this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
18 points (100.0% liked)

Anime & Donghua

11475 readers
43 users here now

Welcome to c/anime on Hexbear!

A leftist general anime and donghua community for discussion and memes.

Simple rules

High quality threads you should definitely visit

Gigathread: Good Anime Talks, Presentations, Conventions, Panels, etc

Piracy is good and you should do more of it. Use https://aniwave.to/ and https://4anime.gg/ for streaming, and https://nyaa.si/ for torrents. Piracy is the only means of digital protest that audiences have to fight poor worker treatment.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
notthenameiwant@hexbear.net
WhyEssEff@hexbear.net
thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net
WIIHAPPYFEW@hexbear.net
Awoo@hexbear.net
18
What have you been reading/watching recently? [Anime - March 2026] (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 weeks ago by Gosplan14_the_Third@hexbear.net to c/anime@hexbear.net
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Tired.

Manga

Same as usual, I have been very slowly continuing GTO, Inari Konkon, and keeping up with Shibuya Near Family. Something I like about GTO is how Vice Principal Uchiyamada is frequently the butt of the joke, the subject of Onizuka's accidental torment; and the mangaka goes out of the way to show that he is absolutely a terrible person with very few redeeming features.

Anime

I am almost done with The Twelve Kingdoms, and yet it feels nowhere near done. It's good.

Sailor Moon S is a step forward compared to the previous seasons, and that is largely because of the more eccentric villains. It's good.

Cardcaptor Sakura is a cozy, and so far low stakes show. It is something I did not know I wanted to watch. Very good.

Space Battleship Yamato holds up very well to this day, and the very 70s soundtrack makes it better. It was extremely ambitious back in 1974, and it is significantly grander in scape than like 95% of slop airing these days.

You're Under Arrest is episodic (copaganda) fun with an ensemble cast, and basically a very slightly worse Patlabor with no mecha. The show's biggest strength lie in the world created. The authors are good at not only creating memorable side characters, but also not forgetting about them.

I have started Overman King Gainer today. The OP is iconic from the moment you witness (or hear) it. The show has a good start, but I am waiting for Tomino to explain the setting more.

Live Action

I have started a project of a Martin Scorsese filmography dive. Who's That Knocking at My Door was mid. Boxcar Bertha wasn't that good of a movie, but the topic was unusual (it's an adaptation of a novel by an anarchist, and union struggles in 1930s America are the core of the story). Mean Streets was fun. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was a major surprise, and an excellent movie with a perhaps somewhat lacking ending. Taxi Driver deserves its reputation. It is a very interesting movie.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Anime

Seasonal

This has been a pretty quiet season for me—only watching three shows. I never actually bothered starting The Darwin Incident (Darwin no Jihen), and I dropped The Case Book of Arne (Arne no Jikenbo) after the first six episodes. The latter was fine, I guess, but I realized I was forcing myself to watch it instead of actually looking forward to it, and I've grown well past the "don't drop anything" mentality that I used to have which lead to me burning out of watching anime entirely for a few years. Anyway, here's what I've got left:

The Holy Grail of Eris (Eris no Seihai) — Decent little show with some mystery elements and politicking. It's no Apothecary Diaries, but it's got a fun twist that keeps it entertaining. Not a strong recommend from me, but you should know from the first couple of episodes whether it's your thing.

Champignon Witch (Champignon no Majo) — Cozy shōjo fantasy with an interesting world and a nice artstyle (albeit with fairly basic animation). Definitely worth checking out!

🌟Journal with Witch (Ikoku Nikki) — This is a must watch, IMO. Lovely josei character piece tackling grief with naturalistic acting, superb direction, a sensitively portrayed neurodivergent character...just, watch the first episode, at least.

Non-seasonal

Beck — Still slowly working my way through this one. I'm enjoying it, but it doesn't strongly pull me to watch it day after day. I'll finish it when I finish it.

Cardcaptor Sakura + Movie I & Movie II — Just finished watching this show for the second time with the Blorp gang and it 100% holds up...goddamn I love this show. I could easily start rewatching it again right now, and I never rewatch stuff so that's saying something! I actually hadn't seen the second movie, somehow, so it was fun to get a chance to watch it for the first time with everyone.

Pokémon: Indigo League (i.e. Season 1) — been watching this in Japanese with Japanese subtitles to take a trip down memory lane while working in some Japanese immersion. Overall the quality of voice acting is leagues better, although I do miss Maddie Blaustein's Meowth, which is both funnier and a lot less grating than Nyarth. Kids these days with all the whiz-bang Pokémon sakuga have no idea what kinda bottom-of-the-barrel animation we had to put up with back in the day! But I didn't notice back then, and nostalgia is enough to paper over it for me now.
It's wild how memorable and iconic episodes there are in just the 20 that I've watched—I'd say it's most of them. So far I haven't hit any episodes that I don't remember from my childhood (not counting Beauty and the Beach), but I'm curious to see if there are any I missed later in the season or if that won't happen until Orange Islands/Johto. I don't remember watching Ash challenge the Elite Four or anything like that, so I suspect a lot of the material at the end of the season will be new to me.

