That’s quite the time skip! I guess they didn’t want to show the same story beats over and over as Inori passes each badge test.

There are only two types of girls. The childhood friend and the homewrecker.

My wife and I quote that one all the time; I’m happy to see it get some recognition.

Best Drama Look Back

I see this jury knows what’s up.

It’s really excellent! I promise it’s not just a cozy anime about cooking up dungeon critters.

The Horimiya anime originally skipped a bunch of stuff that was covered in a later season, titled “Horimiya Pieces” or something like that. If you want to watch the events in the order they happened in the manga it’s a crazy mess.

It sounds like when you say “weird” you mean absurdist, so I’ll not recommend things like “Ping Pong the Animation” even though it’s both excellent and weird.

With that said, the absurdist anime I’ve seen in roughly descending order of preference are:

• Dan Da Dan - Takes itself a little more seriously than the examples you gave, but things still get very wild.
• BOCCHI THE ROCK! - Nothing absurdist about the plot, but the animators get very creative.
• Nichijou - My Ordinary Life - Most people already know what this is, so I’ll just say that City from the same author will be releasing later this year. I haven’t read it, but odds are it’s great.
• Akiba Maid War - Maid-themed Yakuza drama.
• Space Dandy - Cowboy Bebop if all the main characters were incompetent
• Cromartie High School - High school for delinquents.
• Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead - Guy has an opportunity to finally leave his abusive company when zombies attack. He resolves to live each day as fully as possible and makes a list of things he wants to do before being turned into a zombie.
• Ghost Stores (the dub of course) - They realized this anime had no appeal as-is to a western audience so they made a batshit insane dub that only loosely follows the original story.

That over-the-top opening right after Nano’s “friendship sucks” statement gave me whiplash.

It looks like he may have enjoyed painting. If so there are innumerable poisonous things he may have ingested, some of which can mess you up even in small quantities.

I’m interested because it reminds me of other stuff that I liked, but I’m also hesitant because it doesn’t look like the manga was particularly well-received. Still, I’ll probably watch the first episode.

There have been a few. The Vision of Escaflowne, Garzey’s Wing (I won’t claim it’s good though lmao), Spirited Away, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and The Chronicles of Narnia come to mind.

Sometimes it’s an original bespoke song, sometimes not. It just depends.

You’re probably mishearing “gyaru”.

Watched the first 6 episodes of Medalist this week. I had my hesitations, but this show delivers! I still like the manga a little more, but that doesn’t stop me from looking forward to each and every episode I watch. Honestly it made me want to go ice skating but I have a cold and ice skating season is almost over. Still, maybe next week.

It’ll make you want to go ice skating while it’s still cold.

My understanding is that she had been practicing hard all along and perfected the fundamentals

There is some truth to that, but only some. There were some really fundamental things she wasn’t familiar with, like how to glide long distances on a single skate.

The main character syndrome is definitely strong with this one, with her being able to do dual-rotation jumps with so little practice. I have faith in the mangaka at this point to not just have her easily breeze through everything, mainly because they’ve done a great job with most other aspects.

Well at the very least we now know the emperor ships it.

It’s important to not allow “perfect” to become the enemy of “good”.

I’ve seen somewhere before that Redline is another Gundam-like but with cars instead of mechs

I have no idea why anyone would say this. Gundam is about socio-political issues relating to space colonization and the horrors of war. Redline is about doing whatever is coolest at every moment. I cannot think of a single thing Redline has in common with Gundam, other than that the characters spend a lot of time sitting in cool machines. Anyways, I loved that movie. Redline is what showed me that it’s possible for a movie to be excellent while having the most basic plot imaginable.

I’d argue that you would like this one if you dislike the typical harem stuff.

To an extent, yes. If what you dislike about harem stuff is the ecchiness of it though this definitely isn’t going to be a fun ride.

Btw, you’ve got good taste. We have a lot of overlaps in favourites.

It’s a small community so I’m glad that sort of overlap is there!