WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Last Exile.
Man, I love steampunk, it's probably my favorite type of aesthetic in all of fiction ever since I discovered it watching Laputa: Castle in the Sky, then I played Final Fantasy VI and it consolidated my love for it. Unfortunately, there aren't too many good steampunk anime out there, though... After watching Princess Principal a few years ago, I started to look for more steampunk anime, only to be disappointed by the likes of Steamboy and Kabaneri, which looked and sounded really cool, but lacked in every other substantial department. I also watched Baccano, which was pretty good,
...
but not really the type of steampunk I was looking for.
So, just when I was about to lose my interest in steampunk anime, I saw a couple of friends on a Facebook group talking about this steampunk anime called Last Exile, which somehow I never heard of, but seems like it was pretty popular in the west back in the 2000s, guess it was a lot bigger out there in North America and/or Europe than it was here in Brazil. So, after seeing my friends gushing over Last Exile, I decided to look up some stuff about it to get a feel for what I should expect, and I was quickly sold because:
1- The screenshots, character designs and general artwork looked awesome.
2- The synopsis seemed very interesting.
3- It was Gonzo's 10th anniversary project, surely something special must have come out of this.
4- Apparently it's centered around flying into the skies, which is a theme I always enjoyed.
5- "Last Exile" is one hell of a cool title, really.
With all that in mind, could Last Exile finally be the stunning steampunk masterpiece anime I was looking for all along?
Well, I'll just say it already: Last Exile is indeed the best steampunk anime I watched so far, not just because it's one of the few that are actually good at all, it's fucking great even when compared to a lot of regular anime out there. Still, it's not quite a masterpiece as a whole, though it does step into that territory, but ultimately it falls a bit short from that level as a whole.
Our story is set in a world called Prester, where huge airships and the smaller vanships are the main vehicles of transportation, powered by liquidized Claudia, a unique ore found only in this world, the mineral is also used as a form of currency. Prester is also home to Anatoray and Disith, two nations that are currently at war with each other due to their respective territories being severely affected by an abnormality in the solar light: Anatoray's lands started to lose water and are slowly becoming a huge desert, while Disith is freezing with a lot of the water being solidified into ice. Between the lands of Anatoray and Disith is the Grand Stream, a highly turbulent and dangerous air current that separates the two countries and can only be somewhat safely traversed with big airships, though some vanship pilots did attempt to fly through it, but none of them succeeded. Last, but not least, on top of it all is an organization called the Guild, which acts as ruler of Prester's skies and holds the technology of the world, mediating the disputes between Anatoray and Disith and providing such technology to both sides as they see fit.
In the midst of all this is our main characters, the young vanship pilot Claus Valca and his navigator Lavie Head, they're childhood friends and dream of crossing the Grand Stream in the vanship left by their fathers, Hamilcar Valca and Georges Head, who died in their own attempt. In order to achieve such a feat, Claus and Lavie work as couriers and partake in vanship races held in their small hometown, Norkia. However, fate leads the duo to encounter a damaged vanship fleeing from the Guild, the pilot in his dying breath, asks for Claus and Lavie to deliver a girl named Alvis E. Hamilton to the Silvana, one of the most powerful airships in Prester, commanded by local dark-and-brooding-badass captain Alexander Row and his loyal second-in-command, Sophia Forrester. Despite delivering Alvis safely, Claus decides to follow them to ensure the girl's safety, much to Lavie's dismay, which leads into them becoming part of the Silvana's crew and help fend off the Guild, led by the eccentric Dio "Wait, that's a guy?" Eraclea, in their attempt at reclaiming Alvis.
What's so special about Alvis that both the Guild and the Anatoray empire are after her, though? She is the key to finding the legendary Exile, a mysterious item/artifact that is said to grant unimaginable power to the one who acquires it. Although the Silvana is on the Anatoray side in this war, it quickly becomes apparent that our buddy Alex has his own plans regarding the Exile, so the airship kinda drifts out of the war as the crew spend their time looking for the Exile and dealing with the Guild. In the meantime, we are introduced to a shit load of characters, not just limited to the Silvana's crew, which is pretty fucking big already. Last Exile has an ensemble cast of characters, and considering this is a 26 episode show, it goes without saying that most of them aren't given that much focus, which is not really an issue per se, as this is not particularly a character-driven series.
Despite that, Last Exile still does a commendable job at handling its cast, there's a lot of subtle, rich characterization given to a large portion of the people here. Pretty much every character is distinct from one another, they all have unique personalities, well-defined qualities and flaws, as well as their own purpose of being there, doing whatever they're doing as we see their little story arcs unfold, and I'm not just talking about main characters like Claus, Lavie and Dio. For example, there's Tatiana Wisla, an ace pilot that leads the Silvana's vanship fleet along with her best friend, the navigator Alister Agrew. Ever since Claus and Lavie meet Tatiana for the first time, she's shown to be an arrogant bitch who sees herself as too good for everyone around her besides Alex and Sophia, who are her superiors anyway, and Alister, who is her close friend after all. She is very cold to everyone else, Claus, Lavie, the Silvana crew she's familiar with for quite a bit of time, almost as if she wants to give off this image of a cool ace pilot who's all business and tries her hardest to get her superiority across.
However, what's arguably Tatiana's biggest flaw is the fact that she's much more immature and simple-minded than she lets out, she also tends to just take Alister for granted. During Alex's plan to get in a secret black market auction held at the Horizon Cave and receive one of the objects required to activate the Exile, Tatiana participates in the vanship race that happens at the same time to cover up the auction and jeopardizes her mission to drop a bomb on the power generators in order to cut the lights out. Why? Because of a silly provocation from Dio, she got angry, ignored Alister telling her to focus on her mission and decided that proving that she's a better pilot than Dio is more important than getting her mission done. Granted, she did drop the bomb and everything turned out fine, but it was still a risky move she shouldn't have taken.
The consequences of Tatiana's actions start to show when Alister offered to be Claus' navigator instead of agreeing with Tatiana that she should be flying in his place, claiming there is no freedom to be found in Tatiana's sky. Later, when Silvana engages in a battle against the Urbanus, a ship commanded by Anatoray naval captain Vincent Alzey, they end up getting defeated, the Silvana sunk and Tatiana's vanship was hit, forcing her and Claus, her navigator for this mission, to land in the desert. Having been defeated and now finding herself lost, Tatiana feels devastated and through her conversation with Claus we come to understand why she acted the way she did before: Tatiana is the daughter of the Wisla house, a once respected and proud noble famiy from Anatoray that unfortunately got left behind and forgotten about when they ended up being unable to move from their old town like the others did, her mother takes care of her father who's sick in bed and she helps her by sending all the extra cash she makes as a pilot to her family. Her objective is to prove herself, restore her family's honor, make her parents proud of her and of their name, that's why she's so serious about being the best pilot in Anatoray and even some random dude from the Guild provoking can get under her skin.
After getting closer to Claus and learning not to worry too much, she develops a bit of a crush on him, which she rapidly gets over, especially since this is more due to her inexperience with getting close with other people, especially guys, so it's not like she has legitimate feelings for Claus. Once that's dealt with, it's easy to see how Tatiana got better as a person, she's more relaxed and willing to understand other people, she actually starts conversations with other crew members and the troubles her relationship with Alister were facing are now water under the bridge.
Honestly, I could make an elaborate write-up on how every major character here feels well-rounded and grows from beginning to end, but I don't think it would be necessary to get the point across. Even the more secondary characters hardly feel static because they're always doing something different, characters from the beginning of the series such as the vanship racers from Norkia and the Mad-Thane family return later, and they're all doing their best to contribute with the campaign against the Guild in their own ways. Last Exile does a wonderful job at creating a world that accomodates all these little character stories and make it all feel alive, like everything is constantly changing and the people from this world try their best to keep up with these changes, they all find their place in it. You also see events such as the war from perspectives that range from nobleman who respect the traditions surrounding it to a fault, to soldiers who are afraid of losing their lives in the ensuing battle and lower-class people who just see this as nothing more than senseless bloodshed.
A lot of people seem to sleep on our boy Claus, despite being the protagonist, the guy usually gets overshadowed by other fan-favorites such as Alex and Dio, some even accuse him of just being an overall bland protagonist. Granted, Claus isn't exactly the most amazing protagonist to ever exist, he's not even my favorite character from Last Exile, that honor actually goes to Alex for reasons I'll explain later, but I like Claus, he is a better character than most people think and a rather fitting protagonist for this series. To understand Claus' character, you must first understand what Last Exile is really about, and the tagline used to advertise the show sums up its central theme very well: "What lies beyond the furthest reaches of the sky?"
Claus and Lavie have really strong feelings about the sky, they love to fly around in their vanship as they explore the vast immensity of the skies, the freedom, the amazing views you can have from up there... Ever since their childhood with their parents, Claus and Lavie grew to love the sky. However, they soon realize that although traveling in the skies is truly wonderful, it's also not devoid of danger, a war is being fought almost entirely up there, in an attempt at bringing it to an end by crossing the Grand Stream and delivering a peace treaty to Disith, their parents became one of the many casualties in this conflict. This ultimately makes crossing the Grand Stream the main objective of the duo, but as we all know, they ended up getting sidetracked once they got in the Silvana, but that's mostly because of Claus being distrustful of Alex and wanting to go to the Silvana to ensure Alvis' safety, Lavie didn't want anything to do with all this shit and just got dragged along at first.
This is where the differences between Claus and Lavie start to become more apparent besides their chill-guy-and-hot-headed-girl dynamic, it's clear that both of them are pacifists, they would rather not play a part in this war or any kind of conflict, the sky to these two is not supposed to be a place where people kill each other. Literally, the first two episodes revolve around Claus and Lavie getting Duke Mad-Thane to retreat from a battle that's obviously hopeless and continuing for the sake of some stupid chivalric code would get him and his crew killed, resulting in his and many other families grieving.
Unlike Lavie, though, Claus actually has it in him to pilot a vanship developed for war and use it for its intended purpose if he has to, he does it to protect Lavie, as well as Alvis. Lavie, on the other hand, feels terrible acting as the navigator of a vanship that hurts other people, she passes out when they fight the Guild in a war vanship, then redeems herself later when she acts as his navigator for the Horizon Cave's race. After that, she decides to step out of the navigator seat for as long as Claus will be fighting alongside the Silvana's crew, promising to fly together with him once more when all this is over, but that doesn't mean Lavie becomes a useless character or that she doesn't do anything afterwards. Lavie turns her efforts into improving her skills as a mechanic, making sure Claus' vanship is always good to go, as well as fixing their own vanship which got heavily damaged from their trip to Silvana and the first battle against the Guild.
When Claus gets more involved with piloting in battles with Tatiana, a conflict between him and Lavie starts to develop, not just because Lavie has feelings for him and feels jealousy with him getting closer to another girl and all, but because Claus is starting to commit himself more to this militaristic cause and lose sight of his passion, his very identity as a vanship courier who loves the peaceful skies and dreams of crossing the Grand Stream is slowly being lost to this war. After Claus and Lavie's past is uncovered and he gets to hear the truth about their vanship from Alex, he gets pretty close to giving up on the promise he made with Lavie, as apparently he saw no reason to keep this up when the vanship they've been using all along wasn't what he believed it to be. After some reflecting, with help from Lavie, Alvis, Tatiana and a few side-characters, Claus gets reminded of the simple joy to be had in flight, he also reflects on how he was wrong in the early episodes with his obnoxious hero complex and his lack of faith in the Silvana's crew.
When it's later revealed that Claus' risky move in the first two episodes actually caused Mad-Thane to see the potential of vanships as tools for war and start to get the best vanship pilots (including the ones from Norkia) to participate in war, both protagonists are deeply saddened that their effort was used as an opportunity to "evolve" how wars can be fought, rather than help with bringing peace. But what does Claus do, then? Does he give up and try to run away? No, he fucking takes responsibility for his actions, he ain't gonna let his buddies from Norkia lose their passion to war like it almost happened with him, so he sets out to fight, this time as a protector of the skies. Claus' arc is about how his curiosity to see what's happening up there in the skies, especially what lies in the Grand Stream, made him go from a mere spectator with a misguided hero complex to someone who can defend the sky he loves so much, and it's really well done. When I see other reviewers talking about how Claus doesn't develop as a character at all, I seriously wonder if they were even paying attention to what they were watching.
On a side note, fan-favorite Alex actually is a character who doesn't develop much, but I'm not really pointing this out as a flaw, him being a static character makes sense with the story they wanted to tell with him, it might even be my favorite use of a static character in anime, or at least one of them. Despite being the captain of the Silvana, a formidable fighter and strategist, earning the respect of many, as well as the fear of those who stand against him, one look at Alex's face and you can see that he is a broken man, his eyes feel lifeless, he has very little emotional range and a seemingly cold atitude, feeling distant even from Sophia. Alex's story is a rather interesting take on a typical revenge tale, he really wants the Guild leader Maestro Delphine fucking dead because of what she did in the past to him, his close friends Hamilcar and Georges and, most importantly, his lover, Euris Bassianus.
While revenge stories usually have the main character realizing revenge is wrong, following this path will not bring the people they want to avenge back, coming to terms with their loss and then finding a new purpose in life... Alex actually commits himself to revenge entirely. He is shown to be completely aware of the fact that that killing Delphine won't bring Euris back, he is given plenty of opportunities to abandon this path, Sophia clearly loves him and seems very reminiscent of Euris, the children of Hamilcar and Georges are in his ship, but Alex really chooses to ignore these things and sets his eyes only on finding the Exile and killing Delphine. One could argue that this makes Alex a one-dimensional character, but since the writing for Last Exile is as good as it is, even Alex is given some subtle characterization beyond his dark and brooding self. Not just in the flashback showing Claus and Lavie's past where he gives Lavie a goat plushie to help her calm down, this caring side of Alex still shows some signs of life in the present, he offers to help Lavie with repairing her and Claus' vanship, he also seems to acknowledge Sophia's feelings for him and his inability to reciprocate, but he still cares for her.
During the final battle against the Guild, Alex ends up getting captured by Delphine, she tries to torture him into giving out the Mysteria, a series of four riddles with four corresponding answers that are necessary to unlock the Exile. However, Alex thought ahead and decided not to learn the last remaining Mysterion so that Delphine can never get to it even using a drug that forces him into telling the truth. As soon as he has the opportunity, Alex breaks one of his arms free out of Delphine's device and proceeds to strangle the bitch until her fucking neck breaks, it's definitely one of the most satisfying villain deaths I've seen and Alex's definitive chad moment in the whole series. As expected, killing Delphine did not do much to make Alex feel better, he still misses Euris, and now that his thirst for revenge is satisfied, he just doesn't care anymore, so when Sophia has to shoot Delphine's ship with Alex in it, he just accepts his death as if it's freeing him from all the hatred and desire for revenge that drove him for all these years, with his very last words being "To the sky".
I usually like revenge stories, when done right, some excellent character development happens in them (Scar and Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, what I heard of Thorfinn from Vinland Saga seems pretty good as well) but Last Exile's darker, more tragic take on the subject showed me that it's not always necessary to have the main character change his world view and abandon revenge for redemption instead to tell a great story that still shows that revenge is ultimately futile. My only gripe is that I wish I had seen more of Alex's caring side rather than just glimpses of it, maybe that's the point, he's unable to show that trait as much by this point, but focusing a bit more on his attempt at bonding with Claus and Lavie would have been cool. But whatever, he's still my favorite character in the series.
Now, as much as I find most of the cast in Last Exile to be captivating and entertaining due to how the writers manage to make them feel human and believable in spite of their simplicity, I'm afraid not every character is written this well. For a series that's about moral ambiguity, the more villainous characters (those asshole nobles from the casino station and our main villain Delphine, for example) are cartoonishly evil and they stick out like a sore thumb, considering how complex the rest of the characters can be. Like, what does Delphine's character have besides her being cruel, sadistic and kinda sexy? The backstory regarding the four houses of the Guild is interesting, but since the series only hints at it instead of dedicating at least one episode to tell us what happened in more detail as a payoff to all the hints, it ultimately feels lacking and Delphine is as generic a villain as it gets. It also takes a little away from Dio's character arc, which highlights another major theme in the series: How people are capable of putting their differences aside and form bonds, even people from the Guild such as Dio and his totally-not-boyfriend Lucciola, who board the Silvana initially with the intention of just dicking around, but started to warm up to the crew as they also warmed up to their "guests".
Is there something else I have to complain about? Oh yeah, episode 15 had that unnecessary harem shit where everyone seemed to want a taste of Claus' dick for some reason. I mean, it makes sense with Lavie and Tatiana because that was built up to, and in Tatiana's case it's quickly dealt with for reasons I already explained, but the gay mechanic having a thing for Claus is kinda unnecessary, as is Sophia kissing him in the end of the episode, even if she's not really in love with him, she was just frustrated over her feelings not being reciprocated by Alex and used Claus to vent it all. It's not a terrible episode, some interesting things happen in it, but yeah, I could live without Sophia's kiss and the gay dude's sudden crush on Claus, both of which the series even acts like never happened after that episode, probably for the best. Also, I would rather see Claus and Lavie's past being revealed gradually as the series progresses, rather than having one entire episode dedicated to it, but whatever, it's not like I hate the "backstory episode" approach anyway.
