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Kaijuu Mid-Gou

Imagine you have your average shounen story but replace the classic, average, hot-headed, dumbass, boystrous, shouting over the top MC with an older fellow.

You're thinking... Wow, what a treat! The most annoying part of shounen is gone and we can enjoy some good story telling with a realistic edge, a focus on strategy rather than boring obligitory 1v1 fights mid-piece style. The Writer will explore deeper into aspects of the monsters to give a more immersive and engaging edge.
When chinese shows undergo a premise like this they usually understand how to make knowledge, strategy, and wisdom with experience take centre stage in ... the fighting, dialogue and discourse in the show. So they can't possibly screw this up right?

Wrong.

What we got was exactly the same archetype MC we're used to but now we can spam old-man jokes on him. This moron does and speaks the exact same as your cookie cutter shounen MC in his teens, but he's double their age. It makes no sense it's unsufferable and it's not even funny. Let's give him another obligatory simp Mantra which he will parrot reducing his dialogue to the realm of the walking toddler.

Let's add a couple of from-birth stupidly overpowered girls. These annoying little tramps proceed to non-challantly and trivially oblilterate kaijuu who everyone else is stonewalled using strategies to defeat using the preposterously fashioned "combat suit scaling". All of the fun, and curious tension of strategic victories just thrown to the coal to empower these two total shell characters. They, in turn get overpowered by random antagoinst jobber so we can do damsel in distress routine after those girls step on him, socially, physically and mentally. This medium has been taken over by underdog story merchants.

There's the concept of purposeful writing, where characters put on display are utilized efficiently by skilled and experienced writers using the major traits and attributes they differ from others. If a person is older by 10 years etc he's supposed to have a mental advantage if the writer knows what they are doing. On the contrary we instead get Asta with a beard and a pot belly. In refusing to make the corrrect moves in writing, they pretend to appear unique but in their mediocrity they end up on the same level as novice works. Why make him older when you don't utlize the advantages in being an elder?

This MC's goal isn't anything profound, it's a woman, he wants to be close to a woman. A woman who after watching the entire 12 episodes isn't even worth a penny. A woman who did absolutely nothing to help him reach the goal he wants. A woman who doesn't even acknowledge him till she saves her and her entire company from getting point blank nuked. The utter lack of compassion and humility shown to a man who in the flashbacks(utterly insufferable) taught her what she shows and what allowed her to reach these "heights" is just unbearable. This guy is on his knees to a teenage girl at least twice during the first few episodes. This ludicrous progamming conditions the masses to just eat up this boring predictable tsundere simp programming. No girl who really respects you will behave like this.

"Kaijuu" this name is disrespected like no other, these jobbers are going 0-30 against test applicants. Massive 10 story beasts getting one shotted by bullets. Most of them move like robots not beasts they just exist to die, and get destroyed barely fighting back. The most interesting part about them was right at the start of the show, a segment about cleaning out intensitinal waste from the Kaijuus' deceased bodies. They catfished us because it never got that nuanced again despite having such massive potential.

The sponging is insane, it's absolutely fine if giant 10-20 story giga-titans tank bullets and slashes all day, but humans in sleek, skin tight combat suits shouldn't survive 50-ton+ force crushing blunt-force blows from these beasts several times. They don't even have combat-helmets on but their heads aren't crushed from the utterly overwhelming pressure. Let's not even begin to talk about the amount of times they are drilled through like a nail through paper and it almost seems they have the regerenative powers the monsters do.

Characters are thankfully less terrible than the MC, but there's barely anyone likable and no one is funny despite desperately trying to be. I'm not going to laugh at old man deprecation jokes, im not going to laugh at tsudere routines and absolutely nothing was organically funny. Not to mention how poor and forced alot of the dialogue is. Honestly this show needed to be all Male, it would really solve it's story telling issues and it would rely less on the genuine nonsense of combat suit power amplication. It would make the idea of a 27 year old Squad captain seem utterly riduculous, let alone a female one. But you can't sell to the masses with a show that makes total sense nowadays. We have the kind of audience that highly rates garbage like Wistoria, this show and Oshi no Ko, while calling the decent at best "Frieren" show a total masterpiece.

Plot? there is none, it's just unexpected ambush after ambush after ambush. His power-up is an ambush, no logical and thought-out backstory he just gets jumped by his power-up and that's all. Will he engage in training to use his power-up effectively and efficiently? no he will just ambush us with his unfounded profeciency with his unothordox skills. The only thing that pushes this show along is continuous spontaneous ambushes, till a monster gets big enough for MC to stomp with his overpowered abilities. It calls into question how life in such a city is even possible despite constant unpredictable kaijuu attacks leaving entire city blocks inoperable. It gets stale by the end of it, I kind of wished that instead of MC saving all these guys he actually was an enemy agent who had to kill them. It would give MC so much more nuance as well as a much better character. That kind of story would accentuate the tension and multiply the stakes in the lack of knowledge of his idenity or poweres..

So why did i finish it? I made a promise that i would stick around as long as the MC continued to hide his powers. This kind of suspense was the only thing keeping me watching. However, by the time he revealed them to the world I was in too deep so you can understand the only logical thing was to complete it.

Of course the animation was it's saving grace, genuinely good animation, not the best but nice to watch and perspective and consistency was present in the proportion and angles of the fighting. The OP and ED were quite good and it was generally pleasant to hear it's eoundtrack. It was another thing that kept me going, there was generally at least a fight every episode so for weekly watcheres i bet they were entertained. But for bingers like me it's all a smokescreen hiding how poor it is a general package beneath it's production.

Final Rankings

Animation 8
Sound 8
Story 3
Characters 3
Enjoyment 5
26/50 - 5.2/10 - 5/10

Here we have a truly average show but it's slightly entertaining, however i've had my fill i will not be returning for a second season.

Hope this helps.

Yes my dear readers, It's Guilty Crown all over again... These scores cannot be trusted.

A show so bad that even with such great fight animation it couldn't keep me watching.. It's crazy, i started this show, watched 2 episodes, stopped and watched 2 entire animes then came back to the thrid episode and dropped it.

But i've got to give credit to Guilty Crown, its soundtrack is one of the greatest ever, truly 10/10 so i at least managed to survive till the 11th episode.

It's a shame coming from Danmachi's author but it's also telling as the character dynamics are rather similar, while they made far ... more sense in Danmachi they are utterly unothorthodox and awkward here.

What's wrong?

Outside of fights and music? Everything...
Where are the parents? Where are the elders?
The past of these characters suck.
The present journey doesn't exist. because he's already thanos and they start the show in his sixth year of school.
The end goal is in essensce worthless.
0 likeable characters.

I don't even think better direction could have saved this, the source is just as bad for the story telling.

Personality cannot be good if it isn't real or believeable. You aren't kind if your efforts are pure unbridled stupidity that gets bailed out by plot armor. The characters are just so stiff, genuinely statues. Characters that are snatched from the jaws of death and put up a tough act without gratitude.

The hero journey doesn't really exist, he's already incredibly strong, stronger than his teachers it seems. All we get are flash-backs and his occasional remarks of how he knows he can beat this because of his former experiences, which we don't get to see so we're just stuck here hungry for those experiences. It's a real shame because this premise needs a hero's journey to be decent or we've literally got nothing to watch. We know there's no romance because these MC's are always dense. We got a glimpse of the dialogue and it's trash. Why even continue to watch the show?

The MC is insufferable garbage, a kid who whilst being completely overpowered has zero ego. "But isn't that a good thing?" you ask.
No, because it's wholly unrealistic, immersion-breaking and boring. These characters are not real ,they don't react to their environment or present circumstances because they are just devices that stick to their archetype. Once your brain is on it's almost unwatchable.
I'm 3 episodes in and he has zero mentors? where's the old man that taught him to be this strong? this kind of omission is an utter joke in writing. He should be wailing against magic and taunting those gifted people but instead he's gawking and lapping up all the praise for it whilst being locked out from birth.

