Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2026, Week 35]
Welcome to another general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread to talk about things you have watched recently, questions you have, or recommendations you want to give!
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I've been watching "A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even" separate from my group. I have a bit more room for trash in my schedule.
That said, I feel kind of odd about the show. It sort of reminds me of my issue with Overlord: We follow the protagonist most of the time as someone to root for, then they do some absolutely heinous things that feel like they came out of nowhere, then we go right back to them being vaguely sympathetic. I'd say it's one of the problems with doing a villain as protagonist TV show because it's hard for time spent with the protag not to make a connection. However, I feel like there have been some good examples of shows where the protag is the bad guy or becomes the bad guy either due to a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" or "corrupted by circumstances" plot devices.
The one that most comes to mind is Breaking Bad. It's a long road from push over high school teach and family man to ruthless drug kingpin and we're there every step of the way to see how it happens.
This show and Overlord don't really feel like that. The protagonists just kinda do evil shit every once in a while and nobody really acknowledges how fucked up that is. The most recent episode really hammered that home for me.
idk, I'm just overthinking a trash show. It's just that sometimes I can't help but watch some of these and think of what they could have been with more competent... everything.
I'm hard-dropping that one after the last couple of episodes. Killing innocents on purpose and without remorse to get revenge on a third party is just Not Acceptable.
I find Overlord a lot less disturbing, possibly because Ains himself isn't directly responsible for a lot of the most heinous stuff (his servants tend to be a lot nastier than he is, and seldom tell him exactly what they're doing), and possibly because most of the people he ends up killing aren't total innocents and are usually given a chance to fight back. (Plus, we have no idea what being stuck in a lich's body does to the human psyche, so he has at least that much excuse for the evil he does do outright and knowingly.) And it was obvious from the beginning that Overlord wasn't taking place in a nice world.
Buchigire Reijou, on the other hand, started out in a much lighter register, as typical villainness stuff where most of the nastiness is social and political and what combat there is doesn't get particularly gory, and then the protagonist suddenly went full Kingdoms of Ruin on everyone's asses without even nearly enough buildup to justify it. It just doesn't work.
That's the thing that made me start thinking about this. There's almost an interesting angle there with his body seemingly mysteriously changing how he feels, but they never do anything with it. I think some kind of internal struggle and mystery around it could have been a good plotline. I didn't finish watching it, but there was another trash isekai about a guy becoming an evil boss from a video game he played (A Wild Last Boss Appears) and there was a bit of that going on with the personality of the real character he's inhabiting slowly overtaking his own. Although at least for what I saw, they didn't really do much more with that either.
Things in that one aren't quite as they seem, from what I understand, with a few things being revealed toward the end of the first season (second one starts in October), and I think I also read some relevant spoilers dropped here. Maou-sama, Retry! is another one with pretty much the same plotline, where it's also pretty clear that there's Something Going On in the background.
There's been no indication of that kind of thing so far in Overlord, though, as far as I know. There seems to be no reason for Ains being dumped into his game persona, and no sign of anyone who might be responsible.
This week I went to my first anime convention: Anime NYC. It was alright. I don't regret going, but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to go again. It's like 90% people selling stuff. I'm more used to gaming conventions where there's a bunch of stuff to do because companies are showcasing upcoming games.
I did enjoy seeing all the cosplayers though. There were so many. A LOT of them were either from gatcha games or really popular stuff like One Piece/Demon Slayer, but I did also see quite a few from shows I liked.
A few Jojos ones, but save for one Star Platinum, only from part 5/6. I guess it's easier to cosplay the characters that don't have muscles that put bodybuilders to shame.
One Violet Evergarden. I was with my mom who I recently introduced to anime and she loved this show, so she was happy to see that.
There was a Frieren meetup that we went to see. (It was weirdly difficult to find lol.) Funny thing is the character composition. There were only two Frierens in the entire group. Most were Stark or Fern, then one Himmel and I think two Eisens.
There was also a meetup for Apothecary Diaries, but it was at the same time as a panel we went to instead.
On the way over to the Frieren meetup we saw the Blue Lock meetup and I found it kind of funny because I'm reasonably sure literally every cosplayer there was a woman. I didn't really consider it's appeal to female audiences, but now that I think about it I guess it makes sense.
There was one person is a big Garfield mascot costume with a bikini on top of it.
One guy was David from Edgerunners.
One Megumin.
And some others, but you get the idea.
Also holy shit, I haven't been in the Javits Center since I was a kid. I did not appreciate just how fucking MASSIVE that place is. It takes like a minute or so to walk from one end of the building to the other.
I would make a great Eisen (or most dwarves) if not for a fact that I can't grew beards to save my life.
I'm a bulky but very short (159 cm) guy, I don't think I need to kneel like the guy in the pic to look the part. But we don't have big con like this in my country.
Most popular sports titles have Odagiri Effect in play somewhere I think.
My sister didn't watch any anime but Haikyu and one other I'll mention. If there ever shounen Badminton anime I'm pretty sure she would watch that too and she already did but its Blue Box but its more romcom than sport.
Hey, easier to put on a fake beard than putting on fake bulk or somehow growing shorter! Cosplay is a lot of fun; I'd definitely recommend giving it a go if you ever feel so inclined.
Pics?
I generally don’t take many pictures. I just have this one from the Frieren cosplay meetup.
EDIT: Oh, looking close at the pic, there was one more character in there. I assume the guy with green hair is the drunk priest.
Apart from watching over a dozen of seasonals, I finished a rewatch of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. And the show keeps its 9/10 I gave it when I first watched it. It was great. Especially episode 6 – it was an absolute masterpiece with fantastic direction. I think the show might have benefited from one more episode exploring ::: spoiler spoiler for the whole series Lucy's character, instead of giving us an exposition dump with her backstory told as a memory. And IMO the chase scene in ep 10 was a little overdone. ::: This probably sounds like nitpicking, but these might have been the only reasons I didn't give it 10/10. But still, overall, it's a must watch anyway – great story, direction, visuals, everything.
Some people say that the subs suck, but that's about the original Netflix subs from the day the show aired. Fansubs are good. They're not filled with slang as much as the dub, but they're still enjoyable. I enjoyed both versions.
From what I've read, Bartosz Sztybor, the scriptwriter for S2, said that the new season will be even darker and more violent. I can't wait to see it. I hope they won't mess it up.
Last week, I finally got around to watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It's pretty good. I can see how it was considered peak in its time.
I'm surprised that it took Frieren to dethrone it (from the top spot on anime-tracking sites) though. I thought something like Attack on Titan could have done so earlier.
On a more meta note, that marks about 3 years since I got back into anime. (Yeah, saved the best - FMAB - for the last.)
It started with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury as season 2 was airing, and it reminded me not to judge books by their covers.
Thanks to that, I got to enjoyed so many peak anime that I would have otherwise not even considered.
I certainly didn't expect that it would take this long though.
I must admit I cheated quite a bit, skipping those that are too long, too depressing / scary, too old, or those with ratings that are not high enough.
Glad you liked it! I'd definitely recommend reading through the manga as well; there's a bunch of stuff that wasn't adapted in Brotherhood, especially at the beginning where some of that stuff was already adapted by Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). Plus, the OSTs for those two shows also make a great soundtrack for the manga!
Today I finished Fruits Basket (2019). It was good, but not as great as I'd hoped. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a bunch of sad teenagers for a while.
Ayame (the snake) is the best character, and it's not even close.