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Feb 22, 2021
Wonder Egg Priority is a pretentious mess that tries to sell itself as a deep and complicated story, but remains in the end another waifubait show. It brings to the table a lot of "hot topics" such as school bullying, teen suicide, sexism and sexual harassment, but never explores them in depth, it just throws more and more OMG SO DARK twists without any attempt to give them a meaningful context or resolution.
Worse than that, this show tries to deal with heavy themes while pandering to horny male audiences. I just find it ridiculous when a series with such a massive focus on a
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sexual abuse and molestation simply oozes yuribait fuel. Sure, grouping of underage girls is horrible, but look at those two cute totally not lesbians touching each others feet or massaging thicc thighs, tee-hee ;)) Female characters is exactly what you can expect from any waifu show, they are cute, pushy, unnatutally sweet and empty headed. It is very hard to convince me that their feelings are real because their behavior doesn't resemble the behaviour of irl teenage girls, they all act and talk like popular moe tropes. It feels fake and uncanny.
I can't say a lot of about the story because 6 episodes later there is barely any story. All you have is a monster of the week concept spiced up by DARK, FORBIDDEN, TWISTED THEMES and a mystery behind suicide of main character's friend that can be solved by a sleepy toddler. In one of the episodes characters quesntioned why there are no boys, and let me give you my answer: this show has girls only cast because no one would care about it otherwise. We have a countless amount of shows with male cast where boys are dealing with their inner struggles by punching creepy monsters or evil humans. I don't want to say that the same thing can't be done with girls; I have seen many people compare Wonder Egg Priority to Mahou Shoujo Madoka since the episode one which is a great disservice to the latter. Where Madoka uses cute girl suffering as a plot point, Wonder Egg Priority uses it as a selling point, an excuse to pretend that it's something more than it is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 11, 2020
The first season of Psycho-Pass spent 22 epsodes to explore the idea of a technology that can track the criminal intentions.
Inception was 148 minutes long movie dedicated to a concept of a lucid dreaming.
Minority Report is 3 minutes shorter movie with a plot revolving around supernatural ability to predict the crimes.
What's going to happen if you will mish-mash all these ideas and spice them up with Jung physological theories? On the surface it sounds interesting, but we are talking about one cour anime that tries to do so many cool thing at once, but never develops them properly. It looks like the writers didn't
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know how to explain what's going on and they tried to fill plot holes with more and more ridiculous twists, to the point that the show at the end is way closer to the fantasy where everything works because it's magic instead of sci-fi.
The the issue is surprisingly boring cast of the characters. At best you have a stereotypical brooding cop, who for some reason looks like the member of kpop band, and the biggest twists for me was the fact that this teenage looking guy had a wife and daughter. Of course, he *had* them, how else can we create a decent motivation for a protagonist in detective story without fridging a woman or two. At worst you have totally unmemorable members of supporting cast, a bland and predictable villain that can be spotted by a toddler, a bunch of boring maniacs. For a show that litterally has an instrument to delve deeper in the souls and mind of its characters, there is no excuse for such a poor writing.
The quality of art is a good illustration of what is wrong with the show as a whole. On the first sight, it looks clean and stylish. Then, you can notice how poorly drawn characters are, the blatant mistakes in anatomy and wrong proportions. This is what ID: Invaded actually is - a poorly handled mess of ideas from other shows.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 24, 2020
A grade from my inner anime snob - 6 or even 5
A grade from a tired person who just wants 20 minutes of an entertainment - 8, maybe 9
It's not a good show if you are looking for a deep story, brilliant characters and a complex plot with a strong message. It's, however, a good time-killer. There wasn't any single episode that made me feel bored, even though a tonal shift from a light-hearted comedy to a darker approach was somewhat jarring. But the boys are pretty, the comedy for the most part works, the detective story wasn't something special, but made me genuinely invested
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in the mysteries of Daisuke's family.
Not the worst way to spend an evening or two.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 17, 2020
Just like the first season Dawn of the Deep soul struggles from a major identity crisis as it doesn’t know what it wants to be - a realistic and mature take on fantasy adventure or a child story with bits of nudity and gore. The movie tries to be all at once, but the story and genre are at odds with each other; it strives to have a tragic flair, but also wants to beat you over the head with fanservice and cutesy staff. The result is a boatload of forced drama and conflicts which gets resolved in 10 minutes and has no effect on
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the overall story or painfully bland characters. Story supposed to be an epic journey, but not this time, the original show built a colourful fantasy world that the movie ignores completely. The worldbuilding in the movie is almost non-existent and the plot is really simple since the goal is to beat the bad guy. If main characters were dimensional enough, maybe they could carry the story, but they feel pretty underwhelming and boring to watch for the most part.
