I feel betrayed in a way, like I just got deceived, and now I feel like a piece of demotivated rubbish if I wasn’t already one. This anime was like joining a friend group only for those "friends" to start treating you like some weirdo nobody after a while. I was surrounded by a bunch of “me fr fr” people and I thought I was going to literally die from happiness. I thought that maybe I was going to experience some genuine emotions while going through this ride. I thought that maybe there’d finally be characters with genuine personalities that don’t scream, “I AM A
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BLATANT CHARACTER ARCHETYPE LMAO” at me. I thought all of that, but that dream I was living didn’t even last halfway through the anime. It was wishful thinking hoping that it wouldn’t devolve into some lifeless drivel anyway, but still, what went wrong exactly?
I think it’s fair to say that the characters are the driving force behind Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai’s whole idea. Four high school girls who struggle with faith and self-confidence form a band together in search of the colors they’ve been missing in their lives, and to find themselves—to become who they truly want to be. Faced with the many challenges of fame, the girls endure and power through the ups and downs of the new light in life they’ve found together. Theoretically, that sounds like a seriously awestriking idea for an anime, one which has heavy inspirational themes and messaging within it, so everything should go perfectly, right? Well, “inspirational” is what it COULD have been, but you see, there’s just one big problem that makes everything fall apart: the characters.
Yes, the “driving force” of the anime itself kind of…sucks. Remember when I said they seemed to have real, genuine personalities? That mirage wore off real fast, alright. One of our main protagonists, Kouzuki Mahiru, is an illustrator for the band she’s formed with her friends, JELEE. She draws everything from promotional art to the band’s mascot, JELEE-chan. Once she entered the limelight of fame through JELEE, obviously, things started to go a bit awry. No one is used to fame from the get-go, and for a person who struggles with confidence and self-esteem like Mahiru, things started to get to her. Barraged by the internet’s reception and criticism of her artwork and her band, Mahiru, not used to this harsh environment, was quick to cave in and start thinking pessimistically. “Is my art not good enough?” “Maybe I should try to change my artstyle?” “Wow, people really like the fanart better, huh?” Are all thoughts (at least along the lines of the thoughts) of Kouzuki Mahiru, who crumbles easily. And you might be thinking, “WOW that is relatable as hell,” and I also should’ve been thinking “WOW that is relatable as hell,” but all I felt is hurt.
It’s all artificial. This entire anime, along with its characters, ends up all artificial and hollow. Mahiru IS just another blatant character archetype, and so is every single other member of JELEE. And it’s all because the anime refuses to touch on their personalities far enough. “tf u mean, it clearly touches on their development as they journey through the trials and tribulations of fame.” And you’d be completely justified in saying that, because, in truth, yes, that’s exactly what the anime does. But that journey only brings out that tiny part of their character that IS an archetype, and that makes them seem like fake people. The anime spends minimal to absolutely no effort giving any of its main characters a real, uncontrived personality, because it doesn’t explore them whatsoever, yet it drags those characters and stretches them out so that they can somehow fit with a story that requires characters with ten times more layers to them. I personally find it hard to relate or find these characters interesting at all, because while their basic characteristics might be relatable, the amount of effort put into their personalities and the depth they are given is much more like a spit in the face toward me, and other people who might’ve shared any commonality with them. And so, as a result, trying to understand, feel for, and relate to any of the characters is like trying to understand an alien speaking in ⚍ ᓭ╎ꖎꖎ|| ℸ ̣ ∷ᔑリᓭꖎᔑℸ ̣ 𝙹∷ ⚍ᓭᒷ∷。
But who the fuck cares if it doesn’t relate to ME? This review so far has been all about me, me, me, and ME! *I* didn’t like this, *I* disliked that—I need to talk about YOU, the reader. And if you, reader, are sitting here, gawking at the gall I have to bring down your favorite anime from the heavens it soars in, then that either means you’re not looking at the whole picture, or this anime wasn’t made for you in the first place. About the former: you might not actually take the characters into account, or care about them for that matter. You might be one of those yuri addicts that gravitates toward everything with any hint of yuri, or more realistically, you might be here only for the touching journey the characters go through, and not for them particularly—and I would have said I can’t really tell you that’s wrong, but then again, avoiding one of the only reasons why this anime is what it is, is kinda dumb if you ask me. And about the latter: you most likely don’t have an understanding of these characters, and probably have almost nothing in common with them, their experiences, or their feelings, which leads you to believe there are little to no faults with their personalities, while you shouldn’t actually be sure of that. And that’s fine. I get it. You can watch this anime while ignorant and oblivious of its internally vapid and lifeless characters and not have to feel awful, but to those who are able to enjoy the entirety of what makes this anime, and to those who should have been impacted the most, those who should have felt the most touched; to those whom this anime was aimed at and made for, it all ironically ends up amounting to nothing but a meaningless attempt at inspirational storytelling. That was my experience with Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai. I write this review in hopes that you are able to better decide whether to possibly be pushed down into the gutters, or continue with a different anime.
You know what was a real stab in the guts, though? Ryugasaki Nox’s VTuber model. That shit had me crying tears of pent-up sorrow I never even knew I had.
Thank you for reading my review.
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Jun 22, 2024
Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
I feel betrayed in a way, like I just got deceived, and now I feel like a piece of demotivated rubbish if I wasn’t already one. This anime was like joining a friend group only for those "friends" to start treating you like some weirdo nobody after a while. I was surrounded by a bunch of “me fr fr” people and I thought I was going to literally die from happiness. I thought that maybe I was going to experience some genuine emotions while going through this ride. I thought that maybe there’d finally be characters with genuine personalities that don’t scream, “I AM A
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Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 13, 2024
Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Hello to you poor people who came here expecting rotoscoping as good as that of Aku no Hana's, because I'm about to crush your expectations and shove them right down your raw throats where they'll never surface again, because I want to save you. I NEED to save you, from ever experiencing this terrible tragedy that killed possibly hundreds of thousands of eyes, that flat-out snatched them eyes away, crushed them, put them in a motherfucking blender, turned that blender on, poured the results into a mug, microwaved that mug for 3 minutes, and finally threw the mug out from the top of a 13-story
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apartment building, with the sound it makes upon impact with the ground being...nothing, because no cry from such ill-fated beings is ever heard in this deathly cesspool. That's what your eyes will feel ever glancing one frame at this Chinese famine-scale catastrophe known as Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken.
