Making side characters interesting is an art form. In Frieren most of them feel like they are fleshed out so much that there have to be their own show somewhere and we just don’t know about it.

10/10. Fixed.

Since you know the source, let me pick your brain for a second: What’s with the “goblins only live for seven days” in the synopsis? Is that a typo and they mean 7 years, or where do Goblins get the energy and mass from to grow to that size in only 7 days?

Tourists in 3…2…1

The best Ghibli movie. Fight me.

Looks like something for me.

Greatest title ever! I adore those absurdist iskai “deconstructions”.

PSA: Short after credit scene.

The first volumes were more action-packed. Things did happen that drove the plot forward. This last volume had big stuff happen, but it was all happening “off-screen”. What the reader actually ot to see was more like (paraphrasing):

“Well if I use evolution on mob A 15 times and then put those 15 new mobs into the alchemical chamber and give it 800 exp and a drop of my bood, I get special mob B. Okay lets try with an unevolutionized mob A… Okay it doesn’t work. Maybe I should check with the evolutionized subtype of mob A. Okay, 15 subtype mob A plus 800 exp and a drop of blood… Oh, it’s 1.75 times stronger than the basic version…”.

This is a bit exaggerated, but basically what the volume boils down to. They create half a dozen or so new species by trial and error in this volume. It was just plain boring to read. I would have rather read about the stuff happening off-screen.

Strange to see this in a “History” sale, but Victoria of Many Faces gets my seal of approval.

New Water Magician and Murder Hobo volumes for me.

<The Abandoned Reincarnation Sage: Building a Mighty Empire of Monsters Within the Monsters’ Forest.> Volume 03 - I don’t want to spoil it, but they need a bit more creativity for the selection of antagonists.

<The Tale of a Little Alchemist Blessed by the Spirits> Vol. 1 + 2 - comfy and simple series with a lot of really stupid plotholes. What plot is there is also very convenient. For example, when MC brews an antidode there is someone getting poisoned 2 paragraphs later. The actual page count is also about half, since this is one of those that constantly writes out the entire “appraisal screen” every time something changes, instead of just one line of prose that it has changed.

<EXP Is Golden> Volume 4 - New event is starting, but the entire volume is mostly just talking and theorycrafting. It’s like the last anime season of Slime Tensei.

You are killing me, man. There is something called the “Geneva Conventions” and you broke them all. You deserve the downvote!

As you can see in my weekly “what have you read” posts, I’m a fantasy reader. AND I FUCKING HATE IT when they use modern vernacular or words that just shouldn’t exist in that world. For example, in the last LN I’ve read, they baked some danishes. Are you telling me they have a country in that world that is also called Denmark, where they invented the same pastry? What an incredible coincidence.

And then there is something like this:

I hate modern meme-speak in a fantasy setting even more. If I were in a position where I had any say over this, I would immediately fire and blacklist any translator who does this on their first offense. No second chances, no nothing. Whoever put meme-speak into a fantasy novel is inherently incompatible with what I expect from a translation on a fundamental level. (This obviously only applies when the source isn’t using the same type of language. Meme-speak to Meme-speak is okay, I go beat up the author in that case.)

and Death March

😭

Kinme is starting to become one of my favorite characters. (I don’t have much to say about this episode and am mostly just posting to keep the show from getting dropped by Rikka)

Shinichiro Hatta, the eldest son of Hideaki Hatta, will be the new Studio President/CEO. He has previously worked as producer/production manager as far back as 2005 for AIR.

<Isekai Walking> Volume 5 - Good volume. I always like it when there is a new arc. So full of potential and new plot lines. And since it seems like this is a one-volume arc, it means that there is a new arc in the next volume as well. The setup for the next arc is actually quite interesting.

<Heir to a Monstermancer> Volume 2 - Very good volume. It was just the first chapter of the first volume that wasn’t any good. Sadly, the afterword mentions that this will apparently only be a 3-volume series, which sucks since there is much to the world-building that could possibly fill out many volumes without downtime.

<Cooking with Wild Game> Volume 32 - introduction of a new character, and as always, she is very likable. I wonder if she becomes a regular even though the plot makes it sound as if this is just a temporary addition to the cast.

<Secrets of the Silent Witch -another- > Volume 2 - second volume of the spinoff series. This one was less entertaining than the first volume since it mostly showed Louis as we know him instead of the process of becoming him, as in the first volume. The plot was also very predictable, and you would know the rough outline of how it would play out after reading the first chapter. It’s good to have his prequel series catch up to when the main series starts, though, so I stop complaining. I hope the next “another” spinoff will be about Carla. She’s probably the most mysterious of the entire cast, and since we know literally nothing about her, she would make a great spinoff main character.

My interpretation as well.

Akihabara is still alive and well. Comiket also is as big as ever.

Some of the people I follow have been complaining in the past as well about changes in Akihabara. Granted, they were complaining about electronic stores dying out there and not anime-related stuff, so I’m not sure how that translates. I think I also read or heard complaints about Comiket being just a big corporate event instead of the place where people go to sell their doujins. I remember something about winter Comiket now being the new main event for those non-corporate exhibitions.

What I want to say is that I don’t think there’s no passion anymore, just that certain parts of industry become soulless husks of themselves.

You are right, the passion is not lost entirely, but looking at the fandom as a whole, I feel like it has become so large and commercialized that the passionate people are just small individual clusters in an ocean of indifferent people and ads. I base this only on my own views and how it feels to me, and I certainly have changed as well over the years.