schneefink | Entries tagged with anime

Only two more weeks until Worldcon! I'm really looking forward to it. A bit anxious because a lot of my travel planning has been very late (I definitely paid stupidity tax for not booking my flights earlier) and a lot of it is still very vague, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Afterwards I'll meet up with LB and we'll travel for a few days, I look forward to that too.

I'm sad I completely forgot about the ribbons I wanted to make, but I hope I can still collect some fun ones. I'm also still considering if it's worth taking my Hermitcraft TCG cards in the hopes of finding someone to play/trade with - probably not because nobody replied on the Discord when I asked, but it would be super cool if it did happen. (I still need to decide how many of the new series I want to buy. They're so pretty! And I can afford a treat! Unfortunately I have to decide before I'll know how much I'll spend on vacation...)

The Magnus Protocol up to ep 23 "A New You": still not many stories of the week I enjoyed, but some more intriguing bigger picture things. ( spoilers )

Dungeon Meshi: LB, F, and I finally finally managed to find some time to sit down together and finish the first season! After a break of several weeks. We all enjoyed it, but not as much as previous episodes, and I suspect a lot of that is a pacing issue: compared to some other places we'd left off, the actual season finale felt sorta lukewarm in comparison, though there were some intriguing developments. Sadly I'd seen spoilers for ( Spoilers ), otherwise I'm sure it would have been an even bigger o.o moment.

I first heard of the manga as "Dungeon Meshi." The English name of the anime is "Delicious in Dungeon" but that sounds silly so I've been calling it Delicious Dungeon instead – doesn't make that much less sense.

LB, F, and I started watching this on a whim when we got together for movie night about a month ago and couldn't decide on a movie. The upside: watching fun things with friends makes it even better! The downside: we'll most likely only find time to watch things together every couple of weeks so I'll always be a few episodes behind. Fortunately the latest episode, 10 iirc, ended on a good stopping point.

So far it's entertaining, I don't love it yet but I enjoy it, and I look forward to seeing where it goes next. Nice mix of adventure and comedy. Not recommended to watch while hungry.
( Spoilers )

Happy New Year!

I spent New Year's at my aunt's holiday house in a small town near mountains and it was very relaxed and very nice. (Too warm for early January, so I didn't even need to sit next to the oven.) The food was delicious. I ended the old year playing boardgames and then started the new one with a nice walk in sunshine with a great view and then a day of doing barely anything but nap, read, and go for another walk, in the dark that time.
Now I'm back home watching silly videos, trying to catch up on commenting, and working on my end-of-year summary, which somehow gets longer every year. Sadly DD still isn't home but maybe we'll watch something together later.

Fic I wrote for Yuletide:
New Sword in a New Era for

Elemental
Fandom: The Misfit of Demon King Academy
3.4k, gen, post-canon
Summary: When he was four years old, Shin remembered his name.

Notes: I watched this show because of my recipient's prompts and I was glad I did. It's fun! It reminded me quite a bit of of "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime," the fandom we actually matched on: both of them have an overpowered protagonist where "will they win the fight" is rarely even in question, both of them have devoted followers that they protect and try to take care of, both of them are genuinely kind. "Misfit" has fewer politics so far but I suspect that that's a "yet" and that there will be more in the future. (I haven't looked up what happens in the light novel yet.) It's also, contrary to my first impression, as silly: I laughed a lot when seeing the fusion xD
I wrote about a character with less than five minutes of canon screen time and gave him an OC family on top of it, but I enjoyed it and more importantly so did my recip.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, MCU: The first MCU movie I watched in a while. It was fun. I especially liked the first two fight scenes (while during the big climactic battle I was too exasperated with what people were not doing to fully enjoy it.) Having recently watched Castlevania I also could not help but compare Xu Wenwu to Dracula.

Critical Role campaign 3: I do enjoy CR, the new characters are very promising (especially Taliesin's and Marisha's, and Sam's is fun), but 4 hours a week is a lot. I'm glad they'll take one week a month off, I'm already behind (I've watched the first three episodes so far.) I'm not sure yet if I'll continue watching, or if I'll do what I did for the second half of campaign 2, namely read the summaries each week and then decide to watch the episode if something particularly cool or interesting happened.

