What a start to the chapter:

These two never fail to make me smile with their idiocy.

All of these other Gundam answers are great. But…

open to non-Gundam Mecha suggestions

Alright, since you wrote this, I am taking that as permission to advocate for one of my favorite shows from last year that was largely slept on in the West, Brave Bang Bravern!.

It is a comedic take on the mecha/super robot genre and parodies it in many ways (the super robot even builds gunpla of himself at one point). However, despite all the comedy, it is still incredibly tragic and heartfelt. Most of humanity is dead by the end of episode 1 for instance.

I think that Bravern is like other great parodies of our time (Galaxy Quest, Spinal Tap, etc.) in that it is sometimes through parody that you find the best in a genre.

It seems like this love research club quickly destroys everybody’s brain cells. Sorry about that Kaede! It’s a hell of a lot of fun though. Somehow in all the silliness, our two leads managed to recognize their feelings for each other.

Respect for understanding your audience.

Maidnight Ravers

Yeah…that checks out.

That chapter moved really fast, it’s clearer now that we’re closing in on the end. I’m going to miss this series. I might have to check to see if there is a LN translation.

She really does act like a cat in this regard.

Feeling down? Simply hit on yourself to brainwash yourself to feel motivated. Easy, right?

I love that we got a glimpse into Mirai’s power.

Look how surprised everyone is that Kuzuhana actually showed up in her own manga!

Meena finally lays out the plan. I can’t say that the grand reveal felt too grand…but I have seen much worse. The tease at the end has me very interested.

So, I am a huge sucker for post-apocalypse stories, so I am already intrigued from that. Additional points that this is an anime-original. Finally, this is being made by Cygames Pictures, whose most recent original anime was Bang Brave Bravern. So, I think I am at least willing to check it out.

It feels more ecchi than the manga does too

I have only read the manga, but this can also result from the pacing. When you are reading, you can go at your own pace. When watching, you are basically forced to watch an ecchi scene as long as they linger on it. I have definitely had this experience for other series in the past.

There is a taiyaki place near my work and now I really want some. It’s so good. I love the bag design is like the tail fin.

Just in case you forgot that this series is published in a seinen magazine alongside gravure models, this chapter came out guns blazing. I did not foresee the librarian turn at the end.

You can only get those moments when the groundwork has been laid to develop the character so that we can properly anticipate their reaction. So I think it is really just a byproduct of good writing.

We know how Ichinose is going to react because we spent a whole chapter on it previously. Similarly, with Alina, she had explained over and over how much she values a “normal” life, the house being an integral part of that. When that was threatened previously, she almost killed somebody.

The additional cherry on top in Alina’s case is that when she goes off on somebody in the anime, we get to hear her VA go full Megumin-explosion shouting at them.

I went through something similar late last year. Unsubbed from NYT and WaPo and did some heavy curation of communities. The day to day news is exhausting to keep up with these days and never leaves me feeling any better.

I have been using the time and energy to do more productive things. One of those has been working on a future version of awards voting. So, lots of python-flask and Javascript lately. In all this, I learned that I hate front-end UI design and css.

That was really well done, calling back to the earlier chapter. Poor Karasuma has no idea what he did wrong.

Even if his motivation is twisted and self-serving, Dan was a solid friend this chapter. Next stop, culture festival.

I guess just three chapters left? I haven’t read the source, but there has to be more to the story than this, right? Our leads haven’t even gotten old enough to start the events of the game.

Lol at Falin carrying Thistle. I thought Falin had sprouted legs or something.