What are you watching today?

Japanese Watching
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Don’t know why I haven’t written here before. Guess I’ll change that now. :slight_smile:

AniList has something called Anime Watching Challenges (AWC for short), and one of the challenges they have is the Seasonal Challenge, where you’re required to watch 7 anime from the season. Been doing that since Spring 2022, which is when I started watching seasonal anime in Japanese.

Been slacking off a bit with Japanese this year, so I’ve only started 4/7 anime so far. Shouldn’t be too difficult to catch up, since I would only need to watch a little over 2 episodes a day to catch up by the end of the month, and that’s not even taking into account the two weeks of leeway they give after the season is over.

So far, I’ve watched:
転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 S1 | L30 3 episodes watched.
Pretty cute. The political vocabulary is quite difficult, as well as whenever Anisphia goes into the technical details about her magic tools. Probably the hardest show I’m watching this season.

トモちゃんは女の子！ S1 | L25 6 episodes watched.
Going by AniList for the episode count, because for some reason TMDB split the episodes up, despite them being combined everywhere else I’ve seen. This one’s also cute. L25 is definitely way too high for this tho. That would put around the same level as shows like Chainsaw Man and Another, which are definitely way harder, imo. Currently, you can’t grade an anime unless you’ve finished it, and this anime is still airing, so nobody has finished it yet, so that’s probably why the level is so inflated. Probably would put it around L21-22.

ヴィンランド・サガ S2 | L31 2 episodes watched.
Don’t know why I haven’t watched more of this, it’s probably the best anime this season. Much different tone than last season, which might result in the difficulty being different. Although, that’s kinda hard to tell just from two episodes.

お兄ちゃんはおしまい！ S1 | L30 7 episodes watched.
Cute. The difficulty on this is also super inflated, imo. Would say it’s around the same difficulty as トモちゃん.

Once I’m caught up with おにまい, I’m probably going to start 2nd Attack | L20. Really enjoying the manga for that, and I also really enjoyed the adaptation of the first season, and the series gets better as it goes along, so I’m probably going to like this season even more than the first.

At some point, I’d also like to start Buddy Daddies S1 | L30?? as well. Not sure what I’ll do for the 7th anime this season, but I might go with 久保さんは僕を許さない S1 | L25.

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Does anyone have any recommendations for more serious shows? Having a hard time finding them. Maybe genre-wise mystery, crime, thriller, fantasy or scifi would be nice. I don’t mind some comedy, but I really want to avoid the drama style overreacting acting style.

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Paging @cat for this question; they may have some good recommendations!

I’m in the same place you are. :sweat: I figure time and exposure are really the big things here, but it’s tough when it’s hard to measure your own progress…

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:heart: my tastes are known :joy:

Overacting is a kind of hard thing to avoid across the board, and I suspect it’s because even some serious shows will cast idols who may or may not have any acting chops because…idols get viewers. :person_shrugging: That said, here’s a few I can think of which aren’t so bad:

最愛 S1 | L32 - I haven’t yet finished this but I adore what I’ve seen so far. It’s currently on Netflix. It’s about a woman and her younger brother, and a man from the same hometown, and murders that twist their trust for each other.
密告はうたう 警視庁監察ファイル S1 | L34?? - Adored this show. A police officer grapples with the death of a colleague while on duty, and after the event he is transferred to an internal affairs type roles which (in addition to people thinking he got his partner killed) leads to him being outcast. Then he is given a project.
桜の塔 S1 | L35?? - Also haven’t finished this one (I’m really bad at finishing things, I have way more ‘in progress’ than I admit to on Natively :sweat_smile: ) but it’s a grittier cop drama about corruption and power.
ソロモンの偽証 S1 | L35?? - Slightly more overacting here because the cast are ‘high school students’ but it’s not too bad because the focus is on a suicide (or is it murder?!) at school, not romance.
MIU404 S1 | L34?? - More of a comedy, but the serious scenes are serious. About the relationship between two police officers who have to learn to trust each other
シグナル 長期未解決事件捜査班 S1 | L32 - This is a remake of a Korean drama actually. A man with a troubled past joins the police and comes across a walkie talkie that lets him speak with another cop who went missing years before.
うきわ ―友達以上、不倫未満― S1 | L29?? - it’s none of the genres you asked for, but it is a serious show and I loved it. Great story telling, great emotion. About two people connecting when they realize their partners are cheating on them.

