Frieren’s an odd thing.

I had put it off for a while, and finally watched it all the way through about 7 or 8 months ago. And while it’s not my favorite anime (I don’t think it’s even in my top 5), I’d say it’s definitely the best anime I’ve ever seen.

Others generally stand out, if they do, for some specific things — great characters or a great story or great art or whatever. Frieren isn’t like that though. The characters and the story are notably good, but they don’t really stand out that much in and of themselves, like they might in orher animes, because the real strength of Frieren is that every single aspect of it is top quality. There’s nothing you have to overlook - nothing that’s only so-so but that’s okay because something else makes up for it. Whether you’re talking about the plot or the pacing or the characters or the drama or the humor or the art or the music or the voice acting or… anything really, it’s all excellent. And that’s pretty damned impressive.

I mentioned this in passing a couple of weeks ago, and this episode really drove it home - I think the overall theme of this series could be said to be “earn your iyashikei.”

It is an iyashikei in the long run - it’s comfy and soothing and heart-warming. But none of it’s just handed out for free. You (and Yachiyo) have to work for it.

The hunt for a replacement part got genuinely scary for a bit there, and then the way she finally found it was sad and touching and beautiful. And that’s more or less the way an awful lot of the series has gone - things end up relatively comfy and soothing and heart-warming in the long run, but it’s rarely easy getting there. But in a way that just makes it that much more satisfying.

I really love this series, and I suspect it’s going to remain a sentimental favorite for years to come.

Single episodes:

Little Witch Academia - the original OVA. There isn’t a single wasted frame - it’s just 23 minutes of pure genius. (And as a matter of fact, I just rewatched it again last night).

Sword Art Online S01E04 - The Black Swordsman. The introduction of Silica and Pina and just a great, warm, funny, satisfying standalone episode, and particularly because it’s sort of an antidote to S01E03, The Red-nosed Reindeer, which is arguably better, but so emotionally devastating.

YuruYuri S01E05 - When Akari and the Cicadas Cry. Kyouko drags Ayano to Comiket, Chitose discovers yuri doujins, and Chinatsu kisses Akari. Funny and cute even by YuruYuri’s lofty standards.

86 Episode 23 - the last third of this episode is quite simply the most beautiful and touching thing I’ve ever seen, and it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

Akudama Drive Episode 12 - It seems like it should be tragic, but it just kicks so much ass. " Serves you right."

Non Non Biyori S01E10 - We Watched the First Sunrise of the Year - I just love the dynamic between Kaede and Renge

Movies:

Spirited Away Duh. How could I not?

Ghost in the Shell (1995) Still the most concise visit to that universe. I like much of the rest of the franchise too, but that movie stands above them all.

The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi Just a great movie from start to finish. “John… Smith!”

Redline Buried under the stylish carnage and sensory overload is a satisfying tale of honor and redemption, and a surprisingly cute love story.

Series:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Even after all these years and all these rewatches, it just grabs me by the throat and drags me along.

Kemurikusa - Low budget done right. Great mysterious setting, good characters and satisfying story.

FLCL - I especially like episode 1 and episide 3, but it’s short enough and there are enough other good moments that I figure I might as well watch it all, so I do.

And a couple of recent additions: Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! and Make Heroine ga Oosugiru! Eizouken is an unabashed love letter to anime with wonderful characters, and Makeine is a great multi-genre whatever-it-is, and Anna in particular is a terrific character.

Just a quick note on this season: Maebashi Witches is better than you probably think it is.

My current theory is that the author and his assistants (or maybe just his assistants and he quit bothering long ago) have a great big die with story tropes on each face and as necessary, they just roll the die and do whatever it says.

Since they finished the “sports festival arc,” they had ro roll the die again, and it came up “study group.”

And here we are.

Just caught up with this one last night, and it might even beat out the Harmageddon episode as my favorite so far. It was just wonderful - happy and sad and charming and bittersweet and chaotic and touching and, when all’s said and done, contentedly optimistic…

And Yachiyo got her body back.

Her reaction when she first learned of the engagement was telling, though nobody really pointed it out. That was an emotional outburst at the thought of losing Ponko. I think she’s a lot more human than anyone realizes.

That was great, but I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed they didn’t do a display about her awesome stick collection. ⚔️

That was a great wrap-up — it settled pretty much every question I had about the story, and it was great to see Emi and Remilia face to face.

SAO was excellent here and there (Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Black Swordsman, Mother’s Rosario) and was at least decent all the way through.

It was just one of those series that became so commonly loved by normies that advertising one’s hatred of it became an easy way to gain instant edgelord cred.

It’s easy. The only difficulty is that it can’t understand a link to a specific chapter - you have to get the link for the series and plug that in to Cubari, then go to the specific chapter on the list Cubari generates.

Yes. Yes she is.

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Obviously this is entirely up to the instance owner, but it seems to me that, if anything, all of this actually makes our position stronger.

Scanlation’s always been a sort of gray area. It’s technically piracy - that part’s black and white - but the publishers have generally turned a blind eye to it, at least in cases in which there are and will be no licensed translations available. The publishers appeared to generally see it, and correctly, as free advertising (and in fact, scanlation is the ENTIRE reason that manga has gotten as popular as it has outside of Japan).

So the basic rule of thumb for more or less legitimate scanlation has always been that if the series isn’t licensed, it’s fair game, and if the publishers take exception anyway, all they have to do is say so and we’ll immediately “cease and desist.”

