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.

Nah, the gundams are from previous chapters. That's more like one of the mobile infantry power armor suits from Starship Troopers.

It's crazy to me that you could watch season 1 of a show on Crunchyroll, and then Crunchyroll will pay money to license season 2 and not make any attempt to let you know about it.

Sort of; the mangaka did, but on a completely different manga that predates Chihayafuru.

Hey, you never know! We just gotta convince everyone to watch seasons 1-3 so the bean counters know the demand is there!

And Yona of the Dawn is getting another season too!

I mean, you picked the most disgusting show this season and said "wow, how disgusting". I simply don't understand why people are ignoring things like Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia or Daemons of the Shadow Realm to go straight to Chainsmoker Cat.

The Ghost in the Shell has a lot of "what would life be like if people could connect their brains directly to the internet or put their brains in cyborg bodies". It's top-tier sci-fi, but keep in mind that it was written in the late 80s/early 90s so it has some ideas that were fresh then but somewhat less fresh now. There are a few different anime adaptations out there; my personal favorite is the one that's airing right now on Amazon Prime, but Ghost in the Shell Stand-Alone Complex is also great. The currently-airing one does a really good job of preserving the sometimes-goofy, sometimes-serious tone of the original; Stand-Alone Complex is good if you just want it to be serious most of the time. The movies are also good, but IMHO not as good.

Yes.

Yeah, some people have been really weird about how the new show is "ruining the original" as if Science Saru took the movies (not original; as you alluded to they're based on the manga) and threw them into a lake or something when they made the new thing.

Meanwhile it's been freakin' amazing. By the time it finishes airing it might end up being my favorite TV show, ever.

白熊, 白くま [しろくま, シロクマ] (n) (uk) polar bear (Ursus maritimus)

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.

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!

It's excellent, but it's also just way too depressing to watch right now with how much Trump feels like Trunicht.

even going back to the classics

fwiw modern stuff is (on average) actually better about this stuff than the classics. There are still plenty of shows that have that stuff, but there are far more that don't than there used to be.

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.

And nothing of value was lost.

I’m also not sure they don’t

I mean, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is definitely not rated PG. Maybe when the company was founded that was the goal, and it just kinda drifted over time.

They'd have to import the equipment and materials to manufacture them, and those things also have tariffs. They're not gonna do all this just to deal with a tax that might end up disappearing after this year's midterm elections.

For that reason, I kinda feel like banning it on the basis that it encourages smoking is misguided.

Perhaps it's less about whether it encourages smoking and more about whether it runs afoul of laws concerning the depiction of real-life cigarette brands on TV. I don't know Taiwanese advertising law though!

A cynical part of me wonders whether the people making the show did this on purpose to generate headlines since anime are usually carefully made with no direct references to real-life brands.

We should all be more like Bravern. What a fun show.