Taskmaster series 12: DD and I really enjoyed series 1 to 10, and then for reasons we forgot didn't watch series 11. We recently caught up with series 12 and it's so much fun. Victoria might be one of my favorite contestants ever. Only one more episode to go.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: People in magical giant robots fight monsters! And the heroine wants to burn down the sexist system that leads to female pilots being sacrificed. ( Some imo minor spoilers )

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim: inspired by the fairy tale "The Six Swans" in an Asian fantasy setting. Unfortunately the main character left a bad first impression because coddled youngest child or not, a 16-year-old Imperial princess should know more about responsibilities and consequences than Shiori (and that reflects badly on her family too.) Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for YA? None of the plot twists were surprising, and I could only connect to the characters rarely. Overall, I don't regret reading it and it did have some enjoyable elements, but I'm not going to bother with any sequels.

So I'm a Spider, So What?, anime, up to episode 13: I thought this would be mostly silly fun, but, uh, the recent episodes took a much darker tun than I anticipated. Very cool plot twists, ( spoilers ) Without spoilers, I'd appreciate some vague info about how dark this gets.
The first dozen episodes also had surprisingly catchy songs and I'm disappointed those changed.

I'm not a fan of how in these last three weeks even though I've felt fine during the week (apart from work stress) I'm always exhausted and not feeling that well during the weekends. Better than the other way around but still very annoying. I don't want to go running when I have a sore throat, now is an especially bad time to get a cold or otherwise compromised immune system, so I haven't been, and by now I miss it.

DD and I watched the first season of "My Next Life as a Villainess" today (thanks to a rec by

skygiants) and it was great. Very cute, very silly, very pretty, there was lots of flailing at the screen, I enjoyed it a lot. I was rooting for Katarina to end up with all of her girlfriends, and marveling at the extent of her obliviousness.

Immediately afterwards I went looking for fic and was happily surprised to discover that there's quite a bit, including long stories. So far I've read Through the Looking Glass, which is great, and look forward to several others.

Back in April 2019 I watched the first season of "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", aka TenSura (review.) Recently I found out that the first half of the second season has already aired, and despite the fact that she usually dislikes watching anything animated, DD agreed to watch it with me :)

It was still as much fun as I remembered. A very enjoyable power fantasy, with a good supporting cast and h/c potential etc. I enjoyed watching the first season again, and watching with DD made it even better. The OAD extras were fun too. And then season two raised the stakes and it got more dramatic and exciting and now we have to wait until July for the rest of season 2!!!!

( Spoilers )

Yesterday I decided that being sick is the perfect time to watch a few episodes of a ridiculous anime I'd heard about, and then I kept watching ~~until way too late~~ and finished today and I love it a lot.

When I heard that it's about a guy reincarnated as a slime I thought it was a punishment, but it turns out he's a slime because a slime body has some super cool skills. Rimuru is special because he's a genuinely nice guy who wants to make friends and everyone to live in peace and prosperity together, which sounds almost impossible to accomplish but fortunately he also quickly becomes a pretty OP fighter. The most important questions early on are about how to build alliances between different races, especially monsters, and also infrastructure, because you need resources and craftsmen to build a town. I like Rimuru a lot, I like his friends and allies (especially the pretty deadly ones /shallow), and I like that it's essentially wish-fulfillment. I'm glad there'll be a second season next year, I look forward to it.

One caveat: it does get pretty male-gaze-y, especially later on, and I've seen more than enough of Rimuru pressed under Shion's big breasts or Milim in her barely-there bikini, but by the time it got annoying I was already invested. (It helps a little that the one person Rimuru fawns over the most is a guy, but still.)

( Thoughts with spoilers )

I'll just assume you know the feeling of having found a bright shiny new thing that you want to tell everyone about but somehow it's really hard to find the words, and also writing why you like it also takes away time from consuming more of it. I just finished watching the "Akatsuki no Yona" anime (+OVAs) and I'm taking a brief break for some barely organized notes before I go and read all the manga chapters. (Also I should eat dinner, that would probably be good.)

