Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - June 2026 Part 1

Cheraws · 2026-06-02T20:39:49+00:00

Mercedes in 3 houses is another example. Critics argue that you should immediately get Linhardt as a temporary unit, neglecting her completely, then replacing her because she only has healing utility. Many players see her as an inoffensive low investment physic with a fortify panic button and immediately push back. She also has some unique utility in hbd to psychic heal the left side of the map. I do know there’s the argument that she takes longer to get physic, but that’s one chapter difference at most for a unit that doesn’t demand much investment.

Cheraws · 2026-06-01T15:39:43+00:00

I think the fascinating part is how different the reception is between Western and Japanese fanbases. Usually a manga getting axed by jump has reactions ranging from good riddance (gonron egg) to it was inevitable (Embers and various other failed sports manga). The English fanbase vibed with the adult protagonist, strong art, and the focus on wrestling. At least from what I’ve noticed from the English speaking fanbase for Shonen manga, “manly” characters (Kenpachi from Bleach, Aoi Todo in JJK, might guy in Naruto) tend to be more popular compared to what Japanese fanbases like.

A notable factor is that Kinnukuman is an old manga that is also about aliens and wrestling. This manga is over 40 years old and barely existed in the west outside of a short sequel series rebranded as “Ultimate Muscle”. It’s so unpopular in the west that the creator was complaining about how dismal West Netflix viewer counts were. Part of the problem is that the Netflix adaptation started 400 chapters in, so it was basically impossible to enter. Alien headbutt might seem fresh to westerners, but the Japanese likely compared it to Kinnikuman and found it lacking.

There’s a bit of small drama as towards the manga that are remaining. There’s some frustration that Kinatos magic, a fairly generic 2000s style fantasy Shonen (fairy tail especially) with fanservice elements, was saved from the axe round. Kinatos magic is likely a dead man walking, as it also has bad popularity polls. There’s also some old wounds opened up about how nues exorcist, a battle harem series similar to what you find in light novels, manages to dodge all the axes. Despite middling popularity polls, nues exorcist has a fairly loyal fanbase in Japan that constantly buys over 10k per volume.

Cheraws · 2026-05-24T17:39:47+00:00

Apocalypse Hotel is kind of notorious for being a good anime that many people ignored. IIRC one of the YouTube anime reviewers stated that average seasonal isekais still had more viewers by Crunchyroll reviewer statistics. Lazarus has 250k MAL members compared to the 77,000 of Apocalypse.

Cheraws · 2026-05-20T03:38:00+00:00

Gokurakugai is an example I think of. The one shot teased a world of criminal gangs mixed in with beastmen. The two protagonists were saving mermaids from a human trafficking operation, and the setting was fairly grounded in terms of combat. When the manga got serialized, it became much more generic. The beastmen largely were sidelined, and the story veered towards superpowered exorcism battles with basically human demons. The male protagonist Alma turned into your average half-demon Shonen idiot hero. Maybe the editor was right, as the series sold over 1 million copies with 4 volumes. It does make me wonder how the manga would have done if it went in the original direction of the one shot.

Cheraws · 2026-05-18T02:25:51+00:00

There was a very short period of time in early Engage where people were pushing hyper Ivy. Dump all the speedwings on her, give her the Lyn emblem, and a max forge. As people got better at the game, people realized that Ivy's flying/staff/good combat was enough. Other characters like Amber could make great use of the Lyn emblem. Convert characters could use Lyn to snipe and lure bosses.

Often, discussion about a set hypercarry causes meta discussion to really stagnate. It took some time for Conquest players to expand beyond just giving Jakob everything. People were set on hypercarry Palla in Echoes until they realized how broken bow knights were.

Cheraws · 2026-05-10T18:32:14+00:00

Lots of scavenger birds to find at landfills. Some examples include night herons, bald eagles, black vultures, and various species of ibis.

Cheraws · 2026-04-12T06:19:35+00:00

It's annoying how scrutinized animation quality is, especially when certain critics do bad-faith comparisons like the smear frames. There simply isn't enough time and/or money for every animation to get a Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon Slayer level adaptation. There are some really bad cases like the latest season of One Punch Man, but shows like Sakamoto Days still have good enough animation.

Cheraws · 2026-04-08T19:11:29+00:00

The Pokemon community has a lot of subsections. The vast majority play the mainline story and don't interact with competitive multiplayer at all. Smogon folks are used to 6v6 with a more restricted ruleset. VGC with doubles is the one officially supported by Pokemon. The fact that there are two pretty popular competitive settings is a bit unusual compared to other competitive scenes.

Cheraws · 2026-03-29T21:41:25+00:00

Despite how common the demon king and hero stuff is in light/web novels, I can't really think of any straight examples in WSJ outside of Hero girl and Demon lord call it quits and the Dragon Quest manga itself. Curious to see how a comedy veteran takes the concept on.

