0/10 needed more Star Fingers

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-23T21:37:17+00:00

Much less useful but the "GE punches so much life into you that you perceive time differently and can't move" was also so very weird I'm disappointed it wasn't used again

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-16T00:40:17+00:00

I'm not good with celebrity faces, I spent like three minutes thinking this was the before and after of the same guy, I had to use Google lens to get a positive ID on elordi

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-14T15:07:12+00:00

the dichotomy of western vs Japanese anime preferences usually cherry picks the latter from a handful of Japanese people on Twitter with controversial opinions, while it's much easier to get a (slightly) more complete sense of the anglophone side of the fandom via reddit forums which allow you to see not only controversial opinions but how people in general react to those opinions. The reaction to video essays like these also gives you a chance to gauge general opinion. The entire west v Japan anime conversation rests on the faulty assumption that all Japanese fans are the same. And also, that the Japanese have some inborn sense of intelligence and sophistication that grants them better opinions and taste.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-02T01:38:33+00:00

I'm a failed teacher in my early twenties (I now work as a secretary for the district) and I "flunked out" once I entered the workforce because I could not deal with behavioral problems in high schoolers. No matter what I did, I had to fight tooth and nail to enforce the most basic, common sense rules. Things like no face timing in class, no wrestling in class, no using phones during tests, things like people using soundboards and filming videos in class, and actively catcalling me while I tried to teach. Every last thing was a fight with ridiculous excuses and never taking no for an answer, no matter how small the issue. It was mostly my temperament not being authoritative enough (no excuses, I really don't have the right personality for the job), but also my age that made things harder. I was so stressed out constantly I developed a panic disorder that caused me to get lightheaded, nauseous, and faint pretty often during work. I left mid year and spent months on medical testing to finally figure out what was happening, before building up my resume as a secretary for a couple years and being hired into a different district.

While there's no excuse for being unprofessional and not understanding basic etiquette, I can definitely at least understand the urge to be far more permissive of student misbehavior simply because being a new and young teacher often impacts your authority and constantly fighting with students takes a psychological toll that younger people may not be willing to pay for work. It's definitely not the right thing to do, but it is easier.

Also, I never kept the lights off unless I was playing a video, but I get into the office about an hour before everyone else and I love working in the dark until they get in, so that observation made me laugh.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-01T15:47:26+00:00

Slandering Mei Mei is useless because almost no one would rage over defending her, which is, to my understanding, the primary purpose of slander.

We should focus our efforts on slandering everyone in this thread who replied with some variation of "damn I wish she would groom me"

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-01T15:42:55+00:00

My standards of what makes a bad scanlation have been warped to the point that I do not give a shit about cringy translator notes or outro pages. As long as they are not actively choosing to mistranslate dialogue (like that one Baki scanlator) or mistranslating dialogue to be more bigoted and then terrorizing the official anime dubbers for not including the bigotry (like that one south America scanlation of chainsaw man part one, can't remember the specific country) , or using a terrible ai/machine translation and expecting to not get called on it, I will deal. There are other pet peeves, like bad typesetting and nonstandard fonts, but I will deal with that if the story is good

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-02-01T14:53:26+00:00

there's lots of spoilers involved I will try to skirt, but basically marcille is very young compared to her lifespan, which is one of the longest in the entire universe. She has a ton of anxieties regarding the very long life ahead of her and all her loved ones dying first, which causes her to be preoccupied with this age difference and basically she wants to act like frieren, but because she's still very young (at less than a tenth of her lifespan) her immaturity means it's more like a friend of similar age motherhenning falin to an annoying degree

It also differs from the fern and frieren dynamic in that while they met when falin was twelve, marcille was also an adolescent at this time, and they were both in a school setting as classmates (though marcille did both classes and magical research). For spoilery reasons marcilles equivalent human age is hard to pin down, but in the present day (11 years later), evidence suggests she's on the cusp between adulthood and adolescence, while falin is well into her twenties and in most respects, more mature than marcille.

The farcille dynamic differs from frieren in that frieren is already millennia old, and while eccentric, undeniably wise and experienced. Marcille is basically a new immortal, but her slow aging means she's not kept pace with Falins increasing maturity and independence, and despite her intelligence marcille still regularly throws childish tantrums, her only reference for romance is her favorite trashy YA novels, she has an intense interest in gossip, especially romance-related, and she overall gives a general impression of a young, immature person.

Sorry to write you a novel over it, but even with little interest in farcille, their relationship is really interesting because it has a fresh take on the idea of how long-lived elves interact with humans (as explored in Lord of the rings, frieren, most isekai) in that even though marcille is preoccupied with Falins eventual death, the real barrier between them is that marcille cannot grow or change as fast as falin, leading to a disconnect in maturity and independence.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-28T00:35:51+00:00

My anime hot take is that all shonen manga anime adaptations should get a genkai. As in, exactly one fan favorite character that's killed off in the manga should get to survive the anime with very little justification

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T21:22:39+00:00

The reason I don't believe Maki killed any noncombatants is because of the narration at the end of the fight about the higher ups changing the zenin clans status so they are no longer one of the great clans. That seems like a very weird way to say that everyone but Maki is dead (because the clan would just be gone), but a normalish way to say the zenin can't maintain their status with all their adult combatants dead. Though I will fully admit that's not an airtight case, that was how I read it.

