You had me at the MC is a chuuni. I’ll check it out!

Edit: yeah, this is fun already

It’s more that the West has just recently discovered Uma Musume. The show and the game it is based on has been enormously popular in Japan since its inception. I guess it just takes some time for a general audience to acclimate to the idea of racing horse girls.

As for the show itself, I haven’t watched it. However, I have seen it praised highly and seen some really, really well animated clips. They really put that gacha game money to use when they are animating this. @Endmaker@ani.social has had really great things to say about the story as well, and I have seen elsewhere that it is a great example of a sports anime (if that’s your thing).

Reina doing Daichi a huge favor. She is now both of their best friend.

Just caught up on this series. I think it’s interesting that we are getting some backstory for Saya, but what we have seen so far doesn’t match up with what these other survivors have said. Probably more backstory next chapter.

Don’t feel bad Naruto, I totally thought she had died from that conversation as well. Another great chapter.

I love how extremely meta this battle is. However, it is also confusing as hell. I absolutely got faked out by that ending page in the middle of the chapter.

Lila and the Winds of War sounds interesting. Seems like an interesting mix of history with supernatural plus a lot of room for philosophical debate.

Despite it being a short, holiday week this past week here in the US, I have been absolutely slammed with work. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to watch any anime for the past two weeks now. So, I thought I might as well provide a bit of a meta update here in the comments.

Year End Awards

I think that for this year I am going to move the 2025 Anime and Manga year-end awards into January (probably late Jan). One of the main points of feedback I got from that process last year is that it felt weird to vote on the awards while the Fall season was still airing. So, we can fix that! I think late January might work better since the beginning of a new season is always busy, so let’s give it a couple weeks to settle down first.

I have been absolutely slammed with work the past couple weeks, so I have read very little and am behind on just about everything. However, there are two series that ended this past week that I was reading and I wanted to at least try to capture my thoughts on them.

• Sometimes Even Reality Is a Lie! / Real mo Tama ni wa Uso o Tsuku

I have followed this series basically since the translations started (6 years ago!) and it finally wrapped up after 240 chapters. Overall, this series has been really great. It started out as a silly romcom that featured lots of cross dressing and a socially anxious gamer girl. It slowly evolved into a pretty heartfelt romance. Then, finally, it kept the story going after the ship set sail and they had to figure out their lives after high school. Looking back on it now, I never felt like it really dropped off at any point, it just kept being solid the whole way through. It’s been a lot of fun and the meme credit pages have been great to match. If you are looking for a series to binge, you could do a lot worse than this one.

• Senpai, Can I Have a Moment? / Senpai, Chotto ii Desu ka?

This series basically centered around a kouhai that is a bit clueless about how things work since she was so sheltered growing up, but a kindhearted senpai gets roped into helping answer her questions. Cue romcom hijinks and a cast of wacky characters. I enjoyed this series, but I don’t really think it is too special, and I could imagine a lot of people might not enjoy the leads too much. Neither of them are very expressive and a romance between two kuudere doesn’t really get the sparks flying. The ending was pretty satisfying, so it doesn’t feel too rushed at the end.

I commute to work on the MBTA commuter rail. I can confirm that all the trains look like this.

I am going to remove this as this is the anime community, but feel free to repost to !manga@ani.social instead.

This kind of thing can be extremely subjective…but if we are talking about series that I just didn’t click with (in LN form) it would be Overlord. I got a couple volumes in, but it was never really grabbing me and keeping my attention. I absolutely love the art for the series, and I have enjoyed what I have seen of the anime, but the LNs felt more like a chore to me.

This series had a couple of manga chapters translated and I liked it a lot. However, the SL dropped the series, so it has been a year or so since the last chapter was translated. I’m looking forward to more of the story.

It’s like she’s talking directly to me…

I hadn’t really thought about how dark this world is for all of the side characters. They basically can’t do anything if Hareta isn’t involved. It feels like we are nearing a climax of some kind.

I spent a lot of time riding trains this week, which meant some time to check different series out. So, here are some quick impressions of series that I found/caught up on:

• Gokumama: The Story of a Yakuza Who Became a Mom

This was my favorite of all the series I found this past week. It is about a yakuza boss that is shot and killed, but then wakes up again, in the body of a woman that is actively in labor, delivering a child. It has been a really touching, heartfelt series about the trials and tribulations of being a single mom in Japan. That means both the administrative side (procedure for getting a family registry) as well as the physiological (there are whole chapters about the difficulties of breastfeeding for instance). I have enjoyed this series a lot so far.

• That is Needed for a Villainous Aristocrat

A story about somebody reincarnated as the villain in a fantasy novel. I have actually enjoyed it a lot. He really tries to embrace playing the villain role while at the same time using that to shield those around him from having to go through the horrors that he has to deal with in the shadows. It’s been a bit of an interesting take on things.

• The Demon King’s Educator

Got a couple chapters into this one and I’m not sure I will continue. Basically a human commoner is kicked out of a teaching position at a school for nobility despite being incredibly capable. So, he is instead recruited to become the private tutor for the daughters of the Demon King. It is a setup that seems like it has potential, but it feels like this is an adaptation that is going way too fast. Problems are presented and solved all in the same chapter and there isn’t too much of a through line. If the story sounds interesting, I would just recommend finding the LN instead if it is available.

• Cute Girl I Saw at the Station Today

I am a couple chapters into this one as well and I have been enjoying it. Basic premise is that a salaryman that is really into cosmetics/fashion is stuck having to repress that kind of stuff because, well, he is a middle-aged man that wears a suit to work all the time. So, he ends up admiring a girl he sees frequently at the train station that is able to indulge in and wear all the stuff that he likes so much. There are zero stakes to this series, just small little vignettes for the most part. There is a nice twist though that I will leave for the reader to discover.

I had started this at one point, but dropped it after a couple of chapters (all that was released at the time). My impression was the same as yours, so I was going to let it build up and binge it. Now that it is over, I will have to go back into it.

Code Geass is one of those series that I haven’t watched yet, but I have only heard great things about. So, it’s interesting to see a different take on it. From what I do know from clips and discussions is that Lelouch is meant to be that way, an over the top character. I can see how that can be polarizing though (I don’t have a lot of love for Light either tbh).

I have been super busy irl with work, so I haven’t really gotten a chance to watch anything this past week. I think that is partly because of how busy I have been and partly because nothing this season has really grabbed me. I have enjoyed some series, but nothing has made me try to absolutely jam it into a packed schedule. As an example, Campfire Cooking is one that I continue to enjoy, but I have already read past season 2 content in the manga. So, I know what is going to happen, and it will always be there for me in the future. Touring After the Apocalypse is the one I am probably most engaged with this season, but it’s not the kind of show that makes me really prioritize it when I am busy.

This season is going to stand in stark contrast to next season though. Winter 2026 looks crazy stacked. I just did a quick scroll through the Anichart page and there are at least 6 that I am way more excited about than anything this season.

Fylgja’s memories turned out to be pretty straightforward. I was expecting a multipart tale. Looking forward to seeing more Otr backstory next.