Dear God…

Female characters stripping and/or having sex with something/someone is a frequent solution to any problem

Reading all that reawakening some psychic damage I received from the aforementioned terrible book I read. I’m sure I had blocked these memories from my mind as part of some PTSD response. Allow me to elaborate.

The first woman the MC sees after he’s been isekai’d is an elf. In this new world, humans and demi-humans (like elves) don’t get along. Since our MC isn’t originally from this world he says that the beautiful, near-naked elf looks beautiful. She can’t believe this because clearly elves are revolting to humans. So naturally she has sex with him. Because CLEARLY he’s lying and would be far too disgusted to have sex with an elf, revealing his true colors!

I wish I was making that up.

Episode confusingly starts with a flashback to when Wilhelm from Re:Zero visits a 14-year-old wine-drinking Noel. I mean, look at this guy:

We learn that Overdeath was killed fighting some new super strong monster that defies comprehension and has the power to destroy the world. Yay! More plot!

Back in the present, Wilhelm rejects Noel’s clan application, which only fires him up more. He boldly declares they’ll become Regalia in 6 months!

@[email protected]

Noel levels up to Strategist. Then decides he’s going to do naughty naughty things to the top B-ranker. Scary!

Can’t wait to see what Noel is plotting!

OMFG this episode! My nerves were already getting wrecked at the start. Alicia’s second guessing herself. Duke’s giving her the cold shoulder. Then this masterful display happens:

@[email protected]

I couldn’t be more proud for our Villainess.

Alicia decides to be true to herself AND to her ideals as a villainess. Liz bears witness to this display and we as viewers receive another shocking development: Liz’s activation of the brainwashing power . It seems to me that Liz’s power is triggered by her negative emotions. We know girls used to bully her so she might’ve gotten upset and that triggered the brainwashing. Here she seems to gets jealous, which triggers it.

Yes… yes… we are ALL upset that the prince’s love interest is a basically a child. But seriously, this whole chibi sequence was too cute. Alicia is over the moon that Liz thinks of her as a romance rival but affirms she wants to be a full rival in everything.

Freckles-chan tries to turn people against Alicia by falsifying a recording. What was cool here was that people stand up for Alicia, so it’s clear that Liz’s brainwashing doesn’t work on everyone. There must be some special conditions but right now I cannot fathom what they might be. I also liked how Liz seemed to be actively trying to learn from Alicia. Alicia is doing well with her Watcher work.

Afterwards we finally get to meet Mel!

I was straight up wrong about Mel. She’s just an Earth magic user who is also Duke’s spy. Earth magic lets you manipulate sounds, so that’s why she spoke with an omnipresent voice. And since she’s been spying on Alicia, she’s a huge fan and knows Alicia wants to be a Villainess! No supernatural entity stuff nor game knowledge here.

And if all these stunning revelations weren’t enough, at the end we find out that Will is the older brother of the current King! Now maybe we’ll find out why the portrait of the previous king is missing in the castle. And for sure we’ll find out why Will was sentenced to exile in Roana.

Right? It’s crazy how doing just simple changes make it go from “omg this is so stupid” to “okay, that’s perfectly reasonable” while still getting the point across.

as far as recommendations go I would put Death March to the Parallel Rhapsody forward

Oh, I did enjoy that anime even if it’s a bit ridiculous.

it feels more like a travel log with some occasional fights in between

Based on how you described it, it also sounds a bit similar to The False Hero in that it’s more of a travel log with comfy vibes so I think I’d definitely enjoy it. Thanks for the suggestion! Added it to my reading list now!

Are you sure you didn’t fall for an AI book scam?

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the book was published over a year before ChatGPT’s release. Also that’s not the impression I got from the writing. When I looked up the author, he had another series he was still writing as well. My guess is he would jump back and forth between the two tales, but would also just publish a book without even bothering to reread it and didn’t have an editor. He WAS rapidly pumping them out every few months and I blamed that for the very unpolished nature of the book. If anything, I was more suspicious of the ratings as the book was rated over 4 stars, which is absurd for how bad it was.

Just for kicks I looked up my book review:

“By the third book the writing gets extremely sloppy. I found myself constantly reporting plot content errors. Let me reiterate this point. As a reader, I was pointing out how the author of the work was clearly wrong describing aspects of the world they themselves had created. Names of characters and languages were changed at random simply because the author forgot what he had named the character before. Other side characters were forgotten entirely even if they had been waiting for the main character to get back to them. Numerous times the main character inexplicably forgot his own exploits, claiming he had never done a task he had literally performed several pages prior. It became a struggle to get any sense of the plot with things being so inconsistent.”

