I already loved Elmina from reading the manga…and then they go and have Fairouz Ai do her voice? A+ character right there.

Mod-approved self-promotion post.

Enjoy the melancholy! Wait…that might be the wrong sentiment.

See You at That Site of Grace After Work

I was kind of caught off guard that this series is directly mentioning Elden Ring instead of something like Elder Wing or some kind of knock off like you usually see due to weird Japanese IP law.

I remember reading one time on sakugablog that the average anime takes about 3 years from start to finish to make. However, there are many, many examples of deadlines being missed for episodes or a final cut being turned in literally at the last minute. Often the show is mostly done by the time the first episode airs, but there is usually some work still ongoing for future episodes as it is airing.

The animation in that battle for the 8th floor boss was really good. I don’t remember the first season having sakuga sequences like that. Looking forward to what they do for the final dungeon boss.

I like that we’re getting to know Romelia through the eyes of people around her, instead of listening to her inner monologue

This is actually very different compared to the manga adaptation and I like the choice a lot. I think it is clear to the viewer that Romelia is not doing this on a whim and has a plan and goals, but they largely are still a mystery to us. It makes it easier to relate to the soldiers that they introduced this episode because we see Romelia in mostly the same way they do.

Let me know if you have any questions. You can also hit me up in the ani.social matrix room too.

I really like how we didn’t see her face after she got off the bus. I can only imagine it was either the blush to end all blushes, or the biggest stupid grin ever. We just see her try to play it cool and leave, and don’t get too much of a picture of how she felt about it when she wasn’t in front of Shunpei.

I adore this series. It is just so gosh-darned wholesome. Part of me wants them to go into more of Kyou’s past and how she ended up with a daughter and looking for a place to stay. However, the other part of me just doesn’t want any depressing stuff wrecking the warm and fuzzy family vibes.

Probably should mark this as NSFW.

I really enjoyed this manga, but unfortunately it was dropped by the translators pretty early on.

I will preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of the manga adaptation of this series. This first episode was a bit underwhelming to me, but I think helps set the tone for what is to come. I think the humor in this series is at its best when the MC has a comedic straight man to play off of, but it still came through here.

One of my favorite parts of this series and her power is that she gets both the good and the bad of the internet. Like, yes, you get practically god-like knowledge at your fingertips. However, you also get popup ads, spam, forum trolls, shipping wars, all the rest of it too.

I really like the background art style they went with for the show. However, I do feel like they are leaning really hard on the 8-bit sequences to save animation budget/effort. Also, there is just so much text on screen sometimes that it is hard to parse without a lot of pausing.

Anyway, looking forward to more to see how this adaptation works out.

That’s the thing about skateboards…no brakes!

So, the standing and possessions of this aristocracy is determined by their maids’ skating skills? I kind of love how much effort has gone into coming up with worldbuilding to justify the artist’s love of drawing maids riding skateboards.

If you had to pick a department to join that was going to be tolerant of weirdos, you could do worse than Literature. In my experience, literature and theater departments are chock full of them. I think she can bounce back from this.

Seeing how she played with Rei before meeting Aoba really puts into perspective how much she has changed. I love how this series has always managed to keep the younger siblings so central to the story like this.

I don’t think we have had a full chapter of their school life before. This was an interesting change of pace, but a welcome one.

142 chapters and it is just the end of part 1. Time will tell where it goes from here.

The manga adaptation is pretty cool, so I am probably going to check this one out. However, there are signs this has been caught in production hell for some time, so I am not too hopeful.

<The Eminence in Shadow> - Volume 7

My patience for an official translation broke down and I finally dove into a fan translation of volume 7 of TEIS this past week. Overall, it was great and I had a hell of a lot of fun. Like basically every other arc in TEIS, Cid takes on a new persona/disguise and acts out some contrived chuuni fantasy of his. This is one of my favorites he has done so far and the climax near the end of the volume has me really excited to see it portrayed in the anime eventually. One main difference compared to past LN volumes is that this arc is not done yet. Every other LN volume for the series wraps up an arc by the time the volume ends. So, that is a bit of a change, but hopefully it means the author doesn’t take almost three years to finish writing the next volume.

The manga is currently about halfway through adapting Volume 7, so I think we are going to run into a situation again where the manga will run out of source material to adapt. I will be curious to see what they do this time. Last time, it started adapting volume 7 before the official release. So, it was an interesting state where the manga was the furthest along in the story. With no date yet announced for volume 8, I think it is more likely that the manga will go on hiatus.