Idk. Individuals are all different and if it makes the happy juices flow then I guess it’s enjoyable for them. For me there are a handful of people that’s true for but for most other interactions I feel similar to you.

That said: Humans developed a brain that could invent languages to make it easier to communicate and coordinate with each other. It’s probably up there with tool usage for advantages we had. So I don’t think it should be that surprising that our brains usually reward us for it if everything is going right.

Gotcha.

God I’m such a weeb I’ve already seen quite a few of these lol. But there are some ones I haven’t seen. I’ll give those a watch, thanks!

Current Season: (Context: Most shows I watch with a group of friends and we cut down until we have 16. I will sometimes watch some of the cut stuff on my own. I’ll start with friend stuff.)

• Witch Hat Atelier: Enjoying this show. It’s reasonably high quality, creative, etc. I’d say that it hasn’t quite reached the level I enjoyed Frieren yet, but solid none the less.

• Short Skirt and Clutz: We’ve been surprised by how much we’ve enjoyed this. It’s still a mostly generic romcom, but it just has a good vibe to it that makes it feel different enough to have made the list.

• Always a Catch: Always down for some trashy villainess show. We had also watched May I Ask for One Final Thing and liked it. Is this a new subgenre: Vilaness who beats the shit out of people? Sign me up.

• Kirio Fanclub: One of the standouts of the season. It’s just really funny. Good character dynamics, some funny scenarios, and most importantly: Goofy anime faces.

• Slime: Oh boy, now we’re getting EVEN BIGGER MEETINGS! We still kind of enjoy this, but man it’s such a meme at this point it’s hard not to joke about it.

• Bookworm: The first anime that made me want to go read the source material. I’ve read all the books starting after season 2 and I really enjoyed it. Now that I’m a filthy source reader, I can see why some might not be completely thrilled with the adaptation. The animation is pretty basic and it skips over a lot of stuff, but I kind of see that as being necessary. It’s a LONG series. If we ever had a hope of getting a full adaptation they need to be choosy about what they spend their time on. Also one of my friends is also a source reader and the other isn’t, so it’s been kind of funny knowingly listen to him speculate or get confused by stuff we know from the books.

• Iruma: This is just such a great show. Fun, creative, etc.

• Ribdiculous Reincarnation: We were pleasantly suprised by this show. Somewhat original premise, decently fun character banter, and I’m always down for mixing up animation styles. It reminds me of Pop Team Epic.

• Scum of the Brave (Continuing): This is fine. I’m not sure if we would have definitely kept watching it if it ended and then we got a S2 later, but inertia carried it to a spot on the list. Not to say it’s bad, there just isn’t anything terribly special about it. We do get a kick out of trying to figure out what their card game is though lol.

• Marriage Toxin: Unique premise with fun characters. My only gripe with it is I don’t think we needed the stupid magic shonen battle system. It takes up way too much of the runtime to explain all of that when they could have just had him be a regular badass hitman and had a better mix between the action and romcom stuff.

• The Ramparts of Ice: I clocked this one as being from the same author as You and I Are Polar Opposites when they did the chibi bits. Really good in both similar and different ways to the first show. Solid character writing and it’s nice having characters who can more directly talk about their feelings with each other. The first one also jumped the will they won’t they by just starting with them in a relationship. This show has some of the will they won’t they, but it’s more tolerable than normal because the characters are interacting with each other in very natural ways. I haven’t even been sure who the ships would be until somewhat recently. It’s not like some romcoms where I’m just shouting at my screen: “OH MY GOD IT’S SO OBVIOUS! SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING!”

• Akane-Banashi: It’s a topic I didn’t know about. I like the character design and personality of Akane. I just wish that the show would let us see more of the performances uninterrupted. I don’t want characters telling me why something is good. I want to experience it from the action itself. The commentary can be done before or after.

• Classroom of Black Cat and the Witch: The “Wait this trash show is actually kind of good” of the season.

• Daemons of the Shadow Realm: It’s ok but kind of frustrating. The opening episode went for shock value and tried to hook us with the intrigue of the story and then… idk they’ve just been kind of fafing about. It’s driving me nuts how they’ve met Asa and they just straight up haven’t asked her why the fuck she murdered everyone in their village. It’s not even just that I want to know, it also doesn’t feel natural that the characters would be interacting the way they are given the inciting incident.

• NIPPON SANGOKU: Interesting show with cool animation, but as it’s went on, I just kept thinking “Wait, why did this need to be set in a post apocalypse?” It’s pretty much just a period drama. The story barely makes any use of the setting.

• KILL BLUE: Decent action comedy. It’s not amazing but it’s fine for what it is.

As for stuff I’ve been watching on my own:

• I ended up watching a pair of romcoms that are basically just the same premise: Nerdy guy makes friends with a blonde gyaru and black haired girl in class, bonding over some shared otaku interests. They’re both enjoyable, but my god it’s hard keeping track of what happened in which series.

