring a frame that’s not survivable enough normally because of vitality mote, and with very little coordination from the group.
• Because of the way reservoirs work, that strength requirement isn’t as much of a tradeoff as it seems. Wisp can afford to tank her efficiency into the ground and still function very very well in any mission where you can stay near your reservoirs.
• You compare her to arcanes, but those are a very large farming investment to get to high levels, whereas she drops from a boss fight / relics. If you’re one of the players that already has everything the comparison is fair, but if you’re looking at a new thing to acquire the two are very different hurdles.

Ultimately she’s probably rarely the best possible choice, but part of the reason that she’s considered “the best support in the game” is that she does so much with so little investment or effort (and that she was given that title before a bunch of older support frames got buffed to stand on par with her)

I am under no circumstances saying you can’t criticize art or say that the writing was bad or whatever you seem to think my position is.

Writers can and do get fired for not doing the job they were hired for and rarely get to lead the creative process (and usually if they do they’re like, writer/director, or a big name). All I’m trying to say is that a worker can do a good job within the bounds they’re given and still have the result be terrible because the bounds were terrible.

You seem to be giving a LOT of agency to writers for the stories they tell. Some stories are going to be something writers worked hard on wanted to write, and in those cases ya they should be blamed for the resulting flaws, but many times they are constrained by the instructions they’re given.

To go back to the metaphor, did the worker decide that the stuff you need goes out of your reach or are they putting it where they were told to?

“Just following orders” absolutely does excuse bad writing as long as it’s not harmful. I wouldn’t get mad at a writer of a thing a studio ruined just like I wouldn’t get mad at a grocery store worker for rearranging the shelves for the fifth week in a row. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean doing a stupid and pointless job makes them a bad person. If the writing is racist or whatever, sure, they’re complicit, but writers have to eat and it’s not morally wrong to write a boring script if that’s what your boss is asking you for.

The problem is, nazi is a political ideology, but Russian is a nationality and ethnicity. I agree with your point about gay nazis, but would you say the same thing about gay germans?

It definitely reads like an ai hallucination, lol

I read the books over and over as a child and knew the anime diverged from them but holy shit none of that sounds like the story I’m familiar with except the name jasmine and the fact that there are mountains

Edit: I skimmed/searched the linked page and that description doesn’t actually sound accurate to the show as a whole, so maybe that’s just a singular episode?

Edit 2: It sounds like the thing OP was looking for wasn’t Deltora Quest after all, which makes me extremely skeptical your description has any truth to it at all.

There are no rules that can be made ahead of time that catch all the trolls, whilst not gatekeeping innocent folk. Allowing space for people to exist on their own terms means acting reactively, and means that trolls will slip through the cracks sometimes. That is by design, because the alternative is gatekeeping.

I absolutely agree. I think people (myself included) were concerned because the (necessary) ambiguity of rules seemed to be opening the door to times when a user would feel pushed out of spaces by having to tiptoe around other users that they think might just be trolls. It seems to me from talking to you about it that there is generally good faith assumed on all sides, which definitely sets my mind at ease.

I appreciate the clarity on what exactly does and doesn’t get someone banned. That all seems very reasonable to me, and largely answered my main question. Feel free to disengage with this conversation guilt-free if you think my followup here isn’t worth your time. Unfortunately I have reddit-brain and feel like I need to re-explain myself when I feel like i’m not being understood.

With that out of the way: I think you’re missing the point about the examples.

On the User A side, I’m not talking about directly interacting with minors. I’m talking about indirectly interacting with everyone, including minors, but also including adults who don’t want to interact in a sexual manner with randos. There’s definitely a difference, but I think it’s the same sort of effect if User A asks a minor to use their sexualized pronouns vs if they label themselves with sexualized pronouns and then go into spaces where minors may interact with them.

On the User B side, I feel like while “it” is similar in some ways to slur pronouns, it also has some fundamental differences. For one, “it” is already a word we use in other contexts and is not one people can really avoid even if they try, and for another, most “it” pronoun people I’ve encountered intend it to be uses in the object sense, not the reclaimed slur sense. Would User B be treated differently moderation-wise if their pronouns were different reclaimed slurs, like the n-word? I know that there’s no amount of complaining about misgendering that could convince me to use certain slur pronouns.

I do agree that most people are going to be reasonable and those with more controversial pronouns will likely give those who are uncomfortable an out (in the form of alternate pronouns), but I don’t think those people are who anyone is really worried about here, because they seem chill as hell, lol. I get that we’re talking about edge cases of edge cases here, so maybe the whole thing is purposeless anyway.

I think looking at a more concrete hypothetical would be more clarifying for people.

Let’s say that User A has their pronouns listed as “daddy” and User B has their pronouns listed as the t-slur. User C finds both of these uncomfortable to use, A because it feels like they’re being coerced into a sexual interaction with another user, and B because they’ve been personally victimized by that slur before and being around those that use it (even in a reclaimed sense) hurts them (and I am confident this is a thing people are sensitive to on this instance because I’ve seen people put trigger warnings for its usage before). User C wants to continue to interact with their community, so they use “they/them” for A and B instead. What happens next, from a moderation standpoint? What if they had conspicuously avoided pronouns by using “User A” and “User B” exclusively?

