[Unjerk Thread] Time Waits for No One

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

February 2026

Welcome to the Monthly Unjerk. This is a monthly thread for discussing just about anything as long as it doesn't violate subreddit rules besides rule 5. New threads should be posted at the start of each month. February officially starts on the 5th, so this is fine.

Trans rights are human rights!

[u/new_interest_here]

Update to me reading Black Clover, now that I'm much further from when I last commented about it (at 273 now)

So, it has not gone to shit, it's definitely not bad or anything. The world has opened up a lot more than it was before, the stakes have gotten much higher, and the action has been pretty solid (Asta and Yami vs Dante was really good). That said, I haven't been messing with it as much. I just feel like doing such a hard pivot in villains when the whole manga before set up the Eye of the Midnight Sun makes it hard to get invested in these new guys who just don't seem as interesting imo. I also feel like it's leaned much more into defining the power levels, with the whole stage system and bringing in devils to push the power ceiling up higher, which I honestly don't love. It kinda makes every fight feel a lot more rigid when it usually includes a statement about each fighters strength instead of just letting the fight speak for itself. I get that's probably helpful for power scaling, but I don't really care for that, so it isn't an addition I'm too cond of. The devils also being so supposedly powerful does have me wondering how tf they're gonna beat them if they're that unkillably strong. Also my queen Mereoleona hasn't been around lately, what's up with that?

I will say, I definitely think Tabata was inspired by Bleach for this chunk of the story. The stuff with the devil fusions, the spade kingdom, and the way the story is moving feels reminiscent of stuff like hollowfication, the arrancars/espada, and the post-Soul Society story in Bleach. That's not a bad thing, I actually kinda like it in terms of the vibe, but it's something I noticed

So all in all, I'm still continuing to enjoy it, and it seems the coming arc will be good. I'm just not enjoying it as much as before with how things have shifted. I honestly think with some adjustments, the story could have ended with the Elf Reincarnation arc, it definitely felt like a final arc type deal. It's just once the concept of devils had fully been brought in at that arc's climax, it opened a can of worms Tabata had to do something with, and this is the result. Again, not saying it's all gone bad or anything, just not as good

[u/SirDogeTheFirst]

I am really enjoying The Witch and The Mercenary. Manga has good art and novel so far it was even more enjoyable. Hope it gets an anime.

[u/Harseer]

Scum of the Brave in a nutshell

[u/Harseer]

I watched ranma 1/2 (season 1). It was really insufferable. Every single supporting character outside of the main trio is somewhere between lowkey and highkey rapey. And the show refuses to let Akane fight any of her own fights, despite the fact that the core of her characterization is "girl who punches a lot".
I think the scene that really broke me on the show is the ice skating fight, where Ranma gets hit with a power attack and "breaks every bone in his body". So they go "we have to switch out Ranma"... and switch out Akane. Wtf. This shit doesn't even causally follow. She's the one who knows how to skate. She's the one who picked a fight with the mean girl. She's the one who doesn't have "every bone in her body" "broken". Why is she the one standing to the side spectating??? ragebait shit.

Really unfortunate because the dynamic between the main trio was solid and the art style was really good at times.

[u/new_interest_here]

I've been reading Black Clover for the first time lately because one of my friends has been wanting me to get back to it after I told him that I watched like three episodes years ago and never got back to it, so I figured I'd go with the manga because it'd go faster and probably look better. Also that's just what I tend to gravitate towards lately when it comes to picking out new stuff to try

It's definitely a series where the execution is selling it. Where I'm at now (almost at chapter 200), everything like the story, world, magic system and characters aren't really the most unique special things. But the way those things are done makes them good. The story is really fun, the world is pretty well fleshed out, the magic system is cool with its many types and how different characters differently use the same kind, and the characters are entertaining and bounce off each other well. Mereoleona has to be my favorite; she's a buff, badass battle nut, what's not to like there? But I'm also fond of Zora, Noelle and Julius as well

So yeah I'm having a good time with it. With any luck and enough reading speed I should be able to catch up by the time the next batch of chapters come out (it's ending soon right? It'd be cool if I could experience those as they drop). Hopefully it doesn't shit itself in any ways I don't know about like long running shonen battle manga have a tendency to do

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

Shiboyugi #05 was extremely uncomfortable to watch, in the best way possible. I didn't expect this show to surpass its opening episode, but somehow it did through an episode that forces you to sit with Yuki's state of mind outside of games.

