I really liked this chapter. What better sign of her growth could there be than her both getting an interview and then proceeding to make a friend. I know that An is going to be a recurring character and probably help her out at the store. I am looking forward to it!

I really enjoyed this. I had wondered before this season started if this could fill the same adult romance niche that Wotakoi did. After the first episode, I don’t think this one is going to be anything like Wotakoi because our two main characters are both so incredibly reserved. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t really cute together.

I really enjoyed the fact that their coworkers are all on board and super supportive. I think it would have been all too easy for this to become a series that focuses on them constantly avoiding the suspicions of their coworkers or manager. It still might do that, but I am glad it hasn’t yet.

Really looking forward to more of this one!

The boss threw me off when she was skeptical at the party afterwards. I was sure she was suspicious about them faking the relationship. I literally choked on my coffee that I was drinking when she said it meant there was a bun in the oven. Great fakeout and it is so nice to see all their coworkers being so supportive.

Episode discussion threads need to be made by the bot. See the sidebar for a link to the wiki on how to request a thread from the bot. I went ahead and created one for this episode that you can find here.

First episode of Re:Zero Season 3 is a 90 minute long special. So, you know they are really putting in the effort to make it good.

I have always kind of ebbed and flowed with the anime/manga community depending on how busy I am with irl stuff (grad school was a black hole that sucked up all my time for example). However, since kind of stumbling into moderating the community, it has kept me more active.

AC giveth and AC taketh away. Negative Positive Angler is down at 16 when I thought it was a decent premiere.

It’s not a complete roster of shows due to many series not having a first episode premiere yet, but the top place this week was incredibly hotly contested. I can’t remember two shows ending up so close and yet so, so far above the rest of the season.

Ugh, I was faked out in that I didn’t notice it was a bonus chapter until I started reading. This was great, but I wanted a whole chapter 😕

This series is a bit of a roller-coaster. The way this chapter started, I thought she was spiraling down again. However, she managed to break the cycle at least a little bit.

Also, I am a big advocate for spending some time alone in nature when things are tough. When I was really struggling through grad school at times, I would often go to a nearby park at really weird hours during the week so that nobody else was around. Just spending an hour or two walking through the woods and around a lake was remarkably effective at helping ease my anxiety.

I really liked this as a premiere episode. It managed to set up some interesting plot hooks and introduce some memorable characters without overwhelming the viewer with exposition dumps. I think there is a lot of potential here, so time will tell if it lives up to it.

I agree with @glilimith@lemmy.blahaj.zone that the animation overall was quite nice (those reels…) but the fish and, to a lesser extent, lures are hard to overlook. It isn’t as bad as something like KamiKatsu, but the rest of the show looks so nice (even the cgi used for reels and the pachinko machines) that it really feels out of place.

As somebody that really enjoys fishing, but haven’t been able to go on a fishing trip in quite a number of years, I think they did a good job of capturing what is nice about it. I don’t enjoy fishing to catch fish (I don’t even like eating most fish), or enjoy pleasant weather (it often sucks), or even for the friends you make along the way (I prefer fishing alone). No, what I enjoy about it is having some 1:1 time between me and mother nature; just communing with nature out on the lake. However, something the show did well is that every other angler you talk to has their own reason that they enjoy fishing.

I hope that this show uses fishing as a way for the main character to process the trauma and feelings of mortality that he must be working through instead of some way to solve his problems. I think it would be much more interesting if he manages to accept his mortality instead of somehow curing his illness. However, I suspect that we might end up going the curing route…time will tell.

@rikka@ani.social

Oh man, you have no idea. I never fail to get shocked when I interact with colleagues or interview job candidates and realize that they were born in like 2005. Constant reminder of mortality 😢 (and yes, I used an emoji to make myself feel younger, if even just a tiny bit).

Thursdays have way too many shows that I want to watch this season. It really needs to just chill a bit.

I have liked this one as well, but I am not fully caught up yet.

As for the downvotes, instance admins can see who up/downvoted any posts. I actually host my own instance for bot testing and monitoring for vote manipulation in the communities I mod. I agree with Kadath that you just occasionally see some user that has never commented or posted in the community downvote a bunch of posts and then never show up again. Lemmy is weird about anime/manga stuff.

I don’t know how to feel about this hero’s family. They are particularly odd. I did like how Mira views the hero as basically an NPC though, even being pixelated in her memory.

I also ran across a music video featuring everybody’s favorite paranormal pair of JKs.

I really liked Gorou reaching up from the depths to exact his revenge on Hikaru. It actually mirrors some of the visuals from the anime’s season 1 ED in which Aqua is plunged into water and is held down by red threads:

After it is all said and done though, Hikaru has not really lived up to the villainous figure that we have imagined for a large chunk of this series from Aqua’s POV. I guess there is some symmetry with Ai there if you think about it.

When Aqua/Gorou got to know Ai in real life and then even more closely as he investigated her after her death, it turned out that she was just a talented person, but still a person at the end of the day. He had initially built her up inside his head as this unapproachable prodigy, but that was shattered after Akane was able to channel Ai so well in the dating show, causing Aqua’s perception of Ai to start to come back down to earth. Similarly with Hikaru, he is built up as some kind of supervillain inside Aqua’s head. However, the reality is that Hikaru is just a dude with an unhealthy worldview and obsession with Ai.

Edit: looking back through the chapter now, the full page spread is eerily similar to the season 1 ED. Compare the spread to the screenshot I grabbed above. It almost has to be intentional.

I believe that the first two episodes of this show released at the same time. The AniLIst api used by the bot never handles this well, so the thread for the second episode wasn’t made and likely won’t be requestable like a normal show. If anybody wants me to make a thread for episode 2, just let me know here or via pm and I can make it manually.

Ok, I was confused about the test that they traveled to as well. I guess that picture of them looking happy alongside the invite was taken after they passed the test?

One thing that I liked about this first episode is that it spent basically zero time setting up the premise. It was self-aware enough to know that viewers of this show are likely to already be familiar with the trappings and conventions of the otome isekai genre already. The game that this world is based on is as generic and prototypical as you can get. Additionally, we spent absolutely zero time talking about the MC’s previous life other than that she played this game and liked the Villainess. Sorry all you truck-kun lovers out there.

This first episode is a bit of a speedrun of the origin story behind our young Villainess. She studies a lot, practices good manners, gets crazy strong for an eight year old, and has a hell of a sweet tooth. I thought it was funny how she viewed things as a Villainess test, like when the king was asking her questions:

Speaking of, her plan of inciting a revolution for independence in a neighboring region so that her Kingdom can profit is a very Villainess-y move for sure. No saintess is going to advocate for stoking the fires of war, leave that kind of thing to the Villainess.

I am going to try to give this a couple more episodes time permitting, and I look forward to skipping ahead in time a bit to see how the school life goes, as that is usually the setting for the otome games. I suspect that these roses are going to be important. Our MC keeps getting portrayed alongside a black rose in the OP and ED (and her mom was carrying it in the beginning of the episode). So, I suspect that the MC is also a special rose person alongside this golden rose protagonist. We’ll see how it all plays out. @rikka@ani.social