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Nice to meet you! I'm a casual (ex-otaku?) reader of manga, webtoons, comics, and viewer of anime. I got into manga and anime alongside Japanese language back around 2014 and have spent probably far too many hours (but far too little money) on them as a hobby over the years.

Since it's been so many years, my tastes have changed over time. The more I consume, the less satisfied I become. Inevitable, really. The more one watches the same cliches play out, the more disgusted one becomes with them. The wonder I felt at bombastic, trope-filled shounen anime and manga has long since been overtaken by creeping despair over the lack of high quality storytelling, particularly in the realm of anime. And so I have largely turned to manga as a less depletable source of genuine quality. In time, even the light of the stories I currently see as "great" will probably start to dim in comparison to newer, truer masterworks I hope to find out there. Therefore, please keep in mind the date of my reviews. The more recent the review, the more likely it is to be accurate. At least in my opinion! Also, my actual anime list is in total shambles and in no way represents my current views.

Since moving to Japan in 2018 and learning a great deal of Japanese, I've started directly supporting authors by buying their works and reading the Japanese hardcopies.

I have a strong preference for stories involving identity, realistic human relationships, and adaptation to unfamiliar situations. My favourite genres are genderbender and isekai, but I curse the day isekai became a fad and flooded the genre with an ocean of garbage so vast that it has become nigh impossible to find anything worth a damn for the muck surrounding it. I also prefer to get absorbed in stories from start to finish and struggle with the culture of periodical release dates. I prefer to wait until all the chapters, volumes, or episodes have released so that I can experience the whole story from start to finish, with no interruptions. However, I have started to make exceptions more often as of late.

I dislike cliches and struggle with episodic stories where each chapter or arc is its own self-contained story largely related to the overarching plot. This immediately puts the biggest "popular" hits into my trash can, as I really can't stand that level of same-y-ness. However, non-offending popular hits can still make it onto my bookshelf. I also hate excessive melodrama (looking at you, Clannad...), and one of my pet peeves is the ridiculous sound of children laughing/frolicking that they use in anime. Makes me want to punch my screen.

My ideal manga/anime would be a deep and mature take on isekai, set in a detailed world comparable to Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Redwall, or The Twelve Kingdoms, featuring a genderswapped main character who gradually comes to terms with their situation while figuring out their identity, all subtly done in front of the backdrop of slow but world-changing events.