Off with a (bomb) bang. Animation looked pretty good, especially the wave controller scenes. I hardly remember any of this story at all so don't think I can give as indepth comments as I did with tsukimichi. It feels a bit risky to introduce a pretty much entirely new cast after only one season. There was a lot of story for each characters, that I remember at least, back in season 1 but it feels like we kind of lost all of that if they're going with a new crew, which I'm not sure whether will hold the interest the same way the originals did

Oh and one last thing I wanted to say was that it was fun discussing these episodes with you and the others that chimed in. I think based on your post in summer season preview you won't be watching Tower of God so WE'LL NEVER SPEAK AGAIN 😆 but maybe I'll give something new a chance or if not, we can pick it back up in season 3

This series has never felt like it is particularly popular

I never even saw it on the popularity charts you posted but maybe that was because it was a 2 cour anime so not technically a spring one? Although maybe those charts are for outside Japan.

Certainly not like Slime or Overlord

I don't know how everyone else feels but I haven't watched the last like four episodes of slime. I probably shouldn't give up on it but boy does it seem like it's just time I won't get back... I could see people liking Tsukimichi at least more this season rather than overall.

Do you have any closing thoughts on the season overall? Especially with the heroes in the first part, and the students later on? Should they have cut more, less, or was pacing the main issue? I feel like I'm coming out of it with a positive opinion but thinking about it, that might be because everything good was stacked right on the last few episodes, where it took ~23 other episodes to get here

I thought they would actually go back to the fight in Kaleneon this episode but, nope, fast forwarded through it. I still really don't understand what Mio did to make the demon general a smol lizard... I assume it has to do with his reflection skill but... I didn't remember or expect Mio to have won the fight by eating.

Mondo and Lime best bro duo this season.

They kind of glossed over it but the prince(ss) was expecting Makoto to be normal and like... blackmail her. That and Makoto turning down a full time teaching position shows it really does help to have a pocket dimension where all your needs are met.

What I was wondering if would get adapted last episode was (I wonder if we were talking about the same thing, wjs018), and Sofia is shown to be still alive! Oop, nevermind. Hard to not feel bad for her, Root definitely comes off as the villain here with his blasé attitude towards life, but perhaps that comes with living a very long time and losing everyone you get close to by being functionally immortal.

I had a moment during the party where I was thinking "Wait, is this the scene with... Right Mio won the contest... so will they adapt..." And yep, I feel like that's kind of a bad scene to end on, as Makoto brushes her affection aside, comes off as prime dense protag to me, but at least they all get a last name so they're like family, right?

I wanted to spend some time reflecting on the entire season, but doubt I'll have enough time to go through it all to collect my thoughts. Overall I didn't find the adaptation disappointing, but that might be because I have a lot of context with the WN, manga, and soon LN to fill in the gaps. I do wonder if things would be better if they went even more cut-heavy. Like people complain the students aren't fleshed out in the anime, but are in the manga (so go check it out if you want to see more), but I wonder what if the anime just completely cut them out? Nah, that's impossible, but what if... I'm not sure I've seen anything make that amount of drastic cuts though.

It was a fun ride, surprised it got a 2 cour episode season, and even more surprised it's getting a season 3. I think over time this became my favorite isekai, though it's very slow going there's so much character and relationship development, as well as crafty antagonists and allies, that I couldn't think of anything I'd place higher, so even though the anime adapation itself has been a bit iffy, another season is still something I look forward to

This is as surprising to me as it getting a season 2 was. And I'm sure it's a completely normal, company purchasing rights to adapt and expecting returns... but part of me is like... what if it's just one really rich dude that wants to see it animated? 😆

What a coincidence, I just mentioned recently over on !lightnovels@ani.social that I was reading the first volume. Has a fairly unique setting so could be interesting, especially for those that like Overlord

I don't know if the reverse is a new thing or if it's always been like that.

Here's a comment in a lemmy issue describing mastodon images not appearing in lemmy from last year. Since the issue was closed three days after 0.19.3 released I had expected it to work in the next version 0.19.4, but it appears that was not the case.

