Great chapter. Instead of the fireworks preventing progress, it is the fireworks that are causing it. Let’s hope we don’t go back from here.

Yeah, I can see how this arc might be confusing if you have only consumed the manga adaptation. There are lots of details from the LNs that are omitted. I have been enjoying this arc immensely, but I already knew the plot parts of the story, so I have been able to primarily focus on the manga’s ridiculous humor.

Alright, this panel caused me to laugh loud enough to turn some heads on the train.

Kanade continues to be probably my favorite part of this arc in the manga. She is such a great character, kind of like a version of just the mob form of Cid, wishing she could become an eminence in shadow.

We continue to march along in the story with no announcements about LN7. No idea what is going to happen when we hit the end of the LN content. I assume it will go on hiatus, but part of me hopes that we might get manga versions of some of the side stories that the author wrote for the mobile game. I would love to see this artist’s take on those.

One of my favorite recurring jokes in this series is how lame Hikaru is compared to all of the absolutely broken abilities everybody else has. At least people are nice enough to never treat him any differently for it.

I’m glad she feels motivated, but this was a frustrating chapter to read. She can be as motivated as she wants, but it doesn’t mean anything unless she actually takes action. I really hope she plucks up the courage to do something instead of waiting for Daichi to pull himself together. That would be a frustrating level of passivity.

This whole return to the moon storyline is giving me flashbacks to The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I was a wreck after watching Ghibli’s adaptation of that story.

This is a very unusual situation with this new princess that was born from an orphan. No idea what they are doing with this yet.

I haven’t had too much time to read this past week, but there are a couple things I wanted to call out:

• Renge to Naruto (sometimes NSFW)

So, I know I have mentioned this one before, but I just wanted to give this series another mention. It has really packed a lot of emotions into what started as a silly, cooking-themed, ecchi gyaru series. I have been super impressed at the author’s ability to write a compelling MC that isn’t afraid to be emotionally vulnerable at times.

• I Want to Make Black-Knight Fall In Love With Me! / Gakeppuchi Reijou wa Kurokishi-sama wo Horesasetai!

I caught up on a couple chapter of this series this past week and the end of volume 2 was great. I felt like the second volume was dragging a bit with the introduction of some new characters that split our main couple apart for a while, causing the narrative to split as well. However, the end of volume really has me looking forward to where things go from here.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Witch Watch
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Apothecary Diaries

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Witch Watch and Apothecary Diaries stay atop their respective charts this week. There is a lot of movement on the AC chart while the reddit chart has stayed pretty stable. One thing I have noticed this season is that the total reddit karma is pretty low (just a bit over 14k this week). That number is usually over 20k. So, that could mean that either the season is pretty weak for reddit users overall, or that there are fewer active reddit users. I suspect the former, but kind of hope for the latter.

I have hardly had a chance to watch anything this past week. Basically, the only shows I got the chance to watch are not airing this season, but I have been slowly watching together with my wife.

• Natsume’s Book of Friends Season 7 - I finished up the final couple episodes of the season this past week and they were excellent. The final two episodes of this season are frankly, two of the best episodes of the entire show. I hope we don’t have to wait so long for another season again.
• Rurouni Kenshin Season 2 of the remake - Still working through this show and have watched up through episode 17 now (Kenshin just finished his training). My favorite character in this show is Hiko Seijuro, so I have been really enjoying the past couple episodes. I am sad that I won’t see him as much anymore though.

Meta comment: Next week I am hoping to be the OP/ED thread for the season. So, start thinking about it now!

I really felt this chapter in a personal way.

The emotional storytelling that this ecchi series has been able to deliver has been excellent with this grad school arc. It’s so rare to see a male adult protagonist just break down in a good cry.

There were a handful of times during my time in grad school where I broke down like that. Life is brutal when you are barely able to make ends meet and the demands placed on you are completely overwhelming.

I feel like I barely made it to the end of my PhD, after countless dead ends and experiments that just never worked. During those years, I was making approximately minimum wage and had to figure out how to live in one of the most expensive cities in the US. I don’t think my bank account ever cracked four digits all those years. It’s a life in which one stroke of bad luck can be utterly, life changingly devastating.

It’s really nice to see Naruto dealing with the stresses of life in a perfectly human way. It’s also really nice to see Renge be there as simply another human to help lift him back up.

It’s been a lot of silly, ecchi fun. Then it will occasionally really hit you in the feels. This most recent arc of Naruto wanting to go to grad school and dealing with his mom and job has been a bit too real sometimes (cries in former poor grad student).

I just caught up on the past few chapters and that kiss was fantastic. I really hope we get more of Violet as well. She has the villainess aesthetic down.

The duality of man Tsuchiya:

Her being friends with Hachiko was nice. He was such a good boy that he wouldn’t even chase after an errant cat spirit.

Yeah, the TL gets better (or at least I don’t notice it as much), but I almost dropped this series in the beginning as well, mostly due to how depressing it was.

Her sister getting involved in her life has been a great injection of normality. This series has done a great job of evolving the tone over time.

Also, this panel cracked me up:

I really liked the chapter’s title page with the three of them in street clothes.

I suspect this prince is the type of person that will only be more interested if he is rejected.

Hmm, I did some searching and it doesn’t really look like it. The hard part of this is the pandemic which virtually eliminated tourism for the better part of a year. It looks like Saga prefecture is most of the way back up to where tourism was prior to the pandemic. I don’t know exactly how that compares to other prefectures though. (Data source)

The hills were alive with the taste of wine it seems.