I can't be the only one who's sick of these constant bastard poor, omnibenevolent, niceguy underdog stories but they're not really underdogs because they have some overpowered ingrained skill/power. It's not just that, but if the writers had any tact reguarding this setup then they'd realize how prone a person with a background like this is to character flaws and destroying any lasting future success without proper guidance. But they're somehow "perfect" in character. It makes me sick to my stomach when the dialogue makes them almost apologize for existing as if it's some feat of kindness. All the girls come early but the MC is never drawn away but you look-up any man in real life with such history and you'll find it almost impossible. They refuse to exploit anything with any potential cruelness wiped out in writing. They never kill their enemies or harbor a real and tangeable greivance, grudge or revenge against anyone. I've had enough. just give me a rich kid with parents who's a greedy goblin devoid of morals, it's far more interesting that way at least i'll finish a show like that. Isn't it strange how in the past we've had this kind of main character done well as they keep a mentor or parents around to guide them intimately and reign them in when the character flaws start to manifest. We have lost this skill in writing across the board, many of these newer writers do not know history let alone understand the present.

The "goal" or should i say his little childhood girlfriend who's one of the strongest alive whilst being a mage barely of highschool age. Yeah, a Mage, you know the class that only reaps the greatest fruit in older ages when writing with some sense.

You start to wonder......
Why is he here if he's learning nothing and he can never use magic?
Isn't there some swordsman academy?
Why does she have to be the goal when she can just bring him along or visit him, or stay with him etc?
What is the need for this distance?
Why is she "waiting for him" when she can just help him like any sane woman who actually cares about someone would do?
She's literally upstairs, Why are they pretending she lives in the stars?

Also if your using your brain correctly, you'll wonder why it seems like he's having first year school problems in the sixth year of school.
His relationships all seem new rather than old.

None of these questions are answered in the first 3 episodes....

The point is, if this kid has any rational thought at all, other than some played out simp fantasy story we've seen time and time again, then he truly has no reason to do any of what he's doing.

It's superficial, there's no joy in watching this outside of the fights, but then the fights suffer because there's zero weight behind the fighting since it's all pointless. The monsters exist to die, they may do something interesting for shock value at the start of the fight to make you think that they're going to actually effect the plot but then end up as jobbing punching bags. Crushing humans then having those very same humans appear fine the very next episode.

This magic system? not explained well enough and any system that allows a middle school girl to sit amongst the titans of the region isn't really worth exploring anyways. They try to create a credit scoring system but it falls apart by the third episode because the direction is all over the place. He just decides to do something and does something else randomly the next episode, the consistency is rather absent.

This dialogue is terrible, characters just reaffirming stuff we already know instead of just talking normally about their present situation and surroundings like sentient human beings. There's no nuance or advanced thinking just played out tropes. These are after all children, their personalities are highly moldable to traumatic life events. No one has their live saved in their teens and doesn't drop there on their knees thanking their hero and God sincerely for that. There's no bully that hates you that much for something you cannot control, especially if you turn out to be strong like him. There's no girl that loves you so much that she willingly of her own volition goes as far as posisble away from you. If the twist is that she doesn't really love him, and we get some kind of betrayal it would make far better sense, but with the level of the writing and the direction, it just seems impossible for something like this to happen. Mind you he's in the Sixth year, i mean these problems get resolved in the first few years then the character dynamics are never this volatile in later years.

The art is quite good but where it really shines is in motion. The movement of the MC in the fights with the ability use and activation it looks so smooth and experessive. It's obviously wasted on this. That's the best i can say.

This esteeemed author Fujino Ōmori he's had more than 10 years experience i didn't know how he managed to make this so much worse than DanMachi, i mean S2 DanMachi was complete garbage but i had no idea he could stoop this low.

Ranking (Prelim only 3 episodes)

Animation - 8
Soundtrack - 6
Story and Plot - 2
Characters - 2
Enjoyment - 3(4 enjoyment for episode 1&2 and -1 from) 3

21/50
4.2/10 - 4/10 Avoid like the plague

I initially held off on this as i knew it was a bit overrated, but never new it was acutally this bad. All the flashy animation, for nothing.

Hope this helps.

Another great season for bingers, and another reason, i explicitly suggest that you cannot and should never take this show in bite-size portions.
This is a "Page Down", "Press Next" show, you have to keep going, skipping and stoppages are detrimental to the pleasure of this ordeal.

You need to be a man of patience and endure the full episodes in longer sessions. I couldn't imagine foolishly waiting a week after each episode, it sounds like a nightmare. Perhaps if I was waiting around watching this weekly, I would have gone mad and cried like most of these reviews did. You're aboslutely butchering the experience for ... yourself.

8bit have made this a very comfortable binge , I effortlessly flew 20 whole episodes in a single session. I've always said whilst watching this show, it's one of the only shows with such depth and wisdom in discourse that i don't even notice the time go by.

The show does what it does best with it's terrific dialogue, powerful character direction and long engaging conversations filled with insight and thoughtfulness and tact. There are so many characters, yet it never drowns you and each seem important in the grand-scheme of things. I just think nothing else but to press the next button for the next episode. Episodes will just be an entire meeting and i'd never even think of being bored in the slightest. They explore many small details and viewpoints and get the mind going as you learn more about the world. It's truly a rare brain on-experience and you will suffer if you're not the type to think when watching these shows.

Pacing is just perfect for me, they flesh out most things they introduce quite thoroughly and give you time to take everything in. The only problem is that I'll have to wait months to years for the next season.

You look at the public response and my words so far seem utterly ludicrous. On the contrary I think expectations are very different. Every show needs seasons like this where it's alot calmer, more character and dialogue focused. It keeps the pace at a healthy level and tempers the world-building keeping it sane, realistic and immersive. People complain about cuts all the time, but when they actually slow it down and show you everything there are stilll complaints. it seems people dislike not having random fight scenes thrown in every 2 episodes. It's the same response i saw to Goblin Slayer 2 which was a great season aswell but if there isn't some kind of existencial giga-crisis every season apparently nothing happened according to many of these viewers. I simply don't understand their displeasure.

This series has clear phases and you really have to be engrossed into the experience to understand it. Initially he lacked power and influence so the tension lied within his lack of those things with the exhilarting uphill battle it took to gain those things and it was a joy to watch. Everyone was happy during that phase. We are in a different phase due the power, wealth and people he has accumulated and the tension lies more in dialogue, influence and liasion with most of it outside of the battlefield. It's evident that even when politics is done well most people simply don't have the mental fortitude to enjoy such things. This, of course, makes relief moments such as the Tournament Arc very important. With a decrease of these more people-pleasing fight scenes they do have to be handled better to continue to satisfy the fans which hold the battles in such high regard. They serve as a relief from the dialogue which others just don't appreciate.

There are of course many valid complaints.....

The animation was definitely not as strong as S2 but not bad in the least.

I will say, It's all too easy at this point, Rimuru's has gathered all the powerhouses and they're just so incredibly valuable to him in advice and influence allowing him to dodge every obstacle possible on his road to success. His biggest obstacle is practically his own complacency, whilst adequate for his current position, for many viewers who aren't able to hold their attention during extended sessions or made the mistake of watching a series like this weekly, it's evidently too frustrating for them.

It was unfortunately a painfully average tournament Arc(2 eps). It's a 7 fight tourney with far too many forfeits. If this Arc was longer i'm sure much of public perception would have increased. Im sure most people were just craving the fight scenes which are always a blessing in this show.

They did alright in the general sound of the show, however the soundtrack in general could have been stronger.

My biggest problem is the same after every-season perhaps even more so after this one, which is the.... "It's over already?" and "Where's the rest of it?" problem. I just want more and i want it now. Hopefully this movie and the next season come quick, they've honestly left us TENSURA fans hungrier than we ever been.

