efaardvark

Or you could stream it legit from someplace like crunchy - without having to learn pirate-speak. Just sayin'..

Defiance and Radioactive. Nice combo..

I just couldn't get into Black Clover. Yes, the main character is too noisy. The rest don't make up for it. I got about 10 or so episodes in, looked at the (at the time) 40 or so episodes to go, and decided it just wasn't worth it. At least not for me. Who knows? Maybe it'll turn into another 500+ episode Naruto. I kind of doubt it, but either way.. I'm out. Goblin Slayer, on the other hand, was pretty good. If you liked that one then you might try Grimgar .. different, but it had a kind of similar vibe for me. FWIW, I also liked Overlord, and the first season of TenSura (the "slime" one.. I binge and am saving the rest for later.)

This thread title made me think of Midas and his golden touch. Careful what you wish for!

350+ episodes and you expected different? Every season will end that way. That's why I prefer the shorter, one- or 2-season-and-done format. They actually provide closure.

I would second this. Though tbh I don't have much interest in (or time for) doing cosplay myself, I do enjoy seeing what other people come up with however. It isn't totally out of the question for me to do something myself if suitably motivated/provoked* either. I'd be happy to donate prize points or contribute in other ways. *It didn't come together, but I did consider being a Kerbal for Halloween at work for instance. It would have been a hoot to see people's reactions to seeing a Kerbal in the control room at JPL's SFOF.

Agree. I'm a relatively recent MAL convert - even though I've been watching anime literally for decades - mostly because the forums weren't interesting. I have the same issue with goodreads for books.. good for tracking & sharing your list, but not so good for the forum/chat aspect.

Haven't had any time to play games lately. (Actually not true, but now that the season is over I'd rather binge-watch last season's anime than play games.)

Wotakoi. About 1/3rd of the way thru and liking it so far. Nice seeing an anime with (slightly) older characters for a change. [mal type=anime id=35968]

Oh boy. Japanese kana uses a syllabary rather than an alphabet. There are 40 official symbols/syllables in the kana, and Japanese doesn't use some of our sounds so there's not really a direct correlation with our ("English") alphabet. (For example, there are no "V" or "Th" sounds in Japanese, and there is no distinction between "R" and "L" sounds.) There's 2 versions of the syllabary however. Hiragana, which is used for native Japanese words, and Katakana, which is used for foreign words, including names. Written Japanese uses Katakana kind of like we use italics for French or Italian words. The two syllabarys are basically the same (in theory) but the differences between the symbols are more extreme than between normal and italics in our text. Also, there tend to be more extensions to the katakana since foreign words have a lot of sounds that spoken Japanese does not. If that's all there was then learning Japanese would be easy! The thing that kills me wrt written Japanese however is the kanji. A kanji character like 猫 has one or more "readings", or corresponding kana translation(s). In this case the kana/reading would be "ねこ", which are the syllables "ne" and "ko". "Neko" is the Japanese word for "cat". I can sight-read the kana pretty well, but anything containing kanji beyond gradeschool level is beyond me. There might be only 40 syllables in the Japanese language, but there's over 100 kanji in the "N5" (lowest) level of the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), and each kanji character can represent any of several Japanese words, depending on context. At "N1" (highest) there's over 2000 kanji, each with several "readings"! I'm not really the one to teach this sort of thing though so I'll stop there. I've dabbled in it a bit and have an interest, but for further research I'd suggest you look into that JLPT, above, and see how far down that rabbit hole you would like to go. The kana is easy. You can get up to speed on 40 syllables with a deck of flash cards in no time. Basic kanji isn't too much harder, but to get even to highschool-level reading ability might require several hundred hours of study.

Another one with a vaguely similar theme is Shinrei Tantei Yakumo (psychic detective Yakumo) about a guy who can see & talk to the spirits of people who have died and solve their murders. I liked the ET. [mal type=anime id=7662]

What ages are the students you're dealing with? FWIW, the closest I ever came to anything that could be considered "official" Japanese education was when I was in elementary school. I think it was in 1st or second grade they had a sort of immersion program where for 2 weeks a guest teacher(? might have been just a native) from a particular culture would come in and we'd do activities related to that culture for the entire 2-week period. We'd sing songs in the language, do crafts, learn to speak the language, the clothing, and a bit of the history and culture. Even stuff like math was done using the "guest" language. At least as much as possible. Again, this was only for two weeks at around age 7 so it was quite limited in scope, but kids that age are information sponges if properly motivated and this was a lot of fun, at least for me. My next attempt at learning the language wasn't until I was nearly 40 and I was surprised at what I remembered from those couple weeks. Unfortunately it wasn't enough time to get into the written language, especially the kanji. Native Japanese students learn several kanji per week over their entire school life, and 1st/2nd graders are often still learning hirogana. Kanji is a subject you can get a masters degree in. No way is it possible to even scratch the surface in only 2 weeks at an early grade-school level. We were presented with the kana & kanji for common things like "dog" (いぬ/犬), "cat" (ねこ,/猫), "person" (ひと/人), etc., but most of the usage in class was spoken, with reading optional and limited. Still, even 30 years later I found (re)learning to read kana was relatively easy. I still can't write it though, and kanji is a learning cliff that I'll probably never be able to justify the time it'd take to become proficient.