OMG, I forgot that the author would misspell people’s names constantly! Like in one chapter a person would show up, “Hi, I’m Blake Cashmir” and then in a later chapter, “If it isn’t Black Cushmire!” Like it really did feel like the author was just banging them out without doing any proofreading or outlining or anything.

I tried picking it up where the Anime ended but only got a chapter or 2 in before I stopped. I really enjoyed the anime and want more Fran in my life but just couldn’t get into it at the time.

I would probably recommend reading from the beginning. Or from where you meet Fran. If the LN is a 10/10, the anime is a 6/10 at best. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the anime but it waters down a lot of the world-building and character development. And Fran is an amazing character to see develop. Definitely would recommend more Fran in your life!

I was going through Didn’t I say to make my abilities average again.

And I totally forgot about Average Abilities! I loved the anime and always wanted to know more about the world with how the anime had a teaser ending! I might have to check that out now, especially since you’ve read it twice.

So I’m a Spider, So What? - I would say it’s worth a read

Well, that’s another vote for Spider Isekai! Yeah, even with the anime people were upset with the episodes without Spider-chan. The one thing the anime did really well was disguise that there was a time skip. I loved that there were still enough hints about the time-skip that the revelation feels good and mind-blowing. I’ve also read a bit of the Spider Isekai wiki to know there’s a lot more depth to things than what’s presented in the anime. As time passes, it does seem less likely we’ll get that season 2, which is a shame.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Very appreciated!

or My Dress-Up Darling

or Maid Sama!

or Komi Can’t Communicate

or Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible

or Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro

or Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

or Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me

or Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie

or…

But yeah, seems like a overly basic plot, right?

So I just finished up Failure Frame Book 8. If you’re familiar with the anime, that goes up to the end of book 4. And there’s not a whole lot to distinguish it from other “my isekai power is so weak” series, especially when stuff like Arifuerta exists.

But the books are definitely better than what the anime shows. First, the book has a lot of inner monologue for the MC which doesn’t translate well to animation. Also, the book fleshes out all the characters of class 2-C more. You start to learn all of their motivations and backstories whereas the anime just gives you a sneak peak. And in Book 8? It was like everything exploded. Dynamics changed, lines were drawn, secrets were revealed… my mind was blown. And it wasn’t cheap gimmicks or deus ex machina either. Everything in the previous books seemed to come together and some of the biggest surprises weren’t even from the MC!

Reincarnated as a Sword is only up to audiobook 4? But the books are already up to volume 15! Catch up already! More people need to experience Fran!

Anyway, my LN Reading List right now is basically:

• Reincarnated as a Sword
• Failure Frame
• Trapped in a Dating Sim

Solo-Leveling is finished and I read all those. And for more indie (ie Kindle Unlimited) stuff I have:

• The Villainess is a SS+ Rank Adventurer
• The False Hero
• Rise of the Cheat Potion Maker

I was reading The Weakest Summoner but it was never THAT good and the 9th book read like a bad fanfic and I just couldn’t do it any more.

AAAANNNNYYYWAAAYYY… I have a bad tendency to just reread Reincarnated as a Sword on loop instead of checking out new things so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know. It’s always such a HUGE gamble to check out anything on Kindle Unlimited. Sometimes they are great, but sometimes the writing is so bad I want to gouge my eyes out. You know how you can report typos and stuff on Kindle? One book was so bad I was reporting PLOT errors. Like, where the protagonist literally FORGOT the last chapter had just happened and then did something that made absolutely no sense. I ended up calling him Amnesia-MC.

Anyway, I know stuff that’s not on Kindle Unlimited is going to generally be a lot higher quality but I don’t want to buy into a book series and then it sucks either. I have been thinking about getting into So I’m a Spider So What or Arifuerta since I love the animes so much though.

Thanks! And wow, the Bount arc? I think that was the first “big mistake” filler arc that everyone universally hated. Whelp, might have to give the new stuff a try. Couldn’t hurt at least.

The slightly unfortunate thing is that the Pixel 6 is a bit old and in the world of cell phones if it’s older than last gen then it’s a relic. That by itself is going to make finding a case more difficult, but definitely not impossible.

The other unfortunate thing is that most cases online are going to be cheap chinese garbage. This is especially true on Amazon and eBay. Even some “officially licensed” stuff is pretty crap, as they just take their existing case and slap what amounts to little more than a sticker on it.

So basically you’re going to want to find a quality case manufacturer and go directly through them. I found a case I liked on Amazon from SkinIt and have been using that for my Samsung phone. I would recommend going through their website though as it has a lot more options. They have some anime choices like DBZ, Cowboy Beebop, and My Hero, and you can even custom upload an image. This link is for the full silicone “pro” case but they also have a cheaper clear case option: https://www.skinit.com/collections/google-pixel-6-pro-case

Nobody really understands magic, and the writers just have to make up shit to fill up the pages at the expense of a logical conclusion as to exactly why one side won and the other side lost.