Final Rankings

Animation 8
Sound 8
Characters 10
Story 9
Enjoyment 10

45/50 - 9/10 - Recommended

If you're in deep into the world of this series, obviously this is unskippable unmissable greatness which i will eventually rewatch.
Make sure you have alot of free time before you attempt to do this. You must watch handfuls at a time or you risk ruining your own immersion and souring the taste of the series.

Im off to finally watch tensura nikki and the other non-movie adaptations i have yet to watch to satiate my apetite.

If you haven't started it yet it's 72 episodes of some the greatest isekai has to offer, take a few days out and just enjoy the binge.

Hope this helps.

It's as if i watched a completely different show....

I'm here to tell you all to ignore these negative reviews and watch it for yourself, stop following the sheep and come into this experience with an open mind.
Personally i thought i would just start one episode, then go to bed, but here i am finishing the entire thing in that same sitting, ruining my sleep schedule.

The "people" want a big plot, "the people" want to be lead on like a pig chasing a carrot on a stick. They want to be bombarded whilst being overstimulated with plot points collocated with character motivations that lead no-where all ... crammed tightly into 12 episodes. They want proper logic thrown out the window, fantasy worlds practically and mechanically abandoning reality simultaneously losing all wisdom in writing. They'll just lap up progressive programming with unorthodox sexual themes shoved down their throats. They'll larp and pontificate about how "relatable", "wholesome" and "stoic" a young school girl's life is to their own as a man in their 20s. They'll praise animation for having a split-second frame you have to pause the video to see. There's just no hope anymore trusting the popular vote.

Here we have no massive overarching plot, no major goal MC has to complete. We have a plot which starts small and slowly expands becoming better and better with every episode. A story which takes careful time with each character whilst keeping the character pool quite tame. It's refreshing, the binge is rather cathartic and I just have to recommend this show if you love fantasy shows. I can't find any glaring issues in the writing or the plot. It's quite compact. It's far from generic, these morons love to parrot these words whilst having the attention span of common houseflies.

The MC is a real standout here, he acts exactly how he is portrayed, there's very tactful consistency in his character, his movements his dialogue. It's a real joy to watch. He does spearhead the show and that's exactly how a these shows should work from these perspectives no worthless passenger MC. This MC doesn't play around with his foes, he's quick and just with the killing. When he's kind to others there's no bullshit omnibenevolent garbage here, it's because he has proper reason to. They really show his wisdom and experience through his decisions and actions.

The side characters have quite a lot of charm, not a single one annoyed me, which is rare. They are very consistent and in this short time there is very ample development. The dialogue is very stimulating, especially in conflict resolution, it's very mature with each party sounding very lively.

Choreography in the fights took me by surprise there's a lot of logic, with a lot of very interesting confrontations packed into these 12 episodes. I found most of the fights well orchestrated with some care with moves that fit their respective races and powers, personally it was a joy to watch. There was practically no plot armor no stupid limit breaking conveniences you can tell alot of thought went into it.

Is this show predictable? Yeah, but you, like me and many others now are not on our 2nd or 3rd or even 10th reincarnation fantasy, let's be honest we are truly in deep. At this point we can predict almost any show in this genre. We know what it's like we're familiar with all the elements and last of all we absolutely and unapologetically love it. Many of you put on a facade ostenatiously critiquing pharasaically whilst rubbing your hands together and licking your lips every time a new one of genre gets released. Crying about "generic shows" whilst you already know what type of show you are watching is just plain dishonesty, Notwithstanding I can't tell you a single show which had shared this show's particular premise either.

Oh and the "weird" that the weakest amongst us are groaning and babbling about? What these simple minds try to sell you as a drawback or problem conversly, i call it a boon and a blessing. With beastmen representing the beauty of the wealth in diversity of the animal kingdom, is it "weird" that these beast-people actually embody and play-out the animal characteristics they are genetically tied to? This is fantasy, it's time to get rid of your fake morality virtue signaling. You're only fooling yourself. if you hated it why do you check these type of shows out every season? Personally I am enamoured by such things, this type of creativity and intuitive construction of the characters make a show like this so utterly amusing. I've found that the deeper they go with the quirkiness of these characteristics as long as it's consistent it only adds to the immersion pulling you further and deeper into the worldbuilding.To give an example; you see a dog beast-man, you already know he's going to have sharp extraordinary sense of smell and in his nature he's going to be incredibly loyal to a fault. We already know this we don't even need to see it play out and it's pleasant to behold. It's very purposeful wrting from a brilliant mind that can piece together several factors of common life and surplant them efficiently into an interesting story.

The soundtrack did a good job of tying the experience together for me, i'm actually quite fond of it after listening a second time. I wished they would have used them a bit more agressively, for atmospheric effect. If you listen to the individual tracks they are actually quite impressive. Saiki Tatsuhiko is quite underrated and he's done quite a few of the soundtracks for shows of this genre and they've all got above average to great soundtracks. The OP and ED were palatable, but if i'm honest OP and ED almost never affect my score or how i feel about a show because i just skip them both till i'm done with the series to avoid spoilers.

Animation was another welcome suprise they did an alright job and at times it was quite pleasantly fluid and expressive. Coming from this interesting combination of studios, i was surprised. The artwork is quite sharp and it looks good most of the time.

The last episode concludes this season succintly and it's quite satisfying, leaving a little lingering hunger for more. I am certainly locked-in for a second season, with the source starting almost 10 years ago, surely there's much more to adapt.


Final Ratings.

7/10 Animation
7/10 Sound
8/10 Plot/Story
9/10 Characters
10/10 Enjoyment

41/50 = 8.2 = 8/10 Very Good

Fantasy Fan? Hurry and binge it.
Ignore the negative reviews.
MAL has gotten to the point where FMAB isn't rank 1 any more we have the likes of Frieren and a Mid-piece special episode at the top. I'ts abundantly clear the masses cannot be trusted.

The road is narrow, where there are many people there's a good chance it may not be your best option.

Hope this helps.

Tower of God Season 2 - Cour 1 and 2

All in all it doesn't improve upon S1 as a package but i'm willing to live with it.

With the very mixed reception to this season, i found that the reason lies in your own expectations.

I will put forth a more realistic review and will compare each of my categorical points to S1.

If we're being honest, we were blessed with the dilligent work of "The Answer Studio" bringing us double the episodes we had last season and giving the community hope that the wealth of material from probably one of the best ongoing manhwa right now would ... finally be getting adpated. I'm sure the author SIU(Slave in Utero) was somewhat pleased with their efforts.

The first thing to note is that this is "The Answer Studio's" adaptiation. This isn't Mappa, This isn't Production IG, this isn't A1 pictures, this isn't the great titans Ufotable, Kyoto or David Production. We must humble whatever marvellous depictions we cultivated in our dreams and come back to reality.

There's no real chance of a large and prominent studio taking on a continuation project for a source with such a large amount of content. We really musn't lament their efforts, for many fans like me our call was truly "Answered".

Was it bad?
Definitely Not.

Although paradoxically, I will say, it's impossible not to be disappointed. This series, "Tower of God" is without a doubt a TITAN of it's respective medium and so it probably deserved a TITAN studio adapting it. However this doesn't put to shame what we have gotten which, for me, is more than good enough to satisfy my soul and leave me wanting more from this same studio.

Art and Animation - Overall, Worse than S1 but not all the time.