I think there have been cases that go up to or put a toe over the line of acceptability for some people, and some of us are confused/concerned about how far things go. It seems like you have a clear idea of what is and isn’t acceptable, but your hard line hasn’t translated well into the heads of other people, and it creates an ambiguity for the rest of us who see a very blurry spectrum. I know you have a very hard (and usually thankless job) and from both seeing your work and from benefit of the doubt, I’m sure you want to do right by the people here, but I think some clarity would be good for people. In the above example, if User C doesn’t know what will or won’t get them kicked out of their communities or even the instance, they may engage less and ultimately feel pushed out of their space, and so moderation really needs to be a balance of the needs of Users A & B and User C.

And to be clear, I don’t think anyone is asking for permission to bully someone with unconventional pronouns, nor permission to tell them their gender identity is wrong or invalid (If there are, those people do not belong here in any capacity). I think the question is mostly, which neopronouns requests are unreasonable enough for people to be allowed to use backup pronouns or just the user’s name instead.

Makoto’s dad is the real MVP. It’s one thing to support your kid if they come out, but it’s another to proactively say “if you’re not sure, you should give it a try and see how you feel”. On the other side, it’s hell on earth to have a parent make your struggles about them, and Makoto’s mom will not be forgiven.

I thought it was interesting that Makoto kept using “boku” even at the end of this episode, seemingly implying that they’ve settled on being a boy who likes crossdressing, though I still don’t trust that that will hold and suspect they’re deep in egg mode.

Also, Ryuuji, I’m still on your side here but you gotta step it up. You were absolutely put to shame this episode.

Happy to see Elusive Samurai jump up like this. I think it probably got overlooked before the season started because it’s a historical fiction starring real historical figures (I did not learn this until after episode 2 because I don’t pay attention), but I’ve heard the sakuga sections have been circulating and I suspect that’s why it’s picking up speed. Cloverworks is going ham with this one and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

For reference, and without too much spoiler content, here’s what the show is up to

It’s the subtle moments that I think really pull the show together. When Masha meets Kuze you can see the moment her brain goes from “this is my future brother in law so I should make friends with him” to “oh no, this is my longlost childhood friend / first love”, and we never get any exposition explaining it, nor do we get any when she test him by speaking russian to him. Beautiful storytelling.

I’m honestly really sad for Masha. It’s clear she’s going to ultimately lose the love triangle, and I think she already knows that. The Sa-kun she was in love with is in the past, and while there are still some lingering feelings between them, they don’t have a connection anymore like Kuze does with Alya. And Masha seems like she understands that doing anything other than letting those feelings go and moving on would ultimately do more damage to her sister and their relationship than it would do any good for herself or Kuze. But maybe that’s just me reading into things a little and we’ll end up with another mess like over in the other sister love triangle anime, lol.

So cute and so comfy. I’m liking this a LOT more than I expected to.

I was pretty sure that the revive + re-kill day was going to end up having revived Ryuuta, but I wasn’t expecting that reveal to happen so quick, nor that no one would react to this revelation with any real amount of surprise. The explanations this episode were at least possible to follow, but it feels like they’re doing set-up and reveal so quickly with these “mysteries” that it’s hard to even follow what’s happening. Because of that, it’s difficult to even tell who is on whose side, what anyone’s motivation is, and what the reason for any strategy is. But I’m grateful the wackiness is getting turned up via the prime rights, since it reminds me that there is no reason to take anything this anime is doing seriously.

I super don’t trust Doga Kobo with any anime that has “children” in the name, but I looked it up and it looks like it’s actually a different type of weird than I thought (adopted-sibling romance)! Not great, but better than what Doga Kobo’s often up to…

Still not really sold on this yet, but I’ll give it the full 3 episodes to prove itself. It definitely looks great, but I think it’s sort of funny that Mashle, which has a very similar premise but in the form of a comedy, seems to consistently have higher stakes than this show. Like, it looks like the students who got taken out in the dungeon last time who I thought were for sure dead are actually just… perfectly fine? So the only pressing issue here is “will MC see his girlfriend again” (without answering the question “why does he need to get accepted to and graduate from wizard grad school to be able to see her?”)

ok, let’s try this one

This is almost certainly the lowest-stakes mystery show I’ve ever seen. The case of the dry sink is solved! …and I’m very mad at Kengo about it, lol. I loved that, even as pointless as the mystery was, the show still did the mystery thing of giving us all the little clues before we even knew they were important.

I went into this blind and last episode I suspected we were going to be getting a supernatural twist, but this time I’m leaning more away from that possibility. Either way I’ll be curious to learn why these two weirdos have decided to “become ordinary”, but I think a lot of the confusing scenes from last episode were symbolic or stylistic rather than literal, though I’m not sure what they all mean yet. For one of them, though, it seems clear to me that the shots of Kobato in place of the perpetrator (which happened in both mysteries) is expressing his process of looking at the mystery through someone else’s eyes.

Now, let’s see if I can solve the mystery of getting a screenshot to work… (Edit: so far, no, but I’ll give it a few minutes in case lemmy needs to think very hard about it) (Edit 2: I am too ordinary to solve this mystery, I guess)

@rikka@ani.social