I am so incredibly sorry that anyone who worked on this had to work on this. I'm beyond in tears; my tears are fucking defying gravity and flowing upwards, so that maybe they'll one day reach Heaven where all the poor eyes that had ever been subjected to this anime lie. I don't even know how the hell I'm tearing up since I don't have any goddamn eyes anymore, but I guess even my hollow eye sockets know the pain and suffering me and my unfortunate eyeballs went through. That's the sort of illogical happenings this misadventure brings with it. The horrifying 3D character animation that was rotoscoped over—those poor, poor characters, having their bodies move this awkward way and that awkward way in stiff movements while in excruciating pain. Or the way they abruptly freeze, as if some unknown entity were controlling their every move, like chessmen moving in fixed positions around a chessboard. Their petrified expressions are concealed behind a disgusting, fear-instilling artstyle disguised as simple, unadorned drawings. Or the eye-burningly underexposed lighting that attempts to hide the horrors this psyop conspiracy theorist-material contains, and that also temporarily blinded one of my cats because she was looking at a reflection of the screen on a window. The ears are also not safe from such brutal bludgeoning, because my dear gosh, I have never heard such innocuous yet subliminally terrorizing sounds in the history of my 15 years of being alive. Do you plan to get a 6CH or 5.1 surround audio release of this anime? Because FUCK YOU! That shit doesn't matter, since it fails to muffle out the moans of the wretched souls of the seiyuu that voiced for those miserable characters. Moans so desperate and hurt, it pierces through the minds of anyone should they choose to listen. I pray the seiyuu are in good health today, nine years later. But the story? Oh, it was just really, unbelievably mind-numbingly boring, I guess. But no one fucking cares about the story, because let's face it: half of you came here because you heard this used rotoscoping. ...Okay, fine. Some girl transfers to a new school and then some weirdo bullies make up this shit about some Judas ghost thing so then the girl and her friend try to find this guy named Yuda...? I don't know—again, I told you, it was MIND-NUMBINGLY boring. So yeah, now you've been firmly warned to never, ever subject yourself to this life-threateningly-dangerous movie, unless you have a reason for wanting to go blind. Maybe you saw something else you want to unsee so badly you literally want to lose your eyes? I don't know, but PLEASE, stay away from this hellhole. Forever. Lock whatever device you've accessed this anime's MAL entry on away in a safe, throw that safe into the ocean, buy a new device, use that instead, and never, EVER go on this part of MAL again. Trust me, you won't regret it. I typed this all blind, btw. I hope iiddin;t misplell anythijng, Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Apr 22, 2024
Bartender: Kami no Glass
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Preliminary
(3/12 eps)
This doesn't feel like the Bartender I know.
In case you're wondering, yes, this anime is a remake/reboot of an anime that came out all the way back in 2006, called Bartender. Why is it getting remade almost an entire 18 years later? Other than how it might be connected to the fact that 18 is the legal drinking age in many countries, it beats me. I'd heard about this new anime coming out that focused on bars and drinks and all that, and I just had to check out the original. And guess what? I genuinely liked it! I'm not even old enough to drink, ... and tbh, I'm pretty scared of alcohol, but getting to learn about different drinks, their origins, and the struggles of troubled individuals who wander into Eden Hall, all in such a cozy, homey atmosphere, was so refreshing. So, now that this remake's finally airing, what are my impressions of it? Well, I'm conflicted. Now, writing a preliminary review having only watched three episodes so far is kind of unfair in my eyes now, but WHAT THE HELL happened???? Nothing seems very comforting anymore and nothing is interesting. It just feels like some sort of odd ASMR instead, because the inside of the bar is so much more goddamn quiet, it's literally almost unnerving. The 2006 Bartender was one of those anime where it was soothing, and even lulled me to sleep a few times (because it was so chill, not because it was dead boring), but I just felt so oddly alert during every moment inside the bar in this one, and this feeling is strengthened even more by how off the characters and their dialogue seems, and the new sort of personality they gave Sasakura, our lovely bartender. It's like they made him so much more of a goofy idiot than actually mature and collected. Like, okay, maybe he regains himself when he's bartending, but there's still that lingering new aura around him that I just find so unfitting of him, and that really disrupts the already off-putting atmosphere. I'm glad they didn't take the core aspects of Bartender away, though at least not yet. It still seems to have the same formula of a stressed-out drinker coming in for a drink, and having their worries completely washed away by Sasakura's exquisite skills in creating the perfect drink for any individual. Sometimes there's a bit of drama, sometimes it's just that smooth-rolling, straightforward experience. This time, though, there seems to be a goal of trying to get Sasakura to work at a bar, specifically on the top floor of a building. The problem is, he has a fear of heights, and refuses every time he is asked. This is an example of how they made him kind of dumb, but hey, there's a little underlying goal there. But I want my Gary Sue ikemen Sasakura Ryuu in perfect form!!!! I'm not really liking this new adaptation of Bartender so far, but I'm not necessarily hating it either. It's got its unwanted changes in there, but it's not like it's a completely different anime. I'm holding on to hope that by chance this new adaptation could turn in a good direction soon, but that's gonna be a wait. Maybe I might write a complete review once this has finished airing, going over it in more detail, but who knows. Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 22, 2024
Sousou no Frieren
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Funny
Small spoilers for what our friends Frieren and Fern are faced with on their journey.
A line of text from the first PV: “Beginning with true tears…” …and ending with shounen shiz. I’m 15 episodes in, thinking “Man, this is some of the greatest seasonal shit I’ve experienced. Overrated? Hell nah.” Because in all honesty, Sousou no Frieren was a near-perfect, strong, and impactful anime that captured my heart straight from the beginning. A captivating theme around the perception of time, thought-provoking moments, and a lingering bittersweet feel to it. I legitimately was thinking nothing could take down such a titan and what it had already built ... for itself, and for damn good reason. I mean, these 15 episodes had shown me so much perfect in the action, the worldbuilding, the character development, the… EVERYTHING! From exciting battles with demons and even a giant flower, to venturing through a massive, beautiful world, all while our characters learned and grew—it was like nothing could stand in the way of Sousou no Frieren. Upon seeing the inexplicably terrifying praise showered over this anime, I was ready to board yet another hype train that lead to nowhere. Ready to be hit with the fact that, after a great, promising debut, what people were going borderline psycho over would lose control of the joyride and crash down into some run-of-the-mill plot. And I’m glad I threw away all those suspicions and jumped right in, because, for once, I actually agreed with the obsessive fans. For over half the anime, I was on cloud nine, thinking Sousou no Frieren was a perfect gem amongst the piles of dirt, that not even the sharpest blade could scratch its surface. But then, out of nowhere, something went incredibly wrong. That cloud nine I was having the time of my life on? Yeah, well, it shrunk all the way down to cloud five. Somehow, my suspicions were somewhat validated! The bitter conjectures I’d so long ago thrown aside—they came back not only to bite me, but this seemingly impenetrable beast of an anime in the ass, too. In a tragic turn of events, someone flipped the wrong switch on the plane’s control panel and there it all went, diving down, gaining speed by the second and burning up in the atmosphere, until we reached episode 28, where it kissed the ground and crashed. It wasn’t a very satisfying downfall, to be real with you, because I really, really, really, really clung onto hope that this would remain one of the best things to come out in some three years. I didn’t want to give up hope easily—I didn’t want to crash down with the plane, but I had to give in, one way or another. Sousou no Frieren had practically set its own course to perfection from start to finish, but somewhere along the way, it strayed off in a pretty bad direction. I would have asked, “Where did we go wrong, my boy!?!?” Because that would sound cool and emotional and whatnot, but I know exactly where. Exactly what was the culprit. What episode did the mage exam start? I cannot for the love of me recall (and frankly I’m too lazy to recheck), because I was so awestruck by just how powerful Sousou no Frieren could be at times that I was barely paying attention to the change. I was just there, my mind racing with Frieren this, Frieren that. So fixated on so many aspects of this wondrous media that graced us from above, that I didn’t realize that very wondrous media was growing dull. It took me a good three or four episodes to finally squint my starry eyes, shake my head left to right, give my brain a tumult, and realize that this mage exam arc thing that was happening not only dulled