- Characters -
Riko is useless. If she would have died in the first season, no value would be lost. Riko actually plays one of the least roles that she could in her own story. Seriously, our "protagonist" has no control over anything and she always needs to be saved by others every time something bad happens. Many characters are used as mouth pieces to tell the viewer how great Riko is, how smart she is and that she is way more than seems on the surface. But no one of these qualities translates through the screen. The only notorious trait Riko has is that she basically is always super lucky.
Luck that lets her survive events of the first season and recover completely. Broken arm? What broken arm? Riko uses arbalest, her mom’s pickaxe, other weapons, she cooks and does all kinds of physical activities without any restraints. For a story which tries to be realistic the lack of consequences is insulting. Then, Bondrewd’s henchman for no reason decided to help her and later there is even more Luck from a random person “giving” her an extra valuable and rare relic just because they spend like an hour together. Finally, there is extremely good luck that Riko happens to be the owner of a super awesome robot with unlimited hidden powers.
Every single victory gets handed to Riko or just gets bullshitted for her without much effort on her part. She never puts in close to much hard work in anything, yet still gets rewarded. But you can give her screentime with Prushka (all 3 minutes of it) to Nanachi and cut her off completely. Nanachi is the one who does all the strategic planning, Nanachi gives commands to Reg, Nanachi is an emotional anchor of the story. Riko’s character adds nothing to the story, her quest for a mom doesn’t progress at all, her personality is one note happy go lucky girl.
Prushka is useless. What does she contribute in this show? Why is she even here? If her entire existence is based solely on the fact that she is a kicked puppy to feel bad for then they did a bad job with it. I have no idea how I was meant to feel anything for Prushka when she barely shows up. She doesn’t have any depth, or the depth they're given feels very forced (flashbacks right before death). The appeal of Prushka seems to be more from her design and vomit inducing sweetness; she has no flaws, and no personality except angelic innocent victim. She just acts like a Japanese ideal daughteru would, rather than like an actual child with an actual child's personality. Like a lot of manga it lets Japanese ideals regarding character archetypes get in the way of writing interesting characters. There were a few moments throughout the anime I felt were there because the author thought "this is what cute daughterus do, right? Gotta put that in there, the lonely middle aged NEETs and horny teenagers will love it".
I said that this movie can get rid of Riko, but the same trick will work with Prushka too. She exists only for three things: to add more depth and dimensions to Bondrewd’s character, become Riko’s White Whistle and die for an emotional impact. Everything that was done with Prushka, could’ve worked with Nanachi, but better. The worst thing about Prushka is that we’ve already had an uncanny similar plot line in the first season and when the same thing is done again it feels more like the author is beating a dead horse with loli torture porn because that’s what carried his story to popularity.
Nanachi is the most solid character out of the trio, though she sometimes acts in unrealistic ways when contrasted with flashbacks. This is especially bad in Idofront part and can really throw off your immersion. The best two examples of that being when she left her friends alone in Bondrewd’s base, despite her being well aware what kind of person Bondrewd is, and when she randomly softened for him in the end, seconds after she refused to take his hand. Looking at how Bondrewd is weirdly affectionate for his ex assistant and how Nanachi switches from hatred to mixed feelings for him, I suspect that their relationships are more complex than it looks at first sight, but the movie never gives any meaningful context to understand them. Sometimes it just screams that at some point the author planned to kill her off, but as a fan-favorite character she has to live and we’ve got Prushka and her half-assed story.
Reg is the one, who does all the fighting. Does it make him any better? Nope. He is a boring, self-righteous hero from every shonen/isekai ever. I liked him more in the first season, when his powers were limited and his arc was dedicated to self-exploration. In the movie he has no personality, no charm, and isn’t particularly interesting nor likable in any way. I have no reason to cheer this pervert on because he lacks any meaningful motivation, aside from simping Riko and creeping on Nanachi. Motivated solely by his desire to fuc... protect his friends, his personality is essentially a blank slate for the audience to project onto.
Bondrewd is legitimately the only character I enjoyed watching in this show. It's rare for me to find villians that are really terrifying by all means and that have strong and appealing auras such as Lord of Dawn. His voice, his design, his combat moves are pure joy to watch and listen to, ASMR Darth Vader is easily stealing every scene he is in. No matter what he did, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, this guy just radiates charisma. He has everything: a cold and calculated mind, an urge for a good fight, inhuman, corrupted sense of love and a strange inability to hate. Bondrewd is a very interesting take on immortal character, the fact that he once broke the boundaries of life and death and how it changed him is the most intriguing theme of the movie.
