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The Summer 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The problem is with disallowing good people to discuss their beloved series. Unfortunately, we cannot expect Crunchyroll to invest into moderation team, when they are not willing to pay their translators living wage and are trying to replace them with useless AI, aren't we?

Oh wait. Maybe we should do that.

“At Crunchyroll, we prioritize creating a safe and respectful community environment. To maintain this standard, we are hiding all existing user-generated content, including comments and reviews, across all our platforms and experiences,”

smurky turkey wrote:

I really like nearly all aspects of Elusive Samurai after seeing the first two episodes: it has amazing animation, they get creative with the presentation, the story is compelling and very brutal plus the combat is hectic as can be. My issue is with the contrast between the serious and the gags. Going from rather brutal scenes to a weirdo with bright colors or a board game is a rather acquired taste, I am not sure that I am a fan of it. Some of the gags make me question watching while moments such as the big fight at the end and seeing Houjou get some justice for his unfair end are very powerful.

As someone who loves the manga, I feel obligated to warn you that the tonal whiplash never goes away.

isn't this just a harem where the girls have someone else they fell in love in first,or is it going in a different direction?

pikrodafni wrote:

isn't this just a harem where the girls have someone else they fell in love in first,or is it going in a different direction?

I've read a couple volumes of the manga, at least, which seemingly doesn't change much. At most I've seen inklings of romantic infatuation between Yanami and Nukumizu, but even that feels shaky; it feels closer to a couple of low-key weirdos and a likable dope more-or-less naturally building an odd collective companionship. It really doesn't feel like a harem to me, really closer to the likes of... perhaps Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends in terms of their overall dynamic and romantic interest, with how he's (un)lucked his way into friendship a la Eisenbeis' description. If nothing else, the bulk of what I've read so far has been them just kind of bumbling about together.

I know you asked for LN readers specifically, but I can at least give some description of what's to come.

pikrodafni wrote:

isn't this just a harem where the girls have someone else they fell in love in first,or is it going in a different direction?

I've read a couple volumes of the manga, at least, which seemingly doesn't change much. At most I've seen inklings of romantic infatuation between Yanami and Nukumizu, but even that feels shaky; it feels closer to a couple of low-key weirdos and a likable dope more-or-less naturally building an odd collective companionship. It really doesn't feel like a harem to me, really closer to the likes of... perhaps Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends in terms of their overall dynamic and romantic interest, with how he's (un)lucked his way into friendship a la Eisenbeis' description. If nothing else, the bulk of what I've read so far has been them just kind of bumbling about together.

I know you asked for LN readers specifically, but I can at least give some description of what's to come.

https://help.crunchyroll.com/hc/en-us/articles/28154006791188-Why-is-Crunchyroll-Disabling-Comments

Their explanation doesn't seem to match our current reality, so unless they plan to disable comments on other platforms at a later date, it sounds like they're being inconsistent with the silencing of users to make a "safe and respectful" environment.

I find it hard to mourn the CR comments pages too much. Aside from someone reliably telling me what timestamp to jump to so I could skip One Piece's interminable recaps, I think the primary thing missing from my life now is knowing how many pushups that guy on every episode of every show has unreasonably promised to do..

Is it just me, or does everything that's not a straight romance seem to always get much higher ratings from the ANN staff? As long as it's dealing with homosexuality (male on male, female on female not so much) or cross dressing, it's an automatic +1.5 points, on average. On the other hand, anything else is nitpicked withing an inch of its life. It's getting boring.

Alya's (hetero) 3.5 / 2.5 / 2.5 / 3 / 4.5 doesn't seem very much lower than Senpai is an Otokonoko's (cross-dressing/identity) 4 / 3.5 / 3 / 4, or Twilight's (BL?) 4.5 / 4 / 3 / 3.5? Maybe about a half-point difference, on average (and I suspect that might be overstated, given one fewer reviewer chose to review the latter two, which may correlate with less interest/unobserved lower rating).

In Spring 2024, it looks like Spice & Wolf (hetero) received an identical median rating to Jellyfish, and was only trailing behind Euphonium (though there've even been articles here arguing about how to classify Eupho's romantic pairings and non-pairings...). In Fall 2023, the top-rated romance seems to have been 100 Girlfriends (hetero-harem), beating out I'm In Love with the Villainess (which I'm not really familiar with, but I gather was yuri?).

There are definitely some ANN reviewers who've been very outspoken about wanting more LGBTQ media, but skimming through the past few seasons' Preview Guide ratings, if there's any kind of large effect from that, I think it's pretty hard to spot. Just my opinion, but I'd guess production, execution, and writing quality probably mostly swamp other factors.