It's cold, it's dark, work is every day. And yet there is time for anime.
Manga
Beyond continuing GTO at a glacial pace, as well as keeping up with Shibuya Near Family and Wasteful Days of High School Girls + Gekkan-Shoujo Nozaki Kun whenever updates release, I have picked up Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha. It's short, it's fun. I'm pretty early into the story to comment more.
Anime
I have finished Monogatari: Second Season, and the Kaiki arc is just fantastic. It's another high in a series that I have both underestimated and feel that it does live to its questionable reputation. Onto the next series, which is... uh... Hanamonogatari?
One Outs is a gambling sports anime that has been recommended to me for a while, and it is decent so far. The MC is pretty un-Kaiji like, and more your average extremely confident gambling genius.
I've watched Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's somewhat style over substance, but it is refreshing in a sea of formulatic slop. I remember the ending having a bit of controversy surrounding it. I thought it was tragic. The post-credit scene did cheapen that though.
Cardcaptor Sakura keeps being fun and cozy.
I have also resumed Sailor Moon, from Season S. It's still good old Sailor Moon.
Millennium Actress was a pretty good movie, aided by the soundtrack of the excellent Susumu Hirasawa. I felt like I missed half of the appeal of the movie by not being that familiar with what was most likely 1930s to early 1970s Japanese cinema.
To begin with, I just wanted to say that I've been in love with the opening theme of TEPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Laughing 'til You Cry — never seen the show, but I'm very curious about it now!
With Me Mum
We finished City the Animation and she actually said that she wanted to rewatch it, she was very fond of it. The finale of The Boondocks on the other hand we found to be really underwhelming and kind of offensive, though I'm still looking forward to showing the rest of that series on Blorptube this year.
We're continuing Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, Ojamajo Doremi, Sailor Moon R, season 2 of the Ranma 1/2 reboot, Steins;Gate, and Bob's Burgers. I also showed an episode of the latter on Blorptube recently.
We saw the OVA episode of The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan recently. We should also get around to the Squid Girl OVA soon… Well, we should get around to a LOT of things, but y'know.
We saw one episode of Lupin III Part 2, which is always fun, and I showed my mom a particularly fun episode of Maison Ikkoku. She enjoyed Maison but seems fine with me continuing that on my own.
The most striking development is that I've gotten my mom hooked on Serial Experiments Lain, more hooked than I expected! Given how much my mom prefers cutesy stuff I have to say I'm glad that she's responded so well to Lain. Let's all love Lain!
No progress on Tesagure! Bukatsumono nor on The Memories of Phantasm. I guess I could probably continue those on my own since she doesn't seem too interested in them?
We also read a chapter of The Demon Girl Next Door. It's still pretty meh compared to the anime, though, again, we're jumping into the middle, way past the point adapted by the anime.
Obama's Elf
I've been continuing Avatar: The Last Airbender and been enjoying it. I'm 12 episodes in and some of the quaint jank of Norwegian dubbing is starting to show by this point, i.e. multiple characters with the literal exact same voice, because it turns out that there are only so many qualified VAs in Oslo.
I've also been continuing Maison Ikkoku and Tokyo Mew Mew, but in a more surprising turn of events I've also gotten back into Angelic Layer. It's still not my favorite thing in the world, but when one of the other shows I'm watching alone starts buffering on the Totally Legal site I use, I switch to Angelic Layer and find that it's becoming a bit more character-driven and a bit more interesting plot-wise in the second half.
I've been continuing to read Kemono Friends à la Carte and found it a cute and easy read. I had to remark on the chapter "Penguin Friends", though, for having jarringly gratuitous T&A for what is otherwise a very desexualized series.
I also read the first chapters of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, which was a good time seeing the familiar characters of Cardcaptor Sakura in a completely different context; and I read the first chapter of Felina: Spreke Påfunn, a Norwegian comic book that I loved as a kid but didn't remember much from. My verdict is that it was a very fun time. The main character is a cat furry and the stories are inspired by local folklore and such, it's got a bit of adventure and a bit of comedy. If you're learning Norwegian you should try to get a copy.
Others' Blorps
I saw Millennium Actress, which was a good movie. I also saw the first half of Pom Poko, but decided not to stay up for it.
Milky Subway and Milky Highway were a good enough time, though I think the pacing would work better as a movie. Lo and behold, the people behind Milky Subway actually ARE making a theatrical re-edit of the thing! It will be interesting to see whether my hypothesis is correct. My mom didn't complain in any case about me finishing the Milky Subway series without her. The opening theme stands out.
