Past Seasons

I completed Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill over the past week.

It is pretty good for a “trash” isekai. Mukouda is a wimp but is still likeable. Sui is very cute.

It reminds me a little of Dungeon Meshi with its focus on cooking in a fantasy world.

I have got some non-serious nitpicks about the show:

• With how much Fel hunts, the ecosystem should be in shambles.
• They didn’t show us how the characters handle sanitation. With how much food they are eating and no proper toilets / latrine, they should have loads of faeces to let out (especially Fel). We don’t see Mukouda using his Online Shopping skill to deal with this issue.
• We hardly see Mukouda cooking using a campfire despite what the title says.

Season 2 was just announced and I’m looking forward to it.

This Season

The only new real show I’ve picked up so far is Gundam GQuuuuuuX. As is usual for Gundam, an explosive first episode does a good job of getting viewers hooked.

I’ll be monitoring everyone’s comments to see if there’s anything else worth picking up.

For now, I am eyeing Moonrise.

Nice read but there are lots of typos.

Any tips or pointers (unintentional pun) will be greatly appreciated!

IMO the most important thing when it comes to frameworks like this is state management.

Once you truly understood it / know how to do it properly, you are good to go.

P.S. My guess is that React got its name because it reacts to changes in state

P.P.S. this documentary on React provides insights on its history

No punchline…

The Software Craftsman by Sandro Mancuso

It’s less of technical stuff, but more about the attitude one can (and should) have in our profession.

IMO this interview with the author sums it up nicely.

🔥🦆🔥

Kira “Jesus” Yamato namedrop x2 !!1!

Banner:

@rikka@ani.social

Past Seasons

I completed Beastars season 2 over the past week, and it still got me hooked as much as season 1.

However, there were a few points in the show that annoyed me enough to ruin my immersion.

Here are some snippets of my stream of thoughts as I was watching it:

I know the show did address my complaints after the immediate episodes, but I found the way they did so unsatisfying.

The one that takes the cake was

Despite my complaints, I still enjoyed it so, so much.

Plus, the opening song - Monster by Yoasobi - is a banger.

I am so looking forward to the final part / season to drop before starting on the next one.

Unfortunately, because of the annoyances, I will be docking a point from its final score, making it a 9 / 10 - for now; I may change my mind later.

This Season

I dropped I’ve Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level - season 2 after the first episode.

Looks like I have gotten bored of the chill, do-nothing slice-of-life genre.

Miscellaneous

With posts like this and the occasional recommendation thread popping up every now and then, I thought I’d group my favourite anime into broad categories / genres for easy recommendations.

I want each group to be mutually exclusive, so if an anime qualifies for more than one category, I would put it in the one that better represents it IMO (e.g. a romcom that is more com than rom would end up belonging to comedy)

I ended up noticing a few things about my taste:

• I enjoy suspense / thriller way more than I expected. If I combine all the shows with suspense or thriller elements into one group, it covers half of the shows that I consider top tier.
• With only 2 entries, it turns out that I am not into romance - at least not for anime. I found it surprising as I read plenty of romcom manga. In hindsight, I’m probably in it for the comedy, not the romance.

In case you are curious, here are my lists:

• Peak Gundam (politics, war, mass tragedy, etc; yes I like it so much that it has its own category) - 7 entries
• Peak Comedy - 8 entries
• Peak Romance - 2 entries
• Peak Drama - 4 entries
• Peak Suspense - 9 entries
• Peak Thriller - 9 entries
• Peak Wholesomeness - 8 entries
• Peak Degeneracy - 3 entries

Oh cool, my plan-to-watch list just expanded again🙃

Just to be clear, we are talking about villains? (i.e. they don’t have to be the antagonist)

In that case:

Saga of Tanya the Evil has got Tanya, who is not only extremely badass as a villainess, but also serves as the series’ protagonist.

Otherwise, my pick goes to Quinella from Sword Art Online: Alicization. She is evil but with cause (whether the cause is good is another debate).

Also,

Honourable mention goes to Askeladd from Vinland Saga. I begrudgingly respect him despite his evil acts.

Also,

Me seeing this^ on AniList:

when 88?

Edit:

As requested in the post body, here’s my hot take:

there’s no need to be particularly on guard for recency bias.

On the other end of the time-based bias spectrum, we have rosy retrospection (a.k.a. nolstagia).

By discounting recency bias so strongly, we end up being biased towards older shows.

Just leave things be and the biases would cancel out.

So if a recent anime is good, there’s no need to hold back - just acknowledge that it is good.

Edit 2:

Parking thoughts here for next week

Past Seasons

Peak is back on the menu with Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song-

It is yet another anime that is good in multiple aspects - animation, story, etc.

It felt like a crossover of Violet Evergarden and Terminator 0,

It is not without its flaws though.

For example, in episode 2:

I also don’t vibe with the songs despite this being a music-focused anime.

Honestly, these are minor flaws. Plus, the other aspects of the anime are so good that they made up for the flaws.

On a side note, this anime felt especially relevant with all the discussions around AI (even though they are simply narrow intelligence at the moment). For example, we had this recent post in our community. I sense that some people can fit in with Toak - and I don’t mean the moderate faction.

One last point before I wrap things up: I have watched enough anime that Tanezaki Atsumi voice-acted in that I can recognise her by voice.

In a nutshell, this anime is top tier. 10/10

This Season

In the end, I only watch 4 anime to completion this season (Apothecary Diaries is still ongoing).

Apothecary Diaries season 2

I kinda ruined it for myself by reading ahead with the manga, which means that I’m watching a suspense show without the suspense. I should be more patient next time.

Otherwise, the production value is still up there, so it’s still top tier in my book.

Re:Zero season 3

This season of Re:Zero is just not it for me.

I realised that I enjoyed the previous seasons so much because of:

• very emotional moments

• how Subaru turn the situation around against all odds

With how predictable things get, it gets boring.

I don’t think I will be continuing with the next season of Re:Zero.

Zenshu

It had a very slow start, such that I almost got bored enough to drop it. Thankfully, one of the later episodes turned it around.

IMO the last part of the show was good, but not great. It’s entertaining, but I could have explored anime from past seasons instead.

Medalist

I have gushed over this anime before, but that’s because it’s just that good. It’s quality is on par with other top anime and it has so many touching moments.

I gave the top contender for my anime of the season a good run for its money, but in the end I still went with the other anime for AOTS.

To use Tsukasa’s analogy: Medalist is like a taiyaki with consistently high production value, always looking good but with fewer standout moments. The other one is like a strawberry shortcake with clear peaks.

For me, the memorability of a series at its best wins out. And unfortunately for Medalist, its last episode was essentially just setting up for a sequel.

Regardless, it’s still so good that it’s joining my 10s, making it the first sport anime to do so.

100 Girlfriends season 2

This right here is my anime of the season.

This adaptation doesn’t just follow the source material - it elevates it.

A couple of episodes look somewhat rough, likely because the anime staff is stretched real thin, but the standout moments / episodes more than make up for it. My favourite has got to be episode 6, which has everything - top tier comedy, emotional moment, character development and fantastic animation.

I can only hope that the studio announces a sequel.

MOST BASIC LIST EVER

If everyone else enjoy the anime that you enjoy, it just means that you’ve got great taste.