We were a litle catfished from the preview, the first 2 episodes looked and sounded great but unfortunately it was impossible for it all remain at that quality.
With our downscaled choice of Studio, of course, we had very inconsistent animation ranging from spectacle to amateur, poor scene to scene direction with very underutilized soundtracks inserted quite poorly. ToG S1 had it's own charm in the drawn characters it couldn't always maintain the standard it set but it was different from the webtoon but in a good way. This season opts to faithfully preserve the webtoon style, which was a welcome change, but it might have been a step too far for this studio. Firstly i will say, the presentation isn't so smooth and does take a while to get used to. They aren't able to keep up the quality set in the first few episodes. The art-style is sharper, more defined, more colourful sometimes requiring more work to get it looking fluid in motion and it really showed as the limitations of this studio became clearer as you delve deeper into the scene to scene movements, perspectives and fight sequences. The first episodes and last episodes of each cour however were standouts for being much better in this respect but this inconsistency with abominable lows such as in episode 8 of the First cour really riled up the community. Especially after that episode the social media accounts of this studio got bombarded with critiques disgruntled viewers.

Sound - Simply worse than S1

General sound effect direction was fine, the sound effects sounded great and added the much needed push to the scene when the animation was sometimes lacking. But with the soundtrack score it just wasn't as good. Perhaps most people would be fine with this but you must go and rewatch S1 and see the magnitude of difference, i wouldn't blame the composer but rather it's just the entire structure of direction employed here. None of the major scenes hit as hard as they could have and the tracks were heavily under-utilized. We're dealing with one of the best western composers in Kevin Penkin here, with a S1 soundtrack so good it still rings in my head to this day. But it just doesn't measure up. Don't get me wrong it still sounds great when the tracks hit but S1's direction made it almost ethereal, giving me goosebumps at times. Perhaps i'm desensitized to it all but to be honest i just didn't hear these tracks as much as they should have been used.

Story and Plot - Obviously Better than S1

The direction just wasn't as great as it could have been. Only a few major moments hit for me, many good moments were skipped over or presented with very little emphasis or backing from soundtracks and scenery. In terms of what they adapted, obviously the content that was adapted blows S1 out of the water, It's much more interesting less annoying and more consistent. I can't say it's due to Answer Studio however it did better than the previous studio. It's just that the source produced far better this time around. Tower of God is known for it's rough start.

Characters - Obviously Better because of source.

Was alot of new characters aswell as the old favourites. Reusuing old characters shows wisdom and competence in writing. Mostly good but not all interactions were adapted which was quite a shame as some of the more obscure ones do decently well in explaining developments.

Enjoyment I enjoyed it better than S1

I will admit if anything was carried well from the source it's the humor, the humor always hit quite well with the new MC introduced in this season providing alot of the comedic relief whilst also building up their character in quite an endearing fashion.

Final Ratings.

Cour 1

Animation 6
Sound 8
Plot and Story 6
Characters 7
Enjoyment 6


33/50 - 6.6/10 - 7/10

Cour 2

Animation 7
Sound 8
Plot and Story 6
Characters 7
Enjoyment 7

35/50 - 7/10

Overall - 7/10

If you're a ToG fan please temper your expectations it does the Job.
For all of our sakes we need the rest of the source to be adapted so i'm fine and happy for "The Answer Studio" to continue.

I await a season 3, hopefully from this same studio.

Hope this helps.

For my 20th Review on MAL

We have…..

“Crimson”
(Yes, there was another word before that but I’d like to forget that part)

I was rather anticipating the binge of this series, a 48 min opening, a 24 episode season and “SILVERLINK” who have cooked up quite the resume of fantasy anime.

Unfortunately, this is the 1st time i have absolutely hated a 48 min opening it was probably the worst i have ever seen by a mile. To give you a gist they decided to waste your time on some of the most unbelievably insulting writing imaginable. Who thought of this garbage? it's practically nonsense materialized. It's ... fantasy that ignores any sort of realism or structure so it just fails to captivate it’s audience as it’s childish and stuffed with contrivances. What they were saying, what they were doing, I couldn't believe any of it. it's just a forced mess to try and create some sort of impactful introduction but it lacks any wisdom and understanding. it's in essence an exhibition of mediocrity. I was ready to quit by the end of it but they gave a big hint that the source of that pathetic excuse of writing could die in the next episode so I soldiered on. I could fondly recall this inane sequence of the MC’s backstory which just made me burst out laughing. I will applaud that they are no stranger to death in this show which is refreshing.

You can map my experience of this show onto an isosceles triangle with the 2 base angles being white signifying the beginning and the ending and the middle vertex angle being red, “crimson” red. We start from nothing, ascending into an eventful, and clever climax with very sharp and enjoyable moments but with a clear descent into a lacklustre ending.

We are introduced to an acceptable cast of characters I didn’t hate many. I watched the show in the Dub and I was impressed, especially during the middle part. It had killer voice-acting and dialogue that left me almost in tears laughing. However the crown goes to Crimson, that character was pretty much the only reason i enjoyed these 24 episodes. Crimson just oozes with charisma, his motivations and actions are coherent and written with wisdom. You can really understand him and empathize with his decisions and the dialogue is ever lively with his presence. Whilst he’s on the screen the show almost feels like a banger however his brilliance is unfortunately dwarfed and adulterated by the sheer stupidity of the MC "Ragna" who is utterly insufferable and embodies the worst of the unfavourable shonen archetypes, as well as being a massive simp to boot. His motivations are very much mindless his understanding non-existent he is a tool for the plot and apologist when need be, and you really can’t connect with this character. They explore a unique way to give the MC an appropriate power early on, however It’s just too abrupt for me, it’s not got enough drawbacks and it just feels like a cheat-code. The power-up in question, is comparing a crack in the mud from your back-yard to The Grand Canyon. Comparing your local park’s anthill to Mount Everest. Another thing is I hate the idea of people becoming strong all on their own. It’s complete nonsense, no one becomes strong on their own some of the greatest people you know all had strong mentors at certain stages and teams willing to expend copious amount of effort to support them. It’s quite exciting the clear juxtaposition of the excellence of Crimson with the irrational, impulsive, ignorance of Ragna, the problem is these flaws of Ragna’s character shouldn’t really exist to this degree and are rewarded rather than punished. What’s more infuriating is that the nature of this Power-Up should eliminate most of Ragna’s character flaws either immediately or slowly. While there’s glimpses of that early-on ,this development is eventually replaced by “Shonen Main Character A” to my pure dismay, with a cabinet of plot-armor injected into his subsequent actions.

Another peculiar choice is the setting of the show, it seems it take elements of different time periods of history and throw them all together. There's no tact here and from what i recall none of it is explained. I won't say it ruins the immersion but the military strategy and soundness is in absolute tatters sometimes you're left wondering why certain weapons are used when there are clearly better options blatantly available. Then they just end up scrapping all that in favour of a single weapon intimately linked with the MC.

The animation had very good drawing but really lacked a true potency in motion that other shows of this genre usually hold them up. Something like Fate UBW with a story and plot almost as bad as this one i couldn't help but give a high score because the soundtrack and animation were the greatest i had ever seen at the time, it's impossible not to get goosebumps whilst watching that but this did not generate spectacle that was that memorable.

The Dragons were utterly terrible both in conception and in action. They are divided in classes but the sense of unity and family is just a farcical formality, those at the top share nothing in common with those at the bottom. They are suppose to give the collective impression of a great superior race but It could never be realized whilst they the stench of commonplace "bad-guys" and "jobbers". The only interesting "dragons" are those at the top and my quotation is intentional and they were butchered for the plot, with motivations that are simply headscratchers. These dragons have certain ridiculous limitations which are the limitations of other fantasy race/classes you've grown to love and they barely even keep the consistency of these limitations. The monster choreography is mediocre at best, it's littered with monsters just staring at characters and waiting to die. If you want to see real monsters go and binge the Chinese masterpiece "A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality" you'll never respect this average level of choreography again. They call dragons the strongest beasts at the start but you'll be hard pressed to not see most as chaff by the end. They show promise at some points but they aren't allowed to shine as the plot armour on MC is strong. They're obsessed with the need for massive beasts with the strength several hundred times greater than the strongest of men not to mention potent magic abilities, to be one-shot by beings 1/1000th of their weight. There's also hardly any coherent and interesting teamwork outside of boss class monsters. It's usually either u get one-shot or the monsters get one-shot ,sometimes they sponge but it never felt like proper cut-off-the limbs sponging, it was hollow..

