Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion - January 27, 2026

(semi-related, but before dropping Spy x Family I was preparing a clip that I really liked, but I procrastinated for a few weeks or years and the unedited clip is still on my PC, judging me)

[](#kaguyasigh)

Given how much isekei loves the harem stuff I do wonder when we'll get the "I've been transported back in time and am now Genghis Khan!" isekai, which I think would be the logical extreme. Or maybe it's already been done...

This, and Tawawa on Monday (I always link these two in my mind hah)

Breaking out an oldie there.

[](#whippersnappers)

I've been meaning to get to that, the reception I've seen seems generally positive though not without a few flaws.

[](#mugiwait)

One of my favorites of this season so far, though I'm pacing myself to make it last so have not seen even halfway through yet. But if you like romance with rivals to lovers dynamic set in early 20th century London, then you will likely enjoy it as well. Really charming cast of characters and beutiful visuals.

I had it on my list, but then I saw some posts about it having AI generated backgrounds, and now I'm not sure.

Yeah, I loved it. Started rough for me, the first 5 or so episodes felt really generic and riddled with tropes, but it really found its footing after that. Ended up giving it a 9/10.

Yeah, it's a great series and among one of my top from this season. It has excellent production value with the animation and music, which immersed you into the world.

The side cast were given development instead of simply being an ornament to the main couple, but without overshadowing the latter.

The drama also isn't contrived and one major plot point was foreshadowed several episodes in advance.

It's a shame the batch release model resulted in the series not making as much noise in this sub.

I want to but I already am occpied with so much

[](#panic)

I’ve binged the entire thing when it came out and would highly recommend it.

I like it. The first episode was a little weird, I guess they started with that to hook people, but the second episode is the actual start of the story.

so this means you won't be watching chained soldier with me? Sadge missing out on the top tier horny show.

Honestly I'd just watch Progressive on its own, it works standalone and none of the other entries in the franchise are worth seeing.

Alternative and Progressive can be watched in either order, they don't require the other one. They are made with the assumption that you've seen original FLCL though. While not super continuity-focused sequels there are some characters or terms you won't be familiar with if you dive into one of them immediately.

Also, alas, neither is anywhere as good as the original. Alternative has one strong episode, but that's the most I can recommend on those two.

Wait, you're the person who brought up starting it yesterday, right? You're already done with it? Wow, that was quick. I limited myself to 1 episode per day, granted that's typically my process with most anime I watch.

I forgot to mention yesterday but there are a few OVA episodes as well with the 2003 style to them (and presumably the same production staff), although I can't recall if they actually came out in that year.

Awesome! Let us know what you think of FMP and Fumoffu when you're done watching.

For me JJK is missing the "glue" between it's fights. Three seasons in and I really don't care about anyone in the main trio. I only really "like" Todo, Gojo, Suguru, and Nanami.

Most of JJK to me is "stuff is just happening" with very little sense of importance to it.

Choso vs Yuji is one of the greatest anime fights of all time, the show is gorgeous and engaging to watch, and it has some incredibly emotional moments from time to time but as a work of art I think it's a little shallow.

I watch most of my non-airing shows alongside [rewatches](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/wiki/rewatches) on here, so I'm usually watching multiple older shows paced to 1 episode a day at the same time.

I like to have a few that I'm watching at any given time, a combination of new-to-me shows and rewatches, so I can switch between them based on which genre I'm feeling in the mood for. Right now, I've got around 3-4 and that's usually a good number for me.

I tend to juggle a few in different genres to switch between depending on my mood, for example I recently had a school comedy and a fantasy adventure going at the same time.

I exclusively watch "older", as in not currently airing, shows and I like to watch 3-5 at a time with varying genres and decades. It keeps things fresh and gives me options based on how I'm feeling when I decide to watch some episodes.

I'm currently watching [these](https://files.catbox.moe/fscvmt.png).

Most of the time I just binge one show and binge more after if I am still in the mood.

I just do one off-season show at a time that I'll watch when I'm caught up on seasonals.

