SAO was excellent here and there (Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Black Swordsman, Mother's Rosario) and was at least decent all the way through.
It was just one of those series that became so commonly loved by normies that advertising one's hatred of it became an easy way to gain instant edgelord cred.
It's easy. The only difficulty is that it can't understand a link to a specific chapter - you have to get the link for the series and plug that in to Cubari, then go to the specific chapter on the list Cubari generates.
Yes. Yes she is.
Obviously this is entirely up to the instance owner, but it seems to me that, if anything, all of this actually makes our position stronger.
Scanlation's always been a sort of gray area. It's technically piracy - that part's black and white - but the publishers have generally turned a blind eye to it, at least in cases in which there are and will be no licensed translations available. The publishers appeared to generally see it, and correctly, as free advertising (and in fact, scanlation is the ENTIRE reason that manga has gotten as popular as it has outside of Japan).
So the basic rule of thumb for more or less legitimate scanlation has always been that if the series isn't licensed, it's fair game, and if the publishers take exception anyway, all they have to do is say so and we'll immediately "cease and desist."
In one sense, this is just a massive version of what's happened to MD all along. They've gotten takedown requests from the start, and just immediately comply with them.
The things that are notable about this one are the scale of it, and the fact that many of the titles do not have and likely never will have official translations, so it seems to be entirely vindictive. The publishers aren't losing anything by allowing scanlations of titles that they'll never license anyway, so they're not protecting themselves from any nominal loss - they're just being dicks.
And that's undoubtedly what's rattled MD - it's not the fact of the takedowns, which have happened from the start but the seeming vindictiveness of them.
But their response has been to formally shift responsibility to the uploaders. They're saying not just tacitly but explicitly that anyone who uploads anything effectively claims to have the legal right to do so, so if they don't, that's their problem and not MD's.
Which actually removes us even further from any liability. From our position, the uploaders claimed to have the right to do so, and MD accepted their claim, and all we're doing is taking everyone else at their word.
For whatever that's worth.
According to their credits page, Harmless Monsters is going to stop uploading to Mangadex. They're going to continue all of their series, but they're going to post them somewhere else to avoid "potential legal issues."
Is that the future of scanlation? We've gotten sort of spoiled, since the primary sites - Mangadex and before that (the original) Batoto got left alone. Is it going to become whack-a-mole now, like anime? Instead of being able to depend on one site, we'll have to move to a new one every few years?
We got some great animation with the random sentai group that showed up.
That was especially awesome, and it impressed me that they manged to be appropriately stereotypical without matching specific recognizable individuals/franchises.
Then finally, a really touching gesture between two very non-emotional creatures to end it on.
And with Ponko enthusiatically shipping them the whole way.
I'm really liking this, and this was arguably the best episode yet..
I originally expected this to be an iyashikei, but (starting with the oddly dissonant OP) it sort of shifted from what I expected, and started to feel more threatening and somber than that. And this episode started out the most threatening yet. But then there was such a complete and rewarding shift in tone from start to finish that it made it ultimately just that much more warm and uplifting. And to the degree that this has a central theme, that seems to be it.
This is essentially an iyashikei - it's just that it's not naturally or automatically that way. It's made that way by Yachiyo's kindness and courtesy that's tempered by quiet determination and a sharp sense of right and wrong. She's unstintingly kind and courteous, right up until the moment that someone steps beyond acceptable behavior, at which point she immediately shifts to brutally honest and unreserved condemnation, which lasts exactly long enough to clearly convey her opinion of things, at which point she just as quickly and easily shifts back to unstinting kindness and courtesy. And it works. It's made clear, even to someone like Harmy, that she bears no ill will at all - that her kindness is entirely sincere. It's just that she's also entirely honest and fair-minded and fearless, and when somebody deserves a figurative smack upside the head, she will deliver it. And they all come to respect and even admire that.
As do I.
Started off this week with the rest of Mekacucity Actors, which ended up being mediocre all in all (early on, I didn't think it'd even manage that). In the later episodes, it mostly set aside the tedious Monogatari-style pop philosophy monologues set against geometric abstract liminal space backdrops and got down to some actual character development and exposition.. It wasn't particularly compelling or even coherent character development and exposition, but at least it was something.
Then, sort of wandering around aimlessly, I happened across a currently-airing series of a genre I've never bothered to watch before and what-the-hell gave it a watch, and that's how I ended up catching up on and following Maebashi Witches. On the surface, it's just cute and cheery, with pleasantly high quality animation and music and endearing characters and surprising emotional depth, and that might be all it ends up being, which'll be fine. It's surprisingly enjoyable just as that. But there's also some room there for something else. Nothing is quite what it appears to be - they aren't really "witches" in any recognizable sense, the mascot character who recruited them is revealing himself to be a smooth-talking and dishonest hustler and the deal they've made with him keeps getting more complex and its completion further out of reach. I don't expect anything close to Madoka out of it, but there does seem to be a similar hidden agenda and while Keroppe is no Kyubey, he definitely isnt telling them the entire truth.
In any event, at worst, it's cute and endearing and pleasant, and I'm enjoying it.
Then I sort of bulldozed my way through Sora no Otoshimono Forte, which I've been idly threatening to watch for years now, but I expected it to be similar to the first season, which is to say little bits of brilliance scattered here and there among lots of tedious and cringey trash, which is pretty much exactly what it was. Tomoki spent about 90% of the series super deformed and doing that "Kek kek kek" laugh while the rest of the cast just played their assigned one-note roles, but it wasn't all bad, and the handful of serious moments were actually pretty good. So about what I expected.
Then I capped the week off with a real gem - Planetarian, which was absolutely glorious. It's heart-warming and beautiful and tragic and uplifting and somber and deeply, deeply moving, and it made me smile and tear up at the same time and I loved it. I ended up watching both the series - Chiisana Hoshi no Yume and the movie/sequel - Hoshi no Hito, which tells a condensed version of the series plus some additional content after the events of the series. They're both worth it.
And I already grabbed a Yumemi screenshot that's my new wallpaper.
I saw that gotcha coming, and it still made me laugh.
It told me to not expect anything original - to just settle in for the same insipid, contrived edginess they've already beat to death in the Monogatari series
That was a great wrap-up — it settled pretty much every question I had about the story, and it was great to see Emi and Remilia face to face.