I have no idea. I just saw it and noticed the thread for submissions was still going so I drew something up in 5 minutes with my mouse.

I’m proud to have contributed the one for the Medalist manga!

Re:Zero S3 - Watched intro “movie” episode. It’s decent, but I’d forgotten so much context that it was hard to care too much.

I hear ya. I watched about 5 minutes of this and noped out until I have time to rewatch the rest of the series first. I’ll probably wait 'til Season 4.

Things I watched this season, in no particular order:

• Apothecary Diaries Season 2 - So far it’s been just as good as season 1; I find myself looking forward to every new episode. Glad to see it continuing into the spring.
• Kill la Kill - I’m 8 episodes in and while some of the “jokes” go too far for my taste I can see why a lot of people got hyped about this show.
• From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated! - I watched the first episode. It was fun, but it didn’t hook me.
• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You Season 2 - As with Season 1 this was a near-perfect adaptation of a really fun manga. I really hope this gets a third season because my favorite character hasn’t even been introduced yet. It’s certainly popular enough, but managing the voice actors is going to get impractical at some point.
• Medalist - This was the surprise anime of the season for me. Anyways, rehashing what I’ve said on it in other threads: at the start of the show I was really worried about the CGI skating from a studio that isn’t known for amazing CGI, but in the end it ended up working really well! Maybe it helps that they usually only had to make the skaters look good in isolation; during tournaments they’re skating around the middle of a big, otherwise-empty rink after all. The way Inori and her coach Tsukasa play off each other is incredibly charming, and the anime staff did a great job of capturing the facial expressions from the manga. It’s also amazing how a sports anime can feel like it has more dramatic stakes than something action-based. Maybe it’s the very real chance of failure. Maybe it’s just because it feels more grounded and realistic. Either way, nothing sucks me into the next episode like one of the characters getting ready to do a difficult jump in a tournament and everyone is watching to see what they’ll do and speculating whether they can actually do it and then the “next episode” button appears and I just can’t resist pushing it. Looking forward to the recently-announced Season 2.
• Blue Box - This is probably the first time I’ve thought an anime was too beautiful. The manga had a more grounded look to it, whereas in the anime everything is lit up with specular highlights everywhere. It can feel a little over-the-top. Still, that’s my only complaint (and it’s one that very few people seem to share with me). Overall it was a great adaptation of one of my favorite romance manga (and my favorite shounen romance manga). The first season in isolation is a little sad, but I anticipate that the recently-announced second season will get us far enough to make things cheerful again.
• Terror in Resonance - I know a lot of people really liked this one, but I didn’t care for it. It’s unclear to me why “terrorism” was the only answer for the main characters (and especially for one in particular). That whole chess airport sequence was just plain dumb.
• Akiba Maid War - Everything everyone said about this anime was true. Great stuff. If you want a cute yakuza drama comedy look no further.

Edit: I completely forgot there were two other shows I tried:

• Zenshu - I can’t forgive them for the bait & switch, especially knowing that they said it was an isekai in the Japanese description but not the English one. Only watched 2 episodes.
• I Have a Crush at Work - The first episode gave me the impression that the whole anime is basically just the same joke over and over so I didn’t watch more of it after that. Hopefully I’m missing something and it’s actually better than that.

Weird to see Death Note that high up. I rewatched it a while ago and I don’t think it holds up that well. The memes are great though.

I’m also surprised to see Frieren that high up. I loved the first cour, but the second cour was merely “good” imo. It felt a lot more like a generic action shounen thing. It’s also something that’s only had a small fraction of its story animated so far.

Apart from that, well, it’s clear that I need to take the time to watch 86.

At the start of the show I was really worried about the CGI skating from a studio that isn’t known for amazing CGI, but in the end it ended up working really well! Maybe it helps that they usually only had to make the skaters look good in isolation; they’re usually skating around the middle of a big rink after all.

I can see why my wife was excited for this episode. Jinshi sure made some faces! Poor guy got shut down twice. Sounded like he wanted to propose or something crazy at the end there too.

I think the show was already canceled in Japan, but the money for the dub was already spent

Not quite. It was actually successful in Japan but the company that localized it for a NA release was convinced that it would never be successful there without serious modifications. It got a much more normal English dub for its release in Singapore.

It’s hard to pick a top 10. The top 5 on this list are pretty firmly my favorites but after that there are any number of great shows that could’ve filled the latter 5 slots.