the specialness that Frieren had, but flat-out took most of it away. Now, don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty amazing that’s still present in the mage exam bit, namely the more frequent, striking animation that felt like it was dialed up to 11 compared to before, and in general, on its own, this part isn't too bad. But… while that’s all fine and dandy itself, we’re talking about Frieren here. Why such a drastic change from an adventure and slice of life-ish mood to an action-fantasy? Why was something so perfect changed out for something not-so-perfect? Where are the deep undertones? What happened to the impeccable character development? Why is there no sentimentality? Why are they doing this battle game thing? Why are they capturing a tiny ass bird in rivalry of characters we’ve had no time to familiarize ourselves with? Why are they battling against stone replicas of themselves? —The only character development here is learning how to kill themselves! (This really could be put in a less ridiculous way but shut up.) When I think of the anime Sousou no Frieren, the first thing I think of is the adventures of Frieren, Fern, Stark and others, through gorgeous, lively environments—lands vast and wide; forests quiet yet dangerous; small villages housing friendly residents; entire towns teeming with people, with accommodation and shops for all their needs. I think of Frieren’s time long ago, how she and her party of Himmel, Heiter and Eisen, defeated the demon king and became known as the party that slew it. Of her party’s fun memories shared together that she reminisces of every once in a while. I think about the oddly emotional, hard-hitting moments, especially of the first four episodes—they really hit the feels for me, y’know. What I don’t think about as much when I think of the anime Sousou no Frieren is its exciting, adrenaline-pumping action scenes against our characters’ own stone-made adversaries that, while would be able to rival some of the greater shounen out there, don’t reflect Frieren well enough, or its battle games that, while test our beloved characters’ combat skills and bring out their maximum potential, don’t continue proper character development or familiarize us with new characters well enough. I definitely don’t think about Frieren and her teammates’ quest to capture a bird, nor do I even sometimes remember that this mage exam they’re taking is for them to become first-class mages. And if you ask me why they want to become first-class mages… well, don’t. Speaking of the characters, yes, we’ve got Frieren with her impossible-to-break stoic demeanor masking her true emotions. We’ve got Fern and Stark (who, just saying, should REALLY board the ship), and Himmel and the rest of his party. They’re all given a good layer of depth as the anime continues (which sadly stops), and that helps to immerse the viewer, to feel more connected to both the world and characters. Cool. Now guess what I’m going to bring in next? Correct! The mage exam, as well as its characters! “They’re strangers and weren’t introduced at the start, that’s why you don’t understand them!!” No. Well, yes. And no. What I mean is: if they were introduced at the start, and weren’t too stranger, that definitely would’ve worked out better, since they’re given zero time to develop in the hectic mage exam that is almost nonstop challenge, action, battle, and whatever else falls into those categories. We don’t even know what they’re supposed to develop from—we barely know anything about them besides the fact that they’re here to become first-class mages. Having them as strong characters in this part of the anime creates such an imbalance between our Frieren and Fern we know and love, and say, characters like Übel and Denken, that they’re hardly given a chance to be expanded upon, save for Übel being known for her murderous vibe and Denken… I honestly don’t remember if they gave Denken any defining traits anymore, if there was any. One thing I thought that Sousou no Frieren did amazingly was its flashbacks that revealed Frierens past with Himmel and the others. Each flashback felt meaningful, like they had something great to convey and tell the viewer. They weren’t just ordinary flashbacks telling us, “Hey, look, Frieren had great friends and this and that, blah-blah.” These were flashbacks that not only held importance in the anime, but flashbacks that felt like genuine lessons or simply just increased the powerfulness the anime had… That is until the poison that kills—the mage exam. Thereon, in just the flick of a switch, most flashbacks shown turned into unnecessary and boring bits of the anime that almost felt like interruptions. I didn’t used to wait for Frieren and her party’s antics to end before—they were never so purposeless. Frieren and her friends of old didn’t used to have absolutely nothing to share before—their activities were never so flat. Yet there I was, staring at the screen like an idiot, at what once was fun, light, and intelligent, swapped out for dull and drab. But! But, but, but—as I’ve expressed previously, Frieren didn’t lose ALL of what it had before. Not at all. The unprecedented genre change was a sizeable tank downwards, sure, but you cannot at all mention the anime without mentioning just how beautiful studio Madhouse’s obligatorily abrupt spikes in animation quality are. It’s especially strong during the mage exam’s adrenaline-pumping action scenes, which was a big supplement to an otherwise huge loss—shit, do they look stunning or breathtaking!? Outside of the action stuff, though, the animation handling is still actually really good: fluid character movement, some wacky perspectives were handled quite well, and in general it’s really easy to watch. Though, unfortunately, some of the action scenes suffer from being nightmarishly hard to keep up with. Their really well-animated segments and coordination make my eyebrows already shoot through the roof, but hooolyyyy, my eyes trying to keep up with everything going on shoots them every-fucking-where. The scenes are amazing, but it’s kind of a ‘cool! What the hell is happening?? :D’ amazing. The animation, though, is always well-complemented by the artstyle. While whatever messy action might be playing out on screen, at least the artstyle keeps the small little tidy feel to everything. It doesn’t feel overblown by using a million filters, or so well-made it’s kind of overwhelming—it’s just simple and honest. And add unique to that. The soft, roundness of a lot of the character designs and their linework, the minimal shading, and the restrained color palette aren’t a combination you see too often, and it’s quite easy and refreshing to look at. Usually what you get these days is an overbearing amount of filters slapped onto generic character designs to pose as a cool ‘artstyle’, so upon watching the first few episodes, I was pleasantly surprised. Another supplement that almost, ALMOST, helped fill in the void was the music. Evan Call is a goddamn genius, and I cannot thank him enough for composing such beautiful music. Enthralling, exciting, calming, emotional—you’ll hear it all in this wonderful soundtrack. There are few soundtracks that really grasp my attention beyond being just unique, and this is one of the few. The action scenes’ music I especially find absolutely jaw-dropping, as they make the scenes about a hundred times stronger, and it genuinely almost made me forgive that anything had changed about the anime at all. I’m definitely listening to this soundtrack in my free time. Right now, I’m basically walking on the thin, thin tightrope that is the verge between marking this review as ‘recommended’ and ‘mixed feelings’. I’m off-balance and flailing my arms, about to fall towards the ‘recommended’ side, but something is blowing me backwards to the other side of ‘mixed feelings’. That is, the change the anime underwent with the advent of the mage exam sucked the life out of almost everything the anime had built up before—you could even say it destroyed most of it—and thereby it left a giant, lifeless void in what would’ve otherwise been a near-perfect anime. Sousou no Frieren lost sight of itself and became something it wasn’t, and while it kept some of its defining aspects like its striking animation handling done by our lovely Madhouse, and its compelling music by Evan Call that gets the heart racing and the ears soaring, it didn’t take away the fact that what I was watching wasn’t the Frieren that nearly had me shed tears, that made me feel bittersweet, that struck a chord in my heart, that intrigued me to no end, or that practically stole my heart right from the start with its sheer beauty, but the Frieren that turned the ‘meaningful’, the ‘heart-rending’ and ‘thought-provoking’, that it carried, all into shabby ‘challenge’, ‘action’ and ‘epic’. Frieren wasn’t special back then because of this shounen-esque theming, and I think many of you see the same way and can collectively agree on that. But damn, S.S. Stark ‘n’ Fern was really sailing, bruh... Did they HAVE to omit Stark from the exam? Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 18, 2023 Not Recommended
I think it’s safe to say that as time has passed, anime has gotten much, much more advanced, becoming more capable in all aspects than ever before. We’re getting some serious level-ups here in visual effects, in music, in animation handling quality, in everything you can think of. I mean, look at the Monogatari series. Sure, it’s quite old at this point (the first anime, Bakemonogatari, aired in 2009), but you can really see that studio Shaft killed it with displaying Akiyuki Shinbou’s creativity in the visual effects, worked a stellar job on the animation handling using clever techniques, and the music was, well, certainly
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not the norm. It’s VERY ahead of its time, at least in my eyes. This season’s SHY has some pretty unique visual effects too.