I guess there is a kind of collectable aspect - especially if there's exclusive "extras" included in the deal - but for me it more about not wanting to lose access to some content that I really like. Stuff has a habit of disappearing without warning from streaming sites. If I like something enough that I feel I might want to re-watch it in the future then I'll get the DVD. In that respect the streaming sites are just a kind of preview system so I can find the stuff I like without having to make a huge investment in purchasing discs, most of which I'll never watch a second time, and many of which I won't even finish. I consider what I've got on plex on my NAS to be my main source of anime.

Sure. Some stories are built on sad. AnoHana for example, or Angel Beats, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, or Clannad: After Story, to name but a few. That's not to say every moment of those are sad, but individual episodes and/or certain scenes definitely. The "graduation" episode (incl. end credits) in Angel Beats, "White Darkness" and "The End of the World" in Clannad: After Story, etc. Lots of otherwise upbeat anime also have their sad moments. When Pork Bowl goes off to be made into bacon in Silver Spoon for example, or the first episode of Kotoura-san. I also feel sad sometimes when I get to the end of a really good series. Also happens with a good book.

Joshiraku... pretty challenging material for this non-native speaker, but I had fun watching it and I did get at least some of the jokes. I kind of doubt this one could ever be dubbed well. [mal type=anime id=12679]

I currently subscribe to crunchy, plus I "borrow" my brother's netflix and hulu accounts when I want to stream something that's not on crunchy. In the past I've also subscribed to Funi, though I don't currently. However, like others have said, even using multiple streaming services I don't get access to everything. Some stuff never shows up on any streaming site. If I really like something I'll buy the DVD. Usually NOT blu-ray though, unless there's no other option. (BR media is a lot more susceptible to scratches than DVDs in my experience, but can be a pain to rip when I want to back up my purchase to my NAS. YMMV..)

Hachiken, meet Pork Bowl.

Cells at Work. This guy has got to be the most unlucky guy alive. I'm only on episode 7 and he's already had pneumonia, influenza, an allergy attack, food poisoning, a parasitic infection, an infected scrape, heat stroke, and now he's got cancer! He needs to take better care of himself!

That is a problem, but I'll take what I can get at this point. That was the beauty of fictionwise. They had a large selection of material from different authors and genres. Not just obscure stuff either. I found a bunch of my favorites there too.. Niven, Bear, Silverberg, Spinrad, Stine, Ellison, Weber. (I'm into SF, but they also had other genres like mystery, fantasy, etc.) Even collections like magazines like Analog or anthologies where it is typically hard to get all of the authors to grant permission for e-release were there. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. I spent a small fortune there.

Yes, nice that they offer PDFs too, which is what I have kind of gravitated to for my own library. The old fictionwise site also had PDFs and quite a lot of my e-library is PDF as a consequence, including about 3 years of a SF magazine called Analog that I have subscribed to since I was 12. For a while that site alone made me think that ebooks were finally a thing, and I was glad to give them my money. Then they shut down. Fortunately all the stuff I bought from them is still safely stored on my NAS. (Dont try this with "your" kindle collection btw.) Anyway, yes, sites like emanga and fictionwise, and efforts like crossroads are why I keep trying this e-thing. FWIW, my favorite ebook to date is probably that Cassini picture book released a couple years ago. Sorry, not anime/manga related, but cool nevertheless.

Welcome Raven! Hmmm... 54 here. When does this tapering off that you speak of start to kick in? Then again I still enjoy legos and video games too. Maybe it is just me.

I played with my mom's kindle for a while so I'm familiar with those methods. Not really interested in jumping through those sorts of hoops anymore though. If they don't want to sell what I want on the up-and-up then I'll oblige by not buying. There's plenty of content out there that does give me what I want without the hassles. Don't get me wrong... I have no problem paying for what I want, and I'd like to support the actual content creators with my $$$, but they made their choice and I can do without the toll booth operators taking their ridiculous "overhead" (usually many multiples of what the artists themselves get).