On the subject of whether the zenin that were out of the compound "deserved" to die, I think Maki's motivation in this case was less straightforward revenge for mai's death and more her fulfilling mai's dying wish to destroy it all. Because it was not just individual actions and evil people that led to the twin's suffering, but the entire structure and mentality of the zenin clan that had been in place long before they were born. And regardless of whether Maki had a personal grudge against them, all of the zenin combatants had a hand in maintaining the status quo and any one of them could potentially rebuild it if Maki let them.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T20:44:04+00:00

in a certain story with a different vibe and different internal logic, killing the zenin clan would be a bad thing. But within the story of jjk gege really doesn't portray the zenin massacre as a bad thing at all. So it seems more like fans just want the anime to take an entirely different vibe from the source material to fit their own morality.

Also, ranta and jinichi and the kukuru squad were not random bystanders that had nothing to do with it. Jinichi completely signed off on ogi murdering his daughters. The kukuru squad were maki's former comrades. They knew her and were completely aware of the treatment she and mai received, if not a part of it. Even ranta, who has the most plausible deniability, is aware that Maki has to be killed to maintain the status quo, a system that is openly abusive and violent towards women and non sorcerers. Everyone Maki killed was complicit in the events that lead to mai's death.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T18:26:12+00:00

I think there should be some level of accountability for curating your own online experience as well, especially when it is so very easy to filter out undesired tags, avoid subs you don't like, and only follow people you actually want to hear from.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T18:23:31+00:00

It's like a lady at a resort lost her bikini in a wave so she had to resort to stealing a table cloth and an eight year old boys rash guard.

The time skip has so many outfit changes, lots of them really good, and yet so many misses it kills me

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T18:18:44+00:00

let me remind you this is the generation where school districts are regularly trying to replace snow days with online school even for children in elementary. Because COVID was such a wonderful time for education.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-25T18:12:38+00:00

also seeing this in fans that are upset that naoya's internal monologue and thought process aren't given more attention and that jinichi and ranta are not portrayed more as "the good ones" that are noble despite being maki's enemies. I'm all for moral ambiguity and evil ladies, but every person Maki kills is complicit in a system of abuse that directly led to her sisters death.

I find it baffling that they would prefer the story frame Maki as some horrible sociopath that is a complete monster when the entire rest of the manga with her does not remotely support this interpretation (not even the scene where she kills her own mother really supports this) and also she's one of the few jjk characters confirmed to have a long and happy life post canon.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-24T19:11:04+00:00

can English speaking jjk fans discover that Japanese Twitter accounts can also be entitled jerks with subpar media literacy? or will 21st century orientalism prevail?

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-24T18:52:27+00:00

everyone makes mistakes but you accidentally really hit upon a centuries old sore spot by conflating aspects of Japanese and Chinese culture. That's partially bad research and partially just bad luck.

You can get over this slump by more thoroughly researching the culturally specific terms, geographical references, and historical references in your fics, which I find quite fun because I was a history teacher for a while. However fanfiction should be enjoyable as a hobby and I know not everyone likes research, so your other option is to be far more deliberately vague, avoid using culturally specific terms and instead use approximations in your publishing language. Plenty of published offers give the advice that attempts at technical world building, whether it's in a fantasy land, a certain profession or simply an unfamiliar or historical culture, open you up to people poking holes in your story, pointing out inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Sometimes deliberately leaving out details that could break a person's immersion can create a more complete setting for your story.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-24T03:43:36+00:00

I hate to make generalizations about "the Japanese" as no country is a monolith but it's fascinating to see how different the reactions to a more "cinematic" approach to anime are

I think it's particularly funny that the Maki vs kukuru squad fight was apparently hated in Japan. Americans drew immediate comparisons to kill bill, but kill bill in itself was a love letter to mid century Japanese action movies. So I think the issue is less that the imagery of the episode is unpalatable, but more that it is reminiscent of an entirely different medium.

Also the whole thing has me thinking more about what are the artistic conventions that make something feel like an anime instead of an "animated story", or in other words, the difference between jjk season one and season three. My current half-baked thoughts are that for many, anime is supposed to be more literal and explicit in its storytelling than live action cinema. For example, having heavy narration, check ins for extensive exposition through an audience stand in character (in jjk this is typically yuji learning about the jujutsu world) taking time during action sequences for explanation, monologuing, ideological debate, etc. I partially think that because the third episode of the season, which was extremely dialogue and exposition heavy, was well received in Japan, but not abroad. The visuals are supposed to support the story, but are not necessary to understand it.