And that’s about it for the notable stuff in it. Think of a Krispy-Kreme donut, about to be finished and put on sale. The bagel’s fresh out of the oven and all that’s left is for the glazing to be put on. But wait, the bagel was actually half-baked, and someone dropped it on the floor by accident. On the way to the baker-thingy-whatever, someone somehow rapid-fire sneezed in every corner of the room possible, and all that stuff landed on the unbaked bagel. After being half-baked, the delicious, appetizing glazing is put on, making the bagel a finished donut, and giving it a pretty touch-up. That donut is SHY. If you didn’t catch on to anything I said, basically what SHY is, is a poorly-conveyed, poorly-directed anime with a horribly overpompous attempt at being meaningful, and flashy, over-the-top visual effects to draw people in and make the dummies think that the anime is actually good by that quality alone. I was extremely disappointed that, when I opened Crunchyroll, searched up SHY, and clicked on the title and its first episode, I was greeted with an overused excuse of a weak, insecure and socially inept MC, because I actually expected this to be something new, refreshing and different after the high and almighty visuals that came before. Instead, after upping your expectations, you’re smacked with that MC, and later presented with the most generic plotline in the world. Not just generic, but predictable as fuck too. It’s about these magical girls—ahem, superheroes—that each represent a country and together have to fight off some similarly one-dimensional villains threatening… the world? (I swear, they’re there just for the superheroes to find them and go all gung-ho on them). And all the while you are watching, it bombards you with super COOL and SLICK and MODERN visual effects and camerawork, all for you to lick up off the dirty floor. I shouldn’t have listened to the one person on an unreliable part of the internet cheering SHY on, claiming it’d be the anime of the season, because holy shit, it is not. A lot of the time there are underlying messages in anime, hidden under the surface of its main attraction. A perfect case for this kind of anime is Cossette no Shouzou, a three-episode OVA with a similar score to SHY on MAL, filled to the brim with clever and appealing visual effects, accompanied with masterful animation handling and a similarly masterful soundtrack. Its main plot is drenched in the ‘donut glazing,’ so much so that it becomes hard to understand what actually is happening anymore. SHY does the exact same thing, only it wouldn’t have been so unnecessarily bad without its 'glazing'. Cossette no Shouzou needed its fanciness to portray the rest of its story and so the viewer wouldn’t be turned away due to the weird plot behind it, but SHY on the other hand just throws it all at you with a completely normal, completely fine-on-its-own message of ‘even if you’re a socially weak mess that looks like your textbook American nerd, if you believe in yourself and gain enough courage, you can be a normal woman’. It puts all its good qualities to waste and makes everything ten times more dramatic and serious than it needed to be, and it often becomes laughable. At least it was laughable, though. You know, my expectations might have been a bit biased, as I’d seen someone praying that SHY’d be the anime of the season, and I’d also watched the PV that really, REALLY gaslighted me into thinking it’d be a unique anime. But I wasn’t expecting at all, even with my lowest expectations, that there’d be fillers. I thought we were past that era, I thought we’d learned from that. But no, no! Our author really wanted to stretch their story on and on! If these fillers were meant as a break from all the mess, they should’ve just toned the mess down, not strip the anime of its last bit of meaningful sense and reduce it to a dull and drab slice of life with no relation or necessity to the plot. It's a shame that the animation handling was actually somewhat well-worked compared to the rest of this anime. Wasted budget and effort went into animating this godawful experience, and I can’t help but feel a strange pity for the animators that worked so hard to actually make this some good eye candy and not some poorly-worked garbage of abject misery. But I’m going to beat the dead horse here and say the animation handling isn’t anything amazing. I may have praised it, but that’s just because it’s not absolute rubbish like most of everything else in this anime. There are clear flaws strewn throughout (like Pepesha literally popping into frame out of nowhere) and some questionable usages of CGI, namely with Ebio-san. More on the directorial side of things, the animation handling can sometimes, out of nowhere, get overly flashy for no reason whatsoever, especially when random trivial scenes play out as opposed to where it’s really needed: the action scenes. I love spending my time on YouTube, and I’m sure many others reading this do too. It’s an unavoidable part of the internet that’s just about held captive over two billion souls. And a big chunk of those two billion souls know the horrors of the cringy intros and outros that were prolific in every YouTube video back in the late 2010s. And now this year we had to relive that horror again, this time in the form of an anime. Not only is the OP a horrific vomit-inducing vertiginous mess of overused transitions with nauseating camerawork and overdecorative everything, but the visual effects ejaculated everywhere throughout the anime’s runtime doesn’t make it any better. That’s right, I’m bashing the visual effects even more. Oh, we’re going over a tragic event? Let’s add thirty spinning camera transitions and a snow filter so the viewer can’t see shit! Are we explaining some unnecessarily ostentatious lore that’ll change these characters’ lives forever? Let’s put on a film grain filter and make twenty-two triangles and eighteen squares ease into the screen, all starting at a thirty-four-degree angle and ending at a ninety-two-degree angle using keyframing! There might not actually be that stuff, but that’s the kind of stupidity you’ll want to expect. There’s a reason the manga is rated higher: It probably didn’t try to win a fucking Nobel Prize with dizzying visual effects like the anime did. The Nobel Prize for the most detriment to human eyes is what the anime is winning. For how outwards they went with making the visual effects look like unicorn barf, the artstyle is probably the most non-infuriating, plain and normal thing in SHY. It’s like a ‘wake the fuck up, motherfucker’ call that snaps you out of the trance the visual effects threw you into. It reminds you that you’re not always experiencing Satou Yoshiteru-style directing and xXStickyHotdogGamingXx YouTube intros. It reminds you that at least this travesty can at least be mediocre and not all crapola. What I wrote just before might be the tiny little praise I’ll give to the artstyle in light of the rest of the garbage, but I can’t find anything to criticize, which shows just how bland it is. It’s almost the same as every artstyle you see mangaka use nowadays when they’re too tired or devoid of creativity, or the artstyle big companies use when they have zero budget left to spend on the character designers. Oopsie-daisy, I just criticized it, didn’t I? Seems like we’re taking a break from all the rubbish, because now we’re talking about SHY’s music. It’s far from great, but it’s at least one look away from this eyesore of an anime. The music director knew what they were doing, appropriately picking when to play and what to play. You might be watching that one filler part of an episode I talked about, and you’d be hearing pretty