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cutest

My time has come.

I’ve got too many of them so I’ll just mention a small subset.

First up would be (mostly) animals on my AniList profile.

Some of the more prominent ones are:

• lactic acid bacteria from Cells at Work!
• Chomusuke from Konosuba
• Chikuwa from Yuru Camp

(Too lazy to add their pics + you can click on the link)

That’s not to say humans (and humanoids) - mostly children - can’t be cute. I usually find them cute not just for their looks, but also their behaviour. If they are too naughty or bratty, they are out.

The ones whom I find cutest are:

platelets from Cells at Work!

Dou from The Demon King’s Daughter is Too Kind

Anya from Spy x Family

No longer smaller children - probably teenagers - but are still cute:

Shamiko from The Demon Girl Next Door

Haru Urara from Umamusume

When we talk about cuteness, its hard to ignore big franchises like Pokemon. There are too many to list, so I will just give a shoutout to my top favourites:

Lilligant

and Minccino

My toppest, most-favouritest of all time in terms of cuteness is still from Digimon: Patamon!

Edit: Please include some pictures people

(Shy guy x popular girl) romcoms:

• Makeine
• Kubo won’t let me be invisible
• plenty of shounen romcoms

Stoic guy who’s very serious about his craft:

• Barakamon

Past Seasons

I made it halfway through Trigun Stampede. It is certainly well-produced and the plot isn’t too boring.

Unfortunately for it, I got distracted by Pokemon: Horizons. It’s just a kids show with a simplistic plot, with the most protagonistic protagonist to ever protag, but I can’t stop watching it.

(Liko has got to be one of the biggest nepo baby ever. In most other shows, they would give the MC some semblance of humble beginnings. Liko meanwhile

Everyone was handed to her on a silver platter. The rest of the crew has to earn their keep - IMO Dot and Orio contributed the most - but Liko is just there. Having said all that, Liko is a very sweet girl so she gets a pass from me.)

I can’t help but compare it to Digimon Beatbreak (which I don’t think is bad by any means) since these are similar anime aimed at little kids, but somehow Pokemon is the one that drew me in. In fact, I watched more of Digimon as a kid. Perhaps the Digimons’ ability to speak made them appear less cute to me now. (Edit: I realised I valued the cool factor more as a kid. Now that I am older I prefer something cute, and Pokemons are cuter.)

Speaking of cuteness, some of these latest-gen pokemons are simply heart-melting.

My favourite has to be Liko’s Sprigatito. I think the studio did a fantastic job pairing Liko with her partner. They just look so cute together.

I am only one-third of the way through but I heard that it gets even better in later episodes.

P.S. The way Liko carries Sprigatito around is too adorable. I love it.

P.P.S. Cap has got to be the MVP here. His back must be breaking from carrying the rest of them so hard in battles.

If my memory serves me right this is the first time we see Oguri Cap getting pissed off.

is it good?

If you ask in a dedicated thread for it, you are going to get biased responses.

Anyway, it’s good.

But rather than take others’ words for it, how about checking a few episodes out?😉

Edit / P.S. here are my reviews of Umamusume if you care about that:

• part 1
• part 2

It’s hard to go into details about it without entering spoiler territory. The best way to tell if it is good is to see it for yourself.

Even though the main characters are involved, these are among the most forgettable chapters to me.

I have seen the argument that one shouldn’t expect much from it since Spy x Family is slice-of-slice, but guess what? It is possible to be a SoL while having development.

These two chapters - and this episode by extension - did nothing to advance the plot. To put it bluntly, this is filler that does nothing except to extend the runtime.

Unfortunately, this is why SxF has always been shy of 10/10 for me.

If I were a Gnosia and there’s a doctor onboard, I’d totally claim to be an engineer and betray one of my teammates. That’s an easy way to get at least one human on my side.

Also, it looks like the amnesiac premise is conveniently being ignored for quite a number of episodes. I bet that Yuri’s amnesia is going to be relevant to the plot later, probably as part of a big reveal.

Hibike Euphonium. Violet Evergarden

I can second both of these.