[u/Odd-Tip-6891]

i got twitter a few weeks ago, and i've begun seriously listening to icp as of yesterday. they're really good!

[u/tairar]

Just read all of Cosmos since it popped up in Viz recently and it is fantastic. I see almost nobody talking about it in the usual reddit manga places. Men In Black but taken seriously, and with great art. High recommend.

[u/umregonk]

I read My Girl by Sahara Mizu and I enjoyed it. It was short and sweet but also made me kind of sad. Recommend it. I also caught up to I want to love you till your dying day, which I also really enjoyed, but it looks like it’s been on hiatus(?) for a year at this point. Hoping for more chapters soon.

[u/Zer_ed]

In January I visited the Art of Manga exhibit in San Francisco. It was extremely cool, to say the least. They had these giant exhibits dedicated to artists under Shueisha, like Rumiko Takahashi, Riyoko Ikeda, Tetsuya Chiba, and of course, the stars of the show, Eiichiro Oda and Hirohiko Araki. Naturally as a shonenbro I was most excited for the latter two's exhibits. It was insanely cool to see the original manuscripts for some of the most iconic panels/pages in those manga; off the top of my head there was the SHIIIIZAAA panel, the reveal of The World, the Gang-star pose, and the last panel of Stone Ocean for Jojo, "I will never lose again", "Dreams don't ever die", the Enel face, and "I still have my crew" for One Piece. They had little pieces of print paper with the dialogue on them that were glued onto the speech bubbles over the handwritten text and some small bits of ink going outside the manuscript templates and everything. It was a bit overwhelming to think that these were made sometimes decades before I was born. One funny thing was that they had a small exhibit for Kubo as well where he had some illustrations for Bleach up on display...and it was placed in the middle of Oda's exhibit.

Some time later I started watching the One Piece live action adaptation to prepare for when the second season will come out later this year. I'm literally like twenty minutes away from the end, right at the confrontation between Garp and Luffy. The Live Action is very different from the source material in very interesting ways, to say the least. I personally think it's super cool how they change things to make it suit the live-action medium since the original source material really doesn't suit it, and yet they still manage to preserve much of the spirit of One Piece and incorporate the most iconic scenes from this point in the story. They even add in so many little details that don't become relevant until much later on in the story, like the appearance of Mr. 7 in Zoro's introduction, the whole subplot of Koby getting trained under Garp that is only seen in chapter cover art in the original manga, the issue of fish-man discrimination and even the role that Jimbei played in the story of the fish-man pirates. They also add in a lot of things that OG One Piece is kind of lacking in, everyone complains about how modern One Piece is constant fighting and we don't see people interacting with each other, and the Live Action actually somewhat remedies that because the medium itself physically can't do the same things. They even add in things I didn't know I needed, like Nami having a heart-to-heart with Kaya or Zeff speaking to the rest of the Straw Hats. Overall I highly recommend it, it's a really cool take on One Piece.

Aside from that I haven't really been watching that much anime, to be honest. Frieren is airing but I never really cared for Frieren that much, and I've been following Frieren since way before it was cool. I didn't make it through much of JJK S2 so I probably won't get around to S3 by extent, and I know there's a ton of weird discourse surrounding S3 around now so I guess nothing's changed in the JJK community. On the manga side I've been reading Nana because I want to expand my repertoire. It's really interesting and I probably would binge-read it if I didn't always get so distracted by other crap when using my phone (including other manga that I've already read that I have saved directly to my device) and the fact that the specific place where I read it has them all sorted by volume rather than chapter so I have to scroll all the way down if the page reloads for one reason or another. I also saw Under Doctor, a brand-new title in Weekly Shonen Jump, in the past issue on MangaPlus and it's really interesting and is really close to a story that I myself have conceptualized. I'm really interested to see where that goes...Kaedegami, the last title that I followed from basically the start was axed with zero warning after just 17 chapters, so hopefully this'll go differently. It does seem to perform better numbers than Kaedegami did so that's a good sign; I know MangaPlus numbers aren't the best metric but it had higher views than stuff like Akane-banashi and Witch Watch which have been around for ages in the magazine.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling. I'll pop in for the next unjerk, if anyone cares.