carefree, light music, and a few minutes later you might be watching an action scene, a battle between superheroes and villains, and you could be hearing intense or tension-building music, or that weird piano piece that plays two chords each three times exactly… (shut up i’m not good at defining music genres ok) The music itself, though, while fitting, is reaaally uninspired and average. Okay, maybe theres a track or two that are actually a bit surprising, but that’s really it. Are ya proud of me? I don't dislike TWO things from SHY now. Go me!... Oh, back to the dumpster, are we? Let's see... so, what about the one-dimensional characters? We’ve already gone over Teru as a basic bitch in the ‘I hadn’t gone outside before this anime started’ world. The author just slapped the mundane introvert personality onto her, and there ya have it, that’s Japan’s superhero. The other superheroes surrounding her also have stereotypical and sometimes discriminatory personality traits too, like Pepesha, the superhero representing Russia, who we see as drunk more often than necessary. There’s also the useless, burdensome plot device of the anime, Koishikawa Iko, who is around more than half the time as nothing more than a superfan stalker of Teru, even after Teru failed to save her from getting injured from a disaster. As for the supervillains, they’re akin to cardboard in terms of writing. They exist for the sole reason of making this anime work, and nothing more. There is no depth to them; nothing telling us who they really are, save for a single backstory that’s so generic it hurts, and why they’re so goddamn mentally sick, but this anime just has to be some pretentious pile of garbage or else the author wouldn’t survive. It’s clear from the moment they’re introduced into the anime that they were attempted to be given a deeper, more extensive meaning, but it just doesn’t work when the characters don’t have any meaning in the first place. That was a bunch to cover, but that was my view on this season's SHY to the best my tired brain can type out. To shorten my statements, SHY is a pretentious work about superheroes fighting against evil that smacks nothing but drivel into your face by its sad attempts at giving itself meaning with backstories, wacky, over-the-top visual effects that when watching are like being sick on a rollercoaster, and its paper-thin, depthless characters. The only good stuff you’ll experience watching this is the pretty decent animation handling that was given at least some care, the average at best artstyle, and the nice but flawed music. If you’re wanting to watch something with meaning and sense in what it’s trying to achieve, SHY isn’t that. If you’re looking for dumb, sometimes agitating stuff to turn your brain off to and pay almost no mind to, SHY might be up your alley. You’re probably going to grow dumber if you try to actually pay attention to this thing anyway. Don’t end up like me. Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Nov 20, 2023 Recommended
When there are two sides opposing against each other, like, lets say there's good and evil, you would want to root for the good, right? The good could be people who are trying to save the world from the grasps of the evil, ones who could wrongly use the world for their own gain. Obviously you'd want the world to maintain the peace it holds as is, right? So you'd naturally want the good to prevail.
But that's where Shiki stops you and crosses that belief out. 'Who is the real evil?', it asks. It asks so fiercely, so unrelentingly. Sotoba is a quiet rural village closed ... from the outside world and one highway connecting to the village is the only path to access it. This highway is used by a new family who moves into Sotoba, surprising the village residents who hadn't seen new people in a while. But everything becomes even more surprising, no, horrifying, as the residents start dying around the village. The local doctor, Ozaki Toshio grows increasingly frustrated and worried as he attempts to find the cause of the deaths, and in a panic, labels it as an epidemic. Yuuki Natsuno, a reserved boy, believes something else is at play, though, and along with his friends, tries to uncover the true reason behind the deaths in Sotoba. One thing you must've come across if you know a bit about this anime is people complaining about how slow it is. Yes, it's frustratingly slow, but it's intriguing during that period. Shiki starts very, very sluggishly, taking its time to immerse the viewer, to get the viewer to know the characters and how they think and act, and just to set things up for when the anime really picks up the pace and drags you in, all the while being totally engrossing. It might not be the most obvious thing ever, but there are major plot points happening during this slow progression, things to make you feel sad, disgusted and shocked. It's not because this show is terrible that those unwanted emotions surface, it's because the show does a stellar job at surfacing those emotions to make you feel for everything. When Shiki picks up the pace as it delves deeper into the minds of its characters, these emotions are strengthened by about a million times, and add to those emotions confusion. I will not state why, but to assure you, it's not a 'what the fuck is going on' confusion. Please don't think all twenty-two episodes and the specials are just gonna be the characters trying to figure out these mysterious deaths and then, boom, they found it, woohoo! No, Shiki grabs you by the collar, throws you against a wall and hits you straight in the guts with a hard punch of realization soon enough. Shiki is different to your run-of-the-mill we-must-defeat-the-bad-guys-type anime. There's good and evil, sure, they clash in a war, yeah. But the way the story handles how these two clash is entirely different. Instead of opting for generic fighting without any depth whatsoever, like, "BAM! One shiki down, one-hundred-and-ninety-nine to go!" Shiki settles for something deeper. Before all that, it peers into the shiki's lives, their motivation, and their psychology in general. At first you're rooting for the humans, but it slowly turns away from portraying the humans as the just, and focuses more on making the shiki seem in the right. You know already about the shiki's motivation, so you're then even more inclined to root for them, but at the same time, you can't say, "Yeah, the shiki are right, the humans are wrong. Eat up the whole village, you guys," and that's the part where it's confusing. It messes with your head, and that's one point that really makes Shiki shine. Away from picking the storytelling apart, something Shiki does that's also quite different from your regular anime is the artstyle. This might be another thing you've heard about being bashed around. No one seems to even remotely like the artstyle, and I can see why. To me, it's unique, cool, and refreshing, and it didn't bother me one bit, but I think all viewers can agree that it does not fit the context of the anime whatsoever. Shiki is supposed to be a psychological horror anime, and you'd expect dark tones and a serious, or at least basic artstyle, but no. With a bright color scheme, wacky bodily structures and batshit crazy hairstyles that look like they've been put through ten tornados, Shiki's artstyle to some might seem like a failure in conveying the theme and message of the anime. Though, like I expressed before, it probably won't strike you as a terrible artstyle (it's pretty cool to me), it's just out-of-place, that's all. The animation works wonders, especially for being done by a relatively obscure studio in the early 2000s. It must've been pretty hard to animate with tornado-haired characters