That’s without even discussing the fact that not a single penny users give them will end up in the hands of any of the exploited artists who actually made the shows

That's quite the assertion. How exactly do you suggest they're buying the rights to distribute the shows then?

given that there are still plenty of passionate fans who would have done it for free

I'd imagine this is a non-starter from a corporate standpoint. I know if I were in charge I'd be terrified of the idea of just trusting community-submitted subtitles to not have random slurs or something inserted. That said I still think it would be super cool if they'd let people source and use their own subtitle files; I now it's possible because I have a tampermonkey script that lets me do just that.

I haven't noticed anything funky in the English subs but it's unfortunately no surprise that they'd be using AI-generated subs for languages with lower viewership.

The teaser trailer opens with a light-hearted moment of Shiori filming a dance video with friends, but quickly takes a dark turn as she becomes trapped in the smartphone world

Oh okay, so this is anime TRON. Except that when the original TRON was made computers were a representation of how cool the future would be. Now smartphones are a representation of how tech companies have leveraged our psychological flaws to trap us in unhealthy relationships with social media, mobile games, etc.

I enjoyed the original Macross so I'll probably give this a look but unfortunately I expect it to be a depressing time.

Yeah but in Bazzite's case one of those issues (the one from about a year ago) hit over 99% of their users. I really think that all these people talking about how great Bazzite is either haven't been using it for long enough for the devs to have fucked up or they just haven't noticed that their system hasn't been updating for the past year.

The problem with using Bazzite as the solution to new users bricking their Linux installs is I've had Bazzite's update utility break itself 3 times now. I couldn't possibly recommend this distro to someone after that. I literally switched my desktop back to Arch for reliability reasons. Ridiculous.

Well I'm not aware of any Arch-based immutable distro besides SteamOS so it's kinda hard to give a perfect answer.

The Spring seasonals from my perspective:

• Apocalypse Hotel - I've watched the first 6 episodes so far. Seems fun, will hopefully finish within a few weeks.
• Apothecary Diaries - This has been a good time overall, though there are some parts in recent episodes where it's clear a scene probably worked better in writing than in animation.
• I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! - Watching the main character exist was actively unpleasant for me; I couldn't even finish one episode.
• Kowloon Generic Romance - Seems very interesting. Watched the first 3 episodes but the pacing threw me off so I think I'm going to seek out the manga and read that instead. Might come back to the anime afterwards if I like the manga.
• Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux - This had a banger of an ending. Wild show. Some people might think it's paced too quickly; I personally found it engaging and fun this way. Easily my anime of the season. Wish I could recommend it to everyone, but I'm not sure it's the best choice for those who haven't seen the original Mobile Suit Gundam. wjs018 seemed to be enjoying it for a while though so maybe it's fine.
• Witch Watch - The animation is kinda meh but I love the characters and the goofs are fun. Will continue watching this one into Summer.

As for summer, I have my eye on a few things:

• City - Same mangaka as Nichijou, same studio as Nichijou. Need I say more?
• The Summer Hikaru Died - I don't know much about this but I heard the manga was good and it's being adapted by Cygames so odds are pretty good that it'll be worth my time.
• Dan Da Dan Season 2 - If this is adapting the manga arc I think it's adapting this is the part of Dan Da Dan where you realize that Season 1 was relatively calm and restrained actually. I can't wait.

The new OP is fine, but it's hard not to compare it with the truly excellent first OP.

But wow is this girl down bad. She makes our female lead look cool-headed by comparison.

Thanks for the links! I didn't know about the USJ ones; amusing stuff.

you can just permanently connect your headphones to your dongle

No. Fuck that. My PC has a headphone jack, and I use it. I don't have a bunch of extra USB-C ports on the front of my computer. Modern phones have plenty of spaces for headphone jacks. They could put it there, they just don't want to.

That's great and all but I'm not switching to Bluetooth headphones and I'm definitely not going to fiddle around with dongles every time I switch between listening on my phone and my PC. Phones are gigantic anyways; let my have my headphone jack. I don't think it's a coincidence that all these smartphone manufacturers that ditched the old standard will happily sell you shiny expensive disposable wireless earbuds.