Where to start? It has so many of my favorite tropes, especially when it comes to loyalty&betrayal. (A premise is not really a spoiler, right?) The dynamic between Yona, Hak, and Soo-won is fantastic. Yona herself is pretty great, and so is the whole team she assembles. And it looks like things will only get more and more political, yay.

( With spoilers )

I caught up with the Noragami manga (instead of doing what I should be doing, i.e. editing my Yuletide fic and finalizing Christmas presents.) I started with chapter 40, since I read that's approximately where it continues from the story told in the anime, and read all of it in one afternoon/evening, and then I had emotional hangover. The cruel cliffhanger made it worse.

( chapter 71 )

( Thoughts about all of it – I don't even know where to start )

Monthly updates, this is going to be a long wait every time.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/186586.html

I had a job interview today and it went very well! I feel good about my chances.
To celebrate, I binge-watched season 2 of Noragami, after I watched the first season in the past few days. I don't even remember who told me about it but it was on my list of shows to watch, it's short, and I liked the opening. Some people are literally other people's weapons, my loyalty kink sat up and took notice. I enjoyed it a lot, especially the second season.

( Season 1 )

( Season 2 )

My grandparents are currently visiting :) Please, muses, convince me not to scrap everything I've written for Yuletide so far and start from scratch just because I had an idea that might work better, I don't have the time for that.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/186006.html

New episodes of Natsume Yuujinchou have become the highlight of my Fridays (together with D&D, but there was no session yesterday because too many people cancelled.) It's so nice.

( Spoilers )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/185516.html

The fifth season of Natsume Yuujinchou has started and I like it a lot :) It had some of everything so far: Tanuma and Taki, Nishimura and Kitamoto, the Fujiwaras, Reiko, Natori and the exorcists, youkai of the week. I hope we'll get to see some of the neighbour youkai again, Misuzu and Hinoe and the others.

( spoilers )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/181868.html

I forgot where I saw the rec, but I just finished watching all four seasons of "Natsume's Book of Friends", or "Natsume Yuujinchou." I loved it. It's about a boy who can see spirits, or youkai. He's moved in with a new foster family and is very lonely at first, but he acquires a youkai "bodyguard" and slowly makes human and youkai friends and becomes closer with his new family and it's all beautiful to see. There are a lot of "youkai of the week" storylines, and he eventually meets other people who know about youkai too. He also received a heavy legacy from his grandmother: a book with many youkais' true names, which he could use to control them, but instead he gives the names back.
The anime feels a bit slow at times (maybe just because I'm sometimes impatient), but it's very warm and nice.

( Spoilers, non-ordered thoughts about many characters )

I'm going to request this fandom for Yuletide, I already have fic prompts to use.

Season five comes out soon! I'm very much looking forward to it :)

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/173581.html

Today:
- I bought a freezer! They had them at Hofer since yesterday and DD and I had to go to three different stores until we found one left. Soon I can finally buy ice cream reserves!

- I finally tried out the Citybike system. The bikes are nothing special, but there's a stop two minutes from my house and I think it'll be convenient on occasion. I should get my mom's bike helmet, she doesn't need it in Bolivia.

- I wrote almost 2k and finished the D&D session summary, the longest so far. Someone has to do it, and I don't mind, but it's cutting into my story-writing energy. Sure I know what happened, but I still have to put it in words.

- Someone almost ran me over with a car at a crosswalk and my first reaction was to shout "Oida!", that made me feel very Viennese. (Especially as someone who is usually terrible with Viennese dialect. My parents are both from further West, and I'm not good at imitating dialects in general… I do speak Vorarlbergerisch though, which has some similarities with Swiss German and is always fun to surprise people with.)

- I finished watching "Yowamushi Pedal." It's adorable! The rec that made me watch it. I was literally flailing and making high-pitched noises at some points. Team! Friends! Singing!
Some of my favorite things, apart from everything, was ( spoilers )