I remember playing an anime game on my phone in high school, and this one classmate made fun of me for it. Not because of anime, he already knew I watch them and didn’t (seemingly, at least), care one way or the other. But because the game has a hub-like area where the characters are shown in a chibi design. He kept pestering me after that to try out Barbie games.

The “best” part? Dude literally said the game looked fun when he saw me playing the actual gameplay, and even asked me to let him play a round. Then the round ended, saw the hub, and he did a 180 on me and on the game.

To this day I don’t feel comfortable watching certain anime in public. I’m not even talking about ecchi here. Just basically any stuff that is “girly”.

Another is just ask for recommendations, I bet we can find you a couple of good ones if you are interested :-)

You mean asking here? Sure, I’d be down if that’s the case.

I’m not gonna talk about what books I enjoyed as a kid, cause I don’t remember all of them, nor why I enjoyed them. It’s been years. Besides, my tastes have changed, I’m sure. So I’ll only mention what I’ve read since late 2023, when I started to get back into it.

The ones I’ve completed are:

• “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Max Gladstone andAmal El-Mohtar. Was good, maybe a bit confusing at times. I tend to like time travel stories in anime or TV shows, which is why I started this one. I gave it a 3 star rating, although I’m not sure how people interpret each star since I’m new, so it’s entirely possible that a 3 star for me is better or worse than something you’d also give 3 stars.

• “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour. It’s currently sitting at a 4 star for me, but it’s more like a 3.75, but the site I’m using only has full and half stars, so I can’t go in between 3.5 and 4.

• “The Cat Who Saved Books” by Sosuke Natsukawa. This had a bit more on an anime-vibe to it, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned, as a big anime fan. Or maybe it just felt like it did because the characters’ names were in Japanese and the story took place in Japan, since Sosuke Natsukawa is Japanese himself. 3.5 from me.

• “Warm Up” by V.E. Schwab. This is part of a series, it’s a short prologue of sorts (less than 20 pages, from what I recall) and I’m theoretically reading the first book of the main series, but I haven’t read that in a while. I’ll probably get back to it some time soon, but it didn’t grab me as well as the three books above did. As for Warm Up specifically, I haven’t rated it, what with it being so short. I didn’t know how to accurately judge something with so few pages.

• “The Last Murder at the End of the World” by Stuart Turton. My absolute favorite so far (although there’s not that many in total to begin with). I loved it so much! 5 stars. Ironically took me the longest to read out of these, but it was because I wasn’t always in a reading mood, not for any other reason. I already intend on reading “The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” sometime soon, cause it’s by the same author.

The one I dropped is:

• “Hurricane Heels” by Isabel Yap. There were some magical girl anime that I really liked, which is how I ended up picking this book, as I searched for magical-girl-like books. I didn’t end up liking it too much tbh, so I never finished it. Only read 12%, to be fair.

Currently reading:

I think I may have made a mistake by starting too many books, haha. I have these as “reading”:

• “Coraline” by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman has written some stories in Doctor Who, which is how I came to know about him. 24% so far, but haven’t read it in a while.

• “Vicious” by V.E Schwab. The first real book in the series I mentioned above when talking about “Warm Up”.

• “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell. This I’ve read more of recently. Yesterday, actually. 21%.

• “Pew” by Catherine Lacey. Also read more recently, as opposed to Coraline and Vicious. Two days ago was when I last read from this. 31%.

Anime, Cartoons and TV Shows:

As for my tastes in non-book fiction, I’ll mention some of my favorites here, in case you (or someone else finding this) knows about them. There’s not a lot of books I’ve read all the way through yet, so some non-book favorites could be helpful in recommending me books, I feel.

Some of my favorite anime in no particular order: Non Non Biyori, Steins;Gate, Vinland Saga, Bocchi the Rock.

Some of my favorite TV shows in no particular order: Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys (for the latter, I’m specifically referring to the TV show. I haven’t seen the movie that its premise is loosely based off of, because they’re not really related beside a common base concept). Just these 2 really, I mainly watch anime.

Some of my favorite cartoons: Gravity Falls, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

to be clear I didn’t mean that buying books in itself was throwing money away, more if you are unsure what you like from books and end up buying a lot of stuff you just don’t like it is a waste.

Yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t assume anything negative from that. I just wanted to clarify why exactly I don’t just keep on pirating them.

