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[Reelya]

Seriously, the super-NEET stuff is getting old hat now. No Game No Life has that same issue. Sora is supposed to be a shy shut-in, but when he gets to fantasyland, then you have him constantly schmoozing the ladies with confidence, and giving rousing oratory to armies as if he's mr charisma.

He basically does Pick-Up Artist "negging" to the big-boob girl constantly, turning her into his plaything using his alpha-male mojo. Come on now. And the sad thing was - the fans were buying into that, calling the girl "stupid" only because that's how Sora constantly belittles her. It came off to me as just evil-minded bullying of a girl with a less dominant personality. This is fantasy fodder for some really pathetic people.

[Cruxador]

Now, all those things you said are TECHNICALLY true, but not at all believable. People that are shut-in Otaku NEET's typically don't spend all the extra free time they have exercising and getting ripped, they technically could, but typically don't.

It's neither typical nor all that unusual. Without delving into how pathetic the lives of habitual gym-rats often are, a person who is long-term unemployed often gets into habits that are in some ways healthier than someone who has to work all day.

Placed into a foreign place with no information whatsoever, they technically could throw themselves willy-nilly at every opportunity or ham it up and be a huge flirtatious dork for every cute girl, or they could be paralyzed by fear at the situation they're in, and someone who refuses to intermingle with their normal society that they grew up in, I have an idea of what would be the more natural response. Meeting thugs in an alleyway, an ordinary citizen of a country that is in the "Under 1% Club" for violent crime would probably be pants-pissingly scared, not attack them unhesitatingly with vicious fervor...

Not everyone's response to an unknown situation is to shrink from it, and particularly when there's no safe situation to retreat to, it's not at all unusual for someone to throw himself into it and hope for the best. In fact, I would say that jumping into a fight with reckless abandon is ONLY believable in this sort of case.

...and competency. It's meant to be an escapist fantasy, I know, but it's those kinda things that earmark it as being amateurishly written.

I didn't remember this so I went back and checked out the first fight again. For someone who does get a lot of exercise, the fact that he was able to catch people by surprise and get two good hits in before getting his ass beat isn't really hard to believe.

But I'll admit that I am perhaps TREMENDOUSLY biased, being a shut-in loser myself for basically my entire life, I atleast believe I can easily tell if someone exhibits the symptoms of that lifestyle or not.

I figured that might be it. I think you're treating your own experience as more representative than it necessarily is. Are there people who, put in a strange scenario, will shrink from it? Sure. But even the socially reticent will interact with others when needed, and being popped into a new world is a pretty big change which could easily set a shut-in into the throes of cornered rat syndrome. And you're ignoring the fact that not everyone is a NEET or friendless because they're necessarily super passive or anything. Subaru essentially fell out of the system, and he didn't have a lot of friends because he's kind of an asshole. That doesn't mean that something about his character makes him utterly unable to interact with other people.

But can I ask what two complaints are opposite each other?  I'm looking hard for it. Was it the 'spastic shithead' and 'socially competent' remark I made? I meant like, we the viewer can tell that he's being stupid, but in the narrative he's still fumbling and bumbling his way forward and succeeding at social interaction, even if realistically he should be getting shut down, hard and often.

The whole thing. First you're complaining that he doesn't behave in a rational and well-adjusted manner, and then you're complaining that he does. Even the first paragraph you're essentially complaining that he doesn't act normally, though I get that your main complaint there is that other people don't react to this. So why do you also have the complaint that he acts too normal?

"

I want to add one more complaint though to my original post, in that so far I haven't really learned anything about the MC's life before he got kidnapped into the fantasy world. He seemingly doesn't have any friends or family, because he doesn't talk about or even think about them. Same thing for any other aspect of his life, no nostalgia or reminiscence is paid to it. We learned that he plays videogames enough to be able to recognize gaming tropes offhand only occasionally to his advantage, and that he visits convenience stores and likes snack foods and ramen. Pretty much it

The beginning tells you how he got there, though. He didn't really have friends, he went through life, and he failed out of life. It's not exactly a rare story.

this is obviously all to ensure he's the ideal blank slate for audience projection. Now, there's nothing wrong with a character meant for the audience to project themselves into the shoes of, but in this case I feel it's really obvious and immersion breaking because of it.