That’s all I’ve added to Natively that I think fits. I can’t think of anything fantasy I’ve seen that doesn’t have the overacting. I’ll add one more that I haven’t added to Natively, and it’s because I saw it so long ago I don’t remember how hard it was. What mostly stuck was how emotionally brutal the show was: Red Eyes (TV Series 2021- ) — The Movie Database (TMDB)

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I got to learn about this new video tracking feature of Natively very recently, and am so grateful for it, as before this I had no concrete way of keeping track of anything that I have watched with only Japanese subs (which mostly included YouTube videos only😅).

Thanks to this feature, I finally ended up diving into the anime 3月のライオン/March Comes in Like A Lion a couple of days ago. I’m currently watching it on Animelon with JP subs and enjoying it, with occasionally switching on the English subs when encountering a difficult sentence.

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To be clear, we all only learned of this new feature very recently… it launched on Monday!! Very fresh and you’re on the cutting edge

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Wow, thanks so much for typing these out! Will take a closer look and try some of them out! Lots of interesting sounding shows here.

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Since it sounds like you’re looking for shows that are really easy I might have a few recommendations. Apologies if they are too easy and/or too boring/weird looking! (Also, ignore the levels. Apparently with TV shows you cannot set the level while importing…)

Two animes that I each watched one episode of (before deciding that watching actual anime is still a bit too hard for me because of my terrible vocab, but those were the closest I ever came to understanding an anime without English subs):

And two recommendations that are both cult in Japan and are often recommended for beginners, but so far they are only on my wish list and I haven’t even tried a single episode:

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Thank you for all the recs, @Legato! Will definitely keep an eye on these. :eyes:

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I started watching 結婚できないにはワケがある and it’s uh…not very good, but very easy and brainless so I can watch it after a long day and not feel more tired. It kind of feels like someone smashed おじさんはカワイイものがお好き。 S1 | L27 into a ‘woman desperately crazed to get married’ show, and I’m even more confused because it’s the same main actor as in この男は人生最大の過ちです S1 | L26 and he’s honestly not playing that different of a role.

I have no idea if I’ll stick it out the 3 episodes (or so?) it takes to rate it, but it’s on Viki right now so if anyone wants an easier live action to try, it’s an option.

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I started watching ハンターｘハンター S1 | L30 last week; I’m slowly reading through the manga (in English) and I thought it’d be a fun pick. I’m watching through Netflix, and subtitles aren’t an option, so I’m picking up maybe…15% of what they’re saying? Hard to estimate, but it’s very little. I figured listening and not understanding is probably better than not listening at all, at least, and my familiarity with the story does let me keep up with what’s happening, at least.

I need to check out the ones @Legato mentioned to me earlier still.

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So I’m three episodes into 俺物語!! S1 | L18??, but I’m not sure I can take this show seriously… it seems like it wants to tell a serious love story, but so far it just seems too… I don’t know, “fake” I guess. Everything that’s happened so far is unrealistic, the main guy is pretty one-note and crude, the main girl’s voice is annoying. Also, it’s definitely not difficulty level 18 as far as I’m concerned. Particularly the main guy’s voice is so deep I have trouble understanding him.

Has anyone seen this anime before? It’s not so bad that I feel the need to drop it after three episodes, but I also don’t think I like it enough (at this point) to watch 24 episodes. Is there a point where it gets better, or are the first three episodes pretty representative of the show as a whole? Trying to decide if it deserves another 1-3 episodes before I make a decision.