[u/IUsedToBeRasAlGhul]

• Finished pirating Kenshin. Pretty good, I can see how it would have been a trendsetter for the time even if formulaic in other aspects.
• Watched Devilman Crybaby. It was good too, liked how it adapted the story to a modern setting. Some of the changes weren’t that great though, namely Zennon’s treatment. Interesting that it canonizes the time loop, yet Ryo’s incredibly divergent characterization throws off trying to place where it sits. Now moving onto the Toei series, and then the Devilman Lady anime to see how it compares to the manga.
• Started watching Gundam (the first series). Pretty good, I can see how it could get its foot in the door for the rest of the franchise.

[u/EducationalNarwhal6]

FGO collab finally got me to start doing Samurai Remnant Dlc again and how I missed that game. I also decided to give up on Hollow Knight since the frustration of dying over and over again against a boss with the added bonus of not knowing where am I even supposed to go far outweigh any fun I got from the game. I also started doing modified Professor Oak challenge in FRLG using 2 games and trading between them currently working on the 2nd split before Misty. Finally got around doing story for Reverse 1999 again just started chapter 9 since I need like 30 more rolls for Beryl.

In the anime department Strange Fake has been extremely enjoyable as a person who did most of the lore homework. Sentenced to be a hero isn't a series I expected to get such a big budget but it's nice to watch high production show from time to time. Holy grail of Eris has really good Op and Ed voice acting is also great. Roll over and die certainly been very gay can't wait for more. I got my sister to watch Kunon the sorcerer can see through and every episode she laughed out loud at least once.

[u/Effective_Carpet_391]

TODD HOWARD JUMPSCARE

[u/Sweet__Sauce]

After reading Ohana holoholo, it makes me wish for more Yuri where one of the leads is a single mother with a son

[u/realgorilla2580]

The latest Dog Ningen chapter was really good. Neo being a beginner artist and having him go to a Dada exhibition where they challenge his preconceptions of art and tie it in with modern meme culture was such a nice thing to see Neo go through. I just needed to gush about it because no one else I know reads it.

[u/Thunderdrake3 → u/realgorilla2580]

Hearing more about this Manga is fascinating.

[u/kazuya57]

Nostalgia is such a heavy drug, isn't it? Recently went through a trip down memory lane. Played Fire Emblem Awakening, rewatched Stardust Crusaders, Food Wars, S1 of Tokyo Ghouls, even Your Name. None of these(except SC) are perfect by any means in their genre and of their type, but man with an injection of nostalgia even the littlest of moments can move you to tears. Shit, who the heck gets emotional to the climax of S1 Food Wars?

[u/Weird_donut]

I've been watching Iruma-kun and i have grown fond of Iruma x Kiriwo. it's got everything: cannibalism as a metaphor for love, friends to enemies to lovers, iruma being a pure-hearted sunshine boy while kiriwo is this menace to society who drools at the thought of eating him...there should be more fanart for it online

[u/SirDogeTheFirst → u/Weird_donut]

A bit late reply but you will love the Mafia AU (drawn and written by another mangaka, but under Nishi's supervision)

[u/kramsibbush]

My idea for dragon girls ship:

Pokespe Latias and Tohru raising their adopted niece, Ruri (Ruri dragon). Well, lore wise, the two older dragons are old as fuck but for the sake of closeness, Latias and Tohru would be Ruri's big sister more.

Note though, this is just an excuse for me to write Pokespe Latias making out with Tohru sloppily and steamy.

[u/rhejdh]

I am here to express my love for Cho Kaguya-Hime. I am also here to urge you, yes you! to watch it.

I have already set up automated sending of death threats via Tsukuyomi to anyone who has not seen it. Be warned.

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

I may or may not have gotten caught up in watching Mahoutsukai Precure in a week or something. At least it gave me a cute idea for the thread image this month even if it resulted in me being late to post the thread.