These flaws aside, I still really love the worldbuilding, this is Last Exile's strongest point to me. Not only does the series make a believable world with a sense of progress where almost every character is doing something, the "show, don't tell" approach to it works spectacularly well. How do you know Claudia is a unique mineral used not only as a form of currency, but also as fuel to airships and vanships alike? You actually get to see some Claudia mines in the darker places as Claus and Lavie run away from the Guild using the underground water canals, Claus also scavenges for Claudia in the caverns when he and Tatiana are lost in the desert and uses that and the water they have to create some Claudia fluid for their vanship. The same episode also shows Anatoray's deserts where Claus and Tatiana are lost in contrast with the freezing lands of Disith where people are desperately trying to get away before they freeze to death, showing how both sides are facing difficulties and Disith reached a breaking point by forcing themselves into taking the Anatoray side of Prester. A bit of the cultural differences between the two countries is also shown when Mullin and Dunya, two musketeers respectively from each side, comment about how Dunya tried to catch a dove to eat it and Mullin says that bird's a symbol of peace for Anatoray.
Going back to the series' tagline a bit here, I think it's important to acknowledge that Last Exile is, first and foremost, an adventure/mystery anime. There is the war between Anatoray and Disith, but that's not really the main focus, not was it ever meant to be, it's just there for worldbuilding and thematic purposes, the biggest focus of the series is uncovering the secrets of Prester, the Grand Stream, the Exile and (though it left quite a bit to be desired on that front) the Guild. In other words: What lies beyond the furthest reaches of the sky. That being said, Last Exile is not exactly a series that's too keen on handholding the audience and explaining everything as clearly as possible, on my first watch I got a tad confused with the final episodes, especially the very last one. Originally, I just thought the series was being overly cryptic and wrote the final arc off as a bloated mess where the series bit off way more than it could chew, but on a second watch I actually caught a huge portion of the foreshadowing for the twists that happen later, visual cues, hints provided through dialogue, the Mysteria and their answers, after making sure I paid close attention to that stuff and kept it all in my mind, it was incredibly satisfying once I finally got to trace it all to the events of the final arc, felt like I just completed a puzzle, it also helped me with appreciating how poignant and powerful the ending of the series actually is.
There are a couple of things about the final arc I feel could have been handled better, though, it does feel rushed in some aspects. I wasn't a big fan of Mullin's "death" with him inexplicably showing up alive later at the very last scene, then again I just hate fake-out death scenes in general, if you're gonig to kill off a character, then fucking do it, don't pretend he's dead and proceed to make it so that he actually survived, that's cheap. I also thought Dio's last moment was anti-climactic, considering how Claus and the rest of the Silvana's crew grew attached to him, it lacked a more emotional reacton on their part, though it can be blamed on the fact that Dio has been lost before that, when he got brainwashed in the Guild's coming-of-age ceremony thing, but it still could have been done better.
Nevertheless, there's so much attention to detail in Last Exile's visuals and art direction that even if you don't find the plot of the series all that engaging, this style of narrative isn't for everyone after all, I'd argue it's still worth watching just for the visuals and the adventurous atmosphere. I can almost feel the wind blowing during the flight segments, the fantastic stylish, but grounded character designs by Range Murata are brought to life beautifully, honestly this is probably the best-looking Gonzo anime, or at least one of them for sure. The animation is consistently good, with only a few off-model character instances here and there, and the CG holds up surprisingly well, as far as 2000s anime CG goes, then again I don't think better looking CG than this was done as far as 2003. This is also backed up by a great, soothing soundtrack that enhances the series' atmosphere, and of course I couldn't leave the opening out of this, Cloud Age Symphony is one of my favorite opening songs of all time, the opening sequence in general really sets the tone of the series perfectly, my attention was grabbed in an instant when I saw it in the first episode, Over the Sky is also a phenomenal ending, it's impossible not to feel melancholic while listening to it.
It's apparent that the folks over at Gonzo really wanted to make something special for the studio's 10th anniversary, and in my book they succeeded, Last Exile is a great series and definitely one of Gonzo's best works. A lot about it feels very polished: The visuals, the world with its detailed lore that the team behind it envisioned, the way almost every character feels well-rounded with clearly defined story arcs, the thematic richness present in the individual plot points and how they complement the overarching story... I love how much effort went into this. If it weren't for some pacing issues in the final arc, the weird decisions of episode 15 and the fact that the Guild's backstory wasn't fully uncovered, Last Exile would have earned a 9/10 score and certainly be up there with my favorite anime shows. Still, what the series does right more than makes up for its missteps, it encompasses all of the charm, the personality, the unique and experimental ideas found in 2000s anime and shows how executing them well can create something memorable.
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Você tá se achando elitista? kkkk Seu pleb idiota, quando tiver a mínima capacidade cognitiva para fazer um simples raciocínio, irá compreender e aceitar que EU sou o único que realmente consegue fazer uma crítica decente e plausível, que não envolva apenas a minha opinião pessoal. Não que seja um problema envolvê-la, afinal eu sou simplesmente o maior goodtaste que conheço... sim, eu gosto de tantos animes desconhecidos que você literalmente explodirá sua cabeça de informação, se conhecer todos de uma vez só.
Gosta de Heldesagen Vom Kosmosindel?? Kkkkk Meu amigo, isso é Mainstream, eu gosto de Kumo to Tulip e não ironicamente já assisti 15 vezes, gosto também de Puss in Boots, Samurai Giants e Ace wo Nerae. Shin Seiki Evangelion é coisa de pleb e essas "falsas obras-prima" que estão se espalhando por aí, não significam coisa alguma perante a minha fortaleza, que é a melhor metáfora para nomear minha lista de animações japonesas já assistidas. O elitismo não é mais só parte de mim, ela já define a minha pessoa por completo. Eu recomendo que leia LIVROS e BIOGRAFIAS para tornar-se mais inteligente (recomendo que leia o clássico The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, que claramente é um ótimo livro para leigos no assunto). Tenho uma bagagem mais mais de 7000 animes assistidos, já refutei um dos filósofos mais aclamados de todos os tempos e também acabei de te dar uma lição de moral, mostrando que por mais incrível que pareça, eu sou elitista e você não é. RSS Feeds |
Aug 30, 2020
Last Exile
(Anime)
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Last Exile.
Man, I love steampunk, it's probably my favorite type of aesthetic in all of fiction ever since I discovered it watching Laputa: Castle in the Sky, then I played Final Fantasy VI and it consolidated my love for it. Unfortunately, there aren't too many good steampunk anime out there, though... After watching Princess Principal a few years ago, I started to look for more steampunk anime, only to be disappointed by the likes of Steamboy and Kabaneri, which looked and sounded really cool, but lacked in every other substantial department. I also watched Baccano, which was pretty good, ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 19, 2019
Angel Beats!
(Anime)
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Angel Beats and I don't want you to die wishing you watched it unspoiled.
Hey guys, did you know that it's okay to love something while aknowledging that said thing has... More than a few flaws? I know, it sounds ludicrous, but that's called "growing up", or something like that. This is exactly how I feel about shows such as Evangelion, Eureka Seven, Last Exile, Code Geass... And the one I'm reviewing right now, Angel Beats! A series so damn great that its title needs an exclamation mark in order to be uttered! Durarara!! then is even more amazing since ... it needs two exclamation marks!! Keijo!!!!!!!! is probably the best anime series ever created!!!!!!!! Anyway, Angel Beats is one of those love-it-or-hate-it anime, and you might have already guessed which side I'm on, unless you're about as smart as a person who watches ThatAnimeSnob unironically. Written by Jun Maeda, famous for Clannad and his work with Key, Angel Beats resonated with a lot of people in a similar way to Maeda's previous works, blending slice of life, comedy and drama in a way that's actually pretty friendly even for people who don't usually watch anime. I saw people hyping Angel Beats up so much back in 2009 to 2010 that I just felt like I had to watch, and back then I thought it was incredible, this series came out at a very special time in my life and basically communicated exactly what I needed to be told. So yes, I owe part of being the person I am now to Angel Beats, and this show will always have a special place in my heart because of this. The Afterlife was always a fascinating concept to me, ever since I first thought about the subject of death, the biggest question I had would be "What comes next after we die?", it's one of the greatest mysteries ever and the different takes on this question provided by numerous works of fiction and even religions are very interesting. Angel Beats isn't the first anime to deal with this subject, but it's probably one of the most unique non-religious takes on it I've ever seen: The Afterlife here is created specifically for teenagers who died regretfully with their lives ultimately unfulfilled, it serves as a second life of sorts where they can find happines and come to terms with their past lives before reincarnating. What we see of the Afterlife here is a school setting, but it seems to be just a part of a much larger world that, unfortunately, is never really explored in the series. Angel Beats starts with our protagonist, Otonashi, waking up with no memory of anything that's happened prior to this and finding himself caught in a conflict between a group called the Afterlife Battlefront or Shinda Sekai Sensen (I'll just call them SSS for convenience) and a girl with supernatural powers who they call Angel. After getting "killed" by Angel, Otonashi wakes up in the school, finds out Angel is the Student Council president and the SSS want to destroy her in an attempt to get to God, and it's not really possible to die in this world, but you will disappear if you start living a normal school life in it. Thus, Otonashi ends up joining the SSS and knowing its members: The leader Yuri, the co-founder Hinata, the band Girls Dead Monster led by a girl called Iwasawa, as well as many... Many side-characters... I think Angel Beats is the one-cour show with the largest cast ever. Obviously, the vast majority of these people receive zero development, most of them are only quirky characters used for some hit-and-miss comedy, even if they can be likeable and all, not much is done for me to get attached to the majority of them. Except for T.K, this dude is the most based side-character I've seen in any anime series, he should have been one of the main characters or at least get his own spin-off, honestly. Anyway, despite its large cast, there are only a small handful of actual relevant characters in Angel Beats: Otonashi, Angel, Yuri, Iwasawa and Hinata who are introduced from the start, Yui who shows up after Iwasawa's arc is done with, and Naoi who starts out as an antagonist. While not all of these characters are fleshed out as much as they should have been, I feel Angel Beats still does a remarkable job at presenting their stories and the themes they go for, all of them essentially being different takes on the series' main question: What would you do if your life as it is now came to an abrupt end? Each one of these characters' past lives were happy to some degree, they all had dreams they were pursuing, there were still many things they could have done while they were still alive. Unfortunately, and unfairly, they ended up dying without achieving anything, and now in the Afterlife they've been given a chance to fulfil their wishes and move on. At least to me, this is what makes Angel Beats a beloved series to so many people despite its flaws, it has a very strong dramatic core and the themes it's going for are very easy to relate to. Even though the characters in this show act very much like anime character tropes, they manage to still feel human, their struggles in their previous lives are things real people can be unfortunate enough to experience, Otonashi is my favorite character here, he's the one who gets the most development and also the one I related to the most. Otonashi is rediscovering himself in a sense, he doesn't really know who he is and what his purpose in this life... Uhhh... Death... is, due to his mysterious memory loss, so he's left with little choice besides joining the SSS and fighting Angel because apparently any other choice will cause him to disappear, which is apparently a bad thing. We get to see him going from a somewhat aloof guy who's really just doing what he does because there doesn't seem to be another choice for him, to a genuinely caring person who became attached to those around him and wants to help them find happiness. This is mirrored quite brilliantly in the part of the series when we get to see who Otonashi was in his previous life and how his life came to an end, and this is my favorite part of the series, I felt really connected to pre-Afterlife Otonashi and how apathetic he was towards life in general. Working at his part-time job simply because he needs to do it in order to survive, emotionally detached from everything around him and questioning if there's any meaning to all of this as he has little to no hope for the future. Otonashi's meaningless life changed when he tried to do a good thing for his sister who's been suffering from cancer and reached a terminal condition, sneaking her out of the hospital to the streets she wanted to see, and right before passing away on his back, she expresses her gratitude to him. Otonashi's sister already thanked him before, everytime he visited her and brought her somehting to read, but only now that she's dead, he realizes how this expression of gratitude made him happy, it made him feel like life is worth living. After coming to terms with his sister's death, Otonashi decides to study in order to become a doctor... And I won't spoil the rest of his backstory because I honestly think it's by far the best part of the series, if all of the other main characters got the same treatment, you can bet your fucking ass that Angel Beats would be among my favorite anime. It's a little bittersweet, because while this is a fantastic part of the series, it also shows how much better it could have been if it had two cours instead of just one (yes, I know it's a common criticism towards Angel Beats, but I agree with it anyway) in the end. The mystery surrounding Otonashi's memory loss and how it's wrapped up in the final episode is also very well done, but it requires you to pay attention to the dialogue in the series so you don't get lost and think it's some kind of plot hole like many people do. It's like people thinking Clannad's ending was an asspull or a deus ex machina when it really wasn't, the hints were always there. Regardless, I connected so much with Otonashi's backstory because around 2010 I was still a first year high school student and I felt as distant from everyone and everything as Otonashi was, I only went to school because I had to and the only things I cared about were my vidya games, anime, music or whatever could help me with escaping from what I saw as a boring and pointless life. But seeing Otonashi finding his purpose in life and growing closer to the people around was genuinely inspiring, I wanted to do the same thing, and thus I started to give the people around me a chance, it led me to a much better high school life full of great memories. I'm still struggling with my life as I try to find an actual purpose in it, but at least I always look back at this period fondly, and it's thanks to Angel Beats inspiring me to give life a chance that I was able to create those memories, it was just what I needed back then, I still have hopes of genuinely enjoying life again. Anyway, sorry for getting off-topic here. As I said, Otonashi is unfortunately the only character who gets his backstory explored in detail and one of the few we get to see how their death was like. That's not to say Otonashi is the only well-done character here, though, they did a good job with Iwasawa too with her having to deal with a turbulent family that's more often fighting than not and did not have too many friends at school to rely on, then finding her passion in music and deciding to pursue a career, only to end up dying without having played her music the way she always wanted to. Yuri's backstory is probably the darkest one in the series and it's very easy to understand why she's so hell-bent on destroying Angel and seeking revenge against God. I feel people don't give Yuri's character development enough credit, though, her story centers around vengeance due to how unfairly she got the siblings she loved taken from her, she was helpless and couldn't do anything to protect them, and for the longest time she's been seeking revenge. At the end of the series, Yuri realizes that hatred and revenge are not going to lead her anywhere but a self-destructing path, and she comes to terms with her past by being able to protect and help those people she came to love in the Afterlife with moving on. Naoi's character arc was okay, he was just looking for the affection he never really got in his previous life and it led him to believe he should become some kind of God in the Afterlife, and as Otonashi shows him that it doesn't need to be this way, he becomes friends with everyone else... Somewhat. Hinata and Yui are... Complicated. I find it a bit of a wasted potential that Hinata wasn't explored further than that baseball episode, because the glimpses of his backstory we got seemed to be pretty interesting and it's implied that he died of drug overdose, which is pretty different from how Otonashi, Iwasawa or Yuri ended up dying. It's a death he's caused on himself instead of some unfortunate event that happened in his life, and I really wish we could have seen more of this. Yui is mostly comic relief until the one episode that gets focused on her and what excatly was her wish so she could move on, and again, we get glimpses of her backstory, but it's not fully explored. Yui's little romance with Hinata also feels a bit tacked-on, to the point where I was left wondering if Hinata truly loved Yui or if he was just making up this love fanfiction between them on her mind in order to help her with moving on. I mean, the scene itself is really good, it's one of the most well-known scenes in Angel Beats for a reason, but it would have been even more impactful if the series was two-cour and we got time to see Hinata and Yui's backstories, as well as them being properly built up as a couple. The character I'm the most disappointed with, however, is Angel. I mean... I get why they kept her story such a mystery throughout the series and only revealed something about her in the final episode, but it still doesn't make her a good character. She's a typical kuudere, and while she does change quite a bit as the series progresses, it seel feels very undercooked, not to mention there were other alternatives to handling her: If revealing Angel's full backstory in the series would compromise the mystery element around Otonashi, then you could just make an OVA that tells her backstory and ties up the loose ends left by the series' ending, that would have been pretty fucking great, actually. The romance elements between her and Otonashi are also kind of bland, which is probably another setback caused by the series being only 13 episodes long, but whatever. Anyway... That's it for the characters, Angel Beats' plot and narrative are functional, but most of the series' flaws show up in this specific area. The worldbuilding is as lacking as my sex life: We get some explanations on stuff like NPCs, being able to make things out of clay as long as you know how to make them, we're also told the SSS aren't the first people to come her, nor are the first that tried to fight God in some way. But the more complex aspects of this Afterlife world are left vague, like why aren't people popping up all the time since in our world a lot of people die every single day, and why are there only japanese people aside from T.K here... I mean, I guess you could justify it by saying we're just seeing one part of the Afterlife world, and this part specifically is where a certain type of people get sent after they die, it does make a bit of sense, but I wish it was elaborated in the actual series. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind leaving things open to interpretation, Angel Beats does this well for the most part, but not on this area. Thankfully, the worldbuilding is the worst part, as the story and the pacing have a few flaws, but they're not as aggravating. My main gripe with how the story progresses is that there's a lot of time wasted on repetitive comedy and slice of life-ish situations, some of the jokes are good, particularly the ones that revolve around characters "dying", but hey start to get annoying when the series just keeps repeating them instead of moving on to something else. Some episodes like the fishing one and the little arc with the Angel Clones are pretty pointless and could have been replaced with more backstory on Hinata or Yui. Still, I find Angel Beats to be a pretty fun series to watch, the character interactions are entertaining, and when the comedy hits, it gets a few chuckles out of me despite the repetitiveness of it. It also helps that the dramatic moments are plausible and don't feel overblown like many other drama anime out there. There are some weird some tonal shifts, like when we go from funny character "deaths" to Yuri talking about how her siblings were murdered in front of her, but it's not that frequent. The Shadows arc is pretty good, the backstory with the Programmer and how he made the NPCs is some pretty interesting stuff, it also foreshadows the ending of the series well and even made people come up with the famous "Otonashi is the Programmer" theory, but I won't discuss that here. I really like the conclusion we get in the final episode, the graduation scene is so nice and peaceful that it really feels like I'm saying my goodbyes to a couple of friends I made in high school. Aside from one particular NPC-related moment of this final stretch that I say is bullshit and the way most of the characters disappeared offscreen, it was satisfying overall. As for art and animation... P.A Works never disappoints in that department, Angel Beats looks colorful, the animations are smooth and the setting is well-detailed despite being a typical high school setting, character designs are somewhat generic high school dudes and girls with different hair/skin colors, but it's serviceable at least. The soundtrack, also composed by Jun Maeda, is just amazing, though, it is to be expected since this guy is an experienced musician who's been doing this since Key was putting out visual novels in the 90s. It actually feels like a VN soundtrack in many respects, with soothing piano melodies that perfectly fit the mood of the scenes, the opening and ending themes are both among my favorites too. I also like My Most Precious Treasure, even though it is a little overused here, it's still a gorgeous piece. Overall, Angel Beats is an obviously flawed series, it doesn't take a genius to see all the areas with room for improvement here, most of the issues could have been addressed had the show been twice as long as it ended up being. I completely understand people who don't like Angel Beats as much, especially those who give more importance to worldbuilding in their shows, but I just feel it's unfair to judge it as terrible based on that when the series gives more importance to its themes rather than building a coherent and believable Afterlife world. It's because of the themes and the heartfelt message about the beautfy of life that Angel Beats became so special to me, in spite of its flawed writing, I was feeling joy, empathy, some bits of sadness... And in the end, it warmed my heart in a way not many anime manage to do, in a way that it inspired me to somewhat change as a person. So... Thank you, Angel Beats, thank you for giving me the push to open myself up to life, even if it was for a short bit of time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 16, 2019
Chrno Crusade
(Anime)
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Chrono Crusade because I'm still a dumbass who doesn't know how to review things without spoiling them.