There’s an art to depicting the act of “Dragon-Slaying”, and these guys are novices. There’s no nuance, there’s no specific anatomical points where the dragons are weak, the different types, natures and species of dragons are barely explored. I can’t help but feel we were robbed of the beauty of such wise exposition due to the main character and worst of all certain 5 foot sub 100 pound(45kg) girls sometimes not even older than 10 years cutting through them like fodder. These sub-elite class dragons are literally drone bots incapable of higher thinking which is in such opposition to how they are usually depicted. There should have been effective team-fighting sequences for these dragons but The problem with letting these individuals solo-kill dragons is that it's wholly ludicrous and dilutes how impressive a feat slaying dragons is supposed to be. There’s no weight to it, the grandiose idea of this Leviathan; this tremendous mythical creature is eventually brought to naught the longer you watch this show. The disrespect spreads to the dragon-slayers themselves being total nonentities outside of the “chosen ones”. Where is this association of Dragon-Slayers? Where is the Ranking system? Where is the union, the political influence? The hierarchy of dragon-slayers?, the fame of strong parties of them non-existent, there’s just nothing of substance here. This is a problem because it doesn’t any make civilization even possible, nevertheless one that has advanced to the level shown in the show. Where are those society can trust in to be safe? Due to the writing they were just poorly conceived plot devices because the only people capable of these feats are the ones close to MC at the right place and at the right time. It just doesn’t feel like the world exists outside of when it’s on screen perhaps more is explored in later seasons or chapters of the source. I must say at this point, I’m thoroughly disgusted seeing another group of strong warriors subordinate themselves to another shoulder-height, XX, giga-thanos, barely half their weight, half their age or lower, standing at a whopping 2/3rds of their height and 1/10th their muscle mass. This drivel is overdone in fantasy anime, I’m just taken a back, outright bewildered whenever I behold the empty farce of such a scenario.

The last 4 episodes are a complete snooze-fest I had predicted it’s ending by that point and in likewise fashion it turned out to be such a revolting conclusion, They of course, tried to make it all more believable by killing off more characters but when millions have perished without much thought to it, nothing even hits any more. Here we have mighty villains who have sworn pacts with strong wills who then basically set the heroes up to win in the best scenario. It ends up being truly incoherent and in complete antithesis of their goals, it's a shame because this kind of “tie-the-knot” , “let-the heroes-win” lazy writing is very much boring for seasoned anime watchers. The is final fight is consequently reduced to an anti-climactic mess.

Final Ratings

Animation 8
Sound 7
Plot 5
Characters 6
Enjoyment 7

= 33 - 6.6/10 - 7/10 - I can only recommended to fantasy enthusiasts like myself.

So you’re thinking; how can you rate this 7 after you complained so much? Well I made it through 21 episodes(one being 48 min) without stopping. If an anime can keep it’s audience entertained for that long whilst being rather endearing in some areas it deserves some praise. The bad moments never completely wrecked the experience for me.

If you've got time to waste and enjoy the odd fantasy experience with good laughs jam-packed inside then this is your show but the quality of writing outside of general dialogue and communication won't impress anyone. The gold of this show lies within “Crimson” and those that surround him it’s painfully average elsewhere. If this Crimson character didn’t exist, this would probably be another 4/10 disaster. Perhaps the later events of the plot save the series, unfortunately, I have no desire to search that out but I wouldn’t mind if they conjured another 24 episode season.

For the 7 letters of Crimson I shall award a 7.

Hope this Helps.

They weren't kidding about the MC, 1 Episode in i loved the show then by Episode 4 I hated it. In only 4 episodes he's parried my curiosity into abject boredom!

A good soundtrack, fluid animation with the surprise of quite lively side characters with seemingly thoughtful dialogue, what could go wrong?

Yup, we've got another decent prospect pauperized.

The problems all start at the core of the experience. the loop of it' storytelling and the handling of the premise, the MC and last but not least the plot.

For about 4 episodes of an anime, quite a number of issues propped up for me, however due to ... my preliminary review i will only go over a few glaring ones that haven't been fleshed out by others.

The writers might be confused about what to make a joke and what to make serious. The first 2 episodes go quite deeply into his past and it's all quite serious so you have an idea that the dialogue might generate some humor but the general tone will be sincere relying on good writing. To my dismay the gag they decided on is wholeheartedly repugnant. It's truly terrifying a revolving door of cliffhangers teasing a resolution but never delivering it.

To give you an example of what i'm talking abnout.

The MC watches a humanoid monster obliterate trained soldiers each time with a single swing of a human weapon. The MC doesn't know what monster it is so he calls it a cow and he’s being serious. (Not a bull and not bullshit either) At first you will maybe think perhaps this is a joke, not a very funny one but nonetheless it's a joke right?

But no,

With the MC they've broken the record for clueless, it's borderline unwatchable. His ignorance is the bane of the show.
With the plot they've made they've made the MC's cluelessness the crux. It excuses the author to commit heinous crimes, inspiring the kind of diabolical writing the likes of Rent-a-girlfriend produced.

The premise?
Well they almost seem to parry the premise.
What about the side characters? are they written like real people who will slowly correct the MC's stupidity overtime creating healthy character development? Give it a guess....

To continue on with the example i gave above, the premise leading on to the events of the MC's life make it impossible for him to make this kind of assessment about a monster. Not only that but for the experience to be satisfying we need this resolved. instead are left in total despondency, we never know if anyone will ever get him to understand the true nature of the monsters he faces and his relative strength. This feedback loop is very essential to the plot and a staple of the story-telling needed to keep us interested.

I don’t want to delve too much into details but he does a ridiculous amount of training and learning at adventurer academies. His entire build-up phase was spent training to be become an adventurer yet the basics of types of monsters, weapons and practices etc he just doesn't know. It's just utterly ridiculous. Compare this to last season's "The Unwanted Undead Adventurer" with another non-isekai fantasy MC who similarly appears not so gifted till he died to receive his powers, but before his gift he had studied literally everything about the monsters in his area and also the surrounding areas learned all the theory in addition to training himself. "The Unwanted Undead Adventurer" very wisely displays what a realistic passionate individual would have done if they longed to enter such a dangerous profession. You can only train for so long every day, what do you do with the rest of the time especially if the only thing u can think about is your goal, you will buy or acquire books on adventuring, monsters, classes, spells, practices etc . You will ask seasoned adventurers about all of these things. However, in this show it's just a massive joke as he doesn't even know what a goblin is. What an immersion breaker! Another memorable moment is when he’s given a chance to become an adventurer(his lifelong goal) and just declines without even thinking, like a complete dunce.

Don’t get me started on how in his pure nescient innocence he manages to procure a weapon as if hand-selected for him by God almighty. An exercise in crucifying any lingering enthusiasm for this “hero’s journey”.

Another problem is, when you introduce a young, very attractive, female character, ensuing the classic damsel in distress routine resulting in a character so ridiculously besotted with the MC the end result is and must always be a sort of courtship. The writers induce this female into a role so pivotal to the chain of events that we are are all due some fan-service or sexual tension between them. I'm about 4 episodes in, and there's absolutely nothing, her obvious advances stonewalled for no plausible reason by the ludicrous bewilderment of the MC. Here's the problem, without the sexual relationship, or the shared affection, it is just makes the use of this character seem utterly amateur and almost insulting to our intelligence. No it’s not because I’m a depraved horndog, but rather it’s the concept of purposeful writing, once this type of character is introduced it must serve this purpose or it’s just terrible writing. As much as you pathetic simps and cucks like to pretend it's not the case, when an attractive virgin woman is introduced into the story of any series ever made it's a plot device and it's function is always certain to include a sexual one, if not then you've made a mistake and should have used a man instead. There's no way to be "friends "with such a woman in this situation. Especially when it's just those two alone together. They instead try to pass this girl off as an adventurer guide to the MC, how farcical.

