Such a fantastic series. I miss the Mystery Research Club antics each week.

I love this manga so much. Kaguhara is such a ridiculous character.

Just happened to catch your comment from the local feed and wanted to point out that this thread is in the old community. It looks like shinobu is still kicking and picked up the second cour of Nier as the first season (see the links for show info all point to season 1) and is creating threads for the episodes. The thread from rikka for the new episode is here. Just want to make sure that your comment ends up somewhere where rikka will count it for engagement towards creating subsequent episode threads.

Honestly surprised that shinobu still lives though. The little crontab that could.

I haven’t watched it, but it looks like Girls Band Cry. The 13th episode and finale is airing in a couple days. Not sure what episode this is from.

This is one of the limitations of the holo project that shinobu is based on. There are sometimes shows that it doesn’t pick up when it is airing for one reason or another. Then, later down the line, it can randomly pick up a show or episode that it hadn’t detected before.

The technical reasons for this come down to the difficulties of parsing raw html or text strings of torrent titles. Often times, the titles aren’t formatted in just the way holo expects, so it won’t detect the episodes that release. This issue was one of the main motivating factors in creating a whole new bot that doesn’t rely on this method for the creation of discussion threads. Coming to !anime@ani.social with the new season.

I am so torn up that this show is over (for now). As a huge fan of the source, I was so incredibly anxious about this series before it began airing. There are any number of ways it could have gone all wrong and it isn’t a story I thought would connect with such a broad audience. However, in my wildest dreams, I hadn’t expected the show to be this good. Phenomenal job all around. I can’t believe that this is only the second show directed by Keiichirou Saitou, the first being Bocchi the Rock! That is a talent that I will be keeping an eye on going forward.

Awesome episode once again. This show does flashbacks in a way that no other show does. I don’t mind at all that we had a break or two in the action to get a flashback, because the stories that they tell are always great. The flashback showing Himmel’s party fighting that other dungeon boss was great (loved that Heiter was just having an off day).

However, the flashback with Frieren and Serie is the one I found most interesting. I remember reading the manga and coming away with the impression that Serie was…if not evil…at least didn’t have virtuous intentions. She always had a menacing aura about her, both in the way she was drawn and the way she acted. An example is that the sequence animated here, where a young Flamme holds hands with and travels alongside Serie feels like it is a mother reminiscing about her child that has long since left the home and accomplished great things. However, in the manga, it feels colder, like Serie is more detached from Flamme, driving home the point that she must have trained Flamme on a whim because she doesn’t seem to feel anything at her passing (chapter 53 if you want to read this sequence yourself). At least that is the impression I had when reading it.

Finally, the OST this episode was great. It was able to transition so smoothly between these gentle flashback scenes to suddenly driving up the intensity in the Frieren battle. The animation is of course great, but I just wanted to call out the OST as well since I think it adds a lot to both halves of this episode.

Frieren hugging Methode caught me off guard and cracked me up. If only Sein had stuck around with the group long enough to befriend Methode, the onee-san of his dreams.

What an episode. I had said in previous threads that I didn’t really remember this trial too well from reading the manga back when it came out. I have been rereading the manga after watching each episode and I think this whole mage exam arc has been done a huge service through the adaptation. The quality of the animation and choreography of the action scenes that occur all through this arc have been stellar.

I might have forgotten a lot of this portion of the manga, but I will not soon be forgetting that Ubel vs. Ubel fight scene from this episode. The perspective shifts in that sequence from first to third person and back were done so smoothly and the choreography was clear in that it was easy to follow what was happening the whole time. The fight against the Sense clone was also great. The quick cut to Sense stabbing through Edel’s chest after the attempt at hypnosis was so well done.

Back when this show started, I kept waiting for the quality to drop. I just figured there was no way that they could keep up this quality for all 28 episodes. If anything, the production quality has only improved. This production has gone nuts and I hope that the team can stay together for the inevitable future seasons to come.

I am looking forward to the group’s strategy next episode as they are mostly working together now. Somebody still has to deal with that Sense replica while Fern and Frieren are going to strategize for how to handle the Frieren replica.

Obligatory shout out that you might get more answers in !anime@ani.social, either as a post or a comment in the weekly general thread as compared to a meme community like this one.

It sounds like you want to avoid melodrama or manufactured tension. Here are a couple recent shows that popped into my head that generally fit across a couple genres:

• Horimiya (2021) - A really well done romcom set in high school. There is a second season that aired recently, but the first season tells a pretty complete story, the second season is mainly side stories.
• Campfire Cooking (2023) - If romance isn’t your thing, you could check out this series that is a “slow-life isekai” that focuses on good food and fun companions.
• Bocchi the Rock! (2022) - Not into either romance or cooking? Check this series out for anime girls doing music instead. This series came out of nowhere to become a lot of people’s favorite of the season/year.
• Frieren (2023-currently airing) - Think Lord of the Rings, but from an elf’s perspective in that Frieren, an elf, has a functionally infinite lifespan. This fantasy series quickly became the highest rated series on MAL despite still airing its first season. It has its emotional moments, but the series so far has been an excellent adaptation of an excellent manga.