"Because my time is limited, I don't have time to waste hesitating. That is why I can walk straight ahead. That is why I never stop." Chrono Crusade is an anime adaptation of Daisuke Moriyama's manga, from the ever controversial and bold studio Gonzo, the series made quite a stir back when it aired in 2003 due to elements such as a taboo romance between a nun and a demon, Christian lore integrated into the plot, religious themes and a tragic finale that still ... to this day is pretty rare to occur in shounen anime. Both the manga and the anime series are among my favorites, but I tend to give special attention to the anime, because it is the version of Chrono Crusade that tends to get the most criticism, either from manga purists who automatically call anything that isn't an exact panel-to-panel adaptation of the source material garbage, or because of criticisms such as "the whole plot is pointless because everything was for naught" or "the second half has an inconsistent tone and gets too convoluted" and other things commonly said by those plebs who got caught in the filter. In fact, I disagree with the vast majority of the criticism the Chrono Crusade anime receives, as the points tend to be either straight up wrong or only partially right, and I'll discuss some of them in this review when it's relevant to talk about them. Anyway... Yup, the Chrono Crusade anime diverges from the manga, even in the first half that adapts the manga storyline, it's still a fairly loose adaptation: Some of the manga-adapted stories play out differently, some chapters of the manga got cut out because they're not relevant to the anime's storyline, several episodes are exclusive to the anime, and the plot in general for the second half is radically different from the source material. However, I don't care if a series follows its source material faithfully or not, as long as it's still a good story, I'm more than willing to accept it for what it is and recommend to anyone else, as I do with the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist and Bokurano, another controversial Gonzo manga adaptation that gets flak for not following the manga. Maybe I'll write a Bokurano review too once I stop being a lazy bastard, but not today. Sadly, though, Chrono Crusade is barely discussed nowadays, as older anime tend to fade into obscurity after everyone has already discussed everything about them, unless they're either famous long running shounen or provide quality shitposting material for weebs to keep on making memes and/or waifu wars for eternity, like Evangelion, Code Geass and Darling in the FranXX managed to do. Fortunately, I'm one of those guys who remember Chrono Crusade and still think it's a masterpiece of a series, and since my opinion is the only objectively correct one in the entire internet, you either agree with me, or you're simply wrong. Now, let's properly dive into this series as I try my best to explain what makes it so great. Set in America fresh out of World War I and all the prosperity of the roaring 20s, Chrono Crusade tells the story of a nun called Rosette Christopher and her demon partner Chrono as they work for the Order of Magdalene, an organization created to combat the demonic threats that started to mysteriously pop up all over the country. Rosette and Chrono aren't just fighting demons for the sake of it, however, they're after Rosette's brother, Joshua Christopher, who was taken away by a mysterious demon called Aion and his group called the Sinners, all of which seem to share a bit of a history with Chrono. The way Chrono Crusade plays out during its first half is somewhat akin to early Fullmetal Alchemist in a sense that it's an action shounen with dark undertones and some comedy thrown in there so the series doesn't get way too gloomy... Often bad and poorly-timed comedy that honestly the series would have been better off without it. But hey, if Fullmetal Alchemist (especially Brotherhood) can get away with that shit, then so can Chrono Crusade. Regardless, the first quarter of Chrono Crusade mostly revolves around Chrono and Rosette taking up demon-hunting missions for the Order as their personalities and relationship get fleshed out and we're introduced to other characters, the most important ones being: Azmaria Hendric, a portuguese soprano singer who's also one of the seven apostles blessed with God's holy power, and Satella Harvenheit, a pair of breasts who's able to summon magical stands with her jewels, called a "jewel witch" in the series. One of Chrono Crusade's strengths is precisely the interactions between its characters, striking a perfect balance between lighthearted fun, genuinely heartwarming and sad. Chrono and Rosette are at odds with each other in many ways, her being a hot-headed energetic girl who gets in trouble easily while he's calm, composed and passive to a fault, the way they play off of each other and have all this bantz is pretty fun. The series does a fantastic job at showing how different their personalities are, yet at the same time how deep their borderline-romantic bond goes and how much this contract between then hurts on both sides, it's easy to see how important they truly are to each other despite their silly antics as they both grow as characters. Azmaria and Satella, while not having as much focus as the leading pair, still get their fair share of moments, moreso Azmaria than Satella, who unfortunately is a bit underdeveloped in here. That's not to say they're not good characters individually, each one of them develops and the character arcs they go through are very satisfying... Mostly. As I mentioned before, Satella leaves a bit to be desired due to her having significantly less screen time than the other three, but it's good enough to be acceptable nonetheless. The character arcs are mostly tied to the central themes of the series: Mortality, faith, loss, family, stuggling with the past, and last but not least, the concept of "good" and "evil" and how the line between those two opposites is blurrier than we believe, and all of these are more or less incorporated into the main protagonist, Rosette. The way Rosette is handled is a brilliant example of subtle characterization and development, she's presented as this idealistic headstrong girl who, despite having a tragic past that caused her to essentially miss out on enjoying childhood and adolescence, as well as making a contract that's cut her life short and will prevent her from making up for that in the future, is still very optimistic, passionate and caring towards the people around her. But Rosette isn't quite the shounen hero she appears to be at the start of the series, that's more like an image she puts up in order to convince Chrono and the others, as well as herself, that she's fine and it'll all turn well in the end. Rosette isn't really fine, though, her traumatic past and the fact that most of her short life was spent fighting and looking for her brother are taking a toll on her, emotionally she's far weaker than she lets it show and fears that she might die before saving Joshua. The series starts to show this around episode 8, when one of the Sinners, Rizelle, mentions Joshua and actually succeeds in convincing Rosette to board a train with her under the promise that she will see her brother if she goes with them. Rosette was actually willing to abandon everyone that was on her side just for a slight chance at getting to Joshua, not even caring if she could be walking alone into a trap or anything, and if Minister Remington hadn't stopped her at the last second, she would probably be in a much worse situation. From that episode onwards, Rosette still retains her lighthearted personality, but at the same time she also slowly starts to get gloomier, she gets visibly disturbed by seeing people die because she, more than anybody, knows how valuable life is. Around episode 16 Rosette doesn't resemble her earlier self all that much, she's more fearful of what will happen to her, especially because of the holy stigmata that started to appear on her body. The last time we see Rosette being lighthearted and having fun with her friends is on episode 18 during the festival, but even that episode has a really sad undertone as Rosette and Chrono talk about how important they are to each other and Chrono states that he does not intend to live longer than her. If this was Rosette from the earlier episodes, she would get angry at Chrono for being overdramatic and wanting to throw his life away for her, but now that she has even less time than before and got considerably less certain of her future, she reluctantly accepts his wish of dying together with her. It's one of my favorite scenes and shows how far they are now from the goofy pair we saw in the first couple of episodes. Then things go to hell right at the end of that episode and never go back to being lighthearted fun again... It all culminates in one of the most powerful and gut-wrenching final episodes I've seen in any anime, probably the most well-known episode from this series too. However, as much as I love the final episode and have it as my favorite, I disagree with the notion of some people that it's "by far" the best episode and the rest of the series doesn't compare. No, the final episode is only as good as it is because of how the rest of the series built up to that conclusion, if you detach it from the rest it becomes just another tear-jerking moment and loses its impact. Final episode aside, the other characters receive quite a bit of development too, but they don't have as much focus as Rosette, not even Chrono. I mean, Chrono is a very good character here and has a well done arc exploring the trauma he suffers from his own past way before he met Rosette and Joshua and how it affects him in the present, but I always thought he played second fiddle to Rosette way too much. Aside from when he transforms into his true form and uses the full extent of his demon powers to fight at the cost of Rosette's lifespan, he's kind of weak and gets his ass kicked around quite a bit, and I feel it would have been more interesting to have him fight in his sealed form too instead of just being some kind of support while Rosette does the fighting. Nevertheless, it is a minor complaint, he's still a well-written character for the most part, my only gripe is that I wish his past with Aion, the Sinners and Mary Magdalene wasn't explored in just one episode, it came off as a bit rushed. Azmaria's character arc, unlike what people usually assume, is not about her becoming a badass fighter who can take on demons like Rosette, people often call her useless because of her fear of demons during combat, but that's not really the point. I mean, she does say she wants to get stronger, but she's still just a 12 year old girl who's been through a lot of grief and has zero combat experience, you don't just become an amazing demon hunter overnight. Azmaria's story is about her finding her place in the world after losing her parents to WWI at a very young age and her status as an Apostle blessed with God's power causing her to become a target of people who want to use her powers for their own gain, leading her to be adopted by Ricardo Hendric, one of the early villains in the series, and the band of singers with whom she traveled around the country to get killed by demons. After being Rescued by Chrono and Rosette and joining the Order, Azmaria is shown to be submissive and have an incredibly low self-esteem as she blames herself for all the tragedy that's happened with those around her and does not believe her own worth. Inspired by Rosette, she becomes determined to change into a better and stronger person, but of course, this is a tough road for such a young girl, so she still shows more than a few signs of weakness until later in the series when she's matured, so much that when Chrono is at his lowest point moping about how he's taken Rosette's life away, she's the one who reminds him that there's much more to their relationship than just him draining her life away, which puts him back on track. I just love Azmaria's growth from a girl who believes he's worthless due to only bringing misfortune to those around her to realizing she deserves to be happy, and most importantly, she is capable of bringing happines to those important to her, the Christmas episode focused on her is one of my favorite episodes because of this. Satella... Is the weakest of the main characters. Not because she's a bad character herself, but she's mostly separated from the other three doing her own business, and her arc is a bit cookie-cutter: She holds a grudge against demons because her family was slaughtered by a mysterious hornless demon who's taken away her older sister and is totally not Aion, and she thinks Chrono might be the one since he also doesn't have horns, but starts to warm up to him later and becomes friendlier towards Rosette and Azmaria too as she begins to trust them more. She's pretty likeable, though, and there are a couple interesting aspects to her, the parallels between her and Rosette are nice and episode 11 (one of the weaker episodes, unfortunately) at least does a good job at portraying how different their views on life and sacrifice are despite their similar struggle. A few minor characters also get some development as the series goes on, mainly Sister Kate, the leader of the Order's NY branch who's not very happy with Chrono being Rosette's partner in the ranks of the Order as she, along with pretty much everyone else, views demons as pure evil. Sister Kate gets a bit of Rosette's optimism rubbed on her and starts to appreciate Chrono as well, which leads to her defending him as an important member of the Order later in a discussion with the higher-ups when they were offered to join forces with the demons in order to fight the Sinners, who are a common enemy. I find it interesting that Sister Kate did not back off from defending Chrono and suggesting that they take this offer, even though everyone was criticizing her for it, and this experience changed quite a bit about her faith, she started to question some of the things God apparently planned for everyone, even though she still keeps believing. I wish more was done with other characters who had potential and ended up playing a relatively minor role, like Joshua, Fiore and Remington. I mean, Remington does a handful of stuff in the story, but I feel the twist regarding his actual status later in the series could have been better used. Regardless, I don't think there's any bad character to speak of here at least, just some that could have been done better and a few others that are just mediocre or forgettable. As the series goes on, it introduces a handful of plot elements: The Prophecies of Fatima, the seven Apostles, the Astral Line, which is more or less the Lifestream from Final Fantasy VII, the demons' source of power being their horns which draw energy from the Astral Line and Chrono's lack of horns forcing him into using Rosette's life as a substitute source, we get some glimpses of the demon world Pandemonium, the mother of all demons who's also called Pandemonium. All of this stuff gets properly explained in the series, but I wish we got more of Pandemonium... Both Pandemoniums, since details about the demon society and how Pandemonium was ruled are pretty scarce, but what's been shown is at least enough for me to get what was going on: The Sinners killed Pandemonium and stole its head, throwing their society into chaos and causing them to be branded as traitors by the other demons who are still hunting them to this day. And this leads us to Aion... Who is a fairly difficult character to talk about, actually. In a sense, I guess you could say that superficially he's evil for the sake of being evil and embodies the most despicable aspects of any living being, but he's a much more nuanced take on this type of villain. Aion seems to be inspired by the prophecized Antichrist especially in the final stretch of the series, his goal is to collect the Apostles and use their power along with the head of Pandemonium to get rid of God and the system he binds the demons to, essentially using them as tools to test people's faith, increasing his authority as a result. Through Aion, the series puts God in a more negative perspective, as the big bad does some horrible things to everyone and asks why doesn't God show up to stop him if he's able to do so, constantly mocking and blaming God for everything. With time, you start to question the same thing, like... Yes, why doesn't God do something about Aion? Does he not care about what's happening on the Earth? Does he think humanity deserves to be tormented by Aion like that? What's his deal anyway? I'm pretty sure everyone has asked questions like these before, it's natural that we expect an all-powerful benevolent being who created us to be able to do something about the bad things that happen. Chrono Crusade's portrayal of God is not necessarily that he's evil or that he's uncaring of his creations, after all he gave humanity the means to fight the demons off and even blessed a few among us with a fraction of his own power in order to assist us. But God also gave us free will, we can use the gifts he gave us in any way we want, and unfortunately cases like Azmaria's power being used by terrible people for their own gain happen. Even in the real world we see things like pastors using God's name and performing "miracles" just to get money out of people who are too blinded by their faith to realize that they're being deceived. But in Chrono Crusade's case, you can argue that God was actually watching all along and only decided to act when it was most convenient to him, not by personally showing up and stopping Aion, but by giving Azmaria a power boost when things got out of hand at episode 7, or giving Rosette the holy stigmata. It's like God is still manipulating everyone into acting according to his plan, even Aion who fails to realize it and still believes he's doing something that will bring an end to God. Basically, what Chrono Crusade has to say about religion and God isn't that they're bad, but that God is a mysterious figure, we don't know who exactly God is or what he wants, so we shouldn't be blinded by our faith like so many people out there end up becoming. And religion, while having many good people attached to it, can also bring out the bad aspects of other people, the final stretch of the series even shows how easily people who fell into despair can be manipulated by someone who poses themselves as some kind of holy savior to them, becoming completely oblivious to this person's true intentions. It's a much smarter way to tackle this subject than the cynical "naw man religion bad" message that's often present in japanese and even a handful of western works. The writers certainly did their homework, the way Christian lore and symbolism are incorporated into Chrono Crusade's plot doesn't feel like it was done by people who don't know what they're talking about. Even if certain liberties were taken, like demons being capable of being good and working with humans while in actual Christianity they're just pure unadulterated evil, but that's part of the themes here. Due to how they were created, demons and humans are different in nature, the former leaning towards evil and the latter towards good, but much like humans are capable of going against their nature and doing bad things, demons can do the same and perform good acts... Because, you know... Things aren't black and white. During the final episode, it is implied that after Rosette and Chrono died together, her soul definitely won't be damned to hell by God for dealing with a demon, and I think this moment makes it very clear that God also does not view things in black and white either. In any case... Chrono Crusade is still an action shounen series at heart, which makes it easy for some people to just write the more complex aspects of the plot off, because apparently a fun action shounen can't possibly have anything profound to say. A common criticism is that the series suffers from tonal shifts, which I agree, but they're not nearly as bad as they're made out to be. The poorly-timed bad comedy certainly helps with the tonal shifts and I'd rather not have pervy old man boob jookes, as well as the (thankfully few) fanservice moments feel out of place. But when I see people saying the series "suddenly" becomes very dark in the final quarter which is supposed to be totally inconsistent with the rest of it being a lighthearted action shounen, I have to ask... What series were you watching? Because it's definitely not Chrono Crusade. It's true that the final quarter of the series is much darker than the rest, but it's simply not a case of a fun action series that suddenly became an apocalyptic tragedy. The dark and tragic elements of Chrono Crusade were always there since the beginning: Chrono and Rosette's contract slowly killing her, characters like Azmaria and Ricardo were victims of tragedy from World War I, Satella's family was murdered right in front of her, the story of how Rosette and Joshua met Chrono, how he was taken away by Aion and how the contract between Chrono and Rosette was form was anything but happy, there's the entirety of episode 7... I could go on, but I think you get what I'm saying. As much as the series presented itself as an action shounen with some lightearted moments and episodes, it always had a dark atmosphere as well, it just didn't take the center stage completely until the climax from episode 18 onwards, but the progression towards a darker tone was always visible. Regardless, Chrono Crusade is a well-paced series for the most part. There's one episode in particular, that being episode 14, that I feel could have been cut off because it doesn't really offer anything of significance despite being cute and all. And really, I think the time spent in this episode could have been used instead to add more time to the events in episodes 21 to 23, because they do feel like they're unfolding a little too quickly, and an extra episode to cover what happens in them would certainly help. But aside from that one episode, all of the others contribute to the narrative of the series, the ones that don't advance the plot all that much give more insight on the characters and the setting. Speaking of setting... Yes, I think there are some historical inaccuracies, but I don't really care much for that kind of thing. I usually accept this kind of stuff as alternate pasts, and as long as they at least capture the feeling of whatever period in the past they're trying to go for I'm fine with it, and Chrono Crusade captures the atmosphere of 1920s America very well. Production-wise... Well... It's a Gonzo series, which means the series can look very good for most of the time, but then in some episodes it decides to look like complete shit with off-model characters and awkward animation. Fortunately, the badly-animated episodes are a minority, and while the art and character designs may very much be a product of 2000s, they're all colorful and distinct, so it's pleasing to the eyes at least, and the scenery is fantastic, with lots of details and vivid colors to look at. Action scenes are pretty solid, demons (especially the Sinners) are pretty threatening in a sense that they seem to be invulnerable to a lot of the weaponry Rosette has and can require a bit of brains to be dealt with, I just don't get why they chose the demon aura color to be yellow, it doesn't really match them very well, but alright then. To make up for the standard Gonzo production, there's a gorgeous soundtrack to listen to as you watch the series unfold, the opening theme is good but standard for anime, and the ending is just amazing in its melancholy, Sayonara Solitia is one of my favorite ending tracks ever... But aside from that, the music is pretty good, it's largely orchestral stuff with some jazzy tracks, and my favorites being the ones that play during the sadder moments of the series, especially the one that plays in Chrono and Rosette's final moments, it's just so beautiful it hurts. This write-up has already been way longer than necessary, so I guess I should stop. I just wanted to express how much I love Chrono Crusade, it's not very common for me to feel touched by an anime series the same way I did with this one. I'm not one to cry to stuff like anime, games or even movies, but the final episode of Chrono Crusade is one of the few things that made me almost shed a tear. Despite the rough edges, this is a fantastic series that manages to be fun, heartwarming, tragic and genuinely meaningful in one package. Maybe the religous elements won't be for everyone and I understand that, but it is what elevated Chrono Crusade from simply a good action shounen to something greater and more unique to me. Gonzo may be a hit-and-miss studio overall, but this is one of their shows that will always have a special place in my heart, I hope I'm able to convince more people to give it a shot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 7, 2018 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Kenkaku Romantan - Sexually Transmitted Disease-hen.
