We’re starting to see some more of Liz’s true colors. She comes off as exceptionally self-righteous and almost villainous herself. Even after she almost gets Alicia killed and gets the prince stabbed she’s unrepentant.

@rikka@ani.social

The prince taking Alicia’s side and going against Liz was pretty epic though and obviously something Liz was not expecting. I’m further led to believe that Liz has knowledge of the game just like Alicia.

This would also be cute if we weren’t constantly reminded that Alice is only 13…

And while Alicia doesn’t get to act the Villainess since the Prince and King already reprimanded the perpetrators, this was a good look for her.

At the end we learn that Liz controls all elements at levels over 80. Considering that her mana went out of control when she was practicing for her talent show I find this curious. It makes me wonder if she didn’t fake the incident to paint Alicia to be the bad guy.

Adding it to my watch list. 👍

It’s even funnier when you realize ALL the times Heero almost kills her. Like, right in episode 1 he almost shoots her shuttle down.

Right? It’s also comically villainous. Like being evil just for the sake of being evil. They could’ve teased it a bit more and done a Soylent Green… “Soylent Aether… is PEOPLE!” Then again, calling it the “Immortal Reactor” was already a huge hint. I had pretty much figured out they were using immortals as energy just from the name so the exposition wasn’t a huge shock.

The massive juxtaposition though… like it’s a bit wacky with the whole “I’m going to be a streamer” thing (which I thought was awesome) then this.

Ngl, the Trapped in a Dating Sim anime is what got me reading more light novels. The anime wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was still so good. I wanted more of that world and the light novels didn’t disappoint.

Hmm… if it has to have an assertive male character I’d probably have to say Toradora or Horimiya.

It is interesting how much romance doesn’t have an assertive male lead. Like my absolute favorite romance is My Dress Up Darling but I wouldn’t call the male lead in that one assertive. And a lot of romance have the male lead completely panic any time a girl is on the same planet as them, lol.

Overall, probably Slime Isekai. It’s got a good mix of wholesomeness, action, comedy, and world building. And it has just the right amount of OP in the MC.

Overlord is a good runner up. Great character development, good story and humor, intriguing world, etc.

Mushoku is easy top 5 but the bullying and horny drop it down a few notches for me.

Konosuba is also top 5. It nails the parody.

For non-anime, Reincarnated as a Sword is my favorite isekai light novel series, not that I’ve read all that many isekai light novels. However the anime adaptation was mediocre at best. It barely touches on the deep world creation and character development found in the LN.

For video game isekai, Shangri-La Frontier. No trapped in a video game nonsense. No completely unrealistic game mechanics. The game feels like it could be a real game. And the MC is OP only in the sense that they’re good at games, not because of cheats.

Villainess isekai is practically it’s own thing now and I have my favorites there as well but the classic is All Routes Lead to Doom.

I really love isekai so I could keep going but I’ll stop here before I start talking about Trapped in a Dating Sim.

You’re on GUUUUUAAAAAAARRRRD

The trailer shouldn’t give the entire plot away

Someone once told me that once you decide to watch a movie you should no longer watch trailers for it. My experience has been that it was a good piece of advice. It’s INSANE how much of the plot some trailers give away. I remember people put together the entire plot of Prometheus before it was released just from all the spoilers in the trailers, and that’s not even the worst offender.

Loved the chibi. Reminded me a bit of Reincarnated as the Villainess, All Routes Lead to Doom.

The Liz mind control thing is very concerning. If she’s doing it on purpose with some ancient magic, then that would mean she’s not the goodie-goodie she’s supposed to be. It might be some twisted sense of right and wrong where the end justifies the means. Or she could be like Alicia in that she wants to be the greatest heroine and get everyone, even the villainess, to like her. The latter makes the most sense to me in how she always praising and defending Alicia. Regardless, Liz’s motives are the most questionable thing for me right now.

I rewatched the other episodes and there seem to be subtle hints that Alicia’s birth coincided with the blossoming of a Black rose but her father is hiding this so Alicia can live a normal life. It would explain why she has the power to negate Liz’s brain-washing.

One other thing I found note-worthy is how Alicia is pointing out the differences between how things are playing out VS how they played out in the game. For instance, she was never at that tea party. It got me thinking about all the other deviations and the biggest one has to be that she was asked to watch Liz at all. If she was exiled in the original game ending then that means she wouldn’t have had royal backing to monitor Liz. I wonder what other differences will happen moving forward.