But most of your complaints have been about how he isn't that. Giving someone experiences doesn't prevent self-inserting, whether that's experiences in the past, present, and future. In fact, that's sort of the point. But giving someone their own personality, emotions, and agency does hinder self-inserting.

[Karnewarrior]

Honestly, I'd just like to see an Isekai take the CKII route.

Imagine: Lonely casaNEETva sucked into videogame world. With no applicable real world skills he decides his best chances of survival are to go full Hapsburg and fuck his way to the top.

Boom, now you have your harem, endless opportunity for drama, both from inter-harem reactions as he drops one girl for another, extra-harem reactions when their scorned lovers or angry parents come knocking to demand to know what he's doing, and plenty of opportunity for court intrigue and crazy Death Note shit.

Don't tell me "Help! Someone put Light Yagami in my Familiar of Zero!" wouldn't be a fucking amazing read/watch.

That would require the harem to be written realistically though. Girls don't like sharing the dick they claimed with other girls. Generally.

[Reelya]

To be honest though, that's not really that far off what happens in No Game No Life, what you are describing, Karne.

He uses the games to manipulate the ladies, gains a bigger and bigger harem as he goes along. He manipulated several girls who were important to the local political heirarchy with his game-playing and managed to ensnare power for himself. His unbeatable game-fu is done in a similar way to Death Note or Code Geass several times: e.g. he seems about to lose but then a confluence of events reveal that it was "all according to keikaku".

Basically it's harem building, an evil world-conquering NEET/otaku and manipulative game-rigging / high-stakes gambling. However ... this is one light novel where the books might actually be better than the anime.

[Zangi]

Inuyashiki
It is an anime. 
non-spoilery Summary: Old loser family man gets super powers.  His life is reinvigorated by these new found powers, but he can't just idly sit by on the sidelines...  There is some grime, but this show can be considered a super hero origin thing.

[JoshuaFH]

Inuyashiki
It is an anime. 
non-spoilery Summary: Old loser family man gets super powers.  His life is reinvigorated by these new found powers, but he can't just idly sit by on the sidelines...  There is some grime, but this show can be considered a super hero origin thing.

I've read the entirety of the manga, and can confirm that it's both good and full on hammy. and when I say ham, I mean MAXIMUM HAM! There is literally no room left for subtlety, only gorgeous artwork. That's honestly my only concern, that the anime won't be able to convey the manga's wonderful and highly detailed art correctly.

In other news, WTF Kino's Journey? I remember the original Kino's being very good, but this is honestly kinda supremely mediocre at best.

[Cruxador]

Honestly, I'd just like to see an Isekai take the CKII route.

Imagine: Lonely casaNEETva sucked into videogame world. With no applicable real world skills he decides his best chances of survival are to go full Hapsburg and fuck his way to the top.

Boom, now you have your harem, endless opportunity for drama, both from inter-harem reactions as he drops one girl for another, extra-harem reactions when their scorned lovers or angry parents come knocking to demand to know what he's doing, and plenty of opportunity for court intrigue and crazy Death Note shit.

Don't tell me "Help! Someone put Light Yagami in my Familiar of Zero!" wouldn't be a fucking amazing read/watch.

That would require the harem to be written realistically though. Girls don't like sharing the dick they claimed with other girls. Generally.

Ore no Isekai Shimai ga Jichou Sinai! seems to be pretty much that. I'm not sure it perfectly matches the tone or scope of CK2, but it has political betrothal, incest, and inter-noble political shenanigans.
It's in LN form only at the moment though.

In other news, WTF Kino's Journey? I remember the original Kino's being very good, but this is honestly kinda supremely mediocre at best.