"Now this is a story, all about how My life got flipped, turned upside-down And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how My husband's AIDS was way too much to bear" - Kamiya Kaoru ... With that legitimate quote straight from this OVA, I begin this review... Ish of the anime-only ending to Rurouni Kenshin, Seisou-hen, also known as Samurai X: Reflection. Did I ever talk about how stupid it is to call this series "Samurai X" when the main character is literally suffering from PTSD caused by the days when he was a bloodstained samurai and spends the entire series trying to atone for his past? Really, what the hell were these people smoking? It's like calling Chrono Crusade "Chrono the Killer Demon" or something like that! Maybe "Kenshin the Wanderer" wouldn't sound cool with the kids, eh? Oh well, it could have been worse... I live in Brazil, so I should be happy it didn't come out here as "Um Samurai da Pesada" which translates to "A Kick-ass Samurai", which is how the people in charge of localization over here used to translate titles they had no idea how to make sound cool with a literal translation. The review barely started and I'm already going off-topic here, good job, man. Anyway, the Rurouni Kenshin anime series was definitely not perfect, but aside from the bad filler and bad-guy-of-the-week stuff, even from before the series went full-filler after the Kyoto arc, it was a legitimately great series with an amazing cast of well-developed characters with interesting backstories and dynamics, the Kyoto arc was by far one of the most gripping storylines I've seen in an anime and could very well serve as a closure to the whole story for all I care. As someone who didn't read the manga yet, I quite enjoyed the Rurouni Kenshin anime even when I rewatched it last year, the rather mature themes are handled very well, and most importantly, Kenshin's character development delivers a heartfelt message of not giving up on life even if you're broken by past mistakes. You may not be able to correct whatever terrible thing you did in the past, but you can still find happiness and make other people happy as a way of atonement, it doesn't have to end with your life being thrown away, that will only cause more suffering to the people around you instead of fixing anything. I say this because it's a very important part of the series, arguably what made Rurouni Kenshin so captivating to so many people, including myself... And that's also the reason why the OVA I'm reviewing right now does not really work as a Rurouni Kenshin story, especially an ending to the series. Sadly, the anime stopped adapting manga material and went on with a lot of irrelevant filler because there wasn't much to adapt at that point, it was left without a proper ending even. That is, until two OVAs were released, one is the highly-acclaimed Tsuioku-hen, or Trust and Betrayal, a prequel that adapts the part of the manga that tells Kenshin's past and by far the best Rurouni Kenshin animation as of now, the other is this one, Seisou-hen, which has a condensed adaptation of the manga's last arc for its first half and the second half is completely anime-original stuff, serving as a finale to the anime's storyline. Seisou-hen became infamous for the way it ended the series, even the original creator Nobuhiro Watsuki wasn't very fond of what Deen came up with for this ending, and it's not hard to see why, as this OVA pretty much takes the core theme of the original series and spits on its face. How so? Well, let's take a look at how this plays out. As I mentioned before, Seisou-hen starts out with a condensed version of the manga's final arc, told from Kaoru's point of view. Kenshin faces off with his brother-in-law Sakata Gintoki... I mean... Enishi, who wants vengeance for what happened to his sister Tomoe, and during this fight, Kenshin explicitly states that he doesn't fear death, but his life is not just his anymore, he must live for his family and for Tomoe, who died for him. I'm not sure if this was in the manga, but after Kenshin defeats Enishi, he pretty much says that Enishi can kill him if that's what it takes to make him happy and atone for Tomoe's death, and after seeing Kaoru trying to protect Kenshin and reminiscing of Tomoe, Enishi gives up and breaks down in tears... And we never get to know what became of him after that because the story time-skips to some years later with Kenshin and Kaoru married and having a son named Himura Kenji. Kenshin is tortured anew by feelings of guilt for his dark past, he feels like he doesn't deserve to live happily with a family and all that stuff after what he's done... Which is literally the opposite of what he learned in the main series and flat-out stated during the fight against Enishi. So what did he decide to do? He went back to being a wandering hobo because he wants to go around helping people out or something, and Kaoru... Simply lets him go... What? Who the fuck are you? You're not Kaoru, you're a Tomoe clone! Where's Kaoru? She would get mad at Kenshin and slap his shit for even considering something like that! Speaking of getting mad at Kenshin, his son Kenji hates him for leaving him and his mom like that... Can you blame him? I would hate my dad too if he did that because of some retarded emo freakout he's been having for no reason, and I hate the fact that the OVA paints him as the wrong one here, Yahiko beats him in a fight later and goes all "your dad is awesome cuz he's like extremely selfless so stfu m8" and Kenji now respects Kenshin or something. Honestly, everyone here is out of character, they feel like actors playing the Rurouni Kenshin characters without having a solid grasp on how these characters are instead of the real deal, even Sanosuke has been reduced to an emo shit so he can fit into this story. However, Kenshin isn't that much of a dick, he still goes back to visit his family and friends every once in a while... Until the day he came back bearing some good ol' AIDS. ... Alright, alright, I know it's not specifically stated to be AIDS, it's a "mysterious disease" and how Kenshin got such a disease is never explained, but the most baffling thing happens: Kaoru asks Kenshin to fuck her in order to pass this disease to her so he doesn't have to suffer alone! I'm dead fucking serious, and the worst part is that Kenshin AGREES with this and fucks her! That's what led me to believe this is AIDS, it seems to be a deadly STD, which really makes me wonder how Kenshin got that. I have a theory, and I will share it with you guys right now: It is another beautiful day to wallow in self-pity for our broken wanderer, Kenshin is wandering around, weeping as he mumbles "muh dark past..." to himself, deciding who he's gonna help out today. Suddenly, Kenshin finds a man on the corner, crying his heart out, our hero approaches the depressed fella and asks him what happened. "No one wants ho have sex with me!", the guy replies, the answer caught Kenshin by surprise a little, but he decided to help this dude out, after all, he did say he was going to help anyone in need. "Alright, I'll be your sex partner, no need to cry.", said Kenshin, as he pats the guy on his shoulder, the two then proceed to walk towards his house. Sometime later, Kenshin and this guy are laying on his bed, and they start to have a little conversation before Kenshin leaves. Kenshin: "Huh, that wasn't half bad." Guy: "Yeah, thanks, you really made me feel better now." Kenshin: "Don't mention it. Why did nobody want to fuck you back then, though?" Guy: "Oh, people are always skeptical about fucking someone who has AIDS, those damn close-minded pricks with their preconceptions..." Kenshin: "Wait a second... Someone who has WHAT?" Guy: "AIDS." Kenshin: "Did you just infect me with AIDS, you piece of shit? Why didn't you tell me this before?!" Guy: "Would we have sex if I had told you?" Kenshin: "OF COURSE WE WOULDN'T! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, I HAVE A FAMILY TO GO BACK TO!" Guy: "You're just like all the others, get the hell out of my house, you asshole!" Kenshin: "Well, fuck you too, then!" And this is how it went, a disheartened Kenshin walks out of the house and goes off to weep somewhere else as he wonders how he's going to explain that to Kaoru and his friends. He just said he's gotten a "mysterious disease" because he doesn't want to tell people he fucked a guy who had AIDS, that's embarrassing as hell. Somehow, Kaoru didn't realize that, even though Kenshin gave her AIDS through sex, I guess she was too depressed to care about it or something. But hey, they're both gonna die from AIDS and Kenji will be left alone with no parents or anything... Father and mother of the year right here, ladies and gentlemen! So yeah, after talking with Kaoru and everyone else for a bit, Kenshin leaves off to help people out in a war Japan's about to fight in, he promises to go back to Kaoru after that's done with and you can pretty much guess how this is going to end. The sad thing is that Kenshin's death scene is really well done... I mean, the context behind it is fucking dumb, but it is a well-directed and well-written scene, it would have been beautiful as an ending to some tragic samurai-related story that was building such an ending up... But as a Rurouni Kenshin ending, it feels like a betrayal of everything the series stood for. Not to mention, for something that's supposed to bring closure to the Rurouni Kenshin anime and tie up loose ends, it actually leaves a couple of loose ends: What will happen to Kenji now? What did Enishi do after he fought Kenshin? Who knows... Seisou-hen is beautiful on a technical level, it has some stunning art and animation even for today's standards, and, as I said, it's well-directed for the most part, but it's stained by a stupid and misguided concept of how Rurouni Kenshin should end. Look, I'm not against showing Kenshin's death as an ending to the series, but don't do that in a way that betrays his character. You could just make an OVA about an old Kenshin having his last moments with his family before dying peacefully, happy that he lived a fulfilled life and was able to atone for his sins. He didn't deserve to die the way he did in this OVA... And if you think he did just because he was a killer, then explain to me: Why didn't Saitou get AIDS and die as well? Not only he was a killer just like Kenshin, but he still kills people nowadays, he should deserve something worse! But nah, we have to shit on the main character because tragedy for the sake of tragedy sells, or something. Watch Tsuioku-hen thank.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 3, 2018
Big Order (TV)
(Anime)
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WARNING: This review contains some spoilers for this masterpiece known as Big Order.
I'm fully confident to say that Big Order is the most misunderstood anime ever released, the fact that it has such a low score everywhere is truly baffling to me. Now wait, calm down. Drop those stones you're holding there and hear me out for a bit! I too once thought Big Order was a shitshow, especially because its author is the same fella who wrote that ungodly abomination called Mirai Nikki, and Big Order was full of random bullshit just like the previous series, which actually makes me question why Mirai Nikki has ... a higher score than this when both are essentially terribly-written trainwrecks that fail at every single thing they try to do... Or is it really how things are? Well, for Mirai Nikki that's definitely the case, but Big Order finally clicked with me on rewatch and I realized that the series is actually a lot smarter than most people think, because unlike Mirai Nikki, it actually treats its absurdly dumb plot points and twists like absurdly dumb plot points and twists! Big Order doesn't try to paint itself as some kind of brilliant 2deep4u work of art like Mirai Nikki does, it's actually quite the opposite: When you're watching it and say "wow that's fucking ridiculous", Big Order turns to you and says "I KNOW RIGHT?" as it pulls another unbelievable twist right out of its ass in a glorious never-ending show of ingeniously crafted shitstorms. It's almost like Sakae Esuno is actually aware of how terrible Mirai Nikki was and decided to make Big Order into a parody of his previous work, laughing at himself for actually writing that garbage without the smallest bit of self-awareness, and maybe even laughing at people who actually think Mirai Nikki is a good series without being ironic about it. Yes, my friends, Sakae Esuno incorporated shitposting into anime and manga before it became a popular thing to do nowadays with shows like Pop Team Epic, Berserk 2016 and Darling in the FranXX. I haven't read the Big Order manga, but the anime adaptation even adds to the shitposting by having a soundtrack that couldn't be any less out-of-place with "heavy" and "dark" scenes playing out as some bouncy jazz is playing on the background, it's clearly a deliberate move on the director and/or the composer for this anime, they're well aware of the true nature of Big Order and were happy to play along with Sakae Esuno's joke. I like to think that there's a bunch of ninjas who are always playing jazz while hiding themselves somewhere in the scenery, you'll never see them, but you certainly know they're around, and the characters in the series may also know of that, but they choose to ignore the background noise because there's always too much going on. Do you doubt that Big Order is a spoof of Mirai Nikki, and maybe even some other terribly-written anime? Alright then, explain to me why the protagonist Eiji and one of the girls in his ever-growing harem, Rin, have such a strong similarity with Yukiteru and Yuno from Mirai Nikki in their character designs! Is it because Esuno can only draw those types of characters and nothing more? Of course not, his other manga seems to have fairly distinct character designs, so why would he replicate characters from Mirai Nikki specifically for this particular series? I rest my case. But relax, just because these characters look like Yukiteru and Yuno, doesn't mean that they're the same, Eiji shows more balls in one episode of Big Order than Yukiteru shows in the entirety of Mirai Nikki for once, and Rin isn't really a yandere who wants to keep everyone away from Eiji's cock, in fact she actually hates him and wants him dead for most of the story, obviously because Esuno wants them to be the anti-Yukiteru and Yuno as part of the joke. The basic premise of the story is that there's a bunch of people known as Orders who have Stands with unique abilities each, because no shitposting anime would be fully realized without a JoJo reference, and Eiji is one of those people, he also apparently made some kind of fucked-up wish that caused the apocalypse and people hate him a little bit because of that, but he doesn't give a shit, he's got a cute little imouto called Sena who has AIDS and will die in a few months, but bigger than her disease is her lust for some onii-sama D, so he's just fine. However, it all changes when Rin tries to kill Eiji, which leads him to re-awakening his Stand power, which happens to be the Geass of Absolute Obedience! Thus, Eiji forces Rin to marry him and proceeds to legally rape her with his stand's pointy tentacles as the screen fades to black and some smooth jazz plays on the background. After that, Eiji becomes buddies with a bunch of other people who are also Orders and want to take over the world, but most of them don't really matter much aside from the bunny girl called Iyo who gets pregnant because Eiji touches her ribbon... Yes, she says that anyone who touches her ribbon which acts like bunny ears will impregnate her... This actually fucking happens! They take her to a nearby hospital, the nurse says a baby is coming out and later they actually have a discussion about pregnancy and raising kids. How in the world can anyone actually think this was meant to be taken seriously? The show is obviously taking the piss, you're supposed to laugh at how absurd this set-up for a "romance" subplot is and be on the edge of your seat for whatever the hell the series will want to throw at you next, and I assure that you won't be disappointed. I don't even want to spoil much of the plot, Big Order such an unpredictable beast that I could be ruining the experience if I spill out too much, and for the record, I showed this series to a friend of mine without letting her know much of what it's like, and she laughed her ass off from beginning to end, which is how we are all meant to react to it. By the way, the opening is pretty neat, yeah. Anyway, the only complaint I have about Big Order is the fact that it's only 10 episodes long, but... Oh God, it's 10 episodes of pure, unadulterated hilarity.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jul 25, 2018
Mirai Nikki: Redial
(Anime)
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers of Mirai Nikki: Redial, but the most important spoiler is that it's awful just like the anime preceeding it.