Apart from seasonals, I tend to have at least 3-5 shows going on if not more; of different genres or at least different vibes. One chill shounen I can watch with my brain turned off, one serious drama for when I'm in the mood for something like that, one late night vibe show, one comedy, one ecchi, and so on.

Basically, if I look at the shows I'm currently watching and don't really feel like any of them right that moment, I'll just start a new show instead of forcing myself. But of course every now and then I get really hooked on one show and binge it all in a couple of nights.

i rarely watch older shows nowadays; it's mostly watching one episode of the new seasonal a day or catching up on ones i've missed

if i do watch an older show, i don't like to binge because i tend to forget things if i watch too many episodes in a row; it ends up being one or two episodes a day, and as a result if something goes into the crypt of my backlog it rarely makes it to the surface

I watch so much seasonal anime that finding time to fit in even one older show is often a chore, I wouldn't even want to think about trying to do multiple at once.

My standard practice is to go through 3 fully aired shows at once at a one episode of each per day frequency. For example my current cycle is Super Dimension Century Orguss, My Dress Up Darling and Revisions. As I complete one another gets cycled in, with me occasionally doing a movie instead over a few nights.

When I was starting out and everything I watched was complete I binged single series at a time. Once my queue started running dry and I began watching stuff as it aired, I started using older shows to fill gaps in my schedule. Still one old show at a time, but potentially several days between episodes with new shows inbetween.

No particular process but physical media is a bit more disciplined in that I used to do 1 disc 1 sitting which was fine when it was those 3 ep volumes but some blu-ray having 9 eps on a disc which makes that more difficult.

I have a lot of shows on the go but some go months without progress than might get multiple eps in one day or slowly get chipped away.

If I don't binge, I tend to end up with shows half-finished... so yeah. Binge for me. Really ought to go clean up a few of those shows that got stuck half-finished at this point. I mean, I know myself - I'm not going to before I binge at least a half dozen more cuteslop romcoms, but I really should.

Ooh this is good news! I shall make sure to watch it first thing in the morning. 


And no worries! I watched last week's episode pretty soon after it came out - sadly not a whole lot of Uchi in it though. 

Meitantei it's usually translated great detective.

I listened to some audiobooks of it and I don't remember a narrator. There is a lot of introspection and less dialogue, though.

[no](#tiredaoi)

i love how the main character doesn't talk much, especially if she's just by herself

it made me realize just how much dialogue in anime is superfluous; you can get a lot just from facial/body expressions and context

One of my favorites of its year. It even made me check into what Super Cubs were available in the USA (despite being much too old for such things). Too bad the LNs never got translated.

I didn't know it was all outsourced. Looking at the shows Studio Seven normally does (hentai to the extent MAL has to censor the keyart) it might less of a surprise (I'd guess their typical year is less minutes than 1 cour full ep length TV anime and they're still doing hentai).

Wow, what's going on there?


Oh, right. Nevermind.

Wow, I actually have to go 6 pages deep into the subreddit's front page in order to get to the discussion thread. I usually just go to /r/anime and check the discussion threads that are visible to remind myself of what's airing each day, but I guess I can't do that anymore.

And that's terrible.

You're not going to convince people on Reddit or IRL that they don't like something they like. So don't bother trying.

10 hours in and still 0 karma.

Not even Rent-a-Girlfriend and One Punch Man S3 has this kind of downvotes.

Just to keep a running record: 17hrs, 140 comments, 0 karma

>0 points (50% upvoted)

That's so mathematically beautiful

[](#awe)

I watched #1 of Bakemonogatari and dropped it because, "it's just people talking." I'm listening to the audiobook now, and it turns out "people talking" at least **can** make a really good audiobook.

To this point in the show it was looking like an AOTY candidate...

Not gonna lie, I was thinking about that too while watching the episode hah.

They don't make them like this anymore...

[](#whippersnappers "Nostalgia posting about a series that aired like 6 years ago")

But he gets 6 girls to compensate...