In one sense, this is just a massive version of what’s happened to MD all along. They’ve gotten takedown requests from the start, and just immediately comply with them.

The things that are notable about this one are the scale of it, and the fact that many of the titles do not have and likely never will have official translations, so it seems to be entirely vindictive. The publishers aren’t losing anything by allowing scanlations of titles that they’ll never license anyway, so they’re not protecting themselves from any nominal loss - they’re just being dicks.

And that’s undoubtedly what’s rattled MD - it’s not the fact of the takedowns, which have happened from the start but the seeming vindictiveness of them.

But their response has been to formally shift responsibility to the uploaders. They’re saying not just tacitly but explicitly that anyone who uploads anything effectively claims to have the legal right to do so, so if they don’t, that’s their problem and not MD’s.

Which actually removes us even further from any liability. From our position, the uploaders claimed to have the right to do so, and MD accepted their claim, and all we’re doing is taking everyone else at their word.

For whatever that’s worth.

According to their credits page, Harmless Monsters is going to stop uploading to Mangadex. They’re going to continue all of their series, but they’re going to post them somewhere else to avoid “potential legal issues.”

Is that the future of scanlation? We’ve gotten sort of spoiled, since the primary sites - Mangadex and before that (the original) Batoto got left alone. Is it going to become whack-a-mole now, like anime? Instead of being able to depend on one site, we’ll have to move to a new one every few years?

We got some great animation with the random sentai group that showed up.

That was especially awesome, and it impressed me that they manged to be appropriately stereotypical without matching specific recognizable individuals/franchises.

Then finally, a really touching gesture between two very non-emotional creatures to end it on.

And with Ponko enthusiatically shipping them the whole way.

I’m really liking this, and this was arguably the best episode yet…

I originally expected this to be an iyashikei, but (starting with the oddly dissonant OP) it sort of shifted from what I expected, and started to feel more threatening and somber than that. And this episode started out the most threatening yet. But then there was such a complete and rewarding shift in tone from start to finish that it made it ultimately just that much more warm and uplifting. And to the degree that this has a central theme, that seems to be it.

This is essentially an iyashikei - it’s just that it’s not naturally or automatically that way. It’s made that way by Yachiyo’s kindness and courtesy that’s tempered by quiet determination and a sharp sense of right and wrong. She’s unstintingly kind and courteous, right up until the moment that someone steps beyond acceptable behavior, at which point she immediately shifts to brutally honest and unreserved condemnation, which lasts exactly long enough to clearly convey her opinion of things, at which point she just as quickly and easily shifts back to unstinting kindness and courtesy. And it works. It’s made clear, even to someone like Harmy, that she bears no ill will at all - that her kindness is entirely sincere. It’s just that she’s also entirely honest and fair-minded and fearless, and when somebody deserves a figurative smack upside the head, she will deliver it. And they all come to respect and even admire that.

As do I.

Started off this week with the rest of Mekacucity Actors, which ended up being mediocre all in all (early on, I didn’t think it’d even manage that). In the later episodes, it mostly set aside the tedious Monogatari-style pop philosophy monologues set against geometric abstract liminal space backdrops and got down to some actual character development and exposition… It wasn’t particularly compelling or even coherent character development and exposition, but at least it was something.

Then, sort of wandering around aimlessly, I happened across a currently-airing series of a genre I’ve never bothered to watch before and what-the-hell gave it a watch, and that’s how I ended up catching up on and following Maebashi Witches. On the surface, it’s just cute and cheery, with pleasantly high quality animation and music and endearing characters and surprising emotional depth, and that might be all it ends up being, which’ll be fine. It’s surprisingly enjoyable just as that. But there’s also some room there for something else. Nothing is quite what it appears to be - they aren’t really “witches” in any recognizable sense, the mascot character who recruited them is revealing himself to be a smooth-talking and dishonest hustler and the deal they’ve made with him keeps getting more complex and its completion further out of reach. I don’t expect anything close to Madoka out of it, but there does seem to be a similar hidden agenda and while Keroppe is no Kyubey, he definitely isnt telling them the entire truth.

In any event, at worst, it’s cute and endearing and pleasant, and I’m enjoying it.

Then I sort of bulldozed my way through Sora no Otoshimono Forte, which I’ve been idly threatening to watch for years now, but I expected it to be similar to the first season, which is to say little bits of brilliance scattered here and there among lots of tedious and cringey trash, which is pretty much exactly what it was. Tomoki spent about 90% of the series super deformed and doing that “Kek kek kek” laugh while the rest of the cast just played their assigned one-note roles, but it wasn’t all bad, and the handful of serious moments were actually pretty good. So about what I expected.

Then I capped the week off with a real gem - Planetarian, which was absolutely glorious. It’s heart-warming and beautiful and tragic and uplifting and somber and deeply, deeply moving, and it made me smile and tear up at the same time and I loved it. I ended up watching both the series - Chiisana Hoshi no Yume and the movie/sequel - Hoshi no Hito, which tells a condensed version of the series plus some additional content after the events of the series. They’re both worth it.

And I already grabbed a Yumemi screenshot that’s my new wallpaper.

I saw that gotcha coming, and it still made me laugh.

It told me to not expect anything original - to just settle in for the same insipid, contrived edginess they’ve already beat to death in the Monogatari series

Four years later and this surprising gem finally returns.