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Filling in the gaps in series I’ve partially watched in 日本語. atm that’s:

  • SAO 1: 2 eps (Finished)
  • SAO 2: second half of the season (Finished)
  • SAO Alicization: 14-24
  • Akatsuki no Yona: 12-24
  • Log Horizon S1: 12-25
  • Kimetsu no Yaiba S1: 21-26

And most of New Game 1, but I’m deliberately delaying those, while I read the manga

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JFF released new independant films streaming from today on their website here: https://jff.jpf.go.jp/watch/independent-cinema/film-lineup/

From past experience I know it won’t work in some places (notably Japan as its meant as a tourism initiative I think?) but in unrelated news, VPNs can make it appear you’re browsing the web from a different location than you are.

In the Distance and Drive into Night are the ones that appeal to me - any that you all are thinking of watching? :popcorn:

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Oh unfortunately it appears there are hard subs. I’m not sure I’m so deeply interested that I’ll watch an entire movie with something blocking the bottom of my screen :sweat_smile: I don’t remember there being hard subs during the last film fest :thinking:

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I’m in the middle of Kaiji season two. Middle of the Bog with seven episodes left.

Restarted Absolute Boyfriend yesterday as well and I love it just as much as I did back in college for how ridiculous it is

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I started watching 死との約束 (trailer) which is an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Appointment with Death and it’s fun while also not being very good. Over-acting is a complaint I often hear about Japanese TV and usually it doesn’t faze me, but this movie is taking it to extremes. So far as I know it’s a made-for-TV movie, though, so standards and expectations are different.

I like that it took a Christie plot and made it so Japanese though. I certainly wasn’t expecting 八咫烏 to come up while watching a western media adaptation :joy:

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I am watching はじめてのおつかい and episode 10 (season 2) is just :sob:

I hadn’t realized netflix put some episodes up. I remember watching some like 10 years ago or so… :face_holding_back_tears:

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I just finished watching ハウルの動く城 | L26 … kinda.
It’s part of a collection of Ghibli DVDs I got from a cousin and they are all watched to death. In all DVD so far, there was at least one or two chapter that was unwatchable due to the damages. I didn’t mind so far, since I saw most of the Ghibli movies quite a few times myself, so I can remember the missing parts.
However, I never watched ハウルの動く城 and the missing part is the end of the penultimate chapter as well as the last chapter… And I can’t find those parts on youtube either.

Well, what I gathered from the choppy bits I saw in there is that
ソフィー kisses かぶ for some reason and he turns into a prince before saying he will stop the war? Also she put the heart back into ハウル. Also she kissed Calcifer. Then really impossible to watch until a scene of a flying version of the castle and ソフィー and ハウル kissing.
… Now that I think about it, she is kissing a lot of people in short succession haha.

Then I literally cannot watch anymore, my DVD player refuses to go further. :sweat_smile: I think I’m not missing much, but if anyone knows, I don’t mind being spoiled the missing parts.

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Probably a little late but: Not sure where the last bit before this was that you seen in case anything previous has been missing but starting from when ソフィ kisses かぶ, it’s because he sacrificed himself to stop the run away “raft” (the floor of the house) that was careening down a hill and he turns back into a Prince from the neighbouring kingdom which I think him being missing is what caused the war in the first place. ソフィ put ハワル’s heart back into him as that’s what he gave to Calcifer to create the pact and this releases Calcifer which causes the raft to start careening down the hill and ソフィ kisses ハワル because she’s finally admitting to herself that she cares so much about him and is glad he’s safe. After that all you missed is Madam Suliman seeing the dog in her crystal and seeing that the prince is going home so the war will be ending then it cuts to the castle in the sky.

I’ve watched this so many times it’s unbelievable. Also, I could recite most of it in English or give a play by play of what happens in it at each part. If you have Netflix access, it is on Netflix if you decide you want to watch what you missed.

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