That scene in episode two certainly felt unnecessary, maybe a service to the horny viewers. They manage to keep it somewhat believable, where most other shows typically fail to do so. I think the overly interested in the younger characters’ romance teachers is weirder than that scene, though I’ve met people like that and they aren’t even exaggerations.

Maybe I just relate to the MC. There’s a reluctance to romance that takes me back. Most other anime I’ve seen way over exaggerate it, or don’t play on it at all.

I appreciate your explanation.

I really enjoyed I Parry Everything, weird to see it so low or not even ranked in categories it makes sense for. I also watched No Longer Allowed in Another World and it’s way weirder to see it at the top of so many lists. Maybe some of the charm is lost in translation or I just don’t appreciate the play on tropes as much.

Makeine is great so far, half way through about to binge the other half. Lovely art, generally avoiding the gross tropes that turn me off with these types of anime. When those tropes are visited it still manages to frame things in a believable way. I need to get my wife to watch it for her take, but it feels like the girls are represented respectfully as their own relatable characters and not strictly some object for the male viewers to desire. Probably still not totally there, but feels nice to see some growth in that direction.

Curious if anyone can compare Makeine to Days with my Stepsister, and Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian. Both of those shows have some face value ick that’s keeping me from starting them.

Regardless of what the remote access test says about it being available, I had to manually port forward to fix this same issue.

Seriously, can’t get those 15 minutes back.

In retrospect, I can’t argue that it’s an empty world. But during my time with the game as a teen, during its original release period on Xbox, it did not feel empty at all.
I’m wondering how much it had to do with the lower render distance / fog on Xbox, because without that I can imagine a totally different game. I’m also wondering how much had to do with essentially every playthrough of mine being wearing the boots of blinding speed and some magic resist so I could see. The big empty world felt small and populated when traversal doesn’t take as long. Not saying that’s good design, but I can imagine disliking it with the default move speed. Compared to many other similar games I played since then, most of the content felt worthwhile. Oblivion and especially Skyrim fell so short of the bar that Morrowind set for me because so much of the dungeon content felt like worthless filler.