Alright, to put things into context, it's recap time! Last time on Mirai Nikki: A lot of nonsensical time travel fuckery happened, so a third timeline now exists and and our hero Amano Yukiteru ended up becoming God of Time and Space, however his waifu Gasai Yuno commited Sudoku right in front of him, so he's a pretty sad time god right now. Why doesn't he travel a few minutes back in time and prevent his waifu from killing herself? Why doesn't he ... just meet her in a different timeline? Can Mirai Nikki get even dumber after all the bad writing and plot holes gallore that led to the series ending with this terrible forced attempt at tragedy? Find out with Mirai Nikki: Redial, the OVA that gives the series a happy ending that somehow makes even less sense than the tragic ending it had before! So... Yeah, Mirai Nikki: Redial focuses more on this third timeline that was created after Yukiteru and Minene happened to save this Yuno from getting killed by the other Yuno... And this somehow solves everyone's problems and creates a timeline where all the main characters get to live happily ever after, even though there's really no connection between that and Yuno and Yukiteru's parents getting divorced, or Minene's hateboner for relgion, or anything else that was established in the diary users' backgrounds in the anime. It makes no sense at all, but what DOES make sense in fucking Mirai Nikki anyway? It was clearly just an excuse to give everyone a half-assed happy ending, so I get to see all those great characters I totally got attached to living their new happy lives in this timeline, including Yuno who's somehow friends with Walmart Kaworu and the other guys who were Yukiteru's friends in the other timeline, so yeah, there's fanservice and shit, whatever. But things don't look so good, because Yuno is feeling weird due to having memories of Yukiteru... Even though this version of Yuno never actually knew Yukiteru to begin with, so I have no idea how this is even happpening. The idea is that she feels something is missing because there's a certain person she loves and should meet with, but she can't remember and it's obviously Yukiteru... The one who became God of Time and Space and reportedly spent 10000 years doing nothing besides moping around because of his dead waifu. Yes, ten thousand damn years! What the actual hell? Do you not know of the power over time and space that's in your hands, you dipshit? You could literally be in a fucking harem of Yunos from different timelines right now if you wanted! Why does Yuno from this timeline who never even knew Yukiteru from the other timeline suddenly has memories of him? Wouldn't it make more sense if she was feeling that she should meet the Yukiteru from her own timeline? By the way, the other Yukiteru doesn't even appear in this OVA for some reason. Do you know who's also here? Deus! Because of course he would be here, he's the God of Time and Space of this timeline if that makes any sense, and he seems to be pretty okay with dying and the world just ending with that... Somehow. Like, really, why would Deus' death cause the end of the world? I know he's the God of Time and Space, but as far as I know, Yukiteru also is and he's been doing jackshit for thousands of years, so he might as well just be dead. What? Does this god just need to exist and do nothing else, then? If that's so, then Deus could just pick any random Joe and give him time god powers so a God of Time and Space can still exist and the world can go on. But apparently he just doesn't want to do the survival game stuff and can't figure out who to make a new god for the life of him... This is the the stupidest fucking god I've ever seen in any work of fiction ever! And yes, I did play the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, he's dumber than Etro! Anyway, Walmart Kaworu, who was killed by Yuno in the previous timeline, somehow has memories of that and wants to kill Yuno, which results in the two fighting and Yuno winning... How? Yuno in this timeline is just a normal girl, she doesn't know how to fight since she never got to take part in any survival game or anything! Fuck this stupid ass bullshit series, Jesus Christ! Eventually the story leads to Yuno finding Murmur from the first timeline, who somehow has all of the dead Yuno's memories stored in a crystal and wants to give them to her. Well, I'm not sure if it was ever established that Murmur has the power to put people's memories into crystals or whatever, but I don't care enough to remind if it actually was anyway. Now with all those sweet memories of lying to Yukiteru, kidnapping Yukiteru, causing the deaths of Yukiteru's friends, killing Yukiteru's gay crush, trying to kill Yukiteru and trying to trick Yukiteru into getting killed, flowing through her head, Yuno realizes how much she loves Yukiteru and wants to meet him! This causes Deus to go "k go ahead" and smash the walls of time and space so she can go see Yukiteru, apparently choosing her as God of Time and Space because... Fuck if I know, but he talks about how awesome the power of love is before dying, I suppose. So this was all just a contrived happy ending for Yukiteru and Yuno to "fix" what was a previously contrived sad ending for them. Really makes me wonder why Yukiteru didn't just time travel and meet Yuno from another timeline, I thought he was too depressed because the Yuno he wanted was the dead one, but that's not the case since this one isn't the Yuno he knew and he's pretty happy with her. You know what? Whatever, I don't even care anymore.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jul 7, 2018
Darling in the FranXX
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Darling in the Francisco, not that I would recommend you to watch it anyway.
Oh boy... If there was a show in these last couple of months that people couldn't shut the fuck up about, whether they were bashing or praising, it was definitely Darling in the FranXX, an original "mecha" anime made by Trigger, a studio I like, and A-1 Pictures, a studio I'm not a really big fan of. I, for one, was definitely interested in Darling in the FranXX when they announced it, the premise seemed interesting, I liked the character designs that were shown, the mechas ... aren't CGI for a change and Trigger animating the show showed a lot of promise for exciting battles like the ones from Gurren Lagann, especially since Darling in the FranXX is being directed by Atsushi Nishigori, who was heavily influential back in the Gainax days. So yes, there was a lot to be excited about Darling in the FranXX, it was aiming to be a big project and possibly one of the best anime of this year. Unfortunately... As soon as I watched the very first episode of Darling in the FranXX on the day it started airing, my hype for this show was dramatically reduced, by the third episode I actually lost interest in the series altogether, but everywhere I went, I always saw people talking about it, so I decided to give it another shot and the fifth episode was actually pretty good... Then episode 6 happened, I said "fuck this shit" and decided to drop it. A few weeks later, I saw people shitting on this show, but some friends of mine said it was improving, and after some time they convinced me to give it another chance, and so I did... It started to get better again, but then episode 14 happened, and the series never recovered from that, only got worse with each new episode and became a complete disaster by the time it was on its final stretch, and I felt I've got too far to drop it again, so I figured I might as well finish the damn thing. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, let's slow down a bit and take a proper look at things. Darling in the FranXX is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where humanity is constantly threatened by creatures known as Klaxosaurs, therefore humans are living inside mobile city-like fortress called Plantations in order to be safe from harm and these Plantations are ruled by a mysterious organization called APE and defended by the Parasites, children who were raised to pilot the FranXX, giant mechas that can be only piloted by a male and a female in a doggystyle pose [?] and are the only weapon known to be effective in fighting against the Klaxosaurs. The main characters of the show are the Squad 13 Parasites, one of them is Code 016... I mean, Hiro, a boy who was a pilot-candidate, but failed at synchronizing with his previous partner and apparently just can't pilot the FranXX at all, that is until he met a mysterious pink-haired girl with horns who goes by the code 002, but ends up being named Zero Two. After Hiro has a ~hilarious~ encounter with Zero Two naked in a lake and accidentally touches her panties, she starts flirting with him and eventually the Plantation they're in gets attacked by a Klaxosaur. Zero Two deploys to her FranXX called Strelizia along with her partner to fight against the monster, but they end up getting their asses handed to them until Zero Two's partner gets mortally injured and Hiro ends up getting in the Strelizia in the guy's place, thus becoming Zero Two' partner, or her "Darling" as she likes to call him. Of course, with Hiro's main character powers, the Strelizia defeats the Klaxosaur and later we get the reveal that Zero Two is a human-Klaxosaur hybrid who's known for killing her partners. Uh-oh... In retrospect, Darling in the FranXX's first episode wasn't too bad, I guess I just expected too much from it. Although I liked the setting, I definitely didn't like the characters all that much, they all seemed tropey and even the narrative was kinda predictable, it was another "regular teenager meets mysterious girl who gives him some kind of special power" intro episode, and honestly the only thing that made me intrigued was the reveal in the end about Zero Two killing her partners. Episode 2 proceeds to introduce some sweet love triangle drama to the story when Hiro's childhood friend, a girl named Ichigo or Code 015, obviously has a crush on him and tries to get him to pilot the her FranXX, the Delphinium, just to prove that he can pilot a FranXX just fine and doesn't need to risk his life by piloting with Zero Two. Because everything this series was needing was the childhood friend who gets rejected because she's not the main girl, right? I see the writers of Darling in the FranXX did their research on TV Tropes before they decided to work here. Also Hiro has a rival of sorts, and it's no one other than Satan himself! Well, not really, but it's Code 666, also known as Zorome, an arrogant brat who pilots another FranXX with his partner, the token tsundere, Miku, and wants to prove that he's the best FranXX pilot or whatever, so he challenges Hiro to a mock battle. Hiro and Ichigo pilot the Delphinium and fight against Zorome and Miku's FranXX whose name I forgot because these characters are barely relevant to the story, so their FranXX's name is not even worth googling. Predictably, Hiro has metaphorical erectile dysfunction, so it went wrong and he couldn't pilot the Delphinium, which made Ichigo extremely pissed. Episodes 3 and 4 are pretty much the exact same shit: A Klaxosaur attack happens, Hiro's friends deploy to fight them but they job harder than Dragon Ball side-characters, then Strelizia comes in to rescue them and destroy the Klaxosaurs. The only difference is that episode 3 showed that Code 326, also known as Mitsuru, really hates Hiro for some reason and got to pilot Strelizia in his place because APE wouldn't let Hiro pilot until we get the obvious confirmation that Hiro is the only pilot who's compatible with Zero Two. Surprise surprise: Hiro actually is the only compatible pilot, as Mitsuru was shown to be wounded after piloting with Zero Two! Who would have thought that, huh? In episode 4 he ends up piloting with Zero Two after they both disobey APE's stupid orders and run straight for the Strelizia... Which makes me wonder why they didn't do that in the previous episode already, they didn't suffer consequences for disobeying the higher-ups or anything, episode 3 was almost completely pointless in the end. If you feel the plot didn't advance at all in these first four episodes, it's because it didn't, nothing actually happens in Darling in the FranXX for at least half of the series because it's way too busy keeping its vapid teenage drama going while offering some interesting bits of worldbuilding in specific episodes, but it doesn't actually move the plot forwards until much later. I do like the worldbuilding episodes, though, they're some of the better ones in the series and explore the show's world in a fairly interesting way, the beach episode surprisingly isn't just for cheap fanservice, the squad has some fun character interactions and they discover ruins of a civilization that once lived in that beach area near the Plantation, which makes them fascinated because as far as they knew, people only lived inside the Plantations. That one episode where Zorome becomes relevant and ends up getting lost in the Plantation's city is also pretty good, he meets an old lady who seems familiar to him, even though she never met him before, it's revealed that Parasites have a short lifespan because they age faster due to their physiology being different from that of the adults, who are shown to be apathetic as hell, also when he's found by authorities, they avoid direct contact with him as if he was infected. You may argue now that Darling in the FranXX is a two cour show, so it's taking its time to build its world and focus on developing its characters before the plot starts to progress. Excuse me, it's developing its characters, you say? Like hell it is! These characters get a lot of screen time, sure, but saying they get developed is a bit of an overstatement, most of them are two-dimensional archetypes and become completely irrelevant after the one episode that focuses on them, only having some kind of focus again when the show requires more teenage drama to happen, that is for the characters who are actually lucky to get at least one episode about them. Goro, Ichigo's partner and the mature level-headed member of the squad, has an interesting episode where he almost Allahu Akbars to destroy a Klaxosaur from the inside, but gets stopped and saved by Ichigo, then Goro confesses his feelings for her and she doesn't answer, but he's not in a hurry to hear an answer anyway. You'd think they would start to slowly build a love relationship between Goro and Ichigo after this episode, finally ridding the show of this retarded love triangle, but they don't! Ichigo was a character who was conflicted because of her feelings for Hiro, the fact that not only he loves Zero Two, but also Zero Two is killing him the more he pilots with her, and she also needs to have responsibility as the leader of Squad 13. All of these are decent concepts for a character, and Ichigo does grow a bit from episode 2 to around episode 11, she slowly accepts Zero Two as part of the squad, she works into becoming a good leader, she gets some good interactions with Goro, all while still fearing for Hiro's life. But in episode 9, which is the Goro episode, I felt she finally grew up properly both as a leader and a character, in past episodes Goro was the one who helped her in the hardest situations, he kept her from letting her feelings get the best of her and doing something stupid and dangerous in a previous mission, and now Ichigo is the one who stops Goro from throwing his life away and you can see how she acts more maturely in the episodes after this one. A few episodes later, Ichigo discovers that Zero Two is still killing Hiro when they pilot, and then that one infamous episode happened, you know what I'm talking about, episode 14 where Ichigo separates Hiro from Zero Two, I was actually fine with the fact that this happened even after episode 13 showed the admittedly well-done backstory of how Hiro and Zero Two met in the past when they were kids and all. What I wasn't fine with, though, is that Ichigo proceeded to force a kiss on Hiro and say she loves him... And we're back to exactly 12 episodes ago, because fuck developing your character and giving her a new arc or something, right? Better drag the love triangle drama further even though Ichigo hasn't been trying to get Hiro to like her for a while, reverting or ignoring character development for the sake of having more drama is bad writing. And for what? For the following episode to bring in a rushed conclusion to this arc, with Ichigo suddenly being happy that Hiro and Zero Two got together again and now she's totally okay with their relationship, almost as if bringing this plot point back for these two episodes was fucking pointless and only served to undermine Ichigo's development for the sake of making people root for Hiro and Zero Two. Because it was! Is that the reason why the writers denied Goro becoming relevant to the story after that episode and have some kind of romance arc where Ichigo starts to understand her feelings for him? God, what a stupid, emotionally-manipulative pile of garbage episodes 14 and 15 were! Ichigo isn't even the only one who falls into this trap of ignoring character development for the sake of injecting more redundant drama into the story, there's also Futoshi, the fat guy who likes to eat and talk about food. Hah, what a unique and creative concept for a character, guys, truly marvelous! Anyway, Futoshi is the partner of Kokoro, a gentle girl who's been talking with Mitsuru for a while as she tries to understand why he's so distant from the rest of the squad and make him open up, until another infamous episode where Kokoro asks to pilot with Mitsuru while Futoshi ended up being with Mitsuru's former partner, Ikuno. Naturally, and understandably, Futoshi didn't take this too well, he cried a lot in this episode, but when they departed to complete the mission, he had to focus on getting shit done, and by the end of the episode he comes to accept that Mitsuru and Kokoro are partners, making Mitsuru promise that he'll protect Kokoro from now on. That's nice, Futoshi and Kokoro even interact a bit after that episode and he seems alright with that now, good for him! But wait, after episode 15 the squad got isolated in the house where the used to stay, they use a convenient time skip to change the cast's personalities because in 15 episodes they failed to develop them in a convincing way, so now that they spent a couple of weeks together offscreen and they're all best buddy-buddies. Mitsuru and Kokoro's bond starts to grow stronger, but also Futoshi now is back to crying over Kokoro and apparently developed an eating disease... Which never becomes a relevant plot point ever again