I suspect if they repeat the challange today, it would be a night and day difference.

The whole reason it broke for him in the first place was due to a bug in PopOS, so yes.

Right? I’d be so happy if I found this!

Great show btw. I really enjoyed this one.

A certain subset of anime fans would be very angry right now if they could read!

She had a bdsm dungeon she was going to “train” him in.

It’s not so much that he’s been cut off as it is that he’s been avoiding his parents because the fiancee they’ve set up for him is terrifying.

Sadly yes. I think I got 50 or 60 rejections before I finally got my first job out of college.

Those were super popular though. If you were to talk with people about anime 15 years ago that’s pretty much all people knew.

Maybe, but the same writer made the story for Pluto as well and by all accounts it’s also incredibly good.

Mechs soaring through the sky on hoverboards ended up being a way cooler aesthetic than I expected.

Recently I got that watching episode 1 of Takopi’s Original Sin not because of the pacing but because it was really intense and I needed to relax and I didn’t realize that the first episode was double-length!

That’s just the natural result of so many of them being based off of manga, but there are exceptions! Takopi’s Original Sin and LOOK BACK are both recent excellent anime that don’t suffer from these issues. One of them finishes its whole story in six impactful episodes, the other is a movie that wraps up in under an hour. Both will make you cry.

Yeah but there’s more good anime too. Seems like every year there are several new anime that are worth watching; it wasn’t always like this.

There’s still plenty of really cool, unique stuff being made. It definitely can be hard to find under all the isekai slop though, so if you’re interested in finding good new stuff I’d recommend looking for seasonal review videos from channels like Mothers Basement or Gigguk.

isekai is so popular for the same reason: it enables easy, lazy writing that handwaves actual motivations while allowing anyone to self insert more easily

It’s not just because of all that. It also allows most isekai writers to skip 95% of the worldbuilding process! No wonder these things all feel the same.

In the Cardcaptor Sakura manga (also CLAMP), an elementary school teacher gives an engagement ring to one of his students. Also, Sakura’s dad was Sakura’s mom’s high school teacher when they met.

In defense of the Persona one: I think the main character of Persona 5 is supposed to be a self-insert, and as an adult playing those games it’s kind of nice to have a romance option who isn’t a teenager.

I think Shield Hero popularized this trope though. I don’t remember it being so prevalent 10 years ago, and I think Shield Hero was popular enough to make waves.

This might have been photoshopped, but it’s shocking just how many people will get kanji tattooed onto them without confirming the design with a native speaker first.

leveling up your build periodically from a randomly selected set of options

The bosses are also randomly selected

Those are neat and trendy features, but I don’t see how they make it anything like Rogue or its ilk.