I didn’t recommend them earlier because I remember them best not for beautiful scenery, but for peak animation and story. However, I won’t be surprised if they are extremely good-looking when it comes to background art too.

One anime that I’ve watched very recently, and that I can recommend for its beauty, is Dragonite and the Postman (Youtube link). It is only 12 minutes long, so it is very easy to pick up.

Example screenshot:

Also, can’t go wrong with Your Name and the likes.

Nevermind. You got me. Well-played.

It’s mentioned in the article.

Year End Awards

This episode is just setting up for the main event - the upcoming Arima Kinen - but they still managed to turn the drama up to eleven, making it so tense. I like it.

Also, Fumino / Nase brought up Musaka’s achievements as a trainer. Does anyone know which IRL person he is based on? Oguri Cap’s IRL trainer?

Banner: Super Freak babying Tama

@rikka@ani.social

Dang, this show would never go stale. Just as things were settling into a routine, they switched it up. I guess it’s the start of the Gnosia campaign (i.e. Yuri starts “playing” as Gnosia)?

Banner:

@rikka@ani.social

Where are pemdas and bodmas users from?

Easy solution: wired mouse

This concierge approach is nothing new; it existed even before LLMs are a thing.

One of my courses in undergrad computer science is Human-Computer Interaction, in which we learn about user experience (UX) concepts.

One of the things we learnt is to validate our ideas quickly and cheaply before putting a lot of time, effort and money into building the thing.

To do so, what we can do is build prototypes. The early versions may be be low-fidelity (lofi) and are scrappy. The later, high-fidelity (hifi) ones would mimic the functionality of the actual products, and may even appear to work to end users when in reality it could be just be manual effort behind the scenes.

The example given during lecture is the development of a ticketing system. To test the idea out, one could simply get a dude to sit in the “machine” and give out slips of paper.

Anyway, I am explaining all these because this seems like a surprise to those without the same educational background. Long story short, what this startup did is completely normal in the realm of software.

We may have better tools like Figma to simulate browser / mobile frontend experiences, but nothing is stopping us from going back to the basics and doing it this way.

I completed two great anime last week.

The first was Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26. This kind of anime is perfect for me: short, episodic, self-contained and bizarre. It has a bit of everything, from comedy and wholesome moments to action-filled sequences and emotional scenes.

I enjoyed it a lot, enough to give it at least a 9 / 10.

The second one that I checked out is My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. Season 2 is coming out next anime season, so I thought I’d give season 1 a shot. And boy was I pleasantly surprised.

If we ever get some side story where we follow some random C-class heroes from One Punch Man, this is it. This differentiation from the usual formula of following some big shot superhuman, and instead focusing on the not-so-glorious but still heroic moments of your everyday dude, makes for a story that stood out.

Another comparison that I can draw it to is Spiderman. I believe one aspect of Spiderman that everyone loves is that “friendly, neighbourhood” part. You don’t need to save the day like Superman; just small acts of kindness to make everyone’s day better. The MC embodies this and IMO this is what makes him endearing.

Speaking of Western comic superheroes, I like how the animation / art-style used at times is inspired by comics, something we hardly see in anime. It reminds me of the Spiderverse movies (though Spiderverse’s production value is on another level).

All in all, this is a heartfelt superhero anime. I like the characters and I like where the story is going. I would definitely be checking season 2 out when it gets released. Minimum 8 / 10.

Can’t be an umamusume anime without some depression eh?

Edit: I can’t help but think that Belno Light is the actual protagonist of the show, and it so happens that a lot of her story revolves around Oguri.

Anyway, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to the banner this week.

Oguri Derp:

Oguri Squish:

Feels meme-worthy but I don’t know how to describe it:

What the heck are you talking about, Roppei?!

Even the intermission goes hard:

I like that little detail of Oguri holding onto that hand-sewn plush that Kitahara Jo made for her. It looks so cool, but is simultaneously so sweet.

This is an exception but I think this shot deserves to be the episode banner even though it’s not even a scene in the anime proper.

@rikka@ani.social