Edit: While I'm here, I noticed piefed also doesn't support it, so was considering opening an issue to support attachments, but I imagine there wouldn't be much desire to do so until mastodon integration is more of a real thing? though I think other software does it, like Plemora/Akkoma/Iceshrimp, I didn't check but did see the code for it being discussed for plemora at least

Navarre dies and Hibiki gains PTSD and goes through a season of character development. Sealy dies and everyone has moved past it in a couple minutes. o7 RIP random adventurer.

Though there was already a lot of death on that battlefield, hard to tell since there wasn't much focus on it. I liked how they kept Lancer killing demon teammates as well as humans for swords but didn't mention it like they did in the novel, you just had to notice the armor. Might be an actual example of show don't tell actually happening.

Makoto knows that Root was watching 👀 Though Sofia didn't have much of a comment on it, I can't remember if she did in the novel or not... but not important so not going to look it up. He also didn't appear to use Uchine in this fight, which I think is his strongest weapon (what he pulled when facing the goddess). I can't remember if that was the same or not. I don't really recognize the bow he had, so not sure if it's special, though surely dwarf made. Also not sure about the sword Sofia pulled, I'm sure there's some history there, maybe when the translated LN gets to... okay that might be a few years. (Edit: Oh right he literally says the bow is named Azusa. I completely missed that somehow. Now I remember, right, Uchine wasn't his only weapon)

Really good episode, happy with how everything was adapted.

Excited for the finale, I imagine it will be a mop up episode not unlike season 1. There is one more thing I'm curious if they'll adapt or not, so will have to see if it makes it into the last episode or maybe it was cut from the LN.

I played some Tiny Life recently. I liked it, but it is a bit simple, and the bigger issue I had with it is just that there isn't much to it, especially to build. There's like two counters, two fridges, one shower... from my perspective it really needs an artist to just go ham and make tons of options so there's stuff to actually decorate with, even if stats are the same.

Such dense plot armor you can literally see it 😆

I can't tell if they're doing a good job portraying characters strengths when they only get a couple minutes of existing before the next character comes in and shows how strong they are. Hibiki came in and got wrecked by Io, Io got wrecked by Makoto, then Sofia comes in and same for her... She's supposed to be the strongest adventurer and apparently did something to dragons which should've at least been on the level of Tomoe pre-Makoto'ing... But without ever seeing it... I guess she did smack up Tomoki last episode. I guess it's just surprising how one-sided every fight is even for characters who just won a one-sided fight earlier.

What a time for a random flashback from Root. I forget if that was already shown in the anime or they put it here, because it just happened recently in the manga. Feel like they should've kept it back whenever it happened and not interrupted the flow of the fight.

Sofia possibly being charmed is a pretty interesting twist, makes earlier scenes make more sense with her lying to Rona about what happened and leaving Tomoki alive.

Either way this is probably my favorite part, specifically Rona attempting to cast something, Makoto calling her out on it, and her just be like "ha, just a prank bro, what were your demands again? sounds good to me, whatever happens to Sofia happens, bye". That and the team Io blasting off again.

I can't remember if there were more training scenes for Makoto in the novel or not. Definitely feels like he was training up for a goddess smackdown and suddenly got wrapped into a fight in the starting zone. But without seeing any training it feels kind of like... when did it happen? I feel like they didn't do a good job explaining the mana armor, especially when they showed it off by him... knocking a tree over. I don't know if it's explained at this point or later...

::: spoiler some mana armor stuff, maybe covered later?

From what I think I remember it's near impossible to make mana take a physical form. He read that book on the theory of doing it from the librarian, and I think maybe they succeeded in doing it for like an atom of mana for a nanosecond before blinking out of existence using up tons of energy, sort of like large hadron collider level stuff... so Makoto just able to make an entire giant armor of mana and materialize it near endlessly is just complete insanity

:::

Oh I thought next episode is last but I see there's 25, so that makes me less worried, feel like there's still a lot to wrapup but probably doable in two.

Excited for this but might need to rewatch season 1. Nothing in that trailer really made sense to me... I think where season 1 ended was basically where I stopped reading so that might be why, though

So the Hibiki power up scene was one I had been waiting to see animated to see if I could make more sense out of it. And the result was... nothing, they didn't show anything that made it any clearer, I guess there was nothing to learn about it. Unless I try to dig up who that voice actor was, was it the same as a character? Might just be a coincidence, though

And that power, for her, after already being considered dangerous long term by the demons 😬

Well this episode felt like another tease since Io also proves not to be much a threat, continuing the trend... Gonna have to wait a week to see how Sofia does instead.