Stalin showed Heavenly Puss, the Tom & Jerry short where Tom goes to Heaven. The bit with the bag of drowned kittens is sad.
Switchy & Witchy — one of the newer members of "LagnPlan" — has been showing My Life as a Teenage Robot on Sundays. I've tried to tune in when I can, though it's honestly not my favorite bit of gynoid fiction, that would probably be Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. So a bit like Invader Zim I guess I found MLAATR a bit… overrated…? I mean, that doesn't feel like the right term to use, because it IS a fun cartoon… just not as fun as people say, I guess.
Garg's showing of Cardcaptor Sakura is nearing its end: next week we'll finish it off, the weeks after that are the Cardcaptor movies which I've never seen, and what will fill Monday's early slot after that remains to be seen: Little Witch Academia, Hitoribocchi no Marumaruseikatsu, something else entirely? Who knows! Though for the time being I should say that revisiting CCS has been as lovely as revisiting K-On! was last year… Although one of the scenes from last night's Cardcaptors ended up being a bit awkward for me to watch due to personal reasons I'm not really at liberty to say.
Stalin's been showing Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and fuck me this series rocks. I think I have a much better appreciation of it now than as the greenhorn anime nerd I was when I first watched it many years ago. I just wish I didn't have to stay up so late for it!
My Own Blorps
@AernaLingus@hexbear.net and I are still continuing New Game!! season 2 one-on-one. I hope we'll get back to that soon because it is a very cute show and a good way to spend time together. Aer has also been working very diligently with me on my own Saturday watch parties, where we recently finished showing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic — KICKASS finale, just as I remembered! — and have now moved on to finishing the Equestria Girls shorts. We'll show the last of those the coming Saturday, unless we suddenly decide to show the Choose Your Own Ending shorts after all.
I made a very short fanime titled "Once Upon a Time… Blorp — Equestria (and Tomorrow?)" based on the finale of Once Upon a Time… Man to present my plans for the Saturday early slot post-FiM. Some of those plans have been reworked somewhat since then but that's just how it goes.
Part of that reworking involved showing the first few episodes of The Owl House last Saturday — VERY fun show that I'm looking forward to continuing! It felt like a bit of a risk to show a full series that I'd never seen before, because if I as host didn't like it then it wouldn't be ideal to commit to finishing it… but the gamble paid off! I can absolutely recommend The Owl House. I mean, it's about a witch in training, what else do you need?!
I finished showing Once Upon a Time… The Discoverers, which is presumably the last Barillé for a while. I'm still not very keen on showing Once Upon a Time… The Explorers, but Once Upon a Time… Planet Earth is something I might show between seasons of The Boondocks once I get to showing that.
I'm now showing the final season of classic Fireman Sam as dead air material. After that there's the 2005 version, and then the 3D CGI version is something I'm not too keen on showing.
On the same night as I showed the Bob's Burgers episode "The Equestranauts" I also showed the first part of Turnabout Storm, a visual novel inspired fan-made crossover between Phoenix Wright and MLP:FiM. It was fun and I'm looking forward to continuing it.
I'm also looking forward to showing Technotise: Edit & I tomorrow night — that's a low-budget Serbian anime-inspired sci-fi movie I've wanted to see for years, and Cuban just so happened to find a copy for me!
Anime-Related Projects
Progress on my Norwegian fandub of The Memories of Phantasm is slow, but if nothing else I recently shared my renditions of the character names:
This also led me to find out that Giorno Giovanna's Stand in the official Norwegian subtitles of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is called Gylden vind: a calque of an English name that was only coined due to licensing issues around the original Japanese referencing Prince's The Gold Experience — ain't that something?
Progress on my original fanime series is also slow, but at least now I've resolved to abandon the idea of having the whole show be in my conlang. I did manage to translate at least the entire first half of the first episode up to the eyecatch, so I think I can call that good enough and maybe make a conlang dub of that as "bonus material".
So now, before I can make the prescoring of episode 1, I just need to quickly make a third draft of the first episode's script by copying from the second draft while adding back in some elements I cut from the first draft. Maybe I should just do that right now! Edit: Done!
Creating English subtitles for the Norwegian dub of The Secret of Cerulean Sand is still a bit tedious so I've kinda stalled out on that, though I did finish subtitling the first episode if nothing else.
I still haven't made my chart and tier list of anime I saw alone or on Blorptube in 2025.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2: