Tomorrow just got extremely complicated for me and my wife. As in, we may not be able to get rid of the car this week, and will instead have to tow it home and deal with various irritations involving it next week. This is not a good time to be dealing with this nonsense.
So, sure, open thread.
One anime/light novel series you might enjoy is The Eminence In Shadow. Emphasis on the word “might” because at the moment it’s teetering on the edge between sucks and doesn’t suck for me after 5 or 7 episodes into the anime and while I’m 80% certain it’s going to fall down on the side of “doesn’t suck” there are times it looks like the dice will roll 81.
The premise is that the main character dreams of being neither the Hero nor the Demon King but rather the Insignificant NPC who appears in the final scene to reveal that he was actually the Secret Master who was manipulating events from behind the scenes to bring things to their final conclusion. And to support this dream he’s trained himself to a level of martial arts that allows him to go after street thugs who are committing crimes while pretending to himself that there is a secret society behind what they are doing. When he dies and gets reincarnated in another world he starts doing more of the same but with bandits rather than street thugs and makes friends with some of the people he rescues along the way.
To them he spins a story about how he is the master of a secret society engaged in a shadow war against an evil cult and is happy when it turns out that his friends are willing to humor him and LARP along with him. Joke’s on him because his friends know of one evil cult, figure he’s referring to that and duly build new branches of his secret society to carry out his will in regard to attacks against the cult. It’s a joke that wears thin because I have a hard time picturing mutual obliviousness of the sort lasting for as long as five episodes or one book, or alone four novels but apparently it does. Against that must be set that the ninja versus cultist and eldritch horror action seems to be everything you could ask for. So if you like Secret Masters who don’t realize that they’re actually Secret Masters then this one might be your cup of tea.
Eminence in Shadow does have its absurdities, but they’re built in from the beginning. (I’ve not seen the show, but I’ve read it in manga form.) Like, the guy is constantly working on presenting himself as an unimportant background character that no one will pay attention to. In his first life, he hits the gym hard, gets amazingly swole, draws all *sorts* of quiet attention for being amazingly swole… and is still utterly convinced that he’s doing a great job of blending in and attracting no attention.
He’s also *incredibly* chuuni.
So if that kind of absurdity sounds like it might be entertaining, then you’ll probably enjoy it. I’ve rather liked it.
Another in a somewhat similar vein, which, oddly, has two different titles. “If I Die, I Will Be Invincible” and “If I don’t Die Soon, I’ll Really Become Invincible”
MC (the editor of a small, barely surviving literature magazine in chine) isekais into fantasy China as a relatively minor functionary in the deeply corrupt court of a beleaguered emperor. He is instantly informed that he *has* a System, but it only kicks in if he dies… and not if he kills himself. Being a reasonably upright individual, he decides he’s going to lean into that. He’s going to play “ideal, incorruptible Confucian scholar”, openly and forthrightly thwarts and oppose the various ambitious power groups in court at every turn with no thought for his own safety, and wait until one of them makes the obvious move and has him killed. He’s looking forward to it.
It doesn’t quite work out that way.
I just finished Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I thought it was an excellent series. I tried to watch “Bastard!!” but I couldn’t get past the bad guy’s name. Sorry, but the name “Dark Schneider” doesn’t inspire any kind of dread. I just keep thinking of the super on “One Day at a Time”.
I’m looking for a new series. I watched “Baki”, and that was…something. “Samurai Champloo” was awesome. I liked “One Punch Man” as well.