I think they took the “high-road” here, they decided the age-gap was “too wide”, in my opinion it’s sheer poppycock. This lack of confidence with such misplaced morality is what starves series like these of any substance or memorability.

People cried about goblins raping women in Goblin slayer,(brilliant story telling) still one of the top watched shows each season it aired. People cried about Re-do of healer (a genuine masterpiece) a show so incredibly popular despite such average production value. They can never forget those experiences. They put on act and virtue signal professing to care about age-gaps and "Pedo" but in the end we are all here to watch the fantasy experience. We are collectively apathetic about these so called "issues" intrinsically. Most of us want solid immersion and a decent story. Having a hot silver-haired female who is completely in adoration of the MC desperately following them around practically begging for a marriage. However nothing happens whilst we’re being forced to watch the absurdness of the MC's naiveté. It's just too much nonsense for us 100+ day anime guys.

I've had enough of the clueless, omnibenevolent, apologizes for existing, bastard MC it boils my blood and the fatigue is kicking in.
At this point It's not even cliche it’s just poor writing.

Conclusion
We know how he wins every fight from the premise so there's barely any tension and a cap on how creative fights can be.
So there's no interesting hero's journey because he's already too powerful.
The side characters are going to perpetuate the stupidity as a massive gag, slowing the dialogue to a crawl.
And there's no sexual relations between the foremost 2 characters even in a perfect setting to cultivate it because they fear the backlash.
So there's nothing left for any of us seasoned fantasy watchers with a brain to be interested in.

In only 4 episodes it's easy to predict where the remaining episodes will take us, and i don't want to be there.

Preliminary Ratings.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Animation (4 episodes worth)
8
Sound
7
Plot
2
Characters-Story(side characters decent)
5
Enjoyment
2

24/50 – 4.8/10 - 5/10 - Garbage.

This is a generous rating, because im sure if i watched even 1 episode more this would jump down 2 points, It's just that pathetic as a story.
Let me be clear.
I love Re-do of healer and I’m hoping they make an S2
I loved Mushoku's double wife twist,
I loved “Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World” despite the adaptation being mediocre outside of the fanservice.
We all love a crazy fantasy but don't waste our time with these fake, duplicitous perplexities to sanitize the experience. With these types of adventures sometimes It’s better to be dangerous than boring.

Alas I’ve only watched 4 episodes, Maybe I’m wrong, It’s possible that instead of steering the ship away from disaster they managed to get the MC on the foredeck of the ship and he parries the iceberg that would have sank the titanic.

I went in with a right hook, the MC parried, and now I've been knocked out.

I've had enough of this joke.

Hope this helps.

Saikyou Tank, Simping Tank, It's Simply Terrible

Chit chat, prattle, babble, tittle tattle, yakking, Oh boy! i haven't heard conversation so tedious, monotonous and insipid in a long time...
I tried my hardest to finish this challenge, and thanks to God "episode 9" came along which gave me the strength to carry on until it's lackluster consummation. This ninth episode was a meagre glimpse of the type of show it could have been if it stuck to what it said in the title.

All in all, Saikyou Tank is an uninspiring, unstimulating mishmash of sheer poppycock, which ends up completely disrespecting the general anime fantasy experience you've ... grown to love.

You know what? It could have been fine if he just sat in the dungeon for 12 episodes just tanking stuff but no, the writers/directors thought they were capable of writing decent non-combat character interaction, one look at it's current average score will show you how well that went.

I'll summarize the show's drawbacks.

- It's boring.
- Mc is insufferable
- Main cast is insufferable
- Side cast are literally NPCs
- They add mobile game gacha mechanics unironically.
- Dungeons are just barebones and boring.
- Too much explored in 12 episodes, but it's all surface level so nothing is memorable.
- His party is his harem.....
- The pacing is awful.
- Zero tension.

MC sucks, he's terrible, not believable, not tank enough, he charges into every situation headfirst with zero planning and ends up winning because of plot-armor and inventing new powers which break the rules.

I will split the show into two sections which summarize the experiences found within my observations.

The first section when he's inside a dungeon actually doing what the anime advertises.

The second section when he's not doing the stuff in the first section.

The first section is it's saving grace. 6/10 at it's best, and a 4/10 at it's worst.

Not only is the first section in short supply, it's full of asspulls, garbage choreography and having full blown conversations whilst your teammates are getting their ass kicked.

The dungeons themselves are an actual joke, both in their presentation, the mechanics behind them. We come then to the barely-sentient monsters inside them lead by these pathetic excuses for "dungeon keepers" just a comeplete letdown. Every dungeon raid is a speed run, he can't wait to get back to wasting our time.

Another thing is, I'm sick of you bastards complaining about CG this CG that. There was no CG for anything here and it absolutely sucked, all the non-dungeon keeper fights are forgettable, and poorly conceived. I love my CG however bad it is, at least we spend time fighting hordes of mobs instead of drowning in revoltingly bad dialogue borne from terrible writing.

Annoying stuff about this first section are:
- When his fragile allies randomly walk in front of his shield.
- When he starts a chat in the middle of heated fight.
- When he's tanking up a storm and his teammates are just watching.
- When his special move is an offensive move.
- MC Narrating his pain whilst he's completely fine and we know he will be.
- When the enemies are utter morons

The second section deserves maybe a 1/10 at it's worst. It consists of:

- When MC recites to you his motivations
- When the harem speaks.
- When the female main cast tries to show character beyond their surface.
- When he talks to his harem(clan/party).
- When he's dense for no reason.
- When the side cast "negotiates" with the MC like drone bots.
- When he's overly polite, and omnibenevolent because the writer can't manage depicting a realistic person.
- When he talks and liaises with side cast with the most cookie cutter boring uninspired dialogue.

Others have said, that this show lacks any depth, they introduce a concept and ideas and then drown you with pointless garbage so nothing ever gets fleshed out and you are frozen in mediocrity.

Final Ratings
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Animation 5/10
Sound 5/10
Story 2/10
Characters 2/10
Enjoyment 4/10

18/50 - 3.6 - 4/10 Avoid like the Plague.

Shows like this make me reminisce of brilliant Chinese 3D shows like "Fanren Xiu Xian Chuan" where the villains and monsters are absolutely terrifying, extremely intelligent and unforgiving. The tension is off the charts, the stakes are real and if you stop to chat you will be obliterated.

Unlike this show, with it's shameless direction where they managed to sneak in the obligatory hot spa scenes despite the main show being starved of substance.

If you're semi-addicted to fantasy experiences like these, trust me this one isn't worth it, I'm a heavy binger and at best i think i barely managed 2 episodes a day almost falling asleep at the end of the 2nd episode. To be honest this show did such wonders for my sleep, i was practically sleeping midday with the sun out. Might be a great alternative to sleeping pills.

Hope this helps.

it's another "Beauty and the Beast" inspired romance and officially the worst of the three musketeers namely "Niehime", "Mahoutsukai no Yome" and now "MaDoMe".

Niehime was truly special, the greatest of the "B&B spinoffs". The adaptation of “An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride” only helps to make that show even more impressive.

If you want a properly condensed form of my thoughts, SacredArrow2000's brilliant review gets right to the point.

In Niehime, the beauty and the beast are obvious,
In this series, The "Archdemon" is the beast and the "Elf "is the beauty.

The early Arcs have a lot of similarities and the overarching conflicts can be ... compared with many correlations. I believe that Niehime is more similar to this show than MahoYome.

Now back on topic, instead of a proper structured review i will rant.

The genres of this show are Action, Fantasy, Romance.

It barely scratches any of them. This is a huge problem because the show cannot be good unless it does as least one of these justice.

