Spring 2026 Reviewed

A lot has happened this season. If you read the last post, you'll have gotten the full story, but TL;DR, my mother died and I had to move out of the house I've lived in my entire life. The good news is I'm moving to an apartment Thursday, but that's beside the point. I'll talk more about that in the life update section.

Partly as a result of the aforementioned events, I only watched three seasonals this time. I was interested in picking up one more, but then the big life nuke happened and now I don't even remember which show I was going to pick up. Fortunately, I did manage to finish all three of them, and even a couple classic shows!

Completed Seasonals

Witch Hat Atelier: I have to say, this show was fucking amazing. I knew it would be going in, since everybody seemed to love the manga and the anime is a premium adaptation. The show is drop dead gorgeous, the story is awesome and fun and just all around great, it's just one of those shows you need to watch. The biggest criticism I have is where they left the first season, an issue which I hope will become irrelevant very soon. In essence, the show didn't just end on a cliffhanger, it ended in a way that made the season feel incomplete, like there should've been another episode. Just didn't make much sense to stop there.

Dr. Stone: Science Future Pt 3: I really, truly love this show, I do. I stand by what I said about the show peaking in the New World season, but even so, I was still enjoying myself up to the end. Unfortunately, I very much did not enjoy the final scene. I'm about to "spoil" the final scene, but it's not really a spoiler since I can air my grievance without saying anything important. In the final scene, it's revealed that they're working on a time machine. They don't complete it in the show, they're just working on it. I feel like the time travel thing kinda cheapens the sacrifices made by all the different characters and such? It's something a lot of works have a problem with not accepting that sometimes, a thing that happened just sucked and there's nothing you can do about it and you have to accept it and move on. The show did that before. Sigh. Oh well, I'm not going to let that ruin my love of the rest of the show. Please watch it, it's such a deeply humanist work. I love how it loves humans and science and I hope you will, too.

Akane-banashi: I originally decided to watch this show because other people said it was going to be good based on how good the manga was. They weren't wrong! Excellent, excellent show. I should really watch Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu as well. It was also the easiest to watch, due to being officially posted to YouTube, something I wish more series would do. I've heard the money from actually broadcasting a show is extremely low, and I kinda wonder if ad revenue from YouTube might actually be more profitable. Glad I picked this one up, can highly recommend.

Continuing Shows

Beastars/To Your Eternity: I made some progress on these, at least. Three episodes left for the latter. This is almost entirely because my life got upturned. I'm hoping to finish these next week or so, or at least before the end of the summer.

Next Season

The Ghost in the Shell: I love the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie and Standalone Complex, so I'm excited to watch this one. I never watched the others because I heard they were terrible, but other people are saying this one looks good, so here's hoping it turns out great.

Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You: This particular show I saw on the seasonal charts with a score above an eight before the season even started. Apparently, the first episode was originally released in MAy, but the series officially starts July 3. I looked at the description, and the show sounds interesting, so I put it on my PTW.

You and I are Polar Opposites S2: I didn't even realize this was coming out until I saw the MAL chart and I am very excited to see this one! If you read the last recap, this was one of my favorites of the winter season. I hope the quality continues.

We'll see if I pick anything else up, but I'm going to be busy at the beginning of the season at the very least, so I might not go for anything else.

Classic Shows

Turn A Gundam: Kinda on my own with this one now, since the YouTube series I was following with it kinda died out. I've only watched five more episodes since last post and have decided not to watch it week to week anymore, but at the same time, I'm not just going to binge it. I'm limiting myself to one episode a day at most. Aside from that, I'm still enjoying it!

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: Speaking of Gundam, I decided to just go ahead and continue on without my friend. I chewed through this one pretty quickly, going through all 50 episodes in a matter of weeks, mostly at work because somebody posted it to YouTube. Unlike TOS, I watched this one subbed. I may end up watching ZZ dubbed because my choices amongst what people posted to YouTube are the English dub or Portugese subs, and I don't speak Portugese. As for what I thought, excellent series! I think I liked TOS a little bit better, even though this show's production values are a marked improvement, but still. Regarding future Gundam series, I think I'd like to watch all the ones Tomino was behind (whether they are well or poorly regarded), and then just go through the greatest hits for the rest of them. I know all Gundams are not created equal, so there's no sense wasting my time on garbage.

Digimon Adventure: Almost forgot to put this one down. We did end up finishing this one, and it was okay. As I said, I have a lot less nostalgia for this one than I thought. Honestly, Pokemon was better, but maybe I'm just saying that because I have a lot more nostalgia for the Pokemon anime.