Denken in episode 20:

Denken in this episode:

That included me.

The second round begins! I personally wonder what a unified group of test takers could have done to this dungeon. The fights against the replicas would have been interesting. The Laufen vs. Laufen fighting animation was great and I wish it would have lasted longer. Overall, the coordination of Denken’s group seems pretty good. It’s too bad the young girl got trapped and had to leave, but if she struggled against gargoyles, then Shadow Frieren was going to chew her up.

I bet all of you thought that Dungeon Meshi was the only show this season that was going to have a mimic educational segment. Well, Frieren should know more about mimics than just about anybody else out there. They are pretty much her mortal enemy. It’s something that her and Chilchuck can bond over.

Also, I remember when I was reading the manga, it wasn’t until about this point that I really started to get how broken Fern is. It had been mentioned before that she was the youngest to become third class, etc. However, for Sense, a notoriously strict First Class Mage, to come out and say how exceptional Fern is, helped it sink in. I don’t think it really counts as a spoiler to say that Fern continues to be a badass as this story goes.

Also, these two seem to be getting along a bit better than at first.

The replica even nailed Frieren’s uninterested expression. With an episode next week titled “Perfect Replicas” I think we know which type of fight this is going to be for Denken and co.

Start throwing grimoires around to distract her!

On the list of running Frieren gags, Stark randomly coming across master warriors and getting trained is one of my favorites. It might not be as good as Frieren with mimics, but it is pretty good. Overall, this was a slow episode to allow for a cooldown following the intensity of the finale to the first round of the exam.

Lots of great character moments this episode:

• The return of pouty Fern faces. It came back with a vengeance this episode.
• Grandpa Denken treating his (metaphorical) child and grandchild to dinner (also Laufen just rolling with being spoiled like a grandchild)
• Übel turning her eyes toward Land and wanting to get to know him better, much to his dismay.
• Kanne and Lawine basically having a date and meeting up with Frieren and Fern
• Stark doing his warrior thing after being recruited to kill some monsters by Wirbel

Just a solid episode that had to juggle lots of characters going about their daily lives when they have a day to relax. Second round of the exam is coming up. I don’t remember it super well, so I am looking forward to it!

I give a lot of credit to the animation and voice acting they have done for Übel. She seems crazy to a whole depth that I didn’t perceive in the manga. Like, yeah, she was a bit nuts in the manga…but seeing her animated and voiced I realize that I had underestimated her.

Demon King < Frieren < Mimic

I always love that this is one of the official character visuals released for the show:

What a great episode this week.

• Denken gets to channel his inner Chumbawamba and gets knocked down, but he gets up again.
• Frieren gets to show off in an extremely showy way, basically announcing to all the entrants, the proctors, and even Serie that she is here and hasn’t lost a step from her demon king fighting days.
• Kanne finally gets to utilize the rain that has been teased for a couple episodes now to basically spirit bomb Richter.
• Stark gets to live his best life with no rules.

The animation this episode was gorgeous. One thing I especially want to point out is that I loved the way they animated Frieren breaking the barrier. It was so colorful and dynamic! In the manga, it is drawn much simpler (ch. 45, pp. 4-5). Also, I loved how Sense has an umbrella at the ready while Genau is done in by his confidence in the barrier and is left standing in the rain.

Looking forward to round 2 of the exam! I haven’t been re-reading the manga until after an episode airs, and I frankly don’t remember a lot of the details of the next round. So, it’s probably as close to going in blind as I can be.

Denken is the absolute best. Lose a fight? Lose your stille? Don’t have any mana? You still have your fists, right? Then we’re not out of this.

You know from his thinking that Denken has seen some shit in his life and had to fight like hell to get through it. The thought of continuing without mana doesn’t even cross the minds of the youngsters around him. Denken hardly thinks twice.

I love this Denken moment so much. Just pure determination and tenacity. The youngsters around him have already given up, probably thinking about doing the next test in three years time. However, Denken can’t wait, he needs this now. So, he falls back to the one thing that humanity has used to fight since prehistoric times, brute force.

I remember reading this chapter (45), back when it came out, expecting Denken to utilize some clever trick or mind games that he picked up over the years after his defeat to Frieren. However, sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer. If all else fails, you can always count on your own body.