1. Redline - This movie showed me that an anime doesn’t need a complex plot to be awesome.
2. LOOK BACK - Really emotional story about two artists.
3. Kaguya-sama: Love is War - So far this is a perfect adaptation of my favorite romance manga, and my favorite comedy manga. I didn’t want to use the term “romcom” simply because I want to emphasize that it excels on both points individually. Here’s hoping they continue on to finish the second half of the story.
4. Gurren Lagann - Much like Redline, this show is just awesome.
5. Skip and Loafer - Extremely charming story about a girl from the countryside getting accustomed to Tokyo life. Season 2 airs later this year so it’s a good time to catch up if you haven’t seen it!
6. Bang Brave Bang Bravern! - Big gay robots.
7. Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Space opera. The worse modern US politics has gotten the more depressing this show has been to watch.
8. Gundam Build Fighters - The most charming Gundam show. Unfortunately some of the jokes and references won’t land unless you’ve watched an ungodly amount of not-quite-as-good older Gundam shows.
9. Eureka Seven - An excellent mech anime held back a little by a slow first several episodes.
10. Mob Psycho 100 - A story about a boy trying to grow up into the best version of himself he can manage.

There’s not too much I’m excited about this season, but I’ll definitely be watching at least the first episode of Witch Watch and unless something goes terribly wrong all of GQuuuuuux and Apothecary Diaries as well.

There are a lot of Gundam shows that take place independently from the others and thus make good starting points. My favorites are Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. As Endmaker said, the original Mobile Suit Gundam (sometimes called Mobile Suit Gundam 0079) is also a good place to start if you don’t mind watching something that’s kinda old and kinda long.

It’s important to note that Mobile Fighter G Gundam is very different from the others and almost feels like a saturday morning cartoon sometimes. The other shows I listed have a far more serious tone to them, including the original Mobile Suit Gundam.

I don’t think even getting first in a contest could make Inori as smug as she was after everyone watched Tsukasa perform.

Sword Art Online taught publishers that people really want bland wish-fulfillment stuff where the hero just steamrolls any problems that shows up and then gets all the girls. Of course SAO had other things going for it, like good animation and a great soundtrack, but that isn’t what they can easily copy.

Shield Hero taught publishers that people want that but also with the main character owning slaves for some reason.

Anyways, due to these two things isekai has been almost universally weird af lately. That said, it’s not all bad. I liked The Eminence in Shadow, but I recommend the manga adaptation over the anime. The mangaka just has a really good sense of comedic timing. I’ve also heard good things about Shangri-la Frontier. There are a few more good isekai if you look at the pre-SAO era. Vision of Escaflowne was really good, as long as you come in with the expectation that this is a shoujo mech isekai so it’ll have a somewhat different feel to it.

Of course, that’s if you’re stuck on wanting to watch/read isekai. There’s been tons of great stuff coming out every year that has nothing to do with isekai. My favorites from the last 5 years have been:

• 2020 - Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! - A team of high school girls form a club and set out to make whatever anime they can with their limited resources
• 2021 - Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- - The first AI-powered humanoid robot tries to prevent the robot apocalypse
• 2022 - Chainsaw Man - A sad boy has a wild (and bad) time. Honorable mentions go to Spy x Family and Bocchi the Rock. It was a strong year.
• 2023 - Skip and Loafer - A book-smart girl from the country moves to Tokyo for a better high school and adapts to city life
• 2024 - LOOK BACK - A story about 2 artists. Honestly this year was stacked too, so honorable mentions go to Bang Brave Bang Bravern! (big gay robots), DAN DA DAN (romance, yokai, and aliens), and Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi (traditional fantasy, but really well executed).

Notably even though every year a whole pile of isekai gets released not one of them made it into that list. I’d avoid them as a general rule for a while, except when you hear a lot of people recommending a specific specimen.

That’s like saying that Demon Slayer is similar to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure because they both use breathing techniques to harness the power of the sun to defeat man-eating undead. It’s technically true, but that doesn’t mean the experience of watching them is remotely similar.

It’ll make you want to go ice skating while it’s still cold.

My understanding is that she had been practicing hard all along and perfected the fundamentals

There is some truth to that, but only some. There were some really fundamental things she wasn’t familiar with, like how to glide long distances on a single skate.

The main character syndrome is definitely strong with this one, with her being able to do dual-rotation jumps with so little practice. I have faith in the mangaka at this point to not just have her easily breeze through everything, mainly because they’ve done a great job with most other aspects.

He also seems like the kind of guy who stabs you as his special way of saying hello.

It’s important to not allow “perfect” to become the enemy of “good”.

The artist is gar32drawshit on Twitter.