I gave it the three episode rule and didn’t like it. The first episode was decent but I was bored by the third episode.

Definitely not the worst thing to get renewed but not for me.

The candidate said they were going to use Java. I asked them if perhaps they weren’t coding in Python instead? They insisted it was Java. I forget the details but they proceeded to “fix” their code by doing some stuff that made absolutely no sense no matter what language they were using.

At the time it was like watching a train wreck. This was much earlier in my career and I was like, “there’s just no way, right?”

I did get lunch out of it.

lol. I kid you not, someone did that. Then completely imploded when I pointed out that it’d just print the object reference and not the list contents.

Can you start next Monday? :p

Dude, so much of your experience resonates with me! I was applying to a small start-up and they were like “oh, our new CEO is former Amazon so you’ll be doing a half-dozen hour-long interviews over the course of a couple days.” Wut? Other times the company would claim they don’t care that most of my experience is in Java and then after final interviews they’ll turn me down because most of my experience is in Java and they think it’s not possible for someone to use a different programming language or something. And people who reach out to ME then ghost me.

Sadly I’m still trying to find a new role.

As the interviewee?

I show up at their office for a round of interviews. IIRC it was 4 interviews of about an hour each. Every single interviewer comes in 5-10 minutes late. They all look completely exhausted. Unprompted, they all commented that “yeah, this is a start-up so we’re expected to work 80 hour weeks. That’s just how it is.” I did not take that job.

Another place wanted to do a coding “pre-screening” thing. You know, where you go to a website and there’s a coding question and you code it and submit your answer. THIS place wanted you to install an extension that took full control of your browser, your webcam, your mic, etc. So it could record you doing the coding challenge. No, thank you.

As the interviewer? omg, the stories I can tell.

We had a guy come in for an hour interview. We start asking him the normal interview questions. Literally everything he says is straight up wrong or he says, “I don’t know” and then just gives up and doesn’t try to work out a solution or anything. But we have a whole hour with this guy and as interviewers we’ve been instructed to use the full hour otherwise candidates complain that they weren’t given a fair chance even when it’s TOTALLY obvious it’s going to be a “no-hire.” So we start asking this guy easier and easier questions… just giving him basic softball questions… and HE STILL GETS THEM ALL WRONG. We ask him what type of variable would you use to store a number? He says, “String.” WHAT?! I’m totally flabbergasted at this point. So finally I get a brilliant idea: I’ll ask him an OPINION question! There’s no way he can get that wrong, right? Looking at his resume, it has something like “Java Expert” on there. So I say to him, “It says on your resume you’re a Java Expert. What’s your favorite thing about Java?” His response? “Oh, I actually don’t know anything about Java. I just put that on my resume because I know they used that at a previous company.” So now on top of this guy getting every question wrong, we’ve established he has also lied on his resume, so basically just red flags EVERYWHERE. Finally, after a grueling 45 minutes we decide to give up asking questions and just end with the whole, “So we like to reserve the last bit of time so you can ask us questions. Do you have anything you’d like to ask?” Without missing a beat, this guy goes, “When do I start? I feel like I NAILED that interview!”

At another company I worked at, we would do online interviews that took only an hour. The coding portion of the interview had a single question: “Given a list of strings, print the contents of the list to the screen.” That was it. Sure, we could make the coding question harder if they totally aced it, but the basic question was nothing more complicated than that. The candidate could even choose which programming language they wanted to use for the task. That single question eliminated half the candidates who applied for the job. Some straight up said they couldn’t do it. One person hung up on me and then when I tried to call back they said the fire alarm went off at their place and they would reschedule. They never did. Many people forgot that I could see their screens reflected in their glasses and I could see them frantically Googling. There was one candidate that did so insanely poorly during the interview that we believe it must have been a completely different person that had gone through the initial phone screen, so basically they were trying to bait-and-switch.

I have a bunch of other stories but this post is already getting quite long.

The fact that it’s Bocchi is amazing

Okay, I’m going to need this one explained to me.

Right? At best their argument is “I was too stupid to make the right decision for myself therefore no one should be able to make the decision for themselves”