Sekine's Love (romance): 8/10. Enjoyed it. It shows things from a few perspectives, it was a nice slow burn, the misunderstandings felt realistic and the MC was unique (he's bit weird though). Not read much of the genre, but I'd guess it's above average. Another weird thing is that the guy is way too popular, like almost everyone is head-over-heels for him.
Kodomo no Kamisama: 5.5/10. It's one chapter -three young boys are friends with a young girl, but two of them suddenly can't see her anymore and don't remember her, because she's only visible to children and they're getting older. The remaining boy strives to never forget her and falls in love with her. Will she disappear? Not bad for a one-shot, I'd say two themes are not parting on bad terms and how people have interests or ambitions, but can't remember why they have that interest, even though the reason is something that was previously extremely important to them.
I Hear the Sunspot/Hidamari ga Kikoeru: 7/10. Warning, literally gay by the end. Two boys are friends, one of whom is partially deaf and it's getting worse, which stresses him out and some of his classmates are kinda idiots. From the humour you can tell it's for a teenage audience.
I'm reading quite a few, doing the 2022 manga-reading challenge on MAL where you try to fill in lines of a bingo card, with a particular manga criteria (genre, character with glasses or whatever) being paired to each number.
Kaiji (anime): 6.5/10 Finished S1 after a few years off and then S2. Characters are ugly asf - gotta get that out the way. S2's ending video should be blasted into Proxima Centauri.
Kaiji is similar to Liar Game in some ways, but different in others. Liar Game has games more exclusively based on mathematical and psychological logic, whereas the games in Kaiji are much more about luck - Liar Game is a faux-gambling manga, whereas Kaiji is really about gambling, but with people cheating to turn the game in their favour. In LG the characters make use of the game and competitors themselves in order to win, whereas in Kaiji, the namesake character often uses some kind of external tools to try to win the game (to be clear though, he often loses. I originally stopped watching because I got sick of how often him and the others lost). In Kaiji the opponent is the game-master themselves, whereas in Liar Game it's the other competitors (at least in the first few games). In Kaiji the games are far less complex and as such the characters don't get to show the same degree of intelligence, plus the game-masters that Kaiji competes against have usually pre-rigged the games and rely more on that than on fluid intelligence. In Liar Game the games are a more level playing field. In Kaiji, the games are designed for the competitors to fail (and they can literally all fail), which is for the entertainment of the millionaires, whereas in Liar Game there is always at least one winner - the games being less complex makes sense when you consider that the millionaires mostly just want to see suffering and get free labour and that they really look down on the players (who are all poor people trying to pay off debts), whereas in Liar Game the players weren't in debt prior to entering the Liar Game so it's possible they don't look down on their intelligence as much. Personally I much prefer the games of Liar Game, but they both have their strengths, depending on what you're looking for.
I mentioned maths earlier, and I did notice that Kaiji seems to have a common mathematical error in S2 (gambler's fallacy).
Kaiji has rising up as an underdog as a major theme: against millionaires and, as previously mentioned, people who are rigging games in their favour. Class war is a theme that's incredibly rare in anime, as are stories about working/lower class adults, so I think that makes Kaiji unique, as much as the gambling theme does. Kaiji and company being realistic, adult guys and facing realistic destitution gave more weight to a lot of the perils that they face, compared to watching characters in a fantasy, school or historical setting. The voice acting and animation in the moments of severe desperation added some weight too (a big one is the image warping when Kaiji is on the brink of failure, which conveys well the feeling of sickness and vertigo people sometimes experience in dire situations).
Kaiji is a story of a man who never gives up and finds a way to use the smallest of opportunities. A man who has life slam doors on him repeatedly, but he always looks for a new one and always manages to retain his good heart, even when surrounded by evil. Often times he gets extremely lucky (like just happening to run into someone who has a master plan to share with him), but even this luck only tends to give him opportunities so small that most people wouldn't even see them, let alone be able to turn it into a victory. So the luck is annoying, but it doesn't take away Kaiji's story of incredible perseverance. This perseverance is another thing that makes his moments of despair more impactful, as I really didn't want to see him fall back the mountain he'd tried so hard to claw his way up. And with the animation and repeated failures (to the point where it got tiresome and dragged on a bit), you really have a good sense of how much he's struggled for every foothold. And there are other characters who spend years setting up plans, only to fail.
Kaiji isn't perfect, but it's a noteworthy anime and it's possible it will stick with me more than some series I initially liked more. I'd like to see another season, but it's already been 11 and 15 years since the previous two.
) and some subtle moments of characterisation, it still overall succeeds in performing most of the core plot beats and character moments of the Golden Age masterfully. The only major flaw is the ending being a huge cliffhanger confusing to anyone who hadn't read the manga, though at least the circular nature of its plot and how that ties into the story's focus and exploration of destiny give it some sense of completeness, not to mention Skull Knight may have seemed like too much of a deus ex machina for the anime if not going past the Golden Age and become even more of a "read the manga" middle finger of an ending. Unfortunately, that means this version is the closest we have and probably will to Berserk feeling like a complete story 
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