That's like a lily

I love how much the character 酒 looks like, wow, look at this bottle of stuff, like it's putting spirit fingers around a bottle of booze

Things I have watched since last post (I am basically an anime watching machine right now):

• Sasaki and Miyano, a high school set BL about Miyano, a boy who likes reading BL manga but is sure he's totally straight, and Sasaki, his dreamy sempai who thought he was straight until he met Miyano and is now borrowing BL manga from him to read and trying to be cool about his gigantic crush. This is a pretty cute anime, TBH. Miyano is so worried all the boys at their all boys school will not be cool with Sasaki now that he's reading BL, and constantly worried about exchanging books on the sly, and struggles to believe he's now sharing an interest with him!!1! Meanwhile, Sasaki is constantly going through the deepest erotic torment over the most innocuous nonsense.

There's this whole arc after Sasaki confesses his feelings where Miyano wants time to figure out his own, but once he finally figures them out things keep getting in the way of his return confession!! It wasn't too dragged out, so I found it kind of charming, and I appreciate that this is a story where the teens get to be horny but the focus of their feelings is actually based on a shared interest and the friendship they've formed.

• To the end of season 2 of Kimi ni Todoke, and given what I've heard of season 3 sounds frustrating, season 2 seems like a good end. They're together, yay! Let's not look beyond that. There are cute things about this, and I do like how much focus is put on the friendships Sawako forms. But also the misunderstandings drag on just that bit too long (the bit where they both confess they like each other but somehow both still feel rejected is excruciating), and it really does remind me of the things that annoy me about shoujo romance.

• Season 2 of Hana Kimi came back and dropped the first two episodes, so I watched and enjoyed those. The OP and ED are so much better than last season's. I appreciate that this adaptation goes through the events of the manga at a fast clip, so it feels like things are actually happening.

• Currently watching The Betrayal Knows My Name, which is such a style of anime that isn't made any more, and I'm having a great time. All the rose and bloody thorns and chains images in the OP, A+ Everything is cool hair and sad superpowers dark fantasy and nothing hurts.

I also read all of:

• Given by Natsuki Kizu, to see how different it felt from the anime. There are some interesting differences, some of them just by the nature of the format, I think. Uenoyama's sister doesn't get any more depth of characterisation in the manga, but it feels more natural in this format, whereas in the anime it felt like she ever needed to be properly expanded or excised from the story. The awkward encounter between Akihiko and Haruki doesn't feel as non-consensual in the manga, which is interesting, because it definitely felt non-consensual in Given: the Movie. Though it may just be the translation I read? Either way it's good that Akihiko spends so much time afterward trying to get his shit together to make amends & etc. I do feel like the anime having actual music (that I really enjoy) adds a lot to the story, but that's natural given it's about bands and the love of music. It turns out I hate the get together between Hiragi and Shizasumi equal amounts in either version, because it basically involves Shizasumi pressuring him into sex. In the anime, though, when Shizasumi says he thought Hiragi was in love with Yuki it felt like it came out of left field, because Hiragi seemed to have paid more attention to Mafuyu, whereas in the manga I at least get how Shizasumi believes it.

As promised, talking about Bleach. I finally finished the previous season on Monday last week 🤣 just in time for the first three episodes of the final season to come out at the cinema! So I went on Friday night. It's very much just three episodes cut together and not at all like a movie, and I don't feel like it was sharpened enough for the big screen 😂 but it was nice to see, and they played a Q&A between Kubo Tite and the anime directors after.

Getting what I dislike out of the way first... mute naked catgirl Yoruichi infuriates me just as much in the anime as it did in the manga. Ugh.

But I really did enjoy the rest. The fight scenes are so fun. I loved every time Ishida made reference to what Ichigo would do ♥ Byakuya and Hitsugaya's banter was just as fun animated as it was in the manga, and they and Zaraki fighting the big guy is delightful in what I got to see of it. I love Orihime and Ichigo fighting against Yhwach together. The animation actually does a lot to make that fight feel more exciting.

Oh, man, I'm having a lot of thoughts about Urahara. The anime expands on his big fight and it looks so cool. And also really brings home how similar he and Mayuri are, in that they're mad scientists who do equally mad things to themselves. They are their own Frankenstein's monsters.

To be honest, I think one of my favourite things was hearing people's reactions to the scenes in the cinema. I've been into Bleach since the beginning; therefore I am not young. But there was a young man (I wanted to say kid, but given I assume he was 20 years younger than me that still means an adult hahaha) next to me who was having a great time, gasping at all the right bits, and it was just so much fun to hear these episodes appreciated by a crowd. It was nice to laugh at the same parts that I laughed at in the manga and get to hear people laugh with me.

The Q&A was fun to watch. Kubo Tite really knows how to accessorise, which is not a surprise. I've seen people compare how great he looks now compared to how he looked towards the end of the manga run, and yeah, it's not a surprise that a well rested millionaire looks great but he looked like garbage when he was destroying his health to make Shonen Jump's deadlines.