It’s not that I have money to throw away, but rather that I spend a lot of time in front of screens. Anime and games can’t be watched/played without a screen, but books can be read. Since I already look at screens so much, I would want to not do the same when reading if I don’t have to.

I don’t know much about Kindles, to be honest, so I’m operating under lack of knowledge here, but isn’t that technically a tablet of sorts? Or is it less damaging as a screen than a regular tablet?

I’m asking because part of the reason I’d want physical books is because I spend a lot of time in front of screens because I can’t watch anime or play games without a screen. But books can be read without one, so I would like to not do it on my tablet anymore, as I’m currently doing

I’ll look into the library in my city, though.

I’m not OP, but that one is on my radar, having recently read The Last Murder at the End of the World by the same author. With how much I enjoyed it, I have really high expectations of Evelyn Hardcastle, so it’s good to know it’s a great one too!

If by any chance you’ve read both, which did you like more?

This was one of my early questions and one of the first reasons that started pushing me away from religion.

At one point I asked my religion teacher in high school something among the lines of “So if a hypothetical person is the most good person on Earth from all the ways of looking at things, except he doesn’t believe in God, does the latter invalidate everything else and he’d still go to hell?”. She pretty much said yes.

Luckily she was chill about some of us in the class not believing. We just agreed to disagree, and while there were multiple debates on various religious subjects started by someone in the class questioning something she was saying, it never got heated.

Didn’t get the chance to read a lot of manga this past week, but I did start Ruridragon, one of @wjs018@ani.social’s recommendations for me in the previous thread. Only read Chapters 1-4 so far, but it’s really good. And for some reason, I could totally see Aoi Yuuki voicing Ruri if and when Ruridragon gets an anime. Granted that would be way in the future since there’s only 7 chapters so far. But it feels like it’d fit.

EDIT: Seems that the 8th chapter released yesterday. I’m not caught up just yet, so I didn’t know.

I think the clear standout is Nagatoro, but that is well over 100 chapters in, so it wouldn’t be quick to catch up.

I’ve actually watched the anime for that, but the first season only. It didn’t really make me compelled to check out its second season, to be honest. But yeah, that wouldn’t be an easy one to catch up on anyway.

If you are looking for more general recommendations, I made a comment with some in a previous response to a different user.

Some of those I’ve seen the anime of or am currently watching the anime of (in the case of Frieren and Dungeon Meshi), but I’ll check their descriptions too when I’ll be looking for something that’s either completed or has a lot of chapters already.

Here are a couple series that are still fairly early in their run that I see at least a couple comments in their chapter threads:

Alright, so all of those sounded interesting lol.

I’m probably going to go with Star Tripper and Ruridragon to start things off. Do we know how often Ruridragon’s chapters are expected to come out? I see Star Tripper has pretty consistent releases (3 days ago, 10 days ago, 16 days ago, last month, and so on), but with Ruridragon I can’t really tell since it came out of the hiatus so recently that there’s only 1 post-hiatus chapter.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Hi. I watched and am watching a lot of anime, but recently I also want to get more into manga as well, as I only ever completed a handful. I also want to get into the discussion side of things too, which I feel is easier with currently releasing manga, as opposed to completed ones. Currently I’m reading one that’s completed and four that aren’t yet (although two of those four I’m nowhere near caught up, as I’ve only recently started them and they were already well under way by that time).

Right now I’m looking for some recommendations of new(er) manga that don’t have a lot of chapters just yet, but which seem promising. If you want to throw a random completed recommendation in here too, that’s fine too, go ahead, but the main thing I’m looking for is something I can follow along with other people.

If it’s good I’ll read most genres. Basically just don’t give me horror recs and you’ll be good lol. To give you at least something to go off of, my favorite manga from my limited pool of ones I’ve completed are, in no particular order: ReLife, Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, House of the Sun, Spirit Circle, I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl. And here are some of my favorite anime too, again in no particular order: Non Non Biyori, Steins;Gate, Vinland Saga, Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san, Bocchi the Rock, BanG Dream (specifically the MyGO season. I’ve seen the others too, but this one in particular is the one I’d consider one of my favorites), Yuru Camp and I could go on, but this comment is long enough already heh.

Pretty much. Not neccesarily Minecraft, for me, but most of the time I’d rather play a game or watch anime.

I really liked this too. Had no idea about their existence, but I’ll listen to them some more soon.