Reminds me of Bojack Horseman where they’re fighting the improv troop on the boat and they’re literally just making stuff up that’s absolutely ridiculous. I think this can work well when the series establishes the rules and conditions for powers and then doesn’t break those rules (ie pull anything out of their ass). Sadly we only got the most basic explanation of the rules of magic in Demon Lord 2099 so it comes off as a “say wut now?”

That being said, the fight basically boiled down to Veltol surpassing the Familia device and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need the extra nonsense about leylines and wordless casting.

Okay, real talk: is Bleach still good? I used to absolutely LOVE the non-filler arcs but I gave up on it after they did the whole “Final Bankai” thing and then were like “JUST KIDDING! It’s not over! We need to milk this cash-cow for all its worth!”

Overall a good episode thanks to some nice character development. I mean, the fighting was better from last episode but still pretty silly. Mercenary commander guy just picking people up by their heads and stabbing them and then one-shotting the enemy commander. Rietz’s duel was descent, even if the finishing blow was just a slash across the armor that drew no blood.

@[email protected]

“Hey, I know you were like, on death’s door and everything and it’s a miracle you’re even alive and you’re probably weak from blood loss and DEFINITELY shouldn’t be standing up right now but… here’s a baby still covered in vernix to hold!”

But the character development was really good. I especially loved how Ars is remembering all the fallen soldiers at the end. He knows all their stories and is genuinely sad about their deaths. They’re not just a statistic to him. They’re faces and memories.

Right? He’s literally on death’s door. Stands up. “Hey, hold this baby.”

I started watching it but still need to finish it. It’s pretty funny, as it parodies harem tropes. And one of the redeeming aspects is that the MC genuinely seems to want to make every girl in the harem happy.

I will say you probably don’t need to use the 3 episode rule for this one. The first episode by itself is a good litmus test, IMHO.

I need to go back and finish season 1. It’s a ridiculous premise but I like the fact that the MC is actually trying to love all the girls.

Seems universally agreed that the animation this episode was tragic. Like, forget the dragon mouth flapping like it’s a wind-up toy, they didn’t even bother to spend more than 10 minutes drawing it here:

Almost all the Dragon’s movements were super janky. The special effects helped bandage the situation but definitely were not enough. Still I imagine it’s an issue with the medium moving from LN to animation and the studio just not being able to handle anything more grandiose with the time and budget they had.

Marcus’s last words were appreciably pathetic. “You’re going to do the same evil thing you got mad at me for?” “Duh, I’m the Demon Lord.” The moments of reflection with Machina at the end were descent enough. The love confession didn’t even feel forced!

One thing I did really enjoy this episode though was the audio production. The music is great. And the epilogue during the credits felt REALLY good all-around. Makes me interested to see where they go now that Marcus is defeated.

Oh fun, we get to see the race’s conclusion! All the racing finishes up after about 8-1/2 minutes. It feels a little quick given the pacing of the last few episodes but it was still very satisfying.

I expected Kanata to get 4th. There wasn’t much plot about which girl he was going to pick and without that you knew it wouldn’t come up. Still with all the drama they added you really didn’t know which way his battle with the Ferrari would go until the very end.

Aiba’s battle with Yudai reminded me of an old episode of Initial D where a racer drops behind Takahashi’s RX7 because he chickened out from racing side-by-side.

The race “epilogue” was fun to watch as well. All the girls clamoring for Kanata was great. So there’s Ren, Mami, and Nozomi all vying for Kanata. And that’s just the ones in the immediate MFG sphere. Here’s Mami not-so-subtlety showing her butt to Kanata.

@[email protected]

Too bad Kanata’s pockets are near useless for keeping girl’s socials. Aiba getting mad that #7 kissed Sawatori was very in-character. Sawatori’s aloof nature handled that exchange expertly. Aiba’s expression was priceless. “What do you mean she’s a highschooler?!”

I knew Ogata was going to suggest switching cars after he talked about wanting to see Kanata in a better car in an earlier episode. But I also know the whole premise of the show is “underpowered car goes fast!” so Kanata was not going to have it. Sounds like they’re going to Turbo it up to 300HP so it’ll still be “underpowered”, which makes sense. To get to 400-500HP you’d need a very large turbo with a long spool-up time and that’s not optimal for MFG races. Huh, this sounds almost exactly like a plot-line from Initial D!

We finally get to see the GR Supra rival now! It’s going to be a clash of Toyotas.