Finished Vinland Saga

Thanks a lot to @HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee for recommending it as a Gundam show.

I’ve had it on my radar for a while now, and though I’m aware that war is one of the main themes, I wouldn’t have thought of it as a Gundam-like series.

Now that I have watched it, I can say it absolutely is. The protagonist, Thorfinn, is pretty much your typical Gundam protagonist. War crimes and collateral damages are rampant. Heck, there’s even a princess figure and a Char clone, though

Most importantly, the messaging is the same.

The only real difference is its lack of mechs, but Gundam was never really about giant robots anyway.

It is one of my instant favourites from the first few episodes; 10 / 10

With 213 chapter, the manga is daunting to pick up though.

I’ll probably take a break from Gundam-like shows for a while. Watching too many of them in a short period of them is depressing and mentally (psychologically?) tiring.

Thank goodness this season is filled with a bunch of silly romcoms.

I am still on vacation! Another week in sunny California is in store for me. For the past couple days, I have been high up in the mountains exploring some of the parks. Lots of hiking, driving, very large trees (we were most recently in Sequoia National Park), and just about no internet at all. Before we left LA, we managed to meet a celebrity though. I almost couldn’t believe it, but he convinced me to:

I am happy to report that I am back in civilization this week, but just moved north to the San Francisco area to meet up with some other family. I hope that everybody enjoys their week of anime!

Completed:

• Scavenger’s Reign - Not anime, but so good. Super strange world with bizarre but just realistic enough creature designs, great animation, great sound effects. Y’all should check it out. It’s a wild ride from start to finish, and I’d be ecstatic if it gets picked up by somebody for a second season.

Current releases, following weekly (roughly organized by decreasing interest):

• Oshi No Ko S2 - The last few episodes have been excellent. I thought they’d get to a mid season climax sooner and move on to other plot, but nah it seems to keep adding in backstory and side stories to fill in on many of the characters. It’s been great, but I’d like it to finally get to the climax.
• Makeine - Surprise hit of the season. I’m absolutely loving it. Probably more than Oshi No Ko, if I’m being honest. Seriously worth checking out.
• Pseudo Harem - That previous episode was such a fake out not-ending. I had to look up details to make sure I hadn’t missed something. No, it really has like 5 more episodes planned. Then this week just picked up and kept going lol. It’s been great and gives me such cozy early-relationship feelings.
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings… - Previous episode kinda threw me. I wasn’t expecting certain tropes to be in this kind of show and I don’t know what I think of it. Then the current week episode kinda kept going on that. I’ll probably finish out the season, since I’m this invested already but it’s sorta losing me. Surprisingly, Yuki was my favorite part of this week’s episode!

Watched part of, but not up to date:

• I Parry Everything - Almost caught up. Really enjoying this one a lot! Feels similar quality and tone to Helck and I really enjoyed that one.
• Hell’s Paradise - 8 episodes. Still a bit graphic for me, but I’ve enjoyed it enough to keep going. Animation is quite impressive.
• My Deer Friend Nokotan - 3 episodes. I haven’t felt like returning to it. I think I may drop it for this season, since I’ve read it doesn’t really improve from this point.
• Dungeon People - 1 episode. I’ll probably make time for this soon after I finish catching up with Parry Everything.

I’m close to dropping Wistoria. It looks really good, but the story, characters and world are so typical of such a setting. Also some aspects that imo really required more world building

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Oshi no Ko
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Oshi no Ko

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Oshi no Ko continues to deliver killer episodes each week. My only complaint about this arc is that Ruby and (best girl) Miyako are completely absent.

Just a meta question: why is this discussion thread labelled as Week 35? Is it because this is the 35th week since the first discussion thread was posted?

If that is the case, I don’t think it is very useful. I think it is better to label the thread based on the anime season and the week of the season (e.g. 2024 Summer Week 8).