The two main things I took from the Q&A are this:
1) Kubo Tite wears fun patterned socks!
2) Kubo Tite is a micro-managing control freak, when allowed to be, who sometimes started storyboarding scenes for the anime without asking anyone on the anime team first...

Of those two things, only the socks are a surprise.

I have watched so much (mostly) anime in the last week. I got partway through a boring Gintama arc and decided I'd watched way too many shonen battle series recently and should watch something entirely different. So I got through, in no particular order:

Honey Lemon Soda: You know those shojo stories that are about a normal, plain Japanese girl who is isolated from her peers, and then she meets a cute boy, and this kicks off a series of events that lead to her developing social skills, making friends, and falling in love? This is one of them. It's okay. I enjoyed it well enough. Some of the animation does some really cool things, and there's some great stuff. The friends Ishimori makes are great, and I appreciate how much of this focuses on realistic teenage friendships. There's an arc where Ishimori befriends her love interest's ex who still has feelings for him, and they have a genuinely supportive friendship, which feels rare in fiction but actually truer to my high school experience.

It feels a little fast at the beginning and a little slow at other times, and the main character cries a bit too much for my taste, but she is 15 and recovering from being bullied in middle school, & etc. The love interest is a bit of a dickhead, so I was mostly like ?? that's your taste, girl?? He's not the worst or anything, he does encourage her most of the time, but he's just enough of a dickhead that I was like... what's the appeal... half the time. Only 12 episodes.

(Come to think of it, My Dress Up Darling is just the gender switched version of that type of story but for the seinen audience, and with the main characters actually having a shared interest.)

7 episodes of Kimi no Todoke, which is the same kind of thing, except the quirk is that people compare the main female character to Sadako from the ring and treat her like she's creepy. The visual style makes it so obvious the manga started in the mid 00s (oh my gosh, the clothing), and it is charming, and I might have shed a tear, but after Honey Lemon Soda and 7 episodes of this I hit my limit of crying and not being able to talk about what you feel for a while. I would say this is better than Honey Lemon Soda, though.

The Cherry Magic anime, for a change of pace and to watch a story about adults, which does something the live action didn't do: kissing scenes. And the kissing scenes are good. I laughed out loud and was charmed, although I will say the animation isn't always all that good. I mean, the animation isn't Isekai Office Worker levels of bad, though I love Isekai Office Worker on a deep soul level so clearly that's not a problem.

Skip and Loafer is a story about from the countryside who moves to Tokyo to attend high school as the first step in her many step plan to becoming a politician who can help the rapidly emptying out countryside, and then she meets a cute boy, and this kicks off a series of events that leads to her making lots of friends & etc. etc. etc. The anime ends before anyone gets to be in love, though I hear they fall in love in the manga. I will say that this has a higher level of depth and characterisation, but the manga ran in a seinen magazine so was actually aimed at adults. The animation is smooth as hell. I also really appreciated the depiction of high school friendships in this one.

Yes, No, or Maybe? is a 50 minute BL anime film that I found pretty entertaining right up until the sex scene at the end ruined it by being kind of rapey. I'm just not here for ignoring someone's no in sex in romance fiction in the 2020s.

Given is a beautifully animated BL about a band, composed of a season of anime and three different films which crunchyroll has not put in the correct order (when the season of the show ends it automatically starts the last film, and you have to go looking for the previous two). It's so pretty. This is so much about forming a band, loving music, dealing with grief, figuring out your life. The characters feel a lot more real and mature than I was expecting, even the 17 year olds, but apparently the manga ran in a Josei magazine... I do love that Mafuyu is never expected to stop loving his dead ex, even as he falls for Uenoyama, and it's just as much about falling in love with music. Dealing with grief is basically my favourite theme, so I really enjoyed this.

I might try to track down the manga, to see whether some of the emotional arcs feel more complete to me in that (they're not lacking in the anime, but I do wonder if the manga hits harder in that regard). The anime does have the plus point that the music is actually really good, starting from the opening theme song which meant I knew I was in good hands from the beginning. As a music lover this really worked for me.

Season 1 of You and I Are Polar Opposites, just in time for season 2 to start next week. This is a high school romance (based on a manga from Shonen Jump+ apparently, given I seem to be noting the origins of everything this post), but unlike the others I watched this week, the characters get together in the first episode and the series is about navigating their relationship and all the friendships around them from there. This is actually really cute. Probably the best depiction of high school friendships and how much people get up in each other's business of any I watched this week, and it's so funny and charming. The main female character, Suzuki, is outgoing and flashy and adorable, and her boyfriend Tani is a quiet glasses wearing introvert, and it's a fun contrast because they like their differences so much and are really charmed by each other. I'm so excited for season 2 in July.

Also OH MY GOD THE LORD OF MYSTERIES TAROT CLUB OVAS CAME OUT AND THEY ARE SO COOL. I can't talk about how cool they are without spoilers that make no sense if you're not already watching, but omg, Azik ♥ ♥ Klein ♥ Derrick is so sweet in spite of basically growing up in Silent Hill and aaaah Audrey and Alger almost meeting and aaaaah

Also, I watched the first few episodes of the last season of Bleach at the movies, but more on that later, this entry is long enough as it is.