I finished Spy X Family season 3 a couple days ago. Wholesome and actually a show you could watch with kids. Not amazing but I would give it a solid 7.4/10 I find its just a joy to watch the maincast in their daily struggles.

Watching Frieren S2 and quietly seething because we're apparently just getting 10 eps this season

friend got me into Chinese anime so now im watching Lord of Mystery

pretty cool, never knew the Chinese did anime so im excited to get into it because after seeing one episode the animation is great the plot is interesting and part of me thinks that the CPC would crack down on any capitalist brainworms so if the anime had cringe takes it wouldve never been approved in the first place

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:

• Cirno → Kjølina
• Daiyousei → Storfe
• Remilia Scarlet → Remilie Skarlagen
• Flandre Scarlet → Flandra Skarlagen
• Rumia → Lumia
• Patchouli Knowledge → Patsjuli Allviter
• Koakuma → Smådjevel
• Chen → Chéng
• Lily White → Lilly Hvitveis
• Letty Whiterock → Letty Snøhvit
• Aunn Komano → Aum Komano
• Medicine Melancholy → Medisin Melankoli
• Parsee Mizuhashi → Palusi Mizuhashi
• Prismriver Sisters → Søstrene Prismevière

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.

Anime

'Tis Time for Torture Princess - The One Joke Show is back. Guess what, the One Joke is still funny. If you're not watching this, it is very high quality. Better than it ever had any right to be, credit to the original author for committing to the bit in the most earnest way possible. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, you will either love it or hate it, but you should definitely try it.

Frieren S2 - Still batting a high average, and I like the SOL stuff

Oshi no Ko - Having read the manga, this is mostly just for a giggle, but I do like the continued jaundiced look at entertainment/idols/etc.

Jujutsu Kaisen - I love some battle shounen slop. So far this has been fun.

Manga

Hyakkano/The 100 Girlfriends who Really Really Really Really REALLY Love You - The manga continues to deliver, Nozawa and Nakamura are truly incredible. As the cast grows, so do the best chapters (the daily life ones), so I'm here for the long haul. Excited to see who voices Naddy in the next season (which is supposedly later this year).

I should rewatch Millennium Actress sometime.

On the Chinese side of things, I've been watching Shiguang Dailiren (Time Agents), better known as Link Click

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.

Feeling like "I should become a bigger movie nerd" is such a mood lol

Watching Paranoia Agent with my mom because I showed her Welcome To The NHK awhile ago and I'm assuming she looked up "anime like NHK" or maybe it was "anime with adult cast" or something because she was asking if I could download NANA, Shirobako, Paranoia Agent, Wave Listen To Me, etc. Already saw some of them and was planning to watch a lot of the rest on her list so started with PA since it's only 12 episodes and I've been meaning to rewatch it. It's good. The animation has a lot of great shots and it's cool seeing Kon do some TV stuff. I wish he got to do more TV series. It seems like all of the anime auteurs filter out to doing movies, at least in the 2000s.

Also rewatched Nijiro Hotaru/Rainbow Fireflies which was really good. The gesture drawing-like animation in that's so good. If you freeze frame it the characters are all gloopy and weird, like a gesture drawing, but it captures realistic movement like no other anime movie I've seen. Especially when they have background/sideground characters animated, it's so lifelike. A lot of anime, especially TV stuff, takes its cues from stage plays so it's nice seeing something less staged and more dynamic. There's a short early on of a boy walking down a paved mountain road and it gives off a sensation of space way better than most. You actually feel like it's outside and lacks the walled-in claustrophobia of a lot of anime.

Oops, all manga update on my end.

Opus Little 19 chapter meta commentary on artists and their work by Satoshi Kon. A lot of this felt familiar/reused with the anime production episode of Paranoia Agent.

Chainsaw Man (up to vol 12) I'm not usually one for the trendy battle shounen series of the moment, but I like this one a lot. I just started the second big arc, so I'm just waiting to pick up the next books to see where this goes. This genre works a lot better for me as a comic, so I'll probably branch out to whatever my library has.

Dororo Peak edgy Tezuka. I'm about halfway through this one, but I'm enjoying it a lot. I've been a fan of chanbara action since I was a kid, and this one is super weird since everyone looks like a little blorbo. I'll probably get into Astro Boy or Buddha or something else soonish.

Manga

Finished Kaguya-Sama: Love is War and the spinoff We Want to Talk About Kaguya-Sama, which is about two unhinged members of the mass media club, one of whom is a Kaguya fangirl while the other draws fan manga shipping Kaguya and Shirogane. They're both pretty solid, obviously the main series is better. I'm honestly surprised how negative the online reaction to the last arc is when it's more or less fine? Really disappointed they're skipping like 80 chapters for the anime adaptation, Ishigami and Miko were robbed.

Anime

Finally finished Log Horizon S2 by powering through 14 episodes in a single day at 2x speed. Deleted S3 without watching it. Absolute trash. I don't know if there's even a single positive thing I could say about it in retrospect. Taking a break from my backlog to watch some seasonals.

