Unboxious

It hurts me soul to see something like Fairy Tail beating The Elusive Samurai. I’m surprised enough people still care about that show to watch it.

It was fine, but far from my favorite. I don’t think that last episode was all that strong, either.

So far it’s been the following:

• Bang Brave Bang Bravern - Big gay robots. Hilarious show.
• Skip and Loafer - Succeeds more than any anime I’ve seen at making the characters feel like people.
• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken - Fun story about making anime.
• Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- - The only “robots rebel against humanity” anime I’ve ever liked.
• ODDTAXI - An excellent story about a guy who gets wrapped up in some shady dealings he’d rather avoid.

There’s been some other great stuff too of course but I wouldn’t say that anything else I’ve seen that’s been released since 2020 has been overrated underrated.

As for worst it’s gonna be hard to beat The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War and Ex-Arm.

Adding some western folklore to the chaos? I’m all for it!

I use apps that aren’t available in my region for language study, so this could end up being a real problem for me.

Yeah, those videos are part of what made me want to read the manga. So far everything that Geoff has said about it has been completely true. Hard to say if I can say the same for Garnt, but that’s likely just because he spent more time talking about the magic system and I’m only 7 chapters in.

Regarding the page turn button, if yours is anything like mine, it’s just a volume rocker to Android

It actually is configurable on the Boox page! You can set it to be a volume rocker, turn page buttons, or for scrolling. I guess I haven’t tried setting it to scrolling to switch pages, but I doubt that would work either.

Would be nice to see a more advanced configuration utility like the steam deck has; there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to push the button to simulate a swipe!

• DanDaDan - Decided to give this a try since the anime releases soon. Wow! That was some wild stuff. Lots of really beautiful double-page spreads, and good art in general. I really look forward to seeing this get animated.
• Blue Box - This is another one with an upcoming anime adaptation. It’s an okay romance, but I think Kaguya-sama: Love is War and Skip and Loafer spoiled me. I put a bit of thought into what sets those apart, and I think the biggest part is seeing the perspectives of both sides of the relationship. I also like the art in those two just a little more. Blue Box has some serious same-face-syndrome between the two biggest female characters. I can only tell them apart by their hair! Overall it’s pretty good though, and I’m only about 60 chapters in so maybe it improves.
• Witch Hat Atolier - Wow. The art in this one is incredible. I’m only 7 chapters in, and it’s slow-going since I’m reading it in Japanese, but this is easily one of the most beautiful manga I’ve ever seen. I think it’s even better-looking than DanDaDan.
• Boox Page - This one isn’t a manga, but this week I picked up an e-reader. Wow. It’s a huuuuge improvement over reading on my phone! The good: it runs Android, so I can install apps like Manga Plus to read manga conveniently, legally, and for free. I was also able to install some big Japanese manga apps like コミックDAYS using a VPN + the Aurora store. The 7" screen doesn’t sound that much bigger than my 6" phone screen, but since it’s almost precisely the same aspect ratio as a manga the difference is actually much much larger. Battery life is great of course, since it uses an e-paper display. Speaking of the e-paper display, it looks great, most of the time. It’s a bit of a downer not having colored chapter covers but it maps the color to grayscale fairly well, even though it doesn’t support a ton of different gray levels. The bad: it’s stuck on Android 11, so I had to spoof another device to get my favorite offline Japanese-English dictionary (Yomiwa) installed. Fortunately none of the other apps I tried had any issues. Speaking of apps I tried, I installed 7 different manga reading apps developed by various US and JPN publishers. None of them supported the page turns buttons, and none of them had a setting to disable animations. E-paper displays do not like animations, and turning pages feels clunky as a result. I also tried one community-made manga app, Mihon. It supports my page turn buttons just fine and also allows me to disable animations. Very frustrating that once again buying media from the official source gives a worse experience than piracy would. The ugly: thankfully there isn’t anything that falls into this category. Overall it’s been a pretty good experience!

Yotsubato

Glad to see this one getting some attention! Lots of people (myself included) got into it because it’s often recommended as a first manga for Japanese learners, but then I discovered that it’s genuinely really funny! It really felt like the mangaka understood the chaos small children bring to the table.

Nan Hao & Shang Feng

Those sponsored segments were truly bizarre! I totally agree though, when those jokes hit they really hit. Lots of great visual gags.

The use of color is really gonna help with the same-face-syndrome this series suffers from. I can’t tell Chinatsu and Hina apart at all without looking at their hair in the manga!