Orb, Dan Da Dan, and NegaPosi Angler were the three shows for me from this season. I watched some others, but I haven’t really looked forward to those episodes as much as these three. If I had to put a fourth in there, it would probably be Villainess That Goes Down in History. However, that one had some problematic stuff and episodes tended to hit or miss. Part of what helped that show for me is that it was basically the only show coming out on Tuesday, as opposed to like the 5 shows that came out on Thursday.

Oh man, now you get to watch the Konosuba movie, my favorite piece of Konosuba media. I also agree that season 2 is really where the show hit its stride.

As for bakemonogatari (and subsequent -gataris), I have bounced off that series a couple of times now. I can’t really put my finger on it exactly, but I sympathize with you in that it hasn’t really grabbed me. It might just be one of those series that you either click with or you don’t.

Ichigo Mashimaro

I wasn’t familiar with this one, but a quick look and it looks cute af. On the list it goes…

Yeah, Fall has been pretty weak, especially if you just look at new shows rather than season 2+ shows. Orb, Dan Da Dan, and NegaPosi Angler are probably my favorites of the season.

Orb is fantastic. I am a couple episodes behind right now. I mentioned this last week, but because of how busy/tired/sick I have been recently, I have held off on watching it. The show is too good for me to half-ass watching it. That show is deserving of my full attention.

I think Dan Da Dan has benefited tremendously from an otherwise pretty weak season of new shows. Sure, Re:Zero, Bleach, and Danmachi might have been great (I have heard, I don’t watch either), but those shows have the previous seasons as a barrier of entry that Dan Da Dan doesn’t.

funny internet award poll

That’s the spirit! This is absolutely just meant to be a bit of fun, so I hope nobody is taking it too seriously.

We had a decent number of responses, but when the nominations are spread out among so many potential titles, all it takes is a couple dedicated fans to push one up the list. By comparison, it took significantly more to get an anime nomination because the number of potential series is way less.

One of my ideas for doing this again is to align categories with tags on either Mangadex or AniList and, if a series isn’t listed with that tag, it isn’t eligible for that category. Even then, some can be a bit of a stretch, but it should at least be easier to assign eligibility. I think one of the reasons that Best Suspense got so few nominations is because that category is a bit vague and ill-defined.

If Shirabe is a senpai, do they reset before the others finish school, or perhaps continue on until Hareta finishes school? In any case, the tone got suddenly dark there.

Yeah, his objections to absolute monarchy aren’t wrong, but his solution of simply becoming a de facto monarch by turning the next king into a puppet is also not any better.

I love that there is a dedicated pudding icon.

multiple times

Shhh!

I had planned on enabling this software’s cookie to prevent multiple votes, but after doing some testing with @NineSwords@ani.social, found that the cookie was way too aggresive. If somebody opened the survey and then closed it without any interaction, the cookie would then prevent them from coming back and completing it. The way it blocked you as well is by emulating a server error rather than a friendly message about multiple votes. That caused me some headaches when I thought I had a configuration problem on the backend.

The only other tool available to me with this software to try to filter out multiple voters is IP tracking. There is fortunately an option to anonymize IPs. So, instead of telling me what a submitter’s real IP is, it will assign a fake one, but if they submit multiple times, that fake IP will show up multiple times. So, that is what I have turned on right now instead. It isn’t a perfect solution. Things like VPNs and mobile connections are easy to circumvent that, while CGNAT might cause some different people to show up as the same voter.

For next year, I plan on verifying votes through lemmy so that each vote is tied to a lemmy account. It’s going to take some effort on my end to figure that part out though. So, for now, it remains a plan on paper.

I am planning on posting a reminder on Friday; a three day warning.

Try again. My monitoring just let me know and I restarted things. For some reason the backend docker container went down.

Had we previously met Dad’s coworkers? They are each so distinctive that I feel like I should remember them. However, that could just be due to the extra effort that goes into the art of this series.

Typical Miyu, being three steps ahead and planning for Yuushin to fail. She is schemes the whole way down.

Murai has to know something is up with Miyo at this point. I am guessing he is just going along with her out of gratitude at this point.

Yeah, I was tempted by it though after Sakugablog wrote a whole article about it though.

Appropriate level of enthusiasm.

I made a separate post for the year-end awards this week, so go over there and vote! As part of that process, I have been poring over a bunch of series in preparation for voting. So, my reading from this past week has been pretty strongly influenced by that.

• You are a Four Leaf Clover / Kimi wa Yotsuba no Clover

A couple more chapters came out and it is dark. Chapter 2 featured very explicit self-harm and there have been some pretty traumatic flashbacks of bullying and one attempted murder. And we’re at chapter 4! I think I might let this one go. I was initially intrigued due to the time travel/mystery elements, but it feels like this is just going to be an edgefest without a lot of substance to it.

• Ganmanga

This one has been really interesting. Instead of a fictional story, this one is a nonfictional retelling of a manga artist’s experiences with cancer. The first two chapters have come out on Mangadex and she is only at the “just got a diagnosis” stage of the process. It has been remarkably frank and open (including some very mild NSFW panels where she complains about an ex not wanting sex). The dates in the story indicate that she is going to make it, so you don’t necessarily have to brace yourself for a tragic end. I have worked professionally for years on various cancer medications, so I am somewhat familiar with characteristics of different cancers. However, getting a picture into the whole process that a patient goes through, starting from some constipation and ending up with a cancer diagnosis, has been a compelling perspective.

• Love Bullet

One of the nominees for Manga of the Year. I had heard of the series after it made news earlier this year; after international fans organized a buying campaign of the Japanese volume to try to prevent the series from getting cancelled.

I have read through the chapters that are available and it is really good. I have enjoyed it a lot. It’s a mix of romance and action that, on paper, sounds like it isn’t going to work. However, the characters are really interesting and the action is really well drawn, and it somehow all works. It’s still early days in the series, but as a debut manga for the author, it shows a lot of promise and I am glad that it seems to be sticking around for now.

• My Crush’s Crush / Boku no Suki na Hito ga Suki na Hito

This was nominated by somebody for the Best Romance category. Sadly, it didn’t make it to the final list of nominees, but if you are out there and read this, thank you for bringing this one to my attention. I have thoroughly enjoyed bingeing this series over the past week.

As somebody that has read more than their fair share of love triangle/polygon stories, I thought I was in for a pretty typical love triangle situation based on the description. However, what I found was so much more than that. Yes, there is a love triangle, but one in which A loves B loves C loves A. Then, there are other potential partners to the main three that complicate everything. However, the main thing I want to emphasize here is that I want everybody to win. All of the characters are very likeable and wholesome. There has not yet been any of the typical manufactured drama tropes I am so used to. I would absolutely be pleased any way this whole spaghetti bowl of potential relationships end up because I like all these characters that much.