after this one episode where it's introduced. Seriously, the two things Futoshi has in his character are that he likes to eat and he cries over Kokoro, I would say he's the most worthless character in this series, but that honor actually goes to Ikuno. Ikuno doesn't get an episode focused on her, she barely appears or does anything significant, but the show reveals she's a lesbian and she always loved Ichigo from the very beginning... The subject gets resolved after she talks to Ichigo for a few minutes, never to be touched upon again. What was the point of that? Miku is also a character in this show, by the way... Yeah, she's just there, she's Zorome's partner... Also Satan here is never relevant again after his episode and that subplot about the old lady he met in the city goes nowhere. But if you think Ichigo and Futoshi had it bad, then you should take a look at Mitsuru and Kokoro. For one thing, they were actually being developed during the course of the series, Mitsuru's reason for hating Hiro at first is explained, he slowly gets over that, comes to terms with Hiro and starts to take a liking to Kokoro, they have some difficulties understanding each other at first, but eventually fall in love, their scenes together are cute and it seemed like the writers wouldn't find a way to ruin this one! Then Kokoro wanted to have babies because of an old book about human reproduction she found in the house... What the fuck, guys? Isn't Kokoro, like, 14 years old? Is this show encouraging female teens to get pregnant? Ah, whatever, she and Mitsuru got to have sex and the squad simulated a marriage for them, which is good and all... But they get caught and taken away because apparently having sex is prohibited or something, then APE mindwipes them. Yes, they arbitrarily lose their memories of being in love just so the show can have another arc where Mitsuru and Kokoro fall in love, and it's just so contrived because there was actually no point or reason for the mindwipe. It's later revealed that FranXX pilots who get pregnant can't pilot a FranXX, which explains why APE prohibited sex, but doesn't explain the fact that they mindwiped Mitsuru and Kokoro, but kept her pregnant instead of just aborting her child. Also, how come Kokoro piloted a FranXX after that happened even though she was pregnant all along? Ah, fuck it, they actually managed to take a fairly decent couple with a nicely developed relationship and reduce that relationship to being founded upon the fact that one of them is pregnant and the other just feels like he should be protecting her because she's his partner and the writers still want to ship them. What a masterfully-written series, man, you WISH your favorite anime was this good! And then there's the main characters, Hiro and Zero Two, I might as well talk about the two as a couple already since the show doesn't bother to give them much characterization besides the fact that they love each other. They try to give Zero Two some character development, she starts to warm up to the squad for a bit, but after a while she starts acting like she's having her periods or something and lashes out at anyone who would talk to her, because she's half-Klaxosaur and she feels she needs to kill more of those monsters in order to become human, she also keeps draining the life of her partners away because she wants to find her Darling who helped her in the past, being unaware that it was Hiro all along, but he also didn't exactly remember her for reasons that are explained in their background. Right after the episode where this misunderstanding is resolved, Zero Two becomes the squad's buddy in the previously-mentioned convenient timeskip and her personality changes completely, which is jarring because she doesn't resemble her "normal" self from the start of the series at all. She kinda had a strong personality, but it just goes away forever and now Zero Two is a token waifu, kinda feels like Asuna from Sword Art Online being a mildly interesting strong female lead at the start of her series and devolving into a useless damsel in distress for Kirito to save. Hell, Zero Two even becomes a bit of a damsel in distress during the final act of the series, Darling in the FranXX is literally the Sword Art Online of mecha! Now, in all seriousness... I don't mind Hiro and Zero Two as couple, their relationship is handled pretty decently, warts and all. However, I do absolutely hate how every major conflict in this show revolves around Hiro and Zero Two getting separated, reuniting later right when the current battle is on the verge of being lost, then they talk about how much they love each other and Strelizia randomly gets so strong that it one-shoots whatever big enemy was giving the heroes all this trouble. In episode 6 they were emotionally distant and Hiro was being killed by some kind of Dino AIDS, but it's still very much the same shit, the power of love just solves everything, there's no tension, no payoff to what the episodes before the big battles try to build up because after the second time it happens, you already know how this shit will play out. I never felt anything with Darling in the FranXX's most critical moments when some horrible stuff was happening and Hiro and Zero Two got separated, because I knew there was going to be some love ex machina asspull that will make them win the battle in a few minutes as soon as they get together again and talk about how much they love each other and yadda yadda, it's cheesy as hell, and not in a charming way either. It goes exactly like this from the very first major conflict all the way to the last one, the other characters do nothing significant even in the mecha fights, unless it revolves around helping Hiro and Zero Two reunite, they're nothing but glorified background characters. People give battle shounen anime a lot of crap for having power of friendship asspulls, which is true, but I see no reason to give Darling in the FranXX a free pass when it does the same thing, except it's love instead of friendship. Darling in the FranXX's premise showed a lot of potential for how the show could develop its main characters, being a group of kids who don't have much experience with emotions or feelings, or knowledge of the world surrounding them, because they were raised as soldiers whose only purpose is to fight against monsters and protect humanity, in a world where most people became cold and apathetic towards each other. But this show just refuses to do something with these characters besides dragging love triangle dramas out, it doesn't properly develop them as a group of friends who care for each other, it doesn't make the FranXX pilots grow a stronger bond between each other without having some contrivance cutting it out right afterwards, it doesn't show how they deal with the fact that they have a limited lifespan. They just use this potentially interesting concept as an excuse to do the same type of teenage drama you see in thousands of other teenage drama anime, except it's not even well-written teenage drama, it's just redundant and lazy. It's a shame, because I do find some of these characters likeable in spite of how poorly the show handles them and there's definitely a handful of good moments when they're not crying over something, Goro, Ichigo, Mitsuru and Zorome are characters who deserved a better show with better writers. With that being said, the plot doesn't actually advance much for the first 17 episodes or so, we get some bad teenage drama, the Parasites fight Klaxosaurs, some interesting bits of worldbuilding here and there, alright. Then around episode 18, the show introduces us to Klaxosaur-hime, who is a human-like Klaxosaur who lives underground and apparently commands all the Klaxosaurs we've been seeing all along, APE tries to talk her into surrendering or something, she kills one of the APE guys and she sees there's no body inside his suit, proceeding to call him a "human wannabe". We then get introduced to the story of Dr. FranXX's past and how the world ended up being this fucked up. Previously called Dr. Frank, he was a scientist who's only personality trait is that he's an atheist, and he definitely likes to remind us of that, in case we forget it, and his hardcore atheism makes him such a pussy magnet that some girl randomly got attracted to him and they started to date. Then the world gets taken over by APE, who are a bunch of mysterious people who came out of nowhere, and appparently everyone became okay with them taking over the world, no one investigated them, no one showed opposition or anything, because obviously that's how fucking politics work in our world. APE introduces to humanity the concept of extracting magma from the Earth so that it gets used to make humans immortal, which instantly became a hit and Dr. Frank was obviously called to help with this experiment, being a hardcore atheist, he's gonna take humanity's evolution to the next level and prove that he's an euphoric scientist who's enlightened by his own intelligence and not by some phony God. The Klaxosaurs were then introduced as monsters who were living underground and started to attack humanity because of the whole magma extraction thing, which also caused the Earth to start dying... Because the magma was an important resource of the planet and Klaxosaurs feed on it. To counter the Klaxosaurs, Dr. Frank developed the FranXX, mechas who are technically based on Klaxosaurs and require a male and a female to operate, in the first FranXX test his girlfriend dies because we need some tragedy in this story, but he gets sad for, like, 5 seconds and the story moves on. Eventually, Dr. Frank meets Klaxo-hime and he instantly falls in love with her, seeing her as the next step for human evolution or whatever, she bites his arm off and he uses her genetic material to create Zero Two, who was the "perfect" Klaxo-hime clone, and some other imperfect clones called the "Nines" who aren't even worth talking about in this review, they serve no other purpose in the story besides dying near the end so Hiro can reunite with Zero Two for the thousandth time. Well, now that this show explained in this huge info dump episode the backstory it could have slowly revealed in the previous 18 episodes, it's time to depart to the last and most "dangerous" mission yet where they're going to atack the main base of the Klaxosaurs and take Strelizia to some huge mecha called Star Entity that's being held by the Klaxosaurs. Well, the battle doesn't go well, Hiro gets separated from Zero Two because Klaxo-hime kidnaps him to use as a pilot for the Star Entity... And APE is revealed to be aliens called the VIRM all along... Yes, aliens. No, this was not a good plot twist, it came out of fucking nowhere and it has nothing to do with anything the story was doing prior to that! I know some people say there were "hints" to the whole alien thing, but that's bullshit because they could be hinting at anything, having no physical bodies could mean that they're robots, possibly controlled by some secret society or something, hell, it could even be other human-like Klaxosaurs who want to use the humans to overthrow the princess or whatever. Their base being a space station located near the Earth is also not a hint that they're aliens, this series has moving towns, giant mechas who fight monsters, technology that makes people immortal... And you think a base in space is so absurd that they could only be aliens? And even then, what the hell does this twist have to do with anything in the story? Why were there humans in APE who were collaborating with these mysterious figures without even knowing that they're aliens? It's stupid as hell! So, VIRM has everyone as confused as people watching the show at that point, we discover that the Klaxosaurs were actually an ancient civilization that populated the Earth prior to humanity and got attacked by VIRM centuries ago, there were lots of human-like Klaxosaurs, now called Klaxosapiens, like the princess, but now they're all dead and the remaining ones became the monsters we see now. The princess knew VIRM would come back eventually, but never bothered to warn humanity about it before it happens, her reasoning is that she thought they could handle VIRM on their own... Which is stupid because VIRM nearly wiped out her species, but whatever. So, this whole conflict between humans and Klaxosaurs has been pointless and now they're joining forces to fight VIRM, Klaxo-hime dies, Zero Two reunites with Hiro, the power of love makes Strelizia and the Star Entity to merge into a new form and they one-shoot VIRM, who goes all Team Rocket on us and says they will come back with a bigger army. But wait, now Zero Two is dead! Or is she? The next episode reveals that Zero Two's physical body is on the Earth, but her mind is actually on the Strelizia Apus fighting against VIRM on space and getting her ass handed to her, which is causing harm to her physical body. When Hiro finds that out, he talks to his friends about it and says he's gonna save her, but for some reason they don't want him to go and Goro calls him selfish for only caring about himself and Zero Two. Sorry, what? Why aren't you guys going with him? You DO know that VIRM said they're coming back and you'll have to fight them later anyway, right? Also, I thought you all liked Zero Two, now you suddenly don't care that she's getting murdered by ayy lmaos in space? Don't get me wrong, Hiro has been selfish for most of this series and I wanted someone to call him out for that, but not in this specific situation where he's actually right, this was such a dumb and pointless discussion that a few minutes later they just decide to go with him anyway, along with the Nines who are now "redeemed" from being assholes during the whole series and some Klaxosaurs who go together. Mitsuru and Kokoro remain on the Earth because Kokoro, being pregnant, can't pilot a FranXX anymore, and they sorta bond again in these last episodes, predictably, but I still don't see why they got mindwiped to begin with. Eventually they get to Zero Two and fight VIRM, the Nines die in the most anti-climactic way possible and Hiro and Zero Two reunite... The power of love now makes the Star Entity turn into a giant mecha Zero Two with a wedding dress. No, I'm not making this shit up and I couldn't take it seriously for a second, this is the same show that begged me to take it seriously with all that stupid drama and relationship themes, and now it ends with a giant mecha waifu fighting aliens in space. I know this is supposed to be a Gunbuster reference... And I don't care, it's not because it's a reference that it's automatically good, and I don't even think Gunbuster was a good series to begin with. Once again, they one-shoot VIRM with the power of love and now they open a warp gate to VIRM's planet that came out of nowhere and apparently was placed there by the Klaxosaurs... You'd think Klaxo-hime would mention this warp gate since it's so important, but I guess not. Anyway, they use the warp gate ex machina to battle what's left of VIRM while everyone else goes to their homes. In the end: Hiro and Zero Two destroy VIRM's planet but end up dying together, also VIRM are still alive for some reason and they say they will attack again eventually, back in the Earth, our heroes spent years waiting for Hiro and Zero Two to return while focusing on rebuilding the Earth, Kokoro gives birth to her baby, there's a timeskip with them being adults and all and they get a happy ending with Hiro and Zero Two sorta reincarnating into two different kids. ... Wait, the Parasites became adults? I thought they were going to die because they age fast, what the hell? Well, about that... Ikuno, who used up her mech's energy and got granny hair as a result, started to age faster than the others, but she suddenly became Einstein and, even though she was aging fast, still had time to conduct some research and find an unexplained way to revert the whole fast-aging process of the Parasites. Goddamn, what a copout, and that was one of the most interesting parts of the series, it was resolved in such a half-assed way that I refuse to accept this. If they were building up to something that could save the Parasites from aging, then I would be fine, but they weren't, they just casually said Ikuno made some kind of experiment and now they're all cool. This story is a fucking disaster, it has no idea what the hell it wants to be, it introduces a bunch of subplots that ultimately go nowhere, there's a couple of relatively major plot holes regarding VIRM and in the end I don't really feel like much was accomplished anyway, it's just a poorly-written and poorly-paced mess. And honestly, even if you're going to watch Darling in the FranXX for the mecha action, I don't think this show provides enough of that to keep your interest either. There's a couple of cool mecha fights here and there in the first half, but the second half feels like the budget was running out and so they made even a bunch of mechas battling aliens in space amount to them flying around as some explosions happen and occasionally there's some actual fighting, I was honestly surprised by how underwhelming the action ended up being, especially with how much they were hyping the space battle up. The animation at least is consistently good for the most part, I don't remember characters looking off-model, some noticeably poor animation happening or anything, it was pretty solid on that regard and some of the scenery actually looks beautiful. I don't have much to say about the soundtrack, as I don't remember anything from it aside from the opening and ending themes, which are all quite good and I really like opening 1's choice of color palettes for the animation going with the theme, it's really a great opening, but that's about it. There's definitely worse anime than Darling in the FranXX out there, but this is just the type of bad anime that frustrates me the most, the one that shows promise, has great concepts and ideas that could amount to a brilliant work, even a few legitimately good episodes, but it executes most of its ideas poorly and ends up being a huge wasted potential. How did things turn out like this? I have no idea, but this was easily the worst anime I was ever convinced to undrop and possibly the worst Trigger anime I've watched, and even my friends who talked me into giving another chance after episode 6 finished it and got disappointed in the end. I don't care if it's Trigger or A-1 Pictures' fault, both were involved with this and it was terrible.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jul 2, 2018 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Sword Art Online: Not Complete Shit Edition because of reasons.