But it’s just a crime that he didn’t get enough time on the screen. If there was more of him, I would rate this movie way higher, but instead of giving more space, backstory and scenes for a character who deserves it, Dawn of the Deep Souls wastes it on boring children.
- Story -
Like I said it’s simple and rather predictable. We know that Reg and Riko are main characters and therefore they can’t die. Nanachi is too popular for any risky decision on the author’s side. Prushka’s fate is yawn-worthy. The only surprise is Bondrewd’s survival and this was actually the only thing that I liked about the ending. There wasn’t enough foreshadowing and connection to the characters and I was underwhelmed by the conclusion for the most part. Riko got her White Whistle so easily that I'm shocked there is less than dozen of them. But does she get it for no reason...
Nothing annoys me more than dumb characters who are loved by their author too much. Maybe if Made in Abyss was an actual child show, I could ignore it, but it wants to be mature and realistic. Still, no clever decision-making or believable reaction from MC to their surroundings and enemies. Instead, they blindly attack the villain, hoping they'll somehow manage. And they are doing it with the power of… Deus Ex Machina.
Everytime when a challenge needs to be overcome, something appears out of nowhere that makes it effortless. Reg’s overcharged mode, Reg’s knowledge of how to use his body properly, Reg’s ability to remote control his body parts, seems like Reg conventionally can do everything for the plot progress. This greatly reduces the impact of overcoming any obstacles by a whole lot and also the satisfaction of overcoming them.
Let’s talk about another serious issue. The pacing of this movie was all over the place, at the beginning it was so slow to the point where it felt like it was still a full season, the first thirty minutes do very little to set up the story, and serve only to waste time on. Once the main characters enter Idofront, they rapidly progress through this allegedly dangerous place, meeting little resistance. The second problem with them going so quickly is the fact that you don't ever get a sense for the unique aspects of the fifth layer. With a setting filled with such diverse places, you'd expect to get to experience those places with the characters. You don't.
- OST and Visuals -
Soundtrack is as good as it was in the first season. There is nothing to say about, no matter how low my opinion on Made in Abyss, the music is spectacular.
The combat animation may be fine but I didn’t enjoy the fight that much. Reg’s design is anything, but aesthetically appealing, and no matter how smoothly he is animated, he is still a screaming dwarf who looks ridiculous in a serious battle. Aside from the fight scenes animation is sometimes lacking and I actually liked the look of the first season way more. Dawn of the Deep Soul for the most part is grey or too dark and it is nowhere as pretty as the first season with its Ghibli-esque backgrounds. Bondrewd’s base looks dope and the intro scene is eye-candy, but there wasn’t anything on the level of the sunset scene from the very first episode of the original show.
- Overall -
Made in Abyss truly wanted to be something, it tries new things and throws the characters through so much pain and misery that the Abyss they are crossing resembles more a torture dungeon for loli fetishists, it reaches for something more complex and story-driven, but falls short on delivering any engaging drama. But in the end Made in Abyss is wholly unremarkable shounen fare interested more in shocking the viewer with gore and child nudity than in telling a genuinely meaningful story. What Made in Abyss does to compensate for this is killing off side characters or harming the main ones in increasingly brutal ways (and ignore it two scenes later). It is violence without meaning, as manufactured as can be, extreme and over-the-top to the point that it can almost at times resemble a comedy. Too bad there is no message behind any of this.
Made in Abyss definitely has strong sides, but for some reason it is weirdly ignorant of its positive points. It has one of the best world building concepts in recent years, but doesn’t develop it further, it has interesting and compelling adult characters, but we are cursed to follow the dumb, the dumber and a fuel for furry porn. In the end it leaves you more disappointed and frustrated than any other bad show because there is definitely a lot of potency for a great story, but it was wasted on manufactured and effortless tragedy porn.
If you liked the first season for episodes 10 and 13 you will like it because Dawn of the Deep Souls essentially rehashes the same shock content. If you want more of an adventure you will be deeply disappointed. You can give it a chance for the villain, if you are a fan of charismatic bad guys.
Anyways just like everyone else it's just my opinion, the movie is anticlimactic, it breaks all its proposed ideas, the protagonist never learns anything and it could be so, so very much more, both in entertainment and in actual substance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 10, 2020
I usually wouldn't write a review for an unfinished series, but Deca-Dence is a hidden gem and deserves so much more attention and love. This series is extremely well packed for 12 episodes and has everything: a detailed world building with many mysteries, a good action scenes, well written characters and interesting plot with an unique twist. Of course, it isn’t perfect, 3D elements can look awkward and it takes a while for a show to pick up, but totally worth it.
