Thinking of my favorite seinen it comes out to Medalist, Skip and Loafer, Witch Hat Atelier, the One-Punch Man webcomic, and Kaguya-sama: Love is War. I definitely land more on one side than the other here, though I’ll definitely give Vinland Saga a try someday since I’ve only heard great things about that.

Kira-kira is sort of the Japanese equivalent of saying “sparkle sparkle” or “twinkle twinkle” or something. Kira is also the main character’s name in Gundam SEED.

Solid first episode. This girl is absolutely nuts, which is appropriate for a Gundam UC/UC-adjacent main character.

I wasn’t even able to watch the whole first episode. Every time the main character opened his mouth I got the urge to do something else.

That was a weird first episode. I’m down for episode 2.

The manga was probably serious 10% of the time, gags 90% of the time. If that doesn’t appeal to you I don’t think this story is good enough that there’s any reason to stick it out.

Picked up two shows this week:

• Witch Watch - It’s fun and cute. Not the greatest thing in the world, but I enjoy a good gag anime every now and again. I think it suffers from the episodic pacing of the manga though; it felt weird when it jumped to a completely different story halfway through the episode. The OP is beautiful btw. Watch it once even if you don’t watch this show.
• Yakitate Japan - I sat down to watch Kowloon Generic Romance with my wife yesterday and then we watched this instead. It was pretty funny. Main character wants to be a baker. Luckily he has the cheat skill of “slightly warmer than average hands”. A fun show from 2004 that feels like a show from 2004. After we watched the first episode my wife made 3 loaves of bread. Good stuff. We’ll definitely watch more of it.

We’ll probably be giving Kowloon Generic Romance another go, as well as Gundam GQuuuuuux, and of course we’re still watching Apothecary Diaries.

Oh yeah, the poseability of these kits is incredible. Some people have a lot of fun with it.

All of Roboworld leadership from Redline definitely qualified as badass. Most everything else in Redline too tbh.

Sort of. Our leadership have been doing some incredibly sketchy things lately and are very buddy-buddy with Trump.

I have no idea. I just saw it and noticed the thread for submissions was still going so I drew something up in 5 minutes with my mouse.

I’m proud to have contributed the one for the Medalist manga!

Dang, that’s pretty high-effort for an April Fools joke.

Oh my god he’s a freaking Z’Gok from Mobile Suit Gundam.

Re:Zero S3 - Watched intro “movie” episode. It’s decent, but I’d forgotten so much context that it was hard to care too much.

I hear ya. I watched about 5 minutes of this and noped out until I have time to rewatch the rest of the series first. I’ll probably wait 'til Season 4.

Things I watched this season, in no particular order:

• Apothecary Diaries Season 2 - So far it’s been just as good as season 1; I find myself looking forward to every new episode. Glad to see it continuing into the spring.
• Kill la Kill - I’m 8 episodes in and while some of the “jokes” go too far for my taste I can see why a lot of people got hyped about this show.
• From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated! - I watched the first episode. It was fun, but it didn’t hook me.
• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You Season 2 - As with Season 1 this was a near-perfect adaptation of a really fun manga. I really hope this gets a third season because my favorite character hasn’t even been introduced yet. It’s certainly popular enough, but managing the voice actors is going to get impractical at some point.
• Medalist - This was the surprise anime of the season for me. Anyways, rehashing what I’ve said on it in other threads: at the start of the show I was really worried about the CGI skating from a studio that isn’t known for amazing CGI, but in the end it ended up working really well! Maybe it helps that they usually only had to make the skaters look good in isolation; during tournaments they’re skating around the middle of a big, otherwise-empty rink after all. The way Inori and her coach Tsukasa play off each other is incredibly charming, and the anime staff did a great job of capturing the facial expressions from the manga. It’s also amazing how a sports anime can feel like it has more dramatic stakes than something action-based. Maybe it’s the very real chance of failure. Maybe it’s just because it feels more grounded and realistic. Either way, nothing sucks me into the next episode like one of the characters getting ready to do a difficult jump in a tournament and everyone is watching to see what they’ll do and speculating whether they can actually do it and then the “next episode” button appears and I just can’t resist pushing it. Looking forward to the recently-announced Season 2.
• Blue Box - This is probably the first time I’ve thought an anime was too beautiful. The manga had a more grounded look to it, whereas in the anime everything is lit up with specular highlights everywhere. It can feel a little over-the-top. Still, that’s my only complaint (and it’s one that very few people seem to share with me). Overall it was a great adaptation of one of my favorite romance manga (and my favorite shounen romance manga). The first season in isolation is a little sad, but I anticipate that the recently-announced second season will get us far enough to make things cheerful again.
• Terror in Resonance - I know a lot of people really liked this one, but I didn’t care for it. It’s unclear to me why “terrorism” was the only answer for the main characters (and especially for one in particular). That whole chess airport sequence was just plain dumb.
• Akiba Maid War - Everything everyone said about this anime was true. Great stuff. If you want a cute yakuza drama comedy look no further.

Edit: I completely forgot there were two other shows I tried:

• Zenshu - I can’t forgive them for the bait & switch, especially knowing that they said it was an isekai in the Japanese description but not the English one. Only watched 2 episodes.
• I Have a Crush at Work - The first episode gave me the impression that the whole anime is basically just the same joke over and over so I didn’t watch more of it after that. Hopefully I’m missing something and it’s actually better than that.

I’ve spent the last few weeks slowly reading through Medalist. It’s surprisingly dense; when they adapted it into an anime they only covered one chapter per episode and that felt about right. They’re long chapters but even so I don’t think that’s normal. Anyways, this is one you read for the character writing. The way Inori and her coach Tsukasa play off each other is incredibly charming, and the artist does a great job on facial expressions. It’s also amazing how a sports manga can feel like it has more dramatic stakes than something action-based. Maybe it’s the very real chance of failure. Maybe it’s just because it feels more grounded and realistic. Either way, nothing sucks me into the next chapter like one of the characters getting ready to do a difficult jump in a tournament and everyone is watching to see what they’ll do and speculating whether they can actually do it and then the “next chapter” button appears and I just can’t resist pushing it.

Weird to see Death Note that high up. I rewatched it a while ago and I don’t think it holds up that well. The memes are great though.

I’m also surprised to see Frieren that high up. I loved the first cour, but the second cour was merely “good” imo. It felt a lot more like a generic action shounen thing. It’s also something that’s only had a small fraction of its story animated so far.

Apart from that, well, it’s clear that I need to take the time to watch 86.

At the start of the show I was really worried about the CGI skating from a studio that isn’t known for amazing CGI, but in the end it ended up working really well! Maybe it helps that they usually only had to make the skaters look good in isolation; they’re usually skating around the middle of a big rink after all.

I can see why my wife was excited for this episode. Jinshi sure made some faces! Poor guy got shut down twice. Sounded like he wanted to propose or something crazy at the end there too.