I was planning to avoid this because... Well... It's Sword Art Online, I've had enough shit just watching the original series, no need to waste my time with a spin-off that's probably even worse. That's what I originally thought, but then people kept talking about how it's made by a Studio 3hz, a different staff from the original SAO, has a different story with different characters, and most importantly, a different writer: Keiichi Sigsawa, the author of Kino no Tabi, no less! As someone who loves Kino no Tabi, I ... decided to give this Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online thing a chance, then, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at the lack of SAOness here since this time around we're talking about a much better writer than Reki Kawahara, I even managed to convince a friend of mine who hates SAO to watch this one with me, she accepted with the condition that if she didn't like episode 1, she would leave and I would have to watch the rest alone. Fortunately, Gun Gale Online did enough to keep us watching together and we actually had quite a bit of fun with it, so it's already better than the original SAO just for that. But okay, it's better than the original SAO. So what? I don't think that's much of an accomplishment to begin with, so I'll refrain from comparing GGO to SAO for the remainder of this review unless I feel it's necessary to make a point. The story takes place sometime after the whole SAO incident, the NerveGear was recalled and destroyed and VR games lost their popularity because people understandably got afraid of playing a VR game and ending up in a bad romance anime again. However, with the launch of the newest VR gaming device, the AmuSphere, and the assurance that the incident won't repeat itself, the popularity of VR games saw a ressurgence as thousands of rich neckbeards got their hands on this new device. Our protagonist is Kohiruimaki Karen, a socially-awkward university student with a complex about her "abnormal" height, being taller than most people at her age and implied to have been bullied for that in the past, as such she has a hard time interacting with others besides her family and close friends. One day, Karen heard about these VR games that allow people to experience an alternate reality with alternate versions of themselves to boot and it caught her attention, with the help of her gamer friend Shinohara Miyu, she tried a lot of games who gave her different randomly-generated avatars, but all with the same tall height until the shooter Gun Gale Online gave Karen the short loli avatar she was looking for. Wow, I mean, you have these fucking advanced VR games that literally let you BE your own character in a virtual reality and there's no manual customization to how you'll look like? What the hell, VR game designers? Get your shit together! By the way, Karen's avatar is named LLENN... I don't know why her name is LLENN or why it's in all-caps, but alright then. Once Karen becomes LLENN, she at first uses GGO just to play around as the cute little girl she always wanted to be (though I still find her real life version cuter) but eventually she decides to play GGO seriously, and after completing the tutorial and hunting some monsters, LLENN buys submachineguns, a new outfit and changes the color of both the guns and her outfit to pink in an effort to look cute and more girlish. LLENN's pink outfit actually blended well with the desert environment she chose to hunt around and she started to ambush some unaware players using that as well, which led to them calling her the Pink Demon. Eventually, LLENN comes to know another female player named Pitohui and the two become friends and LLENN buys two P-90 machineguns which she ends up nicknaming P-chan, and they play GGO together as a team and hunt some more monsters, and one day Pito tells LLENN about a GGO team tournament called Squad Jam, where a lot of teams fight against each other until the last one standing is declared the winner, and she wants LLENN to participate in the tournament along with her partner, a player called M. Back in real life, Karen isn't sure if she should participate on the Squad Jam or if she should even keep playing GGO, so she ends up asking Miyu for advice again, and Miyu came up with this idea that she was planning to get tickets for them to see a popular singer named Kanzaki Elsa in concert at the same time the SJ would be happening, and if she doesn't manage to get the tickets, Karen should participate on the SJ then. Well, considering the first episode of the show actually shows LLENN and M already shooting out against other teams in the SJ, you'll probably guess what was the outcome of that little dilemma. Also... Pitohui won't be able to participate on the SJ herself, the SJ will happen around the same time Elsa will play on her concert... Sure, that's probably just a coincidence, of course it is. If you didn't notice, GGO is a lot more slice of life-ish compared to SAO, which works better to me because SAO's attempt at having a plot and especially the antagonists were by far the worst parts of it, so we're off to a good start here. That being said, I really do like GGO's first half, it still tackles the theme of escapism and virtual relationships this series became known for addressing in a half-assed way, but this time the main character is well-written and relatable! I mean, I don't really relate to Karen's reason to play GGO, my height is just about the average 24 year old man's height, but as someone who has crappy social skills and tends to use video games, anime and even social media to escape real life problems for a bit and have some fun, I can totally relate to Karen's attitude of playing a game to enter a different reality where she can be whatever she wants and meet a lot of other people who may very well be on the same boat as her. Karen is a timid girl, she deliberately avoids interaction with other people in fear of standing out due to her height and possibly get ridiculed by them, which may seem a bit silly to some people, but there's a lot of real life people who develop social anxiety for that kind of stuff, like people who are fat, poor, have an unusual hair type compared to the others, etc. Hell, I've met some real life dudes who say they don't like tall girls because being tall is kind of a masculine feature, imagine a tall girl such as Karen hearing something like that from a guy she happens to like, it would definitely make her feel terrible for being tall, which is something that's not even her fault to begin with! So, I can definitely understand and sympathize with Karen, the show really emphasizes how much more comfortable she feels as LLENN in GGO, after all a little girl will always be viewed as cute by people, as opposed to a tall one, LLENN is considerably more outgoing and extroverted compared to her real life counterpart, which is actually how Karen's personality truly is when she's around other people without her complex getting in the way. The other characters also play GGO for specific reasons that are mostly related to their personal lives, but they're not explored as well as Karen is, which is kind of a shame because most of them are pretty likeable despite the show not giving them much focus, I thought M was kinda boring at first, but when it's revealed that he was roleplaying as this stoic military veteran who's all business the whole time and in actuality he's a beta loser who cries and begs not to be killed, it was unexpected and also fucking hilarious! I won't delve into GGO's game mechanics because it's a fictional video game that's primarily there to provide some cool action scenes, so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to an extent, as long as the game doesn't contradict stuff it previously established when convenient to the plot like SAO did, and GGO for the most part works fine within its own rules. Since shooting is the name of the game here, the battles lean more on the tactical side, to win the SJ it's necessary to pay attention to the other teams' positions when the game shows them in the radar, use the knowledge of the terrain to your advantage and attack at the right time, although LLENN obviously have some special skills since she's the main character, being short makes her slightly harder to aim at compared to other players, and she can go full Sonic the Hedgehog and run really fast to avoid bullets and surprise other players. I'm not sure why LLENN has these skills, but since this is an online game with a stats system, I'll assume she built herself as an agility-oriented character and doesn't carry any heavy equipment, which helps her move fast. Anyway, LLENN may be somewhat broken as a player, but she's not Kirito, she's not so broken that she's capable of soloing anyone who dares to fight against her and elminating whatever tension her fights couls possibly have, GGO is still more tactics-oriented, and LLENN isn't exactly experienced in that regard at first, which is why she basically just does whatever M tells her to do in this SJ, and even then she still actually struggles in her fights, literally the only reason she even managed to win the SJ was because M helped her in the nick of time and... Some hardcore plot armor. Yeah, sometimes GGO likes to remind us that it's a SAO show and gives its main characters plot armor so thick that even Naruto characters would find it absurd. That's probably my biggest gripe with both Squad Jams in the series, they have some really good action scenes, but the final battles they lead to have LLENN winning in such a bullshit way that it kinda undermines the whole tactical combat that happened before. Stuff like LLENN being able to block bullets using P-chan and not get hit by a single one and the opponent only shooting specifically where LLENN is holding P-chan even though her whole body is still unprotected made me actually cringe while watching GGO and really stretch out how far my suspension of disbelief can go. I get it, LLENN is supposed to be lucky because she's like a rabbit and even her hat has rabbit ears, but there's a limit even to how lucky someone can be, and this goes way beyond that limit. Regardless, after the Squad Jam and the whole time she spent playing GGO, Karen started to get more confident about herself, she even talked to a group of girls from a high school affiliated with her university, which just happen to be the last team she fought in the SJ, they're members of the school's Rhythmic Gymnastics Club and played GGO at first to improve on their teamwork, as well as their boss is a girl who wishes she was taller and less girlish. Although it's nice to see how Karen got over her complex and all, I feel she got over it way too quick, it's a complex she had for years, and yes, GGO was an unique experience for her and all, but still, I'm not to keen on her overcoming her complex so soon. However, I know why they made her overcome her complex already, it's because the second half discards the slice of life aspect of GGO and tries to have somewhat of a plot as what drives the main characters to play the game... Aaaaaand that's when the show starts to get progressively weaker, because the plot of the second half is really stupid. Basically, Asougi Goushi (M in real life) wants Karen to participate in the next Squad Jam because Pitohui is actually a maniac with a death wish who regrets missing out on SAO since that game put its players lives at a risk, and if LLENN kills her in GGO, Pito won't kill herself, but if another player kills her, she'll commit sudoku and it's bye bye for her... And Goushi is actually in love with Pito, so instead of calling the police or whoever can help Pito with this inexplicable obsession with death, he decides to bring in Karen and Miyu into this and begs them to kill Pito in the SJ... While he will be playing on Pito's team. As I said, it's a fucking stupid plot, Pito was a decent character before, but now the show turned her into a stock edgy villain for the sake of bringing a plot and an antagonist into a show that didn't really need one, so the second half is almost entirely in the SJ. But it's not all bad, Miyu enters GGO as LLENN's partner and becomes another loli named Fukaziroh, her weapons of choice are grenade launchers and it's fun to see her blowing shit up, I also like how LLENN learned from M in the previous SJ and becomes pretty good at making up plans to engage the other teams, once again the action scenes in this SJ are pretty good, I would say even better than the previous one. This show isn't visually amazing or anything, but the animation in the fights is really good and the soundtrack also contributes a lot to them as well. ... But just like the first Squad Jam, this one becomes horse shit near the end, at the precise moment when Pito takes a sniper rifle shot to the head, survives because of fucking course she was going to survive, and then she becomes DAMAGED personified. Seriously, she starts acting like every shallow edgy anime psycho you've watched before, she just wants to kill everyone and later she starts using a goddamn Sith lightsaber! I'm not making this up, she starts murdering people with a lightsaber, even though the other characters have guns and could shoot her, they never manage to hit her because she has an ever stronger plot armor than LLENN did in the previous SJ. It gets really ridiculous, and there's no actual reason to why Pito acts like that or has this obsession with death, she just does, after the SJ is over we discover that she's exactly who you thought she was the whole time and she's perfectly normal. Was she just roleplaying as an edgy retard this whole time? Was this supposed to be a spoof of internet edgelords who are actually tame and inoffensive in real life? I don't know, but I would prefer if GGO kept going on as a slice of life show where Karen deals with her personal issues while playing GGO to distract and have some fun, maybe explore other characters with their own lives and reasons to play the game, make Karen meet Pito sooner so the two of them can have a relationship outside of the game as well. For the love of God, anything but this asinine plot the second half had and the cringe-worthy edgefest that were its last episodes. Overall, I have some pretty mixed feelings on this show. The first half is pretty good, Karen/LLENN is a great protagonist, the other characters are likeable, the action scenes are fun to watch and the show's first half balanced slice of life with gaming similar to how a sports anime plays out, but the second half is only worth watching for LLENN and Fukaziroh's battles against the other teams before things get unbelievably dumb. Still, I managed to enjoy GGO for what it was, even though it could have been much better, I would watch a second season of it no problem, assuming it's going to be more like the first half of this one and not the second half, at least. If you didn't like SAO, there's a chance you may enjoy this spin-off, although... Depending on what exactly you hated about SAO and how much you're tolerant to it, there's also a chance that you may dislike GGO as well. I dunno, give it a try and see what happens, at least the first half I can definitely say I would recommend watching.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 1, 2018
Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
Gee, this show is called Tada Never Falls in Love and has "Romance" in the tags. I wonder what will happen in this romance anime called Tada Never Falls in Love. Can you guess it? I sure as hell can't, my buddies! I would say this review contains spoilers, but... I think you would probably know most of what happens in this show even if I didn't spoil you, but here's the warning anyway.
Apparently, Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai was somewhat anticipated before coming out because it's made by Doga Kobo, the same studio with the same staff that gave us Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. Now, ... I haven't watched Nozaki-kun, I don't know what that show is about or if it's any good, but I know people like it and expected Tada-kun to be on the same vein, and judging by how lukewarm the reception to this one was, I assume it didn't quite hit the mark. I'm saying this just so you know that I'm not judging Tada-kun by how it compares to Nozaki-kun or anything like that, especially because I think it's pretty unfair to judge a show by how it compares to another instead of viewing it as its own thing. Sure, you can make comparisons to prove some points and whatnot, but if you're basing your criticisms mostly on that, you're not really giving the show a fair chance, are you? Well, it's not like Tada-kun is the most original show ever anyway, but that doesn't mean it can't be good despite not being exactly original or groundbreaking, Boku no Hero Academia isn't exactly the most original shounen ever, but it's still a pretty good watch because it executes its shounen tropes and clichés very well. So, is Tada-kun a good show in that sense? Well... Kinda. It has some great production values and looks gorgeous, most Doga Kobo shows I watched do, the background art is very well-made and the animations are incredibly smooth, though the characters don't look exactly unique, but they look good enough. The main character is Tada Mitsuyoshi, a japanese high school student who is a member of his school's Photography Club and aspires to be a photographer like his father was, Tada has never known love before. One certain day, Tada was taking some pics of the cherry blossoms for the club, but some dumb blonde bitch who's probably a gaijin was getting in the way of his pics and Tada was about to tell her to fuck off back to Sweden, but then the girl turned around and she actually looks cute, so it's alright, cute girls can stay in our glorious nippon lands. In this exact moment when Tada meets the foreign girl, the screen gets covered in a pink filter as cherry blossoms float around, which means the title of the show should have been Tada Takes A Minute to Fall in Love. Anyway, the girl asks Tada to take some pictures of her, he ends up taking with his own camera because her camera's battery died or whatever. The girl's name is Teresa Wagner, she's a foreigner from European country called Larsenburg, Teresa likes Japan a lot and is particularly a big fan of a japanese samurai-themed TV show called Rainbow Shogun, she just arrived in Japan and got separated from her travelling companion, so Tada lends her a hand and takes her to the Tada Cafe where he works together with his grandpa and his sister Yui. Fortunately, and conveniently, the hotel where Teresa will stay with her companion is right next to Tada's family cafe, also Teresa's companion is a redhead chick called Alexandra Magritte, but better known as Alec, who was worried sick and takes care of her, to the point of beating up one of Tada's friends because she misunderstood him as a creepy dude who was trying to make some moves on Teresa. Can you guess who Teresa could possibly be? I can't for the life of me, man... Turns out Teresa and Alec are transfer students in Tada's school, and they end up joining the Photography Club as well. Most of the other main characters are also members of the club and they all follow some typical anime tropes: There's Ijuin Kaoru, the goofy hyperactive narcisist who's popular with girls, the president of the club, Sugimoto Hajime or Pin-senpai, who's a perverted third year student that's way into photographing nude girls and has an obsession with a gravure idol called Hina, Yamashita Kentarou, a first year student behaves like a dog for some reason, and then there's Hasegawa Hinako who's a bit of a quiet glasses girl and looks an awful lot like Hina... I wonder why Hinako looks like Hina. Can you guess it? Alright, that joke has gotten annoying now, I'll stop. Not that Tada, Teresa and Alec don't follow some anime tropes as well, Tada is your typical stoic protagonist, Teresa is the friendly childish girl and Alec is a bit of a tsundere, in fact none of the characters from Tada-kun is exactly original by any means, it doesn't help much that most of them don't get much development and don't show many character traits besides the ones you've seen since the beginning, but... I actually like Tada-kun's cast, at least most of it. I don't really care much for Yamashita Dog, Pin-senpai and Hinako, they don't really develop much, most of their scenes are typical hit-and-miss anime comedy, there's like, one episode dedicated to Pin-senpai and Hinako, also another one that shows Yui has a crush on Yamashita, but then the show never really bothers to explore these characters' relationships more, so I feel it was kind of a waste, I think Nyanko Big, Tada's cat, has a better romance arc than most of the characters this show wastes no time with starting to ship, which is weird. Being a slice of life, Tada-kun doesn't have much of a plot, it's just the Photography Club doing their club activities while Tada and Teresa get closer to each other and occasionally we get some focus on other characters, the pacing is not very good because there's a few episodes where nothing really happens when it comes to the characters and their relationships, and obviously there's no way to effectively develop many love couples in a 13 episode anime. That being said, Tada-kun would benefit to have more moments when other characters stop playing their anime trope for the sake of comedy, I feel this show really does a good job at making them likeable when it shows other sides of characters such as Ijuin and Alec. At first, I found Ijuin to be annoying because he's even the type of real-life person I wouldn't get along with at all, he's loud, hyperactive, he overreacts to stuff, loves taking pictures of himself and talking about himself, he constantly provokes Alec into beating him up, etc. But then one episode about him hosting a "show" of his own where he treats everyone else from the club with whatever they like to eat, showed that behind Ijuin's silly behavior, there's a great guy who deeply cares for his friend and pulls all this goofy act up just to amuse him and the others, he got moved by the fact that Tada's parents died and has been trying his best to cheer Tada up even nowadays when he's pretty alright, he still does it every year just so Tada and his other friends can have some fun. Now this is how you write a good comic relief character, people, I love it when this type of character gets their chance to show that they're more than just a a way to inject some comedy into the show, it makes me sympathize with them and even tolerate their silly moments, and Ijuin actually has quite a handful of serious moments where he's shown to be a very good friend, I didn't expect him of all people to be my favorite character in this show. Alec is also pretty cute when she's not playing the typical tsundere role with Ijuin, although she can get a bit overly dramatic at times when something happens to Teresa, I think it makes sense because she's not very good at expressing or controlling her feelings and cares a lot for Teresa's well-being, she's an alright character, I actually prefer her to Teresa, who's honestly kinda bland, but not unlikeable at least. Tada is also an alright character, he gets some development as he starts to realize his own feelings for Teresa, he has an internal conflict with that due to his backstory and the fact that Teresa will have to return to her country someday and his interactions with Ijuin are some quality bro shit, for a stoic anime protagonist I found him pretty easy to like compared to a lot of the others. There's also a new character that gets introduced in the second half of the show, Charles de Loire, a descendant of French nobility who's later revealed to be secretly Teresa's fiance, and you'd probably think this show would turn into a shitty love triangle drama where the main character has to dispute the girl with some douchebag the writers clearly want you to hate. Surprisingly, it doesn't go that route! I mean, sure, there's a lot of drama in later episodes, but not because of Charles being a romantic rival to Tada, he's a pretty chill dude who befriends even Tada quickly and never really tries to ruin his relationship with Teresa or anything, although he does genuinely love Teresa and is unaware that Alec has a crush on him. I would go as far as saying Charles is the true hero of this series, because if it wasn't for him, we would have gotten a much less predictable bittersweet ending. ... Well, when I put it like that, it makes Charles look like a character who just made the show more generic since the ending is exactly what I and everyone else were expecting it to be, but whatever, Charles is still a nice character for what this show is. Also, I don't really get the whole deal with Rainbow Shogun, this series dedicate a lot of screen time to this show and I don't really understand why, the rainbow color joke thing was funny the first time around, but not after it was repeated for the 20th time... Is there some deeper meaning to this? Is it just a running gag in the series? I don't know, maybe Rainbow Shogun is 2deep4me. Anyway, I think you'll probably know what route Tada-kun takes and what kind of ending it will have by the time you're starting to watch the second half, it's awfully predictable and by-the-numbers, but it's not a bad anime, I didn't even have high expectations for it to begin with and got pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking some of its characters. I expected Tada-kun to be a nice little slice of life anime with bits of romance and comedy, and I got exactly what I expected, even if the writing is not exactly the greatest and it plays too safe for its own good, it was still enjoyable for what it was and the second half tackled the theme of regret over missed opportunities rather well. There's quite a handful of things to like about Tada-kun, depending on your expectations, your tolerance for clichés and predictable plot elements, you may even enjoy this show even more than I did, I would recommend giving at least the first three episodes a shot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 28, 2018
Mirai Nikki (TV)
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Have you ever watched an anime that simply left you speechless, unsure of what the hell have you just watched, but in the most obnoxious way possible? We all probably did, shows that cause this type of reaction tend to be considered the worst ones. Well, let me introduce you to Mirai Nikki.