Dragon Ball: After finishing Digimon, I suggested starting Zeta Gundam, but my friend wanted to watch this one instead. In high school, I rewatched DBZ and actually started watching Dragon Ball alongside it. The Dragon Ball watching kinda fizzled out as DBZ kinda won my attention. I was watching for nostalgia, after all. I think I only got a few episodes in on that initial viewing, because I don't remember even getting to Goku's first transformation. We just passed episode 31, and I've really been enjoying it! Kinda hoping we continue on into DBZ after this, as I never did watch the entire Buu saga. I might try to convince my friend to do a watch of DBZ Abridged as well. Then he'll finally get it when I make references to it...

Kyousou Giga: Literally no progress. I mean, understandable, considering the circumstances, but at this point, I think I might end up starting over.

The Rest of My Life

I'm finally moving into an apartment this Thursday. I won't get to enjoy it, though, because I'll be moving in Thursday morning and leaving for my aunt and uncle's camp Thursday evening for Fourth of July weekend. It won't be a huge deal to do that, it's not like I have a ton of furniture to move or anything, I just have to move the stuff I took over there. Still, I'm looking forward to the weekend!

In addition to getting an apartment, I have, inadvisably, gotten a new and addictive hobby, one which isn't super expensive right now, but will become more expensive as I get deeper in. I have gotten into gunpla. I started off buying a High Grade RX-78-2 Revive kit and set of Godhand PN-125 nippers from Newtype. In addition to the cost of the nippers and kit, it also cost me ten bucks shipping and a week of waiting. I should also note I bought just the one kit and nippers because I wanted to see if I actually liked the hobby before buying anything else. Before settling on purchasing from Newtype, I looked at a lot of other stores, mostly online, but I also looked at my local Michael's. I didn't initially buy from them because their kits are generally five to ten dollars more than online and they do have a limited selection. However, soon after I built the kit, I wanted MORE. I saw my mother had a 30% off coupon to Michael's in her email and decided to go there. Even if the kit I got was a couple more bucks than what I got on Newtype, I wouldn't have to pay shipping or wait a week, so it would still even out. I settled on a High Grade Char's Zaku, because Zakus are a really cool design and I really wanted one. I also bought a cheap pair of tweezers. I went up to the register and tried to use the coupon, but it weouldn't work. The cashier scanned a coupon on her phone for 40% off instead, which did work and I got it for less than what I would've paid on Newtype without shipping. I decided to sign up for my own Michael's reqards stuff and got a 25% off coupon. Well, it was time to go and get a new kit! I got a High Grade Hyaku Shiki which, with the coupon, was once again cheaper than Newtype.

Keep in mind, this all happened in the span of two weeks, and I completed all three models. I am hopelessly addicted. I did hold off on buying another kit before I moved... Except I'm lying because I bought a Real Grade Zeong as a housewarming gift to myself. It was on clearance at Michael's for $46, compared to $73 on Newtype. Again, if I did buy it from Newtype, that's ten bucks shipping and a week of waiting. I'm not going to get to it until next week at least, but I'm excited to build it! I think my next purchases for this hobby will be some sanding stuff, including a glass file. Or maybe I'll get some Gundam Markers, or both. I do want to get into painting and doing some custom work, though maybe not super heavy into it. I'm not going to be buying an airbrush station or anything like that.

Last post, I mentioned the Golden Butterflies Podcast. Since that post, I have been in two more episodes, the Oshi no VTubers episode (for which I did wrangling, hosting, and editing) and the Console Wars episode (which I just showed up for). I had a lot of fun and I hope to be in many more episodes in future.

I have also acquired two Sony Mavica cameras, which are the ones that use floppy disks. The first one was an FD85 I found on Facebook Marketplace being sold by someone in the same town, and only for ten dollars. I thought the seller had it from the time, so when she said she had bought it recently, I was like, "You bought a floppy disk camera? Why?" And she said, "I didn't know it used floppy disks!" It came with the power cable, some floppies, and even the A/V cable, so it was a pretty complete package. All I needed to do was replace the battery. This was before my mother died. After my mother died, I was once again on good old Facebook Marketplace, and I saw a pretty complete FD92 for 25 dollars. It came with not only the power cable, floppies, and coveted A/V cable, but also a memory stick and the manual! Thing was, it was located in Maryland, but honestly, I needed to do something crazy. So, I scheduled a time with the seller and rode all the way into Maryland. It wasn't actually that deep into Maryland, it was before you hit Cumberland going on 68 from Morgantown, but still. It's a really pretty drive, so that was nice. I guess that makes me a collector now.

A lot has happened this quarter, but I hope I can get my life back on some kind of track.