Personally, I prefer my anime without drugs. So I hope the current state doesn’t change.

Absolutely. The anime adaptation adds so many details. You can really see the passion the studio has for the series.

Just for reference, here’s the part from the manga:

Some positive news about last season’s Journal With Witch

‘Journal with Witch -Ikoku Nikki-’ has Officially won the Galaxy Award March 2026 in the television category! The last Anime to win the Monthly Galaxy Award before ‘Ikoku Nikki’ was ‘Ranking of Kings’ 4 years ago, March 2022

The Japanese Broadcast Critics Association honor is similar to the Emmy Awards, and given to outstanding television, radio programs, individuals, and organizations.

source

Well deserved. If it weren’t for Frieren it would have been my anime of the season.

Hoping for Kinako anime

That character reminds me of the vtuber MinikoMew.

I wish I had come up with that.

PEAK!

Another Easygoing Territory Defense. I wonder if the anime adaptation makes me like the novel less now.

<Ascendance of a Bookworm: Hannelore’s Fifth Year at the Royal Academy> Volume 2 - Myne is off-page rampaging through Yurgenschmidt’s history. I swear to Mestionora, if there won’t be a new series from Myne’s POV about this, I will run amok.

<Fluffy Cafe in Another World> Vol. 1 - This is exactly what you would think it is. If you read the title and think you know how this will play out, you can predict the entire volume. To the letter. But that also means that you get exactly what you want if that was what you were looking for. I actually enjoyed reading it.

<Disowned but Not Disheartened! Life Is Good with Overpowered Magic> Volume 1 - Very pleasantly surprised by this one. It starts with a very trope-y “MC is a disowned noble girl who gets bullied by evil stepsister”, but then completely flips the script by making the MC competent, confident, and giving her overwhelming support from her foster family and friends. Every time one of the usual bully tropes even starts to form, they get stomped into the ground. Amusing.

<The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects> Volume 13 - Illuk village does some covert operation into the beast nation to quell an insurgency. Obviously, that’s less chill and comfy than usual, but it was written in a way that made it not so bad.

It continues to baffle me how bad this adaptation can be. How can they miss the target so completely. It’s like adapting The Lord of the Rings and then cutting all the travel parts between the big events. It just has no worth whatsoever when it isn’t shown how those “big events” are earned. Fuck whoever was in charge of this adaptation at WIT.

WTF is that abomination?! I would expect that in an episode of King of the Hill, but not something a Japanese high-schooler casually eats on a date.

Poor Otakun. I wouldn’t be able to choose either.

Honestly, everything that isn’t a (battle) shounen should be great. The most important thing is to firmly establish that anime is a “medium” and not a “genre”. And since almost every outsider thinks every anime is a battle shounen, it’s important to correct that misconception early on.

AnoHana would be my recommendation. It’s short for a series, it doesn’t take any Japanese cultural knowledge to enjoy it, and the themes are universal regardless of personal background, age or gender.

There was some fan service in the first episode, but not excessively so. But I have a high tolerance for fan service, so maybe stay away if this is something that bothers you.

Yes, I think the entire fight scene with the beast in the last episode of Frieren was also just a single frame in the manga.

Again, I love how much they added “between the pages”. All those little details elevate this adaptation so much from the source which was already a visual masterpiece. For example this entire scene with remembering herself growing up learning and the memory of her mother guiding her is added inbetween just these few frames:

And this one here made me laugh:

We also see why I am of the opinion that Agott is deeply and inherently evil and should not be allowed to exist as a witch.

Part of that might be because it kind of lends itself to visual gags, so that they translate better in manga form.

I can absolutely see that.

<The Amazing Village Creator: Slow Living with the Village Building Cheat Skill> Volume 2 - Just some inoffensive city building power fantasy. Though there is a argument to be had that it’s offensive in how inoffensive it is.

<GATE - Thus the JSDF Fought There!> Volume 1 - Experienced the series in the wrong order (anime -> manga -> lightnovel). That’s also how I would order the adaptations, with the anime as the best version and the LN at the end.

<Looks like a Job for a Maid! The Tales of a Dismissed Supermaid> Volume 1 + 2 - This follows a simple formula: Maid comes someplace, a problem develops and gets solved by Maid because that’s just what Maids do. She then collects a dedicated follower and they then move to the next place like a locust swarm that feeds on problems. Sadly this changes in the second volume and she stops collecting followers. I had hoped she would continue to do so like a Maid version of Pikmin.

<The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary> Vol. 4 - I picked up this series again. Not sure why.

Has anyone read The Worlds Strongest Witch?

Yeah, I have. Here’s what I wrote about it back at the time:

One of those “somehow our entire fantasy society is based on skill ranks using earth terminology but everyone thinks ‘S Rank’ is the worst because it’s so far down the alphabet, so I get left to die by my parents because that’s totally normal parenting behaviour, but it turns out S-Rank actually means it’s good!” type of stories. I’m groaning so much reading this, my neighbors started cheering for my stamina. There is a certain charm to it, though. It reminds me of the good old days before I stopped reading web novels for the lack of quality. This book here is riddled with so many logical and temporal errors that it should never have reached the point where it got picked up for publication and stayed in WN territory. It’s ridiculous, really. Like the editor just threw in the towel and said “yeah, whatever…just release it”.

Oh wow. What a week. Bookworm, Setsuna, Frontier Lord and Zilbagias.