everywhere, after all, so there was a decent amount of effort poured in. Each character's movements flow mostly well, and there weren't any drops in quality, drops that weren't noticeable, anyway. It wasn't absolutely amazing, though, as in studio Madhouse standards, but still far from mediocre. This is probably the least exciting thing about Shiki. Where the artstyle failed, the visual effects succeeded, serving well in more conveying the creepy and depressing vibe the anime has, and in general adding that little bit of spice. Spiking things up from least exciting, Shiki is accompanied with a beautifully chilling and sad soundtrack, and (how can I begin to describe this?), it's like... by itself, it immerses you in the anime. Forget those two paragraphs dissecting the storytelling for a second. Imagine yourself just watching some random fight sequence between, I don't know, two toddlers? Put Shiki's music over it, and it becomes a hundred times more powerful. You'd be immersed in that fight, waiting to know who'll land the next uppercut, if toddlers can even do that. Suddenly it's as if those two toddlers have the whole world on the line. That's how amazing Shiki's soundtrack is. Now watch Shiki while some of its best tracks are playing, and you'll be lost for words (and thought, it's that mind-numbingly good). It fits perfectly with every scene. There's a depressing track, a suspenseful track, a creepy track, an emotional track, a goofy track, a track with every fucking emotion combined—it's all in the soundtrack. You can just hear behind everything the sadness and chilling tone of the music, even when there isn't something big happening and it's not one of the best tracks. I have to applaud Takanashi Yasuharu for composing such beautiful and compelling music. I've always told people that if they won't watch the anime, then they should listen to the soundtrack, because if they're not even a little bit more convinced to watch the anime after listening, or even worse, think the soundtrack is bad, then they're hopeless. As I'm typing this up, I'm listening to the track "Eau de Vie", and you should be too. Unlike the soundtrack varying its tone, delivery and sometimes its genre, Shiki's voice actors are consistent. Speaking for the Japanese voice actors, they are never bad or even good; they're DAMN good, and all throughout. Each character expresses the right amount of emotion every bit of the way through. Never exaggerated, and never played down. This is the type of voice acting needed in anime. As for the dub, coming from Funimation, you'd expect the same level of production considering their other okay-level dubs, but they really reeled in some amazing voice actors with this one. I'd say it compares just as well to the Japanese version, maybe sometimes performing better. I feel they picked the perfect English voice actor for Natsuno. He speaks just like some antisocial and cold teen jaded with just about everything. If you prefer dub over sub, you won't be getting cheap stuff, that's for sure. Something we all like to avoid is annoying and unlikeable traits in characters. We want to see characters that we like and can root for, not characters that piss us the hell off and give us a distaste for the anime. Too bad, Shiki is chock-full of them! But they're unlikeable and realistic, and they'd be better of being so. The reason no one likes the characters in Shiki is because we expect them to all be badass vampire hunters ready to stab any vampire coming their way in the heart. All the village residents are completely normal human beings, influenced by normalcies what is morally right and what is morally wrong, and what is considered real. Most can't just up and accept that vampires—in this case, the shiki—have started invading their village and killing the village off. If you were in their situation before all the chaos, living your relaxed life in Sotoba, would you believe Dr. Ozaki, your waka-sensei, when he tells you, "Yoooooo, min'na! So I just found out the cause of the deaths and it's vampires, baby."? Of course not! And now, to address the elephant in the room, Muroi Seishin, who we all hate for reasons I won't explain, else I'd spoil a big chunk, is very well-written. Yes, he sucks, he should probably off himself, as one of you who have watched the anime might suggest, but he's undeniably very well-fleshed-out. There are signs left that, though very subtly, suggest he is a misanthropist, and that's more than enough reason for him to go down the unlikeable character path. Another thing mentioning the characters (and this is targeted directly at those that've watched Shiki) is the way the anime sentimentalizes the shiki. Many claim that it's a poor attempt at romanticizing the little pests and that the way it does so is pretentious, but you have to view the humans' side too. The shiki aren't the only things which are changed and morphed into something completely different. By the end, you'll be disgusted at the humans' actions and that's why the shiki are made to look like the ones in the right, not just because the anime showed the reason the shiki do what they do. And then, coming back to the paragraphs picking apart the storytelling, again you're left with mixed emotions on who to side with. In actuality, you can't side with anyone, and so all the sentimentalization amounts to equally as much sentimentalization the humans have. The point is to have you scratching your head. There may have been a certain degree of effort put into romanticizing the shiki, but it ultimately wasn't the point of the anime. Out of all the anime I've watched so far, there hasn't been an anime that's been so well-crafted in its storytelling, messaging, and had me feeling more emotion, than Shiki. The anime's an amazing blend of horrifyingly sad and terrifying moments, with an intent to really make the viewer think who and what is really evil. You might get a bit bored during the start of the show, as it takes a while to pick some speed up, but I'll tell you, you'll be greatly rewarded for your patience. The artstyle might be a little strange and off-putting, considering how 'frighetened' you'll feel throughout the show, but it shouldn't be much of a bother if you're not too nitpicky, and it just looks cool in general. All of that, though, is all majorly made up for by the great animation, the absolutely stunning soundtrack, the skilled cast of voice actors fitting every character, and the realness and humanity in all the characters, even in the shiki. If you're looking to watch something with strong messaging and emotional weight, Shiki is something to consider watching. And you won't go a week without thinking about how amazing it is. Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Sep 29, 2023
Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuuutsu
(Anime)
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Cat owners usually clean up after their cats; we clean our cats’ litter tray, their food bowl, and their fur off furniture and other objects. We usually have to do checkups with the vet to ensure our cats are healthy, and that’s only a few of the things we need to do. But what if there was a cat that not only takes care of itself, but is an absolute clean freak, cooks meals for its owner and makes sure its owner is healthy? It wouldn’t be us that would clean up after the cat, it would be it cleaning up after us! Well, meet
...
Yukichi from Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuuutsu, or The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today. With him, you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping your lifestyle at home organized again! (Do watch out for when you tick him off though).