The so called "Action" is erratic, either too pointless and fleeting or just utterly ludicrous. It get's evem worse when they try to make the situation more serious, where it often concludes the confronttation in the utmost anti-climatic fashion. The powers they use and exhibit are inexplicably formed and manifested which stifles any of my interest.
Are you here for romance? Here’s some crumbs, enjoy!
They seem to touch on several fantasy themes and ideas but never go deeper, which is incredibly disappointing.

Why does writer make official use of shortened names?
it's one thing to shorten it only in secret, but to maintain this distortion of a name outwardly, causing others to adopt this broken form is utterly atrocious.
Let me give you an example of why you don't shorten names; in the UK if you are called Gary, or Gareth, they call you Gaz. Likewise if you're called Barry, Basil or Sebastian you are nicknamed Baz. Notice how the original name is robbed of it's glory, it's symbolism and respect. What is the purpose of this? Apparently, "to show affection". What is this shortened name called commonly? A "pet" name. Well that's exactly it, reduced from person to pet, your respect taken for such a fleeting thing such as affection. imagine being called Sebastian and someone shouts to you "Baz" randomly in front of people, how can people take you serious? The shortened name sucks. In short the elf's full name is fine and necessary for an immersive fantasy experience, we should not make the mistake of shortening it for so called "affection".

What is the obsession with putting a large potentially dangerous, intimidating character in a slick full suit of armour and revealing them to be another annoying fan-service tool which only cheapens the experience? These editors love this garbage, they want recognition, they want sales, they want retention, but for binge watchers like me it's just utterly revolting.
Remember when characters took of the mask and turned out to be Obito Uchiha? Gone are the days.
They did the same trick with "The wrong way to use healing magic" as a result, the fight suffers, the stakes suffer, the stories suffer, the emotion is reduced a crawl the immersion is smashed, broken. It's disgusting and I'm sick of it. I ended up reducing the score of that show by an entire point, what a terrible way to ruin the experience.

"Arch-demon" Oh dear.....

Perhaps the source portrays him better, but this adaptation does no justice to his character.

What about the way he achieves this obviously prestigious title/role? A true marvel in terrible writing.

You see the powerful and intriguing word "Arch-demon", and I know just like me you're expecting some Alucard-like middle-age or older warlord just overflowing with charisma, aura and confidence, drowning in a wealth of experience with his wisdom, knowledge and understanding sharpened by the mentoring of remarkable teachers and the whetstone of life.

However..........

We're left in total despondency. For this MC you've really got to depress any sentient brain activity to have any shred of pleasure with him on the screen.
Can writers just stop making everyone an orphan/ bastard. It's the easy way out, you write without attachments and it's still awful.
His level of achievement and power is completely impossible with the background we were briefed on. He is obviously too young, and too inexperienced which completely counteracts any serious writing here. When he's supposed to look and act badass, it never quite hits, it feels fake and forced, whilst the “romantic” scenes completely bastardize him. Nearer to the end he’ll appear in places and make sharp and intelligent decisions, pulling out powers and wisdom like a rabbit out of hat, because the plot requires him to. It’s all too boring and superficial for me to care, perhaps I’ve just watched too many of these shows.

As for the romantic interest, undoubtedly she's the best part of this show, however she suffers from a similar but different issue, she's either too good, almost angelic or too ridiculous. It just doesn't seem realistic, she’s like a fantasy, in a fantasy. Unsurprisingly she is written as a bastard with zero attachments which makes me very skeptical as a lot of the decision making seems far beyond her background. This kind of untouched, unattached, beautiful, well-mannered, well-raised woman who also happens to be abandoned as a child without proper parental guidance, doesn’t exist. It wont all be negatives as the writer does quite wisely understand the true power of women, showing what the MC is inspired and influenced to do due to the actions and character of this woman. It was pleasant to watch this character hold back from conventional actions because she understood her feminine role in the situation as to ascertain a greater future regarding the relationship and others. She needed a flaw to be believable, you might say her flaw is "she loves mc too much, too readily" but this is nonsense as this cannot be a flaw of women as that is their purpose.

The other characters just didn’t impress. Too many women and every other man that gets significant screen-time is basically a dunce or cynically evil. The interactions are sometimes funny and cute, I just didn’t care for it, after watching a show like Niehime it just wasn’t good enough.

As touched on by SacredArrow2000, the omni-benevolent nature of some these characters just kills the tension, curiosity and the drama produced by these conflicts. When someone tries to kill you, you can’t just instantly forgive them. Even if that’s the case it has to be only one unique character like this, most sane people do not invite threats into their house, or turn their backs to their enemies, treating them with care.

I will say, the show shines with the dialogue between the characters, it's quite enjoyable despite lacking quality in the writing.

The plot depicted by the direction of this show is another rather embarrassing attempt of saving the world and mending longstanding divisions between sub-national factions. It ends up leaving a lot to be desired and oversimplifies too many elements. The conflict is also confusing and illogical subsequently the conflict resolution is even worse.

Sound and animation did the job but were not powerful enough, in harmony, to produce any spectacular moments I could recall.

Ratings
----------------------------------------------------------------
Animation - 6
Sound - 6
Plot - 4
Characters - 6
Enjoyment – 5

27/50 – 5.4/10 - 5/10

Conclusion
----------------------------------------------------------------

It falls short of doing anything particularly well.

If the story intrigues you, perhaps consider reading the manga or light novels, I assume the general sentiment will be more inline with the author's intended ideals.

If not just go and watch Niehime, a show that does everything better, namely it’s brilliant soundtrack done by Kohta Yamamoto, A great story, proper characters, real stakes and proper wisdom in dialogue with interpersonal conflicts and ideals.

This for me, wasn’t optimal to pass the time.

My review may seem like an advert, but such was my experience watching this show, I could only think of how another show did better.

Hope this helps.

Shield Hero 3 - Can't even gas it up anymore. They're just living in the shadow of S1.

Better than S2?
Without a doubt! but that's not an achievement.

I should have listened to the elitists on twitter when they called this show "mid".
Gone are the golden immersive sequences which caught me by surprise in the marvelous orchestration of S1. This season I could barely stop myself from pausing the video, several times, in utter disappointment. I struggle now to recommend this series to anyone other than the Isekai fanatics.

Let's be honest, they got us good. That short stretch of episodes we were blessed with ... at the dawn of S1 have lived rent-free in our heads for too long. The novelty has now worn off, they can longer hide the flaws.

I remember the loud LN readers telling us how the show was going to be far better after S2's failure. "Tortoise arc was the worst one", "The characters get so much better". I'm not going to say they're wrong. It's no where near as bad as S2, except, what's carrying this experience are the animators and Admiral Penkin, not the story.

Ultimately we must now come to grips with the fact that this show is barely a mid-tier Isekai. The writing and direction are in absolute shambles.

After watching so much anime, I doubt I would find many first times for anything. This show managed to be the first time I was bored during a tournament arc.

I'm a sucker for tournament arcs, but if you wanted to make me hate them, just do it like these guys did.
The tournament arc was just too quick, too sloppy and had such a lack of attention to detail that It just left me stunned frozen in disillusionment. I won't even use lack of tension, as they didn't allow enough time for the brawling to get tense, paradoxically speaking.

