Animators, please. You're ruining the show :-/
I was rather excited at it, the manga is good, so why the hell do you need to do things so slow? It's fine to abridge things for the adaptation, anime requires a faster pace.
The source is great but the animation isn't doing it justice. The content that pops up in this episode could've been easily crammed into half episode; really, it was mostly to introduce the type of person Haga is, and to get Nikola following him.
I have a really soft spot for the manga series, and I'm glad to see it being animated. So far the animation has been fine, I hope that it's kept this way.
...Sensei doesn't want to become a hero but an hero.
RL to manga/anime adaptation changes
The problem is one of motivation - IRL Dazai got what he wanted and tried multiple times, a double suicide; Isekai Shikkaku Sensei didn't, due to truck-kun, and that is why he's still trying. If his fate was the same as IRL Dazai, and he got transported after death to isekai, he'd stop trying to kill himself.
And given that truck-kun is highly unrealistic, thus the audience is expected to know that it's bullshit, we can safely interpret it as a "what if Dazai was transported to another world, instead of succeeding on his last suicide attempt?".
I was expecting something slightly lewder, considering the source (Methonium's manga series). Or longer, the episode has effectively, like, 10min?
I'm probably dropping this series midway, but for now it's interesting enough to keep going on.
I didn't read the source for this one, so the story is 100% new for me. It seems fun.
...okay, got to admit that, when I see people "reinventing" stuff from Earth, it makes me wonder why the locals never thought about it. If you have machines that can output wind/water/fire/earth, in controlled amounts, a hair drier is kind of obvious, isn't it? (At least it wasn't mayo or soy sauce.)
Rimuru is killing a few birds with a single stone: Veldora now can release his aura, Ramiris got a new home, Rimuru himself got some tasty source of profit for the city.
Okay... I'm rather pleased with this first episode. Yes, it is edgy. Yes, it makes you feel like singing "CRAAAAWLING IN MY SKIIIIN...". But you know what? It's fun.
The higher the number of people summoned from Earth, the higher the chances that the summoner is scum, and someone is trashed away. (Relevant detail: I can't help but associate the goddess' name "Vicius" with "vice".)
She doesn't get Touka's ability right, does she? She was talking about low accuracy, but apparently at least Paralyse hits true all/most of the time.
I've added Dahlia in Bloom to the list, thanks! It sounds like a fun series, I'll check it out too. By the synopses it sounds like the MC is trying to carve her place in the world, without relying on the others.
About QA in Another World: the story boils down to a bunch of debuggers trapped in the world of the game that they're debugging, and either accepting their fate or trying to go back to Earth. The main character (Haga) is one of those debuggers, but unlike the others he keeps diligently debugging the thing.
And as he's debugging a village scripted to burn down to a dragon attack, he meets a weird NPC, called Nikola; due to some bug Nikola doesn't die with the other villagers, and now she follows him as he's debugging everything.
So it's way less serious than the PVs make it look like, and considerably less serious than, let's say, Log Horizon (another "multiple people trapped inside a game world" story).
I recommend to give the first chapter of the manga a try. I personally find it fun, and I'm planning to follow the anime series.
I said metaphorically. But... well :D
Fuck. This season ending was well made. It's clear that they tried their hardest to make it bittersweet, and they got it.
Rudeus lost a father, but got a daughter; he lost an arm, but he has Roxy to support him. Norn might have bawled and created drama, but she's learning how to defend herself. Zenith is disabled, but she has Lilia to back her up. There's a "but" for every down that they got.
That scene with the grave was specially beautiful IMO. I feel like drinking booze with your parents is special, for both sides - they're acknowledging that you're an adult without losing that parent-child link. (Fuck, now I feel the urge to buy a bottle of liqueur and drink with my mum.)
I feel like this is something that Mushoku Tensei does amazingly well, in comparison with a lot of series made for masculine demographics: the main character is powerful, but not invincible. He has to sacrifice things to get other things. And it plays really well with the theme, that it's worth to go further and chase what you want, that you won't get things without effort.
I'll provide some LN spoilers simply because I can't help but talk about this. I'm excited for season three, after all.
heavy LN spoilers, from multiple volumes onwards
Zenith didn't lose her memory. The time spent in the mana crystal made her into a Blessed/Cursed Child. She's telepathic, but lost her ability to talk "normally". People talk with her, but she only gets an idea of what they're talking from their thoughts, and then she "talks" and nobody hears it.
Eventually she'll get a granddaughter to talk with her, Lara (Roxy's daughter). Lara is not a Blessed/Cursed Child or anything like this, she's simply inheriting the Migurd ability for telepathy that for some reason her mother lacks. It's kind of funny because almost everyone in the family will see Lara as a silent kid, except Zenith - who sees her as a chatterbox.
In fact, Lara is the reason why Hitogami was so hellbent on making Rudeus not go to Bergaritt. If Rudeus didn't meet Roxy again, Lara wouldn't be born, and Lara is an essential pawn in the fight against Hitogami.
It was a bit obvious that the MC was a woman, even if the first episode tried to hide it.
And holy fuck hoarding dungeon master. A golem arm with too many joints? Seriously???