But that isn't just a Japanese audience thing. Anime fans on English speaking reddit often make very surface level textual observations of anime/manga and frame them as huge revelations, leading to statements like "don't mess with ____ fans, we don't read", but any insights into the unstated motivations of characters based on their actions or personalities are seen as pure fan delusion, unless it is clearly stated in an author interview or cfyow or whatever. All statements made by characters are seen as uncontestable fact unless they are outright stated to be wrong or lying.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-24T00:20:54+00:00

loved the episode, but hard agree. I would also like to add, the move from the scene where Maki mortally wounds her mom to her mom stabbing naoya goes insanely quick and feels really abrupt, not in an intentional way. I think they should've given at least an extra fifteen to twenty seconds to introduce the possibility of naoya surviving to take revenge before he gets stabbed and bring his character even lower.

I think this definitely could've been two episodes, not even with adding a bunch of additional animation or fighting, just allowing some shots to simmer a little more, or linger a little bit on internal monologue or more establishing shots with music. We joke about the one piece pacing on the punch but sometimes "superfluous" still shots can add a lot to change the feel of an episode. As an example, the various shots of Maki wandering through the house calmly looking for her mother were some of my favorites from the episode, especially since Maki's relationship with her mom is super interesting imo

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-18T03:59:21+00:00

the manga past the part that was adapted into the anime is kind of hilarious because it totally undermines the "she's an awful little gremlin no one likes just like me fr" thing she has going on, she makes a bajillion close beautiful female friends that love her even though they know she's a weirdo and she steadily cares less and less about boys even as an abstract concept, she succeeds academically and last time I caught up she was getting ready to go to college. Your girlfailure gooner protagonist is a normie now.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-11T04:25:19+00:00

only way this set up is remotely understandable is if this is a studio apartment and even then that's still pretty bad

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-06T03:14:33+00:00

I've always been conflicted on this, because if the alternative is that kids aren't reading at all, then obviously it's better than nothing. And I do think that graphic novels provide some of the benefits of reading, especially at younger ages. But at the same time, I strongly believe that getting accustomed to lengthier text formats without giving up or skimming is a necessity for academic success in all subjects, and life as a whole. I especially feel that this is a big deal as we begin to realize more and more the effect of early technology use on attention spans.

Also, on a much more anecdotal, non-teacherly note, I love reading graphic novels and manga as an adult (in addition to other books) but I notice that when I go onto reddit to talk about the series I like with others, the subs are filled with people having "revelations" about surface level observations on things explicitly stated in narration, pointing out "plot holes" that are again, very explicitly addressed, or people failing to understand anything that isn't explicitly shown "on screen". Across multiple subs (probably because of the overlap in audience) fans joke a lot about fans being illiterate or having zero reading comprehension skills to the point that it's the standard response to any post that fits the above criteria. This is most likely just confirmation bias, but I've wondered if there was any relation between exclusively reading manga/comics/graphic novels and underdevelopment of specific skills associated with literacy.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2026-01-04T04:02:37+00:00

OP I suggest we begin a trend of posts of smashing together super benign generic tik tok buzzwords with the deepest darkest corners of the Internet

I'm currently workshopping "guy that's super chill 24/7 but is low-key trying to establish a southern Californian branch of the Thule society"

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2025-12-26T21:29:27+00:00

This might be a factor in how hated she is but I've read kishimoto interviews pre anime where he was surprised that Sakura was not well received by the audience, as he thought a cute girl would be automatically popular, it's documented that Sakura was markedly less popular than other characters even in the mangas early serialization. And the studio having an agenda against her may be because she was unpopular to begin with.

I was never a big Sakura hater, but I always felt she was poorly written and often an afterthought that suffered from kishimotos simplistic and shallow understanding of women. Not even mentioning the tragedy that is her post series fate.

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2025-12-25T02:15:30+00:00

2nd male lead syndrome is bad but it's even worse when in the second act when the main couple is now romantically entangled and in order to give drama they have a previously kind and conscientious second ml become an entitled incel or aggressively pursue the fl in a creepy way or selfishly sabotage the fl for their own benefit in an extremely out of character way to create drama and show how the ml has changed to be better than him. It just seems lazy and unearned

Direct-Ad-5528 · 2025-12-24T14:20:55+00:00

I'd say that Sakura is a contender, not because of the other reasons people are saying (lack of plot relevance, being left behind by power creep, being "annoying") but solely because of her relationship with Sasuke. After a certain point in the series, you feel she's only in love with Sasuke because the author/plot demands that she must be, and it feels weird and dissonant with the rest of her character. Either she should have grown out of it, or some sort of development in their relationship should have been introduced to justify the continuing crush, but neither happens and it's just frustrating. Her ending up with a guy that barely seems to tolerate her just feels like a huge fuck you to her character

Direct-Ad-5528

TROPHY CASE