New Game!! (i.e. New Game! S2) — Finally got back to watching this with @Erika3sis@hexbear.net! Not much to say about it, but it's Doga Koba doing CGDCT, so if that's your thing you'll probably enjoy this show. The creator used to work in the video game industry, so while there are obviously idealized aspects of the work environment there are also a lot of details that make it feel more authentic.

Manga

I've really been slacking on the manga front, sadly. Read a couple of chapters here and there but nothing consistent. I'd really like to sink my teeth into a manga in Japanese for immersion but I have to find something that'll hook me enough to push through the difficulty. The Ikoku Nikki manga is one candidate, especially since I hear that the anime does cut out a lot since it's 11 volumes and only 13 episodes, although I don't know if the anime is actually covering the full series or not.

Western Animation

The Owl House — Incredibly charming show that was sadly canceled by Di$ney because we can't have nice things. But damn, I am absolutely loving every minute of it. Almost certainly going to go down as one of my all-time favorite animated shows. Also, thankfully creator Dana Terrace's new show Knights of Guinevere is being produced under the auspices of indie animation studio Glitch Productions, best known for The Amazing Digital Circus. It's much darker than Owl House, but I enjoyed the pilot and I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Various pre-G4 My Little Pony bits and bobs — The production values in these can be quite rough, but it's been fun to see what came before the Friendship is Magic juggernaut. G1 in particular had some pretty catchy tunes, I have to say.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Champignon Witch (Champignon no Majo) — Cozy shōjo fantasy with an interesting world and a nice artstyle (albeit with fairly basic animation). Definitely worth checking out!

I swore I'd already put this one in the bottomless pit of PTW but apparently not. Time to rectify that!

🌟Journal with Witch (Ikoku Nikki) — This is a must watch, IMO.

I take it that's why you put the star there.

It's wild how memorable and iconic episodes there are in just the 20 that I've watched—I'd say it's most of them.

This activated a neuron of me as a brand-new weeb watching my "first anime" (Little Witch Academia) and just looking at the episode list when I was halfway through it just to see how many of the episodes I could remember.

I'd really like to sink my teeth into a manga in Japanese for immersion but I have to find something that'll hook me enough to push through the difficulty.

The obvious cliché answer is just "read Yotsuba&!" but I can do you one better: My Journey to Her (Boku ga Watashi ni Naru Tame ni, abbrev. BokuWata). Single volume with eight chapters. Most terms have no furigana, but I didn't let that stop me. It's an autobiography of a Japanese trans woman going to Thailand for SRS.

Aside from Yotsuba&! and BokuWata I have also read ARIA in Japanese and really enjoyed it. I also have the first volume of Doraemon in Japanese but I've hardly touched it, alas.

[–] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This activated a neuron of me as a brand-new weeb watching my "first anime" (Little Witch Academia) and just looking at the episode list when I was halfway through it just to see how many of the episodes I could remember.

Cute!

My Journey to Her (Boku ga Watashi ni Naru Tame ni, abbrev. BokuWata)

Great recommendation! But perhaps too good of a recommendation, since I've already read it bleh I guess I could re-read it in Japanese, but I read it relatively recently so I don't think I'd have that same pull. Incidentally, that's the second manga in the "autobiography of a Japanese trans woman going to Thailand for SRS" I've read, the first being Umareru Seibetsu wo Machigaeta (I Was Born the Wrong Sex) which I think I've read in both English and Japanese.

As a dutiful Japanese learner, I do have Yotsuba&!, and I've read a few chapters, but the kind of thing that really gets me hooked is well-developed characters and emotional turmoil (hence Ikoku Nikki). I think when I get to the point where I can easily read in Japanese at about the same pace I can in English, I could read something more lighthearted, but in the meantime I need something properly dramatic to keep me plowing ahead.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The bleh is on me, hahah. I'll add Umareru Seibetsu wo Machigaeta to mia planlisto. And it's interesting that you have that attitude towards Yotsuba&!. I guess for me Yotsuba&! is good because one doesn't need to understand much of it to follow along on the plot, but one gets more out of it by understanding more of the text, so it's basically easily read as long as I accept that I won't understand everything. But I can also see your perspective.

[–] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago

I guess for me Yotsuba&! is good because one doesn't need to understand much of it to follow along on the plot

This is also a case of having different needs from an immersion text: I've now gotten to a point where I actually want something on around a high school reading level without furigana (or without copious furigana, at the very least) so I can really test and reinforce my kanji and vocabulary knowledge. But early on, I was much happier to read something along the lines of Yotsuba&! which I could get through without giving up in disgust. It's all about finding that right balance of challenge and enjoyment.