I feel Film 4 gets packages from distributors for a certain period with a cooldown which is why various films keep showing like (those two Shinkai Films but also things like The Equaliser and Mission:Impossible). Studio Ghibli films also used to show up from I think about 2006 to 2018 (look up TV listings in newspaper archives if you want more data, careful not to mix cinema listings) and I caught them all except My Neighbours the Yamadas (whenever I noticed that it was on at like 2am) but I guess that stopped when the StudioCanal and Netflix legal case started.

Far as Channel 4 goes right now I would say their streaming is falling into the same problem as many ad supported streaming services: there's no ads to support it (for some genres at least a car or home appliance company tends to be the sponsor) which makes it difficult to afford streaming only programming. *Lazarus* was part of an Adult Swim package deal (I guess things like Rick and Morty helped dull the monotony of live-action US sitcoms over on E4) which was terminated last year (swallowed back into a HBO Max which will apparently launch in March).

I'd love to say it was ebb and flow stuff as I recall hearing Channel 4 showed anime in the early 90s in the early hours and then there was nothing terrestrial (things like Alfed J. Kwak were on but country of origin was not emphasised int he same way) until the Pokemon boom that brought along other "kids stuff" (and erm [Strange Dawn](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2002-01-21/strange-dawn-begins-airing-in-the-uk); that English dub was gaijin talent and partly lost media) and that faded away too. With how established streaming platforms are nowadays I'm not sure there's much flow back.

Pop also shut its television broadcast channel last month (they have a FAST feed now - despite the acronym these are slow to load so not fun to channel hop). This did start out as cable/satellite only but had been freeview for years. As a kids channel that and its sister channels had various anime over the 2 decades though last I checked their anime was whittled down to Pokemon Journeys (but if their presence on Pluto is anything to go by Pokemon is a separate FAST channel).

Zero no Tsukaima was 2 episodes for volume 1. Only one like that I'm aware of.

Silent Witch was [it's a mystery so this reveals in what episode will they tell you whodunit] >!4 episodes!< for volume 1.

I don't know what's typical because I don't read many novels at all. But not none, obviously.

I drop whenever I get sufficiently bored or aggravated. I have even dropped shows after their next to last episodes.

> the writing has taken a turn for the worse and it's clear that they're stalling and refusing to advance the main plot.

Ah, when the author didn't expect they'd have to write a sequel.

I mean, unlike with manga, where you get 2-4 chapters adapted in 1 episode. Which gives you 1 volume adapted anywhere from 2 to 4 episodes. The 3-episode rule is basically working with around 1 volume of manga content.

I do understand what you are saying, as many authors's main ideas are in volume 1, and they don't really get around to expanding until they start volume 2.

To get through a volume of content in a light novel extremely varies. Usually the average is 3 or 4 vols per cour these days. There is a lot of uncertainty. (As I have read some more LNs, I really feel that going beyond 3 volumes in a cour will run into a ton of issues. Hell, if a series is dense like Silent Witch, even 3 can be too much.) As one example, 86, which in its first cour adapted 1 volume in the first cour.

With light novel adaptations, there are more creative ways to adapt it than with a manga, as the translation between Novel -> Anime is wider than Manga -> Anime. I don't think there is a simple number you can illustrate to it like with manga.

Ultimately, I believe people should go with their gut. These are shows I dropped this season.

* Dark Moon: The Blood Altar -> 1 Episode
* A Misanthrope Teaches a Class for Demi-Humans -> 3 episodes
* The Daily Life of a Part-time Torturer -> 1 episode

Granted, it is more of a coincidence that I dropped the 2nd one in 3 episodes. It could have been 2 or 4.

Though I would argue the 3-episode rule is bad practice. If an episode is horrifically bad, why would I give it another shot? Sometimes a show will simply not suit our interests.

I dropped Dragon Maid on episode 2 my first time I watched it. I came back to it this year and loved it. Sometimes our tastes also evolve.

~~That'd require light novel adaptations to be good enough for 3+ episodes first.~~

does this apply to shows with 12 eps or longer shows mainly? i dont read any source material so i really have no idea

i ask this because if you end up with 3+2 for a 12 ep show, you're basically watching half of it just to see if you like it enough to keep watching. which seems to be missing the point of a mechanism to drop shows before wasting a ton of time on them. i believe thats the intention of the 3 ep rule, anyway.