How long has it been since we’ve got one cour anime, which isn’t a blatant advertisement for a manga and has a compelling
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and completed story?
How long has it been since we’ve got an adult protagonist, who isn’t moping around and cries about his low self-esteem and lack of a girlfriend? Kaburagi is such a delight to follow, after myriads of “literally me” school boys having a mature man as a main character is like a breath of fresh air.
I didn’t like Natsume at first. She seemed like a mold of optimistic, always happy heroine that for some reason plagued the modern anime scene. But eventually she breaks up and changes.
Please, watch Deca-Dence. A very well-crafted show with from little to no fanservice, great concept and a clear idea behind its story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 7, 2020
I gave Sakasama no Patema 3, but I still would recommend it if you are new to anime or looking for something inoffensive for your newcomer friend. It’s not THAT terrible, just cliched to the t. It’s Japanese “boy meets girl” mixed with Western “young people rebel against the evil government”, you can mute the sound and still be able to understand what’s going on because you’ve seen this story, these characters and twists thousands of times. That’s why I don’t see any reason to write an in-depth analysis of this show, there is nothing to write about.
It’s truly a pity that an original
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concept was wasted on such an unoriginal story, but If you are looking for a good scenery and a heartwarming classic adventure, then this movie is perfect for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 7, 2020
To all appearances Mahoutsukai no Yome seemed to be a promising anime with amazing music and eye-catching visuals. It starts off good, but in the second half it's less about folklore made into its own creative story and more about overarching plot that might seem interesting to make into a story, but it isn’t. Some of the episodes in this series are absolutely breathtaking, containing a large amount of emotional baggage, as well as some twists and turns that keeps the viewer on edge. Some of the moments from this show are truly moving, but near the end the series goes in another direction and
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gets worse gradually.
That said, Mahoutsukai no Yome is interesting to a degree, but much of this comes from the way in which European myths and legends are tied into the plot. Now, when I think about it, this series would benefit from an episodic model a lot because the main storyline was the least interesting part of the show. All the various problems with the characters and its themes lead to the storytelling being weak and lacking substance. There is almost a total disregard for pacing in the show thanks to the numerous characters being poorly introduced. Things either crawl at a snail’s pace or they give you whiplash with random new developments. There are way too many plot contrivances in this anime and there’s very little foreshadowing of anything that is to happen. Too many things are solved by Chise’s magic and her being held as a hostage only to be saved in the next episode becomes something like an overarching gag instead of the dramatic twist it was supposed to be.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Chise at the start as she was more like a red haired animated version of Bella Swan, aloof and depressed all the time, but slowly she develops into an empathetic and nuanced person. Maybe too empathetic even, sometimes she acts more like a cliche of a kind and forgiving shoujo heroine rather than a human being.
Elias was a disappointment, I started to watch this show for an interesting, inhuman being with mysterious origins, I’ve got a boney man-children with charisma of that one sparking vampire. He has to do some heavy plot lifting, and we're supposed to believe that he's experiencing a journey as he understands feelings and emotions, if not literally the first time, the first meaningful time, but his development is all over the place.
What bothers me is that at the end of the series I still had no clue what relationships between Chise and Elias were supposed to represent. Is this a love story? A family bonding? I don’t know, Mahoutsukai no Yome tries to be all at once, but fails at portraying any noticeable chemistry between main characters. With the word “bride” in the title it is expected for the series to have a romance plotline, but I felt like Chise had far more romantic chemistry with some members of the secondary cast and Elias was obsessed with Chise than he loved/liked her.
The main villain is hilariously bad. Cartaphilus is the anime’s attempt at making a sympathetic villain and he’s given some backstory and such as to why he’s the crazy guy he is. The anime, however, can’t make him imposing in any sort of way and he instead comes off as a comedic maniacally laughing douche while he’s busy doing really despicable things. His “development” comes late and feels very rushed and contrived in a form of sob story cliche. If it wasn’t for this guy, I would give this anime 8, but he ruins every scene he is in.
There were a lot of supporting characters, but most of them were only there for a specific role and that was it really, however they compliment each other nicely. No one in particular stood out for me, but due to the semi-episodic nature of the show I didn’t set my expectations high for them.
On technical aspects, the series is more than satisfying. The artistic direction is truly something. I personally loved the background art, it was really beautiful and full of bright colors. I think the artstyle is what kept me watching the show mostly, as there were so many scenes you could look at and pick apart how good the animation and background was, like for example the scene with blue flowers or Titania’s entrance.
