Every week, I visit over 200 anime sites looking for posts that celebrate amazing moments in anime or otherwise blow me away with their wit and charm. These are my five favorite posts for the week. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
You can see a list of the sites I check here: Massive List of Sites!
Anime Hanabi
Anime Doesn’t Have A Problem with Girl Bosses!
I enjoy strong female characters. The corollary is that I get annoyed when people show disrespect to said characters. I have a theory about that, but why spoil a good mood? Let’s just say that I don’t dislike Rey because she’s a she. I don’t like her because she’s symptomatic of the kind of narrative rot that Chris talked about. So, yeah, I respect and seek out powerful female characters. As proof this is a good and honorable thing to do, please let me direct your attention to this post by momomanamu on the site Anime Hanabi. She makes a great case for girl bosses — and she has some even better examples! See if you can add anything to her selections!
More Post from Anime Hanabi
Arum Journal
Witch Hat Atelier Episode 6 Review – The Other Adult In The Atelier
Another week, another supremely enjoyable episode of Witch Hat Atelier. I’m starting to believe — with trepidation, I can assure you — that the show might keep up this pace and end up being as much fun to watch as the first six episodes were. Speaking of which, did they really top the fifth episode? I mean, well, if you saw it, you know what I mean. Turns out that ecargmura has an opinion about that, and she published it on Arum Journal. I don’t want to spoil the post, so I’ll just say this: I really enjoy how she drops hints based on what she’s seen in the manga, but never spoils anything. That just intensifies my reaction to the foreshadowing I saw on the screen! What’s she hint at this time? You know what to do to find out!
More Posts from Arum Journal
Kvasir369
Witch Hat Atelier – Episode 5 Review
It’s good to cultivate multiple opinions. I’m not saying I need to have my opinion validated. Quite the contrary. I seek other other opinions first without discrimination, then see if they agree with me. If they do? Then I can see why they took that position. If they disagree? Then also cool — I’ll learn to see a show I like (or didn’t like) from another perspective. Either way, I win! On the site Kvasir369, blogger kvasir369 gave me quite a lot to think about the fifth episode of Witch Hat Atelier. What’d he feel about episode 5? It’s be too simple to say he liked or disliked it — you’ll need to read the post to see the nuanced approach he took!
More Posts from Kvasir369
Pirates of the Burley Griffin
Rising of the Shield Hero Seasons 1 – 4 (2019 – 2025)
I have a complicated relationship with Rising of the Shield Hero. I actually reviewed season 2, after having barely finished the first season because of a character whose banal evilness annoyed me so much. I mean, a layered, intelligent villain in that role would have added so much! But, knowing I didn’t want my expectations to ruin the experience, I forced myself to review season 2. It was a long time before I could watch the other seasons. That’s why I have so much respect for John Samuel, who, on the site Pirates of the Burley Griffin, posted about his experience binging all four seasons. That took some doing! Also, I have to admit his perspective has me re-thinking some of my conclusions. I haven’t changed my mind yet, but he’s got me thinking about it. What’d he say? You know how to find out!
More Posts from Pirates of the Burley Griffin
Season 1 Episode 1 Anime Reviews
Backlog Busting – “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”
There’s been so much written about Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, it’s tempting to ask yourself, “What else is there to say?” With the sheer volume of perspectives and opinions that have already been shared, is there anything new to share? Well, it’s actually a trick question, because the answer’s obvious. Yes, there’s more to be said, because everyone hasn’t shared how the show resonated with them personally. So until everyone publishes that perspective, there’s always something else to say. And that’s not even counting people who change their minds!
That’s why I like this post by Jessi Silver on the site Season 1 Episode 1 Anime Reviews. No other site has published how Frieren touched her live (as far as I know!). No other post (again, as far as I know!) has shared what Jessi Silver shares in this post. I often think that what separates great art from good art is how applicable that work is to our own lives. Given that we all live different live with different experiences, it only makes sense that some art resonates and some doesn’t. After all, we can’t live each other’s lives! But we can share those experiences, like Jessi Silver does here! If you’re at all interested in deepening your appreciation of Frieren, this is the perfect chance!
More Posts from Season 1 Episode 1 Anime Reviews
Want to Read More of My Favorite Anime Post Lists?
Want to explore more amazing anime blog posts? Check out the previous editions of My Favorite Anime Community Posts!
TCrow, I’m adding more to my post ’cause I was again guilty of assuming people would be able to completely understand my thoughts without me laying it all out there, so I will lay out additional implications to Foxidna doing what she did in spamming the Yang magic attack, Jiwald.
I believe Foxidna’s spamming of Jiwald was to deliberately signal to Subaru to think hard about why she’d do that instead of thinking of how to overcome the exam for the entire group, leading to his thoughts drifting to Julius instead of the mission of passing the exam even though Ram wanted him to focus on the exam given Subaru is somebody who follows his instincts and hunches as shown by Episodes 69 and 70. While Subaru may believe that Foxidna isn’t the real Echidna, his being guided by her would still be the point of that scene.
As I have stated in the past, I believe the reason Satella knows what savepoints to choose for Subaru is that she has a soul link with Echidna, whose Authority allows for her to see into the future, meaning they are close collaborators, and I believe Foxidna much like Tea Party Echidna has the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, so she was attempting to advance Subaru to a point in which Satella could update his savepoint to a point favourable for him to succeed, which would be sometime after Subaru has gone down the stairs with Julius.
TCrow, here’s my write-up on Re:Zero Episode 72 (Season 4 Episode 6): https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=254
I believe any write-up that doesn’t talk about Julius’s issues is severely lacking given the actual content of the episode itself. I love how much planning Tappei put in Re:Zero with his having clearly planned Julius’s character arc since its inception as being what we see in this episode.
Julius’s arc impressed me. Like you said — that was some serious planning!
TCrow, Episode 72 wasn’t filled to the brim with content like most of the Re:Zero episodes this season, but I’ll be referring back to episodes from Season 1, Season 3, and this season to make a full character analysis for Julius. I just have to refresh myself on some of the content first.
Yay, thank you for the shout out! I had a lot of fun writing that post, and there were so many more great anime girl bosses I wanted to mention too! Like Scarlet from the series May I Ask For One Final Thing, or Kagome from the anime classic Inuyasha. There are just so many awesome ladies in anime, Hollywood really should be taking notes!
Scarlet was great! I wasn’t expecting it, so I found the ending of the first episode in particular delightful. But even after I expected her approach to problem resolution, I still liked it.
I appreciate the mention, Crow!
I’m just a little bummed that my WHA episode 6 review wasn’t written that great since I was tired when I wrote it.
I guess I’ll just have to make Episode 7 and beyond better written.
Isn’t it interesting how hard we can be on ourselves? Because your article didn’t come across that way at all! I quite enjoyed it.
Jessi Silver’s review on Frieren is indeed an excellent read as you say, TCrow.