So, you’re probably wondering, how the heck did owner and cat switch roles? I’ll give a short explanation here: Fukuzawa Saku is a woman who works at an office and comes home drunk nearly every day. Her life at her apartment room is a total mess because she can’t for the life of her clean anything up or cook properly! She lives alone so there isn’t really anyone that could really assist her. So, when Saku takes in a stray cat from outside and names it ‘Yukichi’, her lifestyle would begin to take a turn. Little did she know, this cat would grow and grow... until it was bigger than a normal human! Moreover, the cat would start to take care of Saku and her apartment room and learn to go outside for groceries! So that’s how all of this started. Dekineko is a mostly chill slice of life-ish comedy anime focusing around our two main characters, Saku and Yukichi. Saku is usually the one to start all the funny stuff by being lazy, drunk, and trying to hide from her coworkers that she has a giant cat in her house. Yukichi is always cleaning up after her, is always reluctant to give her alcohol and attempts to wake her up for work, but most of the time she ends up oversleeping anyway. It’s kind of like a battle between the two, except Saku only wants her fix of alcohol and time off from work. That’s all this anime really is about – it’s so simple and I love it. Something to give praise to is the animation handling. A few of us have seen what GoHands has done with Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta this season, and the animation handling and art in that is quite a bit nauseating. It seems they’ve toned down on the 2.5D animation thing in this anime, which, thank goodness, works perfectly. (However, the first few minutes do use 2.5D animation which wasn’t a very good first impression for me. Don’t be fooled though!!!). The animation handling is clean and feels smooth. It’s not stiff but the animators didn’t bust their guts trying to animate in fifty frames a second, either… although there are some scenes where the characters look like they use sixty bottles of conditioner a day, which looks ridiculous. There is barely any use of 3D except for some cars and sometimes the background. The artstyle that’s used fits really well with the animation handling. Nothing is overdone, but it definitely doesn’t look generic. I especially liked the way they designed the eyes. It’s kinda like the way the eyes in Steins;Gate look if they didn’t have the white dot in the center. Some expressions the characters make are quite ridiculous but honestly, they work just fine, especially since it’s a comedy anime. They have quite a bit of variety to them too, so you won’t be fed the same thing expecting to laugh each time. One gripe I do have is the lighting in the anime, especially at daytime. It’s kind of weird and hard to look at and ruins a bit of the enjoyability. It does have a nice realistic air to it though. Unlike many other comedy anime, Dekineko has a good selection of music. What do I mean by a good selection? It’s balanced and nothing sounds like it came from a random royalty-free music site. Not every track portrays “Haha, lol!!”, there are some genuinely good tracks you could just vibe to by itself without it feeling weird. The sound effects are also a nice touch; they really add to the whole funny vibe without feeling intrusive. There’s also a narrator. All in all, Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuuutsu is a fun little comedy anime with slice of life elements mixed in. Our two main characters have a hilarious dynamic together; it’s a friendly-fire war between a clean freak and a messy freak, and you’ll enjoy just about every moment. From Fukuzawa Saku’s tiring work life and funnily disorganized lifestyle, to Yukichi and his obsessive cleanliness disorder, to meeting new people who think Yukichi is just a man in a costume, to, uh… well… that’s basically all this anime is about. Yet it’s such an enjoyable anime! Even if half of the anime is set in Saku’s apartment room, it’s all about her and Yukichi’s chaotic and hilarious life there. Trust me, you're never gonna wanna leave Yukichi after watching this. Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 22, 2023
Tonikaku Kawaii: Joshikou-hen
(Anime)
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Listen, I tried reeeaaal hard not to knock my head on a wall out of boredom while watching this. I’d already endured the rest of season two by that point, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. Thump… thump… went my head as I repetitively knocked it against a wall. As repetitively as how this anime is written.
Enervating, I believe, is the correct term for describing how mindlessly written Tonikaku Kawaii: Joshikou-hen or TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You – High School Days is. The series gaslights you into thinking it’s good with the first season, smacks you in the face with a boulder of ... boredom with the second, and then produces this ONA, a copy of the second season, only much weaker in delivery. Dry comedy, characters that’d perform better in a puppet show, and agonizing repetition. Oh, man, is it frustrating to be fed the same shit ad nauseam. For those who don’t already understand why this thing is a waste of time, I’ll provide a short synopsis: Yuzaki Nasa starts teaching at an all-girl’s school and gets along pretty well with the students, meanwhile one particular student(?) at the school whom the others refer to as “Princess” is supposedly as smart as Nasa. Besides that, you’ve got a replica of season two, with an even more terribly-written mystery. How much can they milk out of this series?? I’m 90% sure the main reason people stayed till this point of the series is because “OoOHh lOoK! A GenUiNE mArRiED CoUpLE, Oh mY FUCkINg GoD!!” as if that single quality makes everything ten times better. No. No, it doesn’t. What’s so different about a romcom with a married couple? That they live together? That they get more intimate? Really, so this passes as good romance anime now? Besides the whole married couple craze, this is basically your everyday slice-of-life romcom, just with terrible comedy. The thing is, slice-of-life anime like this heavily relies on its characters and how they’re written, designed, what their personalities are, etc. Unfortunately, Nasa and Tsukasa here are less than amusing or interesting and the side characters are comically… bad. They tried to make this ONA somewhat interesting with the character Gekkou Kaguya, the student who is referred to as “Princess” by others. The thing that’s funny about her is that she’s presented in a way that suggests she’s some mysterious antagonist or something. She’s got dark clothing with a mask concealing her lower face, like some cyberpunk-ninja or whatever. Why??? If the writer intended Kaguya to be some sort of mysterious enemy, they could’ve designed and written her a lot better; she’s waaayyy too overexaggerated. She’s like that anyway, probably as a last-ditch effort to pull this whole thing out of the depths of the Boredom River. Now, I might be really wrong about Kaguya. What if she turns out to be the final boss that Nasa and Tsukasa must fight against using their love? That could totally happen in a later season. For all I care, though, this is the last piece of Tonikaku Kawaii media I’ll be consuming, so I won’t really know what happens with her. The romantic dilemmas were another failed attempt at making this less generic. Except the dilemmas are overused tropes, ultimately resulting in the ONA becoming more generic and your brain beginning to short-circuit. Man, don’t you love it when anime tries to make itself unique by not making itself unique? I know I don’t. It's time for more insult to injury!!!! This time the ONA had a good setting to work with, unlike with season two. Nasa teaches at an all-girls school and Gekkou Kaguya is the mysterious character! This should be interesting, right? …No. There was an opportunity for an actual good comedy anime, and maybe there could’ve been a good bit of mystery in there, too! There was such a unique setting to work with, yet it’s as if nothing changed from season two. There was no improvement on the characters, no improvement on the story, nothing. It’s probably because there’s no character development left for Nasa and Tsukasa, which is an example of why romance anime like this just doesn’t work. When is it ever fun to just look at a married couple do mundane married couple things with no such aim or development? Exactly, it isn’t. If everything was executed well like in season one and was written with much more creativity and less feeling like the writer asked the Google Bard AI to create a script for a romcom with some weird mysterious character, maybe this wouldn’t feel so irritatingly dry. Nasa and Tsukasa’s love in the first season seems much more natural and less awkward, and there were moments that kept you engaged and wanting more. There was room for character development which meant things wouldn’t get so boring. Unfortunately, after season one, room for character development vanished and the writer was so out of ideas that they couldn’t get their head out of the clouds trying to think of something good. For better romcom anime, I’d recommend these shows: Komi-san wa, Komyushou desu. (Komi Can’t Communicate) Kawaii dake ja Nai Shikimori-san (Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie) Or for if you’re feeling wacky, Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan (Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan) Sorry if you’ve seen all of ‘em. I’m not a seasoned romcom-er. I don’t really have much else to say without this becoming a review of the second season as well, so I’ll end it around here. If you want to waste time watching more of the unfunny married couple, the soulless side characters that surround them and a failure of an interesting “mysterious character” and story, check this ONA out. It’s better to put it on in the background rather than pay attention to anything, since there’s nothing worth watching. Unless you want a quick way to fall asleep. If you’re looking for something that’s worth your time, though, you’ve stopped at the wrong entry on MyAnimeList. Thank you for reading my review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jul 23, 2023 Recommended Preliminary
(3/12 eps)
Alright, let’s see what all the noise is about.