Are you sure nostalgia isn't involved? I haven't found the new one to stand out that much, but I don't think it's worse than the old one.

[JoshuaFH]

In other news, WTF Kino's Journey? I remember the original Kino's being very good, but this is honestly kinda supremely mediocre at best.

Are you sure nostalgia isn't involved? I haven't found the new one to stand out that much, but I don't think it's worse than the old one.

That's honestly what I'm suspecting Crux, seeing as how I watched the original like ten years ago now.

[Reelya]

Giving my rec. of the season to Inuyashiki at this point, though I haven't watched many other shows yet. Inuyashiki is looking like one of the best shows of the year, so it might be the best of the season too.

[JoshuaFH]

Ok, Kino? Is something up? Do you need to talk about something? Cause this is pretty inexcusable at this point, and you need to stop. A whole episode, basically not about Kino at all, but about bland 1-dimensional characters making up the whole cast, a storyline that sounds like something out of an old, simplistic fairy tale, and for some reason I highly doubt that the conclusion to this ep is the setup for anything in the future, as the nature of the show is highly compartmentalized and episodic.

In other news, I finally got back onto the March Comes in Like a Lion train, after ignoring the show for like a solid year now, and my-god what an expertly designed show. There is no compunction at all with rapidly changing art styles and aesthetics to try to convey the emotion of a scene perfectly. And it's a little thing, but the way the mouths are drawn, instead of just being a normal dark line, it's slightly upgraded to be a thicker line with rounded ends, and it really makes the emotiveness of the characters just POP. It's such a small detail, but I love it so much. What an excellent shogi propaganda piece.
Also though, not going to spoil anything, Kyouko is just the most perfect ice cold bitch I've seen in a while... Just, any scene she's in, you have to say "God that was fuckin ice cold girl!", and she easily sets herself up as an antagonist that you just love to hate, which are perhaps the best kind of antagonists, in my opinion.

[Reelya]

Well the episodes are almost never about Kino at all. Kino is usually nothing but an observer that acts as the viewer's eyes, this was one "criticism" some people had of the original: that Kino didn't "fix" the problems that she encountered. Some people expected a happy-ending "touched by an angel" type of plot. However, the whole story is a metaphor for the human condition, it's not intended as something that gets "fixed". Sometimes Kino sets off things in motion but only ever pulls a trigger (usually literally) then the situation itself implodes because of itself.

In the current series it seems they're trying to adapt only storylines that didn't appear in the original anime, which is nice at least, it can be like a companion piece not overwriting the original. However, it loses whatever strength the selected pieces had from the first season: you have to pick at the leftovers. There was one repeated story so-far, but it was needed because that introduces a character who has their own journey that they're showing, which is separate from Kino's travels.

Remember, they're only adapting things from the books here. That's "what's up". Blame the orginal author.

[Andres]

Anyone know where I can find the coloured pages of Chapter 540 of Bleach? I know they exist because I can find a bunch of coloured parts of it in the Bleach wiki, such as here.

[Jopax]

I'm still not sure wether I like UQH or not, 10 eps in now. It's interesting for the most part, and kinda fun when it's self aware and poking fun at the whole harem thing, the main plot is ok I guess and most of the characters are kinda interesting (tho mostly trough their abilities I gues since not many of them get too much screentime). But then it plays it straight at times and I can't help but cringe for the most part, both at the dialogue and at the characters themselves.

Dunno, it has so much potential to be smart about the whole thing and prod and deconstruct boring tropes, but it seems like it dips it's toe in that pool before running back into the every trope played straight one because that one is warm and cozy(probably from all the piss).

[Max™]

I totally forgot if you folks were watching Houseki no Kuni but we just now got caught up to the newest episode and blurgh it's hard not explaining everything for the missus since she hasn't read the manga.

[Cthulufaic]

Spoiler: DBZ Super Spoilers (click to show/hide)

In less memey discussion, can anyone suggest some feel-good, non-depressing anime?  I'm trying to recover after finals and something easy to relax to would be nice.