Golden Kamuy Final Season continues to be peak, the Sapporo Beer Factory arc slapped. The constantly shifting allegiances and all these different people trying to use Asirpa to their own ends results in so many characters being fleshed out. And sure, plenty of them are shallow, but they're all quirky weirdos.

Oshi No Ko S3 is kinda meh so far. Aqua's relationship drama is as uninteresting as it is creepy, and Ruby does not have the sauce when it comes to the 5d chess mindgames. Hopefully it improves.

Frieren S2 has been almost entirely the more boring generic fantasy journey stuff, which is fine I guess, but I really long for the first 3 episodes again. The Southern Hero was kinda neat, I guess, but definitely feels like an episodic adventure that will never come up again.

#Anime

Frieren is back, baby. Idk what it is about this show but it fills me with a buttload of wanderlust. When I was a decade or so younger, I lived out of my truck for years, often just camping in the woods for months at a time. I do hope to get back to doing that again, but there's a lot more "bandits" on the road to worry about, compared to 15 years ago. Frieren makes me yearn for it though.

Fate /Strange Fake - I never know half of what's going on with these Fate shows, but I enjoy them nonetheless. There was a prequel that was released as a movie or something I had to go hunting down.

Oshi No Ko - I started reading the manga after season 1 and I gotta say, it kinda fell off. Those first few episodes of the anime tell a story that I just don't feel like the manga carries to the end. There's a supernatural side to it that never really gets fleshed out and I don't know if I'll stick around for the end of the anime. I'm watching for now, at least.

Tis Time for Torture Princess - I wish I still smoked weed, this just seems like the perfect show to light up a bowl and laugh at. My sober ass still enjoys it quite a bit.

Jack-Of-All-Trades, Party of None - I had some time to kill one night and I decide to pick up a random winter season off of myanimelist. I chose this. Wasn't bad, not particularly special. It's another show where the MC is overpowered as hell, but there's a secret behind it and gives it a bit of intrigue. I picked u pthe manga and I'll probably stick with it a bit to see how it goes.

ChainsawMan Movie - Watched it last night. Well done, loved it. Poor, poor Denji.

There's No Freaking Way etc. - I just noticed it's back, guess I'll watch the few episodes of that that are already out this season. It's cute.

#Manga

Hajime No Ippo - things have come to a crawl. I worry the mangaka is gonna die before finishing, it just seems likely with so much of the story left. He's been sick, he was in a car accident, he was doing research, there was a double issue he skipped. There's only been a couple chapters out for the past couple months. I worry.

Dandadana - still killing it, if you didn't like it before, you won't like it now.

Frieren - back on break. :(

Chainsaw Man - love it, even if I lose track of which girl is which demon. lol.

One Punch Man - seems to be moving again. I'm enjoying it. Admittedly they've had a couple opportunities to end it, but I still find it funny.

I've been watching Jujutsu Kaisen (anime) for the first time and I just finished Season 1 and..

Well, it's good, to me. Didn't find anything I particularly disliked.. Maybe because for me it's an anime where i I can relax and watch cool fights interspersed with a somewhat interesting magic system (I've been exposed to some critiques of it, but maybe I just glossed over the problems?) and loveable character dynamics with the three (Yuji, Nobara and Megumi) and Gojo.

Something I'll comment right now, is that comparing it to a movie like (that I also just recently watched) Kimi no Na wa (Your Name...) where at first I was enjoying the aspect of the first half, then got nervous as the plot moved forward and basically was screaming at my screen because:

And so, compare that to JJK where I was tense but I knew that if they die, they'd die fighting and saving friends and stuff.. I just really enjoy hero shonen stuff okay?! I know it's like, less.. complex and doesn't address much themes that don't already exist like clan stuff, the dichotomy of good and evil, saving people.. The stuff that every anime/manga has already touched on, but.. can you forgive a gal for liking the thrilling yet funny sometimes stories that help me calm down where I don't stare into a wall contemplating my very identity..? Yep! That's a writer for you!

Anyways, aside from that, I also just liked the music of these animes that have hype battle scenes. Just because of their rock/metal aspects that get me pumping and moving through life, and even though I often... go into way more in depth than necessary, (looking at you Attack on Titan, I still dislike the ending in a lot of ways..!) it's what allows me to enjoy life in a less.. ahem, connected way to real life.

Like, I wanna write something exactly like that where it's funny, thrilling yet aspects of tragedy bleeding through but not to the point of existential dread or anything. Chainsaw Man, is my like, exact type of series for this reason and FUJIMOTO I SWEAR IF THIS STORY DOESN'T END WITH ASADEN I WILL— removed for legal reasons

note: i gotta watch Frieren, but I focus on one anime at a time, aight?

That's.. about it! Will post a comment to this comment once I find a lot more to talk about~