I'd say this is a fairly mixed show, but it felt more positive than negative. The characters and pacing are really what lets the show down, but it had its moments of goodness. I loved setting, animation, music and some side stories, but the main storyline left me unimpressed. Mahoutsukai no Yome has its magic and mysteries and I would recommend this show if you want a fantasy with a female lead, but don’t expect too much.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 6, 2020
On a first sight Made in Abyss does not sound too bad. A girl named Riko is about to be killed by a giant beast when an amnesiac robot pops up and saves her. One thing leads to another and soon she is thrown into the mysterious hell pit. The setup is very interesting and very well done. The stakes and goals are immediately established, make sense, and make you want to know more. I got amazed by how well we were introduced to the main plot, and how good was writing in those episodes. Everything looked so fresh and different from any fantasy show
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in recent years, and I loved how the first episode made me almost tear up over the beauty of this world.
Unfortunately, there's not much of a story in Made in Abyss. Synopsis pretty much describes 80% of the entire plot. The premise established in the first episode is good, and the last episode would be really good, in my opinion, but nothing in between really leads up to, or makes you care enough about the characters or their circumstances, for the ending to hit as hard as it could have. For the most part, characters are going down, episode after episode, facing from little to no obstacles on their way. There is no room for Made in Abyss to actually breathe and explore its own setting, even though there's potential for a deeper and more meaningful story as it was shown in flashbacks of Ozen or Nanachi, but so far that's nowhere to be seen. Don't let the seinen label fool you, adult rating is justified by two gore scenes near the end, but in its very core this is an adventure shounen with linear and simplistic plot and quite uncompelling characters.
The anime has a serious problem deciding whether it wants to be a realistic or a cartoony one. For an episode, Riko ping-pongs between cavern’s walls with Looney Toons physics and no damage comes to her. In the very next episode, a minor injury leads to a botched surgery with lots of grotesque details. The line between realistic and fantasy is constantly erased and redrawn depending on what the plot needs at the moment. Everyone and their mothers are talking about dangers of the Abyss and how it’s impossible to survive here. Then, we have a clueless robot and Darwin Awards nominee of heroine doing every mistake possible and getting away scot free until the very end. There's a childishness to the anime that doesn't quite fit with the major themes of the plot, and in many ways it feels more like bait and switch.
Now look, I'm usually not that judgmental of the main character as long as they're not completely terrible, but Riko is so actively, offensively, overwhelmingly horrible that it boggles the mind. Even as a child she's an absolute failure, shallow and annoying. I didn’t expect from a girl a caricature over the top intelligence of The Promised Neverland protagonists, but she is lacking basic cognitive skills. Her stupidity effectively turns 1/3 of the show into a waste because everything that Ozen tried to teach her was forgotten once main characters crossed the layers. What does she think? Honestly, I'm not sure she does at all, it's rare we get any insight to her thoughts while others get plenty of focus. Personally to me she as a character just didn't have any growth. By the end of the anime, Riko finally faces consequences of her dumb decisions, but she ends up learning nothing from it.
There isn’t a lot to say about her companion. Reg exists as little more than a personification of the viewer, similar in many ways to isekai protagonists, and lacking in any meaningful characterisation besides his natural instinct to protect Riko. I’m interested in his origin, but as a character he is just an excuse to spoon feed the viewer more exposition.
The side characters didn't really stand out, either, though they are slightly better than the leading duo. There is some backstory and development to Ozen and Nanachi, while some characters are barely fleshed out at all like kids from Orth, and are only there to serve a very specific purpose in the plot. This was obviously a bit unfortunate, since I feel like there was certainly time for more time to be spent with the characters, and yet we’re left with this. It is at the point where you can’t feel or naturally sympathize with the characters; in fact Made in Abyss tried to make you feel bad for characters solely because they are small children.
For some people, this works, and throwing a pretty loli through a tornado of awfulness is enough to instil sympathy. That's great, and I don't hold a grudge against these people. If anything, I am jealous of how easily they can feel emotion. What actually bothers me is how effortless this method of storytelling truly is, and the audacity Made in Abyss has to pretend it is something deep (no pun intended).
After the last episodes, I have passed the final grade from 9 to 7. The tease for which we have been submitted by the authors, an awesome art and music deserve a whole 10, but the story and characters are nothing special. It’s very clear more effort was put on style and shock value rather than substance. There are several instances of legitimately investing and interesting storytelling in this anime, but it’s too few and far between to be worthy of any real praise. Not to mention that it is constantly interrupted by inopportune comedy during or immediately following a dramatic moment. Made in Abyss definitely had potential, but just wasn't executed well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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