• An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess: Interesting twist. Not amazing, but entertaining enough. After the pink haired girl snaps, I kind of thought it would be revealed that she is also an isekai, but that hasn’t come up, so idk why she thinks the same way as protag.

• Pardon the Intrusion: Decently fun shojo rom com.

• Warrior Princess and Barbarian King: A new entry into a shojo romance sub-genre I’ve decided to call either “Beauty and the Beast” or “Stockholm syndrome” romance. It’s alright. And then suddenly: BAM! IT’S AN INCEST SHOW!

• Dr Stone: This season has gone full “Draw the rest of the owl.” It has completely jumped the shark for it being believable that they’ve been able to reconstruct these complicated technologies so quickly. Even if Senku is ultra smart, technology is built on other technology and economics. It’s hard to build stuff without excess labor from agriculture, precision tools, machinery, etc. In the earlier seasons one basic piece of tech would be a whole adventure and now it’s just a throwaway part of an episode.

• Vending Machine Isekai: It’s still just an amusing premise with ok characters. It’s fun enough to watch though. Also I cannot believe all the different kinds of vending machines there are. I had to go look one up recently to see if it was real: They had a pizza vending machine. As a New Yorker, what kind of unholy crime have they committed against pizza? Why Japan? Then it turns out it’s actually an American company and… I’m more disappointed.

• Re;Zero: I bounced off watching it with friends sometime in S2 because I just found it was way too bloated with characters yapping about lore and I had forgotten enough from S1 that I just kind of zoned out after a while watching it. I decided to give it another chance with a rewatch to see if maybe we could watch S4 together since friends have kept up with it. It was a bit better on second viewing as a binge watch from S1, but I think I still stand by S2 not being that great. It’s just not as colossally bad as I thought it was. I ended up continuing but didn’t get to S4 before we decided what shows we were watching. It’s been alright. I am kind of annoyed about the memory loss thing that just happened. It feels like something to just kill forward momentum when we were maybe getting somewhere interesting.

• Wistoria Wand and Sword: We can’t remember if we actually watched S1 or not, so I ended up rewatching it before catching up on S2. Oh my god this show is so fucking stupid. It’s definitely making for a good trash watch.

• I watched through Overlord, rewatching S1 and going on to the rest. It was suitable trash.

• I’ve been showing my mom some anime. She’s been enjoying Bookworm, Eizoken, Little Witch Academia, A Place Further Than the Universe, Kongming, and I think one or two more that I’m blanking on at the moment. In particular it’s been really nice rewatching LWA. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve watched it. I love that show.

First time posting in one of these. Before I get into the current stuff: I’m looking for some anime recs. I always watch stuff when I exercise and at the moment if there’s no current episode out I’m out of stuff to watch.

In general I like a mix of stuff. Comedy, slice of life, romance, action/adventure stuff can be fine as long as there’s something more interesting about it than typical shounen, some shojo, and some weirder things. I’m also fine with some trash recs as long as they might be funny.

Not a complete list obviously, but here is a sampling of shows I’ve liked over the years in no particular order: * on things that I especially liked.

• Most Trigger shows. *
• Most Shaft Shows.
• Most Kyoani shows. *
• Zombieland Saga *
• Hinamatsuri
• Bookworm
• A Place Further Than the Universe *
• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
• Konosuba *
• Frieren *
• Apothacary Diaries
• Spy x Family
• Jojo’s *
• The first 2 Fate shows + The cooking show.
• Dress Up Darling *
• Dan Da Dan
• Bocchi the Rock *
• Ya Boi Kongming
• Apocalypse Hotel *
• Catcher in the Ballpark
• Call of the Night
• Slime isekai
• World in Colors
• A Sign of Affection
• Train to the End of the World
• Goblin Slayer
• Zom 100
• Iruma
• To Your Eternity
• FMA
• Mob Psycho 100 *
• First season of One Punch Man
• Magical Index/Scientific Railgun
• Machikado Mazoku *
• Kakegurui
• Death Note
• Golden Kamuy
• My Hero Academia Vigilantes
• Oshi No Ko
• You and I are Polar Opposites *
• Let this Grieving Soul Retire
• Campfire Cooking isekai
• Bakarina
• Dr Stone
• Witch Watch

I’d go on but this is getting long and I’m getting into the newer stuff I’ve watched with friends and we don’t always label the shows with their actual names lol. So hard to remember.

I guess in the interest of formatting I’ll just put the current season discussion in a comment.

Thanks. That sounds like a mess. I guess I’m not surprised to learn the US is involved. I hope this works out for them.

Any insight you can provide? I know next to nothing about Bolivia’s politics.

I was going to say this too. Time powers can be used to mimic all other powers, therefore making it the best.

I guess less a new “word” than a new euphemism.

Honestly, there was a short time where I thought the prat fall might have been an intentional bit… then it just lay there and eventually the guy shows up to drag it off stage lol.

Did it really predict these things? We’ve had data surveillance and algorithmic targeting for a while before Watchdogs. A lot of “prescient” sci-fi is just writing about stuff that’s already happening but which people don’t pay much attention to.