Zom 100: Zombie ni Naru made ni Shitai 100 no Koto, or better known by its English title, Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is a zombie-themed anime centered around the shenanigans of our main character, Tendou Akira and his survival in a zombie apocalypse. In this review, my main goal is to try and find the answer to this question: where is all the praise coming from? Tendou Akira finds a job at an office and at first, everything seems what your everyday office workplace would be like. But as Akira continues to work there, he ... finds his job extremely draining and abnormally rough. Turns out that office is exploitative, and Akira is just another person who has fallen into the trap the office has laid. One day he wakes up, ready to continue his dreadful work life, when suddenly he sees the streets swarming with zombies! And that’s when Akira realizes he doesn’t have to work anymore. And so, he creates a bucket list of what he wants to do now that he’s free. Within the first episode, the show establishes the setting our main character is in. It’s simple and easy to understand. This bodes well for the rest of the show’s enjoyability. Here’s one of the weak points. How many zombie survival films or TV shows are out there? 50? 100? Maybe even 1000? Zom 100 might just be another one of those. On paper, it looks pretty cool, but when you actually think about it, it’s not very interesting. This guy finds himself in a zombie apocalypse and must survive. He’s finally free from his job, so makes a bucket list of what he wants to do and completes those bucket list goals throughout the show. It’s kind of underwhelming. Besides the gimmick, it’s just one of the many zombie survival shows out there – albeit one of the better ones – which isn’t too good a sign. This is where most of the praise comes from: the animation handling. It’s probably one of the best this season. I haven’t watched and don’t want to watch Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 or Mushoku Tensei Season 2, so I found this to be the best. The way the characters move and the flow of everything makes for nice cinematic scenes. Studio BUG FILMS did an extraordinary job as the main animators behind this. The colors are nice. In my previous reviews I didn’t write about the art or color since to me they weren’t anything worth mentioning, but I feel like I need to write about this. The way the blood is all multicolored might seem strange at first, but soon enough you’ll realize how cool an aesthetic it is. It’s not the typical red that we always see, which is a nice change from everything. The way all the colors are saturated is done nicely, too. Usually, zombie anime and any horror anime tone their colors down a little to fit the mood. Since Zom 100 is both horror and comedy at the same time, saturated colors work, and in a pleasing way. The music is pretty good. The background music is chosen well, as the tracks fit with every scenario they are used in. A serious scene? A serious track. A funny scene? A funny track. You get it. Every track’s placement is great. They’re not just always the techno-rock-whatever-the-hell tracks that would be used in a typical zombie anime either; they actually have a variety of different-styled tracks throughout the show. I’m not too great with analyzing music, so interpret that however you want. The OP is an angry track but isn’t anything creepy or horror-ish. This fits well with the theme of Zom 100, as the show doesn’t try to be too horror-focused and instead focuses on survival, where the angriness of the track fits well. The ED is also nice, being focused more on the lighthearted side of the anime. The lyrics actually relate to the anime in a way and how survival is necessary, even in the state the world is in. Two well-chosen tracks. I give Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead a solid “watch” for this season. Overall, this anime is a great zombie survival anime that does things right. It strays ever so slightly away from most other shows of the same ilk, and in a good way. The idea of it being another zombie anime with a gimmick might not be so great but, that’s made up for by the phenomenal animation handling, the strange but cool use of colors and the fitting music. Give this a try, you won’t dislike it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 19, 2023 Not Recommended Preliminary
(3/12 eps)
Isekai, oh isekai. The one genre that never seems to change. Well, sometimes it adds a minor twist to each show, but it’s not like it helps make them much better. Isekai is essentially what a writer resorts to when they have zero ideas. That way they can pour their last two braincells into whatever story they make without it being rejected by publishers, which makes for unoriginal and dull material and later for some reason that material gets adapted into an anime.
Jidou Hanbaiki ni Umarekawatta Ore wa Meikyuu wa Samayou or Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon is yet ... another example of a show that falls into the never-ending spiral of unoriginality and bland writing that is isekai. The story isn’t very exciting, really. It’s once more your typical “x died and now x is reincarnated into another world” story. It only ever adds one twist which is that the main character gets reincarnated as a vending machine and can dispense your average vending machine items. These items prove to be useful to people around him. The people find a way to communicate with the vending machine… and then the story goes on like a typical isekai. (And somewhat like Akame ga Kill?? Take that with a grain of salt, though.) For the sake of spoilers up to the third episode and to save me from writing the rest of the mundane shiz, I won’t elaborate further, but I’ll assume you know what I mean. The animation handling is just okay. No major flaws to it, but we’ve seen much better. It doesn’t stand out but serves well for the show. Honestly, a higher budget would’ve been a waste, so a mediocre budget is better than anything else. It just fits with the anime, you know? The comedy is the weakest point of the show. It just isn’t funny no matter what. I can see some seven-year-old getting a chuckle out of this and that’s it. Now this might be due to my preference of gag humor over normal comedy, but a normal comedy would at least have me grinning once or twice. Not this, though. My face stayed rock solid and unmoving. Actually, it’s like they didn’t even try to make it funny. The demographic I assume would be young teens, but honestly, in this day and age, I can’t see anyone like that cracking even a smile at this show. Now, as for the music, the background music isn’t too special. it’s just… isekai music. I know, I’ve put music used in an isekai into a subgenre of itself. It’s reminiscent of every isekai soundtrack ever. If I recall correctly, there’s one trancey-techno track that breaks through the rest of the stale soundtrack, but that’s all. Now on to the better side. The OP is pretty good. It’s a pretty funky track and sets the mood well. It’s good to know that it isn’t just another generic J-pop opening and that the director actually thought about using something unique, but sadly, the ED takes “unique” the wrong way. The ED feels like it was ripped straight out of a children’s or slice of life anime, and overall doesn’t work. A very strange choice for an ED. I wouldn’t recommend this anime if you’re looking for something to watch this season. The comedy appeals to no-one; it’s unfunny and you’ll probably only manage a weak smile. The animation handling is the best bit of this show, but sadly even that only reaches a “fair” rating. And finally, the music was a bag of strange and bland. If you plan on watching this show, just consider that it’ll probably be another uninteresting isekai to you. Aren’t the anime community and audiences in Japan tired of these isekai shows already? The anime industry is basically repeating itself over and over again with shows like this. It’s as if isekai is becoming a trademark that defines anime just as shounen has done, except most shounen aren’t repetitive or lackluster in ideas. If isekai shows were kept to a minimum and the writers didn’t rush to come up with ideas, maybe they’d be more enjoyable than now. Thank you for reading my review. (this hunk of mindless text is so borung that i'm on the verge of deleting the review. i've deleted enough of my old reviews already, though, so this snorefest is off the hook for now. for some reason some preliminary reviews pop up on already-aired shows, so right now i'm at the mercy of MAL's new shitty review system. if you're reading this, the fuck are you doing and go read my BETTER reviews (or worse, if you for whatever reason prefer to put yourself to sleep by torturing yourself over being entertained) Now I TRULY thank you for reading my review, as well as this note I added at 5 AM out of pure insomnia-driven boredom.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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