I forgot to mention it last week but I did not recall reading anything about Lancer having a glow up from harvesting some souls or something. This whole time I had no idea who that even was at the end of the OP, I only thought of him in his smol form.

Also off-topic I've been playing Cassette Beasts for weeks now and got a bootleg (shiny) Tokusect which I've been using in honor of Makoto's suit

I have no idea how they're going to fit it all into three (I think that's how many are left?) episodes. Which sounds crazy after most people would think they've been dragging their feet for the last 21. I'm trying to save my retrospectiveness for the final episode but I do wonder if this is a really difficult arc to adapt to anime. It flows much better as a novel since it's just such a long series of events from the tournament starting until the end.

When I checked out the next episode preview last week I knew this was coming (flashbacks of what was going on with the heroes). Though I actually expected Makoto to not even land this episode, so that turned out to be wrong, only just.

::: spoiler explaining Tomoki's trump card

Feel like the anime made this a little unclear, but it does seem like some people caught on; his trump card is a nuke, and the "lasting curse or disease" they're speaking of is radiation poisoning.

:::

There was some good foreshadowing this episode as well but I'll resist writing about it, but do love the anime keeps some of the finer details.

People finally get an explanation for Hibiki's outfit from the opening. "It's just because of stats, guys, I swear"

Didn't seem to matter to Io though, even with all their training and equipment he still shows his strength. But now he has Makoto in front of him, find out what happens next time on Dragonball Z Tsukimichi

I took screenshots of this convo as well 😆 Picked this game up when it went on sale for the multiplayer update, been having a fun time. Not too far into it though, been taking my time catching everything and ranking everything up first.

Ah, that sort of tells me what I need to know. If it had started to get more serious with the empire building / character development I would've wanted to continue with it but if it just goes into comedy / gag bits then probably not for me.

Haha, I picked up vol 1 of that as well to check it out since I couldn't find much info about it. I feel like the only sci-fi isekai (I guess it isn't technically one, but I mean sort of close / fish out of water) I think is really good is The Galactic Navy Officer Becomes an Adventurer but both the LN and WN stopped years ago and never made it West afaik. I read Reborn as a Space Mercenary instead as at least that is still going, though it does have its own flaws. Evil Lord was definitelyyyyy not exactly my cup of tea though I'm not sure if I should completely write it off, I'd be at least curious where it's going with the antagonist isekai god stuff since I haven't seen that often in a story before... Oh well, besides Death Mage Doesn't Want a Fourth Time

Reborn as a Space Mercenary Vol 8 - Finished this one finally a few days ago, just in time since vol 9 came out so picked up that and will be the next one I read. This was one of my favorite volumes right below vol 6. I think the author does a good job with action scenes, both in space combat or on the ground, and describing them in easy ways to visualize which helps a lot.

Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra Vol 1 - Working through this one, having trouble sitting down and reading it. I want to like it, I think, as I liked the manga. I sort of see it as an alternative Overlord, except maybe less grim dark? Although that might be early on, it feels like being the "evil" faction is more like a cosmetic pack and set faction affinity. Not unlike a real RTS / Turn-based strategy. Like the zerg in starcraft sure seem bad but when you're just playing the game it's more just a different cosmetic for the same units. I sort of like it that way in this story, whereas Overlord was more cruel / suffering this has, started out at least, way more focus on nation and resource building. Edit: That's not to say there isn't some dark / psychological horror stuff, it just isn't the main focus.

Edit: Accidentally hit enter before I even typed anything besides a title out so have been editing this quickly to fill things in, caught myself off guard there 😓

A good episode, quite a cliffhanger to end on though.

Them off-screening all the mob fights... maybe good to save some time, I guess not really important? MCs team wins, move on. Yea, I guess so. I feel like I'd be very confused why the lady knight with Souei was blushing but it seems like maybe people can figure it out themselves, I feel like I certainly wouldn't without having watched the previous seasons any time recently.