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Turning on the first episode of Link Click you are immediately greeted with fast paced dialogue and a stylish artwork that is both modern and yet different from what we are used to seeing. Its first priority is to set up its fantastical time-traveling mechanics, then following that up with the structure and commentary you will be getting all throughout the show, leading to a plot twist right before a banger of an ending song hits. All of it feels purposefully structured so that you know from the get-go what kind of show you’re getting into, and I can certainly appreciate the snappy pacing that ... doesn’t waste your time. Not only that, the first