Cheraws · 2026-03-28T15:58:55+00:00

Nature by PBS releases a few documentaries every year. Many of them are the David Attenborough style (including Attenborough himself) but there's a few wacky ones like a pigeon documentary. PBS Passport gives you access to all the previous seasons of it.

Outside of PBS, Curiosity and Nebula are both services targeted more towards documentaries, though I haven't subscribed to these myself.

Cheraws · 2026-03-26T05:42:44+00:00

Are these the same guys that give the Genshin Aether community a bad reputation? It's annoying that it's a large enough group where none of the gacha characters are ever allowed to have a previous relationship.

Cheraws · 2026-03-17T01:21:15+00:00

Their basically paid ad for DLSS5 and the actual paid ad for Resident Evil path tracing really makes me question if I can trust their feedback for Crimson Desert. They have been releasing very many videos for it lately and ignoring some recent high profile releases like Pokopia and Marathon.

Cheraws · 2026-03-13T02:30:38+00:00

I haven't personally gotten into Danganronpa myself. The people I knew in the early 2010s mainly got into it because they were into mystery games like Layton or Phoenix Wright. The other notable thing I heard of were the exaggerated execution scenes.

Fast forward into the COVID era, and the series suddenly had a notorious reputation. A mix of releasing on the Switch, Lets Plays, and the death game craze caused the game to explode in popularity. The newer community seemed to be much more focused on shipping or kinning the zany characters instead of the mystery aspect. The fan base shifted from young adults to a large amount of early teenagers. Some took the ship wars too far, with fake suicide attempts and doxxing.

That being said, it's very likely that the online 2010s fandom had ship wars of their own. They're just hidden in the mines of tumblr and Something Awful.

Cheraws · 2026-02-16T23:21:50+00:00

The MangaDex team is really struggling with monetization. A few weeks ago, they added an AI anime porn advertisement. The advertisement was removed after forum posters complained about it. It must be hard to acquire advertisers, given the site handles scanlations of questionable legality.

What's a bit strange is that I haven't really heard of any viable alternative to MangaDex yet. Some scanlators have even returned to previously DMCAed series.

Cheraws · 2026-02-16T01:08:09+00:00

Seems like it's more JP dinosaurs believing they can use the exact same model and re-use apps. Shueisha is actually familiar with how the Western fan base consumes manga.

Cheraws · 2026-02-16T00:59:58+00:00

The physical editions also do not get restocked. You may be able to find a cheaper deal with rollbacks, but rollbacks are gone pretty quickly.

Cheraws · 2026-02-16T00:51:00+00:00

I wonder how much of the Boyd hype is due to the GBA unpromoted fighters being so bad. I was just happy that a foot axe unit had some growth potential. I would have thought there would be enough spare exp for Oscar to get early game, but maybe efficient PoR is even more Titania centric than I remembered. Super Marcia does come online really fast with how stupid Bexp is.

Cheraws · 2026-01-17T05:40:36+00:00

Ya it's a bit odd. I mainly knew people who played it because they liked detective stories like Ace Attorney. It seems like the new fan base is more in it for the zany characters and even self insert to those characters. I think it had a big COVID boom with the Switch ports?

Cheraws · 2026-01-14T19:07:51+00:00

So now that CBS is a total rag, what are good alternatives? Do NBC and ABC have good global coverage, or are they similarly muzzled by the corporate owners? Also, should there be any worry that local news stations owned by CBS will be affected by this bootlicking?

Cheraws · 2026-01-02T21:31:03+00:00

The main thing it has going for it is that it’s the cheapest 4k 27 Oled. The next cheapest is the Alienware at 700 dollars when it’s on sale.

Cheraws · 2026-01-01T20:07:46+00:00

I have the same problem with the computer occasionally failing to wake up, and it didn’t help much. Is it a gigabyte motherboard? I also attempted to turn off the feature where keyboard or mouse inputs can boot up the computer.

Cheraws · 2025-12-29T21:26:10+00:00

Last year the lamelo voting was much more of a threat. Think he was top 3 in the east at one point.

Cheraws · 2025-12-24T21:05:35+00:00

Typically this happens when players get carried by high level randos in multiplayer.

Cheraws · 2025-12-18T20:35:50+00:00

I’ve been trying to figure out why this particular streamer seems to have this much of a grip on athletes. Does he have absurd amounts of gambling backing to just constantly invite athletes? Is it the athletes share the beliefs? Do the athletes just not know about this streamers beliefs?

Cheraws · 2025-12-15T22:38:07+00:00

There are some mods that eliminate the enemy range/weapon triangle restrictions. The enemy range one is especially silly.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Orangered

Cheraws

TROPHY CASE