Mirai Nikki is the worst anime I have ever watched. No, I'm not kidding, nor am I being hyperbolic. This unholy abomination of a series left such a negative impact on me when I originally watched it back in 2012, that I actually started to hate anime in general and lost interest in the ... medium for a couple of years because of the fact that Mirai Nikki was the most popular anime back then. It baffled me how anyone could like such an atrociously-written crap without an ounce of irony, and if this is what people were accepting as "good" anime, then this medium is fucking doomed. Thankfully, as the years went by, people started to notice Mirai Nikki's bullshit and this show's reputation nowadays is considerably worse than it used to be, which is exactly the kind of thing that happens with terrible shows that were once loved merely out of hype while not having substance to back it up. The hype dies away, people will watch it again, some new viewers will also give it a shot, and the awfulness of the content will come and hit you so hard you'll wish you were Chris Brown's wife. Maybe if Mirai Nikki was your first anime, or at least your first """""""""""serious""""""""""" (there's still not enough quotation marks there, believe me) anime, you'll probably feel nostalgic about it, and thus, unable to judge it as the shitshow it actually is. For the sake of being specific about why I hate Mirai Nikki so much, be warned that >>>I'M GOING TO SPOIL THE HELL OUT OF THIS SHOW FOR THIS REVIEW<<< because I don't think I can express how bad it is without spoiling it. If you're somehow masochistic and want to waste your time with Mirai Nikki without being spoiled, then I advise you to not read any further, I also advise you to go watch something else that's more worthy of your time, or maybe go see a psychiatrist. For everyone else... You may also want to do something else that's more worthy of your time than reading some autistic weeb rambling about how much he despises a shitty japanese cartoon that's 7 years old at this point, but if you really want to keep reading, then be my guest. Some people usually talk about how good Mirai Nikki's premise is, even others who also think this show is horse shit, tend to admit that it had a good premise. Well, I don't think it had a good premise at all, honestly Mirai Nikki seemed stupid to me ever since the very first episode, and I'm going to explain why. The premise is that there's this guy called Amano Yukiteru, he's your average socially awkward loner teen and has the habit of writing down everything that happens around him in his cellphone, while talking to his imaginary friends, Deus Ex Machina, and his partner, Murmur. Turns out Deus Ex Machina and Murmur are not really Yukiteru's imaginary friends, instead Deus is actually the God of Time and Space, he turned Yukiteru's cellphone into a Future Diary, a device capable of predicting the future up to ninety days, and dragged Yukiteru into a deadly survival game. In this game, Yukiteru and eleven other participants posessing their own Future Diaries with their own specific effects must kill each other until one remains, and the sole survivor takes Deus' place as God of Time and Space. Why? Because Deus is actually dying and must get a successor before that happens. Yeah, if this premise being stupid wasn't self-explanatory enough for you, then I'll tell you why it's stupid. First of all: Why the hell is Deus dying? The show never ever explains what exactly is killing him, hell, I thought gods were supposed to be immortal, but I guess Deus just got some kind of God AIDS and now he's about to pass away. And second: If Deus is the God of Time and Space, then why doesn't he just use his powers over time and space to look into the future and just make whoever won the game there into his successor already? Isn't he in a hurry to get this damn successor before he dies? Does he just want to see a bunch of people killing each other before dying? Either way, it's fucking dumb as hell, there's no reason to even come up with this game when you know exactly who is going to win in the end. Even if you make the argument that he's giving the participants the chance to change this future that he already knows is coming ahead, this is pointless because the winner of the game by the end of the series is exactly who Deus knew was going to be all along. Really, what is the point of everything that happens in this series? And no, that's not even the worst part, the story somehow actually manages to get dumber after that masterpiece of a premise. Among the other eleven participants of the game is Yukiteru's classmate, a girl called Gasai Yuno, who has been obsessively stalking the guy and vows to protect him at all costs, her Future Diary is even made specifically to help her protect Yukiteru. Together, they vow to defeat the other Future Diary owners and bring this game to an end, and as you may have guessed it: Most of the diary owners are generic anime bad guys, ranging from a terrorist, to a girl who commands a creepy religious cult, to a serial killer, to a psychopathic loli who somehow has access to dangerous weaponry and so on. Why would Deus choose a bunch of deranged people to this game? I dunno, it's almost like this is an anime and Yukiteru is supposed to be the protagonist who fights against a bunch of villains or something. There's a cop in the game, though, apparenly Deus' motivation to choose him would be to balance things out because the other Future Diary owners were horrible people, because surely one cop can stand up to almost a dozen dangerous criminals. Predictably, most of the other participants target Yukiteru because he's Deus' personal favorite pick for winner of the game (in other words, he's the protagonist of the show) and they all end up being defeated. Good thing they all conveniently attack him one at a time despite having a common goal in mind, otherwise I would start believing the characters in this show are actually smart or something. But even if they did attack Yukiteru and Yuno together, I'm sure the writers would find a way to make them fail, because Yukiteru has a plot armor that's somehow thicker than Sakae Esuno's skull. The bad guys have to be really dumb in such unbelievably contrived ways in order to lose their battles against Yukiteru and Yuno that it's really hard to take this shit seriously. Take Minene, the terrorist who's the ninth diary user, for example, she sneaks into Yukiteru and Yuno's school and somehow manages to set up bombs all over the place without being seen or suspected by anyone, which is fucking ridiculous, but I'll buy it. What I won't buy, though, is that she conveniently blows up one part of the school at a time, and it's always giving Yukiteru and Yuno just enough time to get away before they get blown up. She then blabbers about how this was all a plan to lure Yukiteru out, and she actually threatens to blow the whole school up. Well... Why doesn't she blow the whole school up? Isn't her objective to kill Yukiteru? By just blowing everything up from the get-go, she would have killed both Yukiteru and Yuno, two birds with one stone. But we all know why she didn't just do that, because then this garbage would have lasted for a mere two episodes. The other battles against diary users aren't much better than this, it always comes to them having Yukiteru and Yuno backed into a corner, with all the opportunities in the world to kill them, but failing because they're plagued by the powers of bad writing. The Future Diaries themselves are barely even worth talking about here, seriously, they're almost completely forgotten by the characters during these fights, and only do actualy predict the future when it's convenient to the plot, which makes them more of a cheap gimmick than anything else. Action scenes in spite of that aren't even that good, so just turning my brain off and enjoying the action was an impossibility, they're serviceable enough, save for some really stupid moments such as the fight against the twelfth diary user who acts like a tokustatsu hero, he hypnotizes some followers of the sixth diary user and they also wear wacky tokusatsu costumes to fight alongside him. His strategy is to confuse Yukiteru and Yuno because the costumes look similar, so they have trouble telling this guy apart from the others... Except they shouldn't have so much trouble because the costumes have different colors in their helmets, so even if he did blend in together with the others, he still has a specific color in his costume's helmet, but Yukiteru and Yuno are fucking idiots and take forever to get this guy for some reason. God, this is so dumb... Even worse than the fights is Mirai Nikki's pathetic attempt at character development. The diary users for the most part are generic anime archetypes with some edgy backstory thrown in there so the unfortunate viewer can maybe sympathize with them, and I mean, they do try really hard to get you to sympathize with these characters, if their stupid backstories didn't get you feeling sorry for them, the fact that most of them die right after those backstories are revealed definitely will! Or maybe you're an actual thinking person, and you realize these backstories don't matter in the end. Look at Tsubaki, the sixth diary user and leader of the previously mentioned generic evil cult that does whatever, she's a backstabbing bitch who wants to win the game because she hates the world and wants to destroy it. But hey, look at her background, she was randomly gang-raped by all the other males in her cult right after losing her parents, how ~sad~ and ~tragic~ a character this one is! The rape really drives the point home, it was completely necessary and had everything to do with the plot, man! What about Minene? The terrorist who blew a school up and possibly killed thousands of students in the process? Minene lost her parents and spent her childhood alone in some eastern country where religious extremists caused violent conflicts to happen, which eventually led to her hating religion... And eventually becoming a terrorist who fights against religion because God is evil and yadda yadda, yet doesn't think twice before blowing up schools and murdering thousands of students to achieve her goals. But wait, you're gonna love what comes next, trust me! Minene ends up being romantically engaged with a cop called Nishijima... A damn cop is in love with a terrorist who recently killed a lot of innocent people! Minene then "softens up" starts acting like a cookie-cutter tsundere in their "cute" romantic moments together, and it's like she never did anything wrong to begin with! She never shows any regret for killing all those people she killed back then, and may I remind you that Nishijima works for the Police! What the hell IS this shit? Am I supposed to just accept this as some kind of cute anime romance? What, does Nishijima see the real human bean behind this poor terrorist who's responsible for the grief of many families who sent their kids to school? Fuck you, Mirai Nikki. Fuck! You! It's already bad enough that you're implying rape victims become psychopaths, but now you're trying to pass murderous terrorists off as misunderstood humans who deserve love? What the fuck, man? Not even our main characters are exactly well-written either, Yukiteru is wildly inconsistent through the story and can go from a helpless loser to a badass whenever the plot needs him to do so, his relationship with Yuno is as deep and engaging as the romance in the Twilight saga is. He slowly starts to realize that Yuno may have a few screws loose and keeps oscilating between trusting her and not trusting her, yet this motherfucker keeps trusting Yuno even after she tries to kill his friends and even turns against him later! He has no real reason to trust Yuno aside from the fact that she protects him, but at this point it's pretty obvious that she has obscure reasons for doing so. Yuno is a yandere who loves Yukiteru, and that's basically all the characterization she gets, all of her dialogue and actions are about Yukiteru, and she also has a dark past, of course she does. Yuno was abused by her parents and became depressed, she was a loner in the classroom until one day she talked to Yukiteru and sorta made him promise he'll marry her in the future, he thought it was a joke and just accepted the proposal in an obviously half-hearted way. Do you think that's dumb? Yeah, me too. Oh, and also Yuno has what seems to be some dead bodies inside her house, which makes Nishijima get on her tail and start to question her about these rumors, Yuno reacts in the most "obviously I did something wrong" way possible, but Nishijima for some reason doesn't follow her or anything. I swear this dude is the worst cop of all time. But enough of this, time to crank up this diarrhea dile, because we're going to dive into the final act of Mirai Nikki, where things get even more hopelessly stupid than they already are! Yukiteru's father, who previously abandoned his son in a collapsing tower to save his own ass, by the way, was deceived into killing Yukiteru's mother by John Bacchus, the mayor of the city and the eleventh diary user. This makes Yukiteru go after him, the two to share an "emotional" reconciliation moment, only for them to get ambushed by Bacchus' goons who kill Yukiteru's father. Turns out this whole game was actually Bacchus' plan and he is the one who designed the Future Diaries, Bacchus somehow convinced Deus to go with this game and his motives for wanting to become the new God of Time and Space is that he's basically a Hitler wannabe. Why would Deus go with this plan to begin with? Is it even worth giving a fuck about the plot at this point? Now Yukiteru wants to win the game because he believes that will give him the power to revive his family... Yes, he thinks the God of Time and Space has life-restoring powers... This is our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen! This is hilariously retarded enough as it is, but Yukiteru could have literally just asked Deus if he could revive his family if he became the new god, there was nothing stopping him from doing so in the scene where Murmur implied the revival thing to him! "Why doesn't Yuno tell Yukiteru that he's going full retard?" you may ask, it's actually because she's also deceiving Yukiteru into believing that! Woah, what a shocking turn of events! Yukiteru just believes her, of fucking course he does, even though she lied to him multiple times at this point, caused the death of his friends and almost even killed him. But yeah, there's a really nonsensical plot twist regarding Yuno, and I'll spill it out right now. Walmart Kaworu eventually finds out that the Yuno that's been around the whole time is actually another Yuno from a different timeline where she indirectly killed Yukiteru and won the survival game. Seeing that she can't bring Yukiteru back to life, she then traveled back in time, killed her own parents in this timeline, as well as killed herself from this timeline and took her identity as Yuno. She's basically doing an infinite time loop where she spends time with Yukiteru, kills him at the end of the game and returns to the beginning to start it all over again. First of all, how is Yuno even still around? She went back in time and killed her version of this time, which means she was killed before entering the game and shouldn't be participating on it as a result. Alright, let's assume she's immune to time travel bullshit because she's technically God of Time and Space, then... How the hell can two Gods of Time and Space exist in the same universe? How is Yuno's meddling with time affecting Deus? Couldn't Deus see that Yuno comes from another timeline or that she's actually another god? If Deus died in the previous timeline, how can Yuno just travel back in time and have him be alive? Why doesn't Deus just do that to himself so he can just exist forever instead of bothering with all this stupid shit? What does Deus dying even mean? He dies but can be brought back to life later? His existence gets erased out? Who the hell knows? It's not like the writers are going to explain shit! Anyway, Yuno and Yukiteru are the only survivors left in the game, turns out Murmur has been secretly manipulating the game all along in order to have Yuno win, which is something Deus apparently never suspected, even though he's the fucking God of Time and Space and can see into the future! Murmur and Yuno travel back in time and end up creating a third timeline, but this time Yukiteru interferes with Minene's help. Yeah, Minene was kept alive by Deus. They end up saving the Yuno from that timeline and her parents before Yuno and Murmur could get to them, which ends up making this the happy timeline where not only Yuno, but everyone else apparently have peaceful lives now. How exactly does Yuno being saved affects everyone else's lives? What does Yuno's life have to do with Yukiteru's parents not divorcing? I don't know, I don't care either. The Yuno we've seen this whole time kills herself and Yukiteru then becomes the new God of Time and Space. What does he do? Nothing, he becomes depressed over Yuno's death and doesn't do anything... Even though he's the fucking God of Time and Space and he can just travel back in time, meet Yuno in a new timeline, maybe save her and her parents like he did in the third timeline, I don't know. I guess that would mean Deus would also come back and there would be another death game, because this show's use of time travel is just great. Ten thousand years later, Yukiteru decides to create a new timeline while Murmur plans to create another survival game. Yeah, it's basically a failed attempt at a Gainax Ending. What else can I even say about Mirai Nikki? The visuals and animation aren't anything to write home about, in fact it looks weird sometimes and the CGI is terrible, but at least it looks okay for the most part. Music is also just there, I don't remember anything when it comes to the soundtrack, but the openings are pretty good, so at least there's that. The direction is also pretty sloppy sometimes, although it may be the fault of the source material, but aside from the characters dying pretty much in the same episode that reveals their background, this show has the tendency to immediately brush their deaths off by showing the main characters doing some random comical stuff right afterwards, which diminishes the impact of those deaths even more, and those awkward transitions are present in most of the story. Even if it was the source material's fault for having those same transitions, the anime should have improved on that instead of being such a literal adaptation. Regardless, Mirai Nikki is a trainwreck in every sense of the word. A poorly-written and poorly-directed mess that pretends it's smarter than it actually is, tries to mask its terrible plot and characters with shock value caused by gore, edgy characters and other themes it handles terribly, and can only be enjoyed people who literally turn their brains off, as many suggest. I would like to say there's some positives to talk about in the story, but I can't see them, the premise is stupid, the story has enough plot holes to cover the moon, the characters are not only unlikeable, but also poorly-written, and the ending is a forced attempt at tragedy. Some people still like Mirai Nikki, even though they admit it's not a good anime, because apparently it's "so bad it's good" so they watch it for laughs, but I seriously can't even give Mirai Nikki this much credit because I was outright pissed off when I watched it, I just couldn't believe how retarded all of this was getting, and the final act was the point where I just gave up and wanted to finish this anime just for the sake of finishing it. I would watch other bad popular anime like Sword Art Online, Guilty Crown, Akame ga Kill or even School Days over Mirai Nikki any day of the week, at least most of those shows had something going for them, they actually made me create expectations before going to shit. Mirai Nikki, on the other hand, is a show I went in with extremely low expectations, and it didn't even meet those low expectations to begin with.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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