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?

I appreciate that you call people out on these things. My experience with pointing things out or seeing online conversations where someone else pointing it out has been very different. That’s not to say what you’re saying doesn’t happen. It’s probably just different based on where exactly on the internet we’ve been. Granted, leftist areas of the internet has this issue less, but it’s not zero.

Like let’s take a conversation about men that are virgins. The more comments there are, the more likely it is that at least one person will make fun of this category of men. And in the cases I’ve seen, any attempts to counter this is met with “Lol the virgin outed himself”. Very rarely does an actual conversation happen (again, in the cases I’ve seen), because any arguments brought forward about why we shouldn’t shame men for being virgins is shot down as invalid because the person bringing these arguments is a virgin. Or heck, he might not even be one, but the other person has already made up their mind on the virginity status of the commenter.

And the fact that it’s present, albeit not as often, in leftist spaces as well is really harming and it can push people in the other direction. I’m in my 20s, a leftist man and a virgin, but I was fortunate enough to form my opinions on a lot of issues without encountering douchebags like Andrew Tate. But what about someone that’s a teenager right now, doesn’t have any opinions on political stuff yet, but sees the left that’s fighting for no discrimination, making fun of virgins, which he is? He goes to see what the other side is saying, and boom, he’s trapped in there now. Of course, the past couple sentences is my idea of what might go through this hypothetical guy’s mind. So it’s not that I think the left as a whole makes fun of virgins, but from where my example guy is standing, it could seem that way when a lot of people say those things and they go unchallenged.

Sorry for the long rant, but it’s basically a really long way of saying: I’m glad you’re calling this shit out and keep at it!

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.

Ah okay, so I did read that wrong then.

just with half the extensions, though that plan didnt seem to help them avoid people going after them.

Wait, am I interpreting this the wrong way, or did you mean that Mihon is already threatened?

Yeah, that’s fair. You said you were curious what other recommendations there are, which is why i mentioned Mihon.

I’m not sure if Aniyomi is going to be affected by what happened to Tachiyomi, cause I haven’t used Aniyomi in years, but hey, if it still works and you like it, keep going with it.

I liked Kotatsu for some features, but I ended up trying Mihon after seeing it mentioned a lot, and it has most of what Kotatsu does.

And I also had trouble with Kotatsu’s sync. It synced my library, but it wouldn’t update read chapters between devices. So if I read up to, say, Chapter 14 of a manga, then did the sync and read Chapter 15 on the other device, the first one would still have me at Chapter 14. Also, not really sure why, but activating the sync on the second device was kind of a pain. I had no trouble setting it up on the main device, but then the second one wouldn’t open that screen where you can load your library. I ended up having to make my way through some well hidden settings outside the app (as I figured out that the screen it was meant to open was basically a redirect to the phone’s settings), and it wasn’t even worth it, since it’s not properly being synced anyway.

Heh, my first site was also Cartoon Network. And I remember the voting too, we had them in my country too. I can’t recall if I ever voted myself, but I remember some of the 24 hours days. Sometimes I loved it when it was a show I liked and sometimes I would be like “Well what do I watch today now?” if I wasn’t a fan.

I don’t know what the very first thing was back when I didn’t yet have internet and could only use it when visiting my uncle who did.

But I remember the first site I visited after I had internet myself. I went on the Cartoon Network site to play some of the games they had.