To go into depth, something simple but important like their disguises were butchered. Honestly they were like an elephant hiding behind a bamboo tree. Every twist and turn of this arc broke my concentration. It was all so rough consequently lacking tact and a genuine atmosphere. You could never stop take in the true spectacle and emotion of environment. Oh dear! the dialogue, It was rubbish, this ruined a fair amount of the seriousness as well as any chance of me getting engrossed into it. They designed some surprises along the way but the transitions into them didn't work or felt rushed collectively cheapening the experience.
For me especially, these fights were over too fast, I needed to see more going at it, old school, head to head, 1v1s, 2v2s, 3v3s all with previous skills and abilities we have come to know from the OG squad. There was a moment where I almost got into the zone but was rudely interrupted by some annoying plot point, abruptly killing the momentum. Picture this, a crowd jam packed but seemingly dead, an announcer that is for all intensive purposes doing it for the paycheck, a plot twist but instead of bringing a welcome change of mood it stifled the creation of the mood we desired. Little things that spice up the experience were absent like, dare I say it, the spamming of authentic and interactive crowd reactions after every pivotal moment. For example; football is far less interesting without an interactive crowd of fans, fanatics, bigwigs with monetary interests and zealots who dedicate their lives to experiences like these, similarly so here, it seems like the crowd doesn't even care. The funny thing is that, there are many shows with much worse animation/budgets that can recreate the arena environment and ambiance quite well, even if you know the outcome of fights they still manage to make it interesting and enthralling. Another golden aspect of tournaments is some sort of adherence to rules and integrity and if you track where I'm going with this, you can guess what occurred.

Here's a question, can there ever be too many women in these type of shows?

Yes.
It's even worse when the men are treated by the writers as either useless old husks filled with regrets or dumb jobbers.

I hoped for my salvation with the return of the cardinal heroes, on the contrary, they dragged me deeper into mediocrity. Giving some thought to it, outside of Naofumi, the slave merchant and the countless women we are swamped with, the level of characterization is atrocious. They're not characters, they're jobbers. Person A, Person B, Soldier A, Soldier B. There's nothing to them they're robots, barely sentient just churning out the appropriate lines and "Shield Demon" or "Shield Hero".

On the subject of these cardinal heroes. We have Motoyasu being the eldest at 21, followed by Naofumi at 20, itsuki the Archer at 17 and Ren the child swordsman at 16. Every detail we are given must be used when we judge these characters. This particular 5 year difference between the ages 16-21 has a rather large neurological and emotional significance in the development of young men. In your real life you'll find that, in this age range, a vast majority of young men make copious amounts of terrible life decisions and need quite heavy guidance during this period for ample development. Whilst this could defend the author's choices here regarding the events that went on, their work rather denotes a general tone of laziness and relegates these so called heroes to "NPCs", If I may use that term here appropriately.

Instead of vivid and creative wisdom in the writing of these characters, we are graced with undeniably some of the most amateur depictions I've ever seen. Basically the other 3 heroes are just cookie-cutter, 2 dimensional, giga social-rejects with barely any autonomy. I talked previously in my review of S2 about these heroes being used as mere plot devices, despite how pivotal a role they play in the greater plot. This season did nothing to fix this, they aren't real people, they aren't alert, they don't respond to their environment, their only job is to make Naofumi look more righteous. Countless scenes of what could have been, flow through my mind; a healthy brotherhood based on age/skill related deference with constructive liaison to bolster their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. It's a real shame because they could have created really organic and lifelike interactions between them based on their shared background from Japan, or even profitable advice, strategies and methods on levelling their skills and party members. This could have created a great deal of humorous, witty and relatable moments promoting a more memorable experience that the audience could truly appreciate. Kinship, camaraderie and things of this nature certainly would have brought the hype of this show back to S1 levels. Oh, lest I forget, the flashbacks, the oh so terrible flashbacks. Utterly laughable, how did authors/writers come up with this? It's hardly believable. They try to show you what happened during the "Tortoise Arc from hell" from the other heroes' perspectives, nevertheless it comes up short. I don't have any confidence that I could think of a more insulting way to portray these events. I was just mortified with what they came up with, a thoroughly senseless exercise in writing. What you'll find truly astounding is the sheer lack of communication between these 3 heroes, they don't really even talk to each other they have no reason not to. It's a real shame because it makes no sense, it highlights the authors neglect of these characters.

Furthermore it all takes a turn for the worse with an old antagonist making a quite startling re-appearance. Assuredly, there's no way this villain had a possible way of operating with such cunning deception in these circumstances if we assume there was a shred of forethought and coherence in the writing. The sad state these heroes are reduced to is practically unthinkable, it just doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. I recall their pitiful attempt to copy-paste repeat the magic of the emotional breakdown Naofumi had in S1 to give these heroes depth. The problem is, they all can't have the same breakdown. The depth, in question, just insults the audience. It doesn't grip me as a story of 4 different heroes with separate ideals, goals and interests. Far be it from such a exciting premise, rather we have; Naofumi and the 3 clowns with identical character development arcs, grudgingly I expected so much more. It doesn't end there, after the "development" you genuinely can't distinguish their characters other than some generic tropes and the wholly repugnant gag humor. Taking a step back I just can't help but notice the horrendous state of the characterization of men in this show. The only positive here is that with these 3 heroes at their lowest point they can only go up, hopefully their development steps up in a meaningful way adding some dimension to their behavior in subsequent seasons with the writer molding them into something we can actually interact with.

So you're thinking how after all this how it gets rated 7? Well let's talk about the positives.

In shows like this I love when they return to more familiar characters we have seen before to advance the plot rather than a whole host of new ones.

What's the best part of this season?
Naofumi is back as a functioning and autonomous main character whose decision-making appears appropriately refined and made wiser as a result of his rollercoaster of experiences in S1. This was a very welcome improvement from the garbage shell of an MC we were subjected to in S2.
There's also a neat dragon fight. I got some goosebumps watching that at least. How it was eventually defeated wasn't the best and the entire reason that fight even occurred was lackluster, but all in all, it did hit the spot.
The animation improved by leaps and bounds. With the help Penkin's creative score of pieces the show looked and sounded great even in it's darkest moments.


The positives run quite thin, to make matters worse, they end the season with a very annoying retcon ending.
A puzzling cliffhanger seemingly out of thin air with a whole host of new characters for S4.

Even though I'll most likely watch S4, I'm so disappointed. The hope and curiosity is rapidly fading for me because I know the writers/directors will likely lack the competence and careful thought at to really nail any of the developments of the next season without getting distracted with fanservice. They can start by stopping the flood of random female characters ruining the immersion.

If I am to describe this show for any prospective Isekai enthusiast I would say the following:

This series has a Hall of Fame S1 48min introduction, an above average S1 and the rest of it is just an average Isekai with some interesting world building, with S2 dangling it precariously into the trash region.


Quick summary

Pros this season
+ Cardinal Heroes revisited
+ Stellar Animation, good fight choreography, very colorful consistent art.
+ Very Pretty Anime Opening
+ Naofumi back as a character
+ One of the best CG dragon fights i've ever seen
+ Allows us to forget S2
+ Kevin Penkin soundtrack
+ Consistency in general

Cons this season
- Too many girls out of no where, doing crazy things. Harem ruining everything that could have been.
- Editor inspired tropes and events not helping the story.
- Male characterization is boring, filled with tropes and clichés lacking assertiveness or awareness.
- Hated being narrated to when they could just give us decent dialogue and a few scenes.
- Garbage writing.
- Garbage Characterization and developments.
- Worst tournament arc I've ever seen.
- Woeful Direction.
- Boring retcon ending/cliffhanger.

Ratings

Animation 9
Sound 8
Story 5
Characters 5
Enjoyment 7

34/50 6.8 = 7/10 Shamelessly, I'm inflating the score. (It's really a six but I'm hopeful for next season)
I had to score it above the 6 I duped out of S2 (which was more of a 4-5/10)

Don't Give Up! This series isn't finished yet. However, now is the time to lower your standards for this series. No more "peak" shouts.
It's not gonna be Slime, Re Zero, Kage No, MT or Overlord it's just little, bang-average, scraping the mid-tier shield hero and that's how it's going to be.
This season definitely got back on track, but that's all I'm afraid.

The coping LN enthusiasts, hyping up the developments of this show cannot be trusted, we must move forward with our eyes fully open, expelling any undue expectation.

Hope this helps.