Many such cases, alas. Especially since there are several related pitfalls, including two notable ones:

- The second book problem you often see in series where the author *did* have a plan for sequels, where book 2 is unusually weak because book 1 was written so it could work standalone (but with natural hooks for sequels) and book 2 suffers because it has to do the rest of the setup work for later books that was left out of book 1 so that that book could work standalone. (I usually call this the Chamber of Secrets Problem, after a certain popular non-anime example.)
- The phenomenon traditionally known to Anglophone webcomic readers of a certain age as Cerebus Syndrome, wherein an initially parodic work gradually runs out of jokes, gets serious, and turns into a straight example (or semi-straight example, ala Order of the Stick) of what it is parodying.

These have different timeframes - a Chamber of Secrets Problem case will, naturally, have its weak arc be whatever corresponds to the second book, whereas Cerebus Syndrome cases may have a more gradual decline for 2-4 more LNs rather than a clear falloff from LN2 on. If you want a good example of an LN Chamber of Secrets case, look no further than Haruhi - Sigh is the weakest arc of the source material, even before KyoAni gave it an unusually uninspired/unambitious adaptation[1]. (Likewise, while I've never actually gotten around to 86 by rep I strongly suspect it's another CoS case.) For a Cerebus case I'd point to Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu, which is firmly a sentai parody at its core and is at its strongest in the material corresponding to the first LN, but rather than fall off immediately the jokes taper off over the rest of the adapted material (with episode 11 in particular suffering from playing one scene far too seriously).

(Also note that the kind of fall-off you describe is by no means limited to LNs - it's a common issue in manga as well, just with less defined timing. Romance manga *love* to do this adding new romantic rivals, to such an extent that I consider "sudden romantic rival in a non-harem work at a point where previous obstacles to the main couple getting together are resolved" a red flag and grounds for a drop. Likewise the Yu Yu Hakusho "go battle shounen and/or tournament arc" gambit isn't particularly uncommon - Negima gets a pass since by all accounts Ken Akamatsu wanted to write a battle shounen from the start and pulled the YYH gambit to get it past his editor, but I have my hunches on why Frieren has a tournament arc (though that one is arguably also a CoS case!) and going towards battle shounen after the point where the mangaka ran out of ideas is why I eventually dropped [meta ecchi]>!MahoAko!< in both manga and anime form.)

(Hell, you'll occasionally see this sort of thing in originals too - though in Mecha-Ude's case I think the issue was one part "episode 4 was the point where they overshot what the original short had covered" to three parts "there *was* a plan, but it was for two cours and they only got one".)

[1] - Say what you will about Endless Eight, but that arc's adaptation did not lack for ambition. The ambition may have been trolling the production committee after it had pissed them off (they will admit it if so because Japan, but I have Suspicions), but ambition it had nonetheless!

That looks like it should summon your people to you very effectively indeed!

Do you have a recording of this on YouTube or somewhere? I'd be interested in hearing it.

Wholesome family? I'd recommend Clannad and March Comes in like a Lion for wholesome vibes (Though fair warning, Clannad is *also* famous as one of the anime tearjerkers...)

A Sign of Affection

April Showers Bring May Flowers 

Her second mask/hat is just as absurd. She’s great.

Just fyi, can click an entry and scroll down a little to get a list of countries where it's top-10 (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan)

Was expecting Succubus Hayasaka or something.

[](#seasonalpout)

> is there even a short version of its title

Osalove, apparently. I don't know how many people would actually know what you were talking about if you referred to it like that though.

It won't ever have great animation, but I never thought it was bad either. It's fine.


The manga is probably better, since the anime cut some side stories out (some of them released as OVAs instead), but the anime is great as well imo.

Based solely from my (possibly incorrect) impression of your username, I think there's an 80% chance you'll enjoy it!

They might have cheaped out on the animation but they locked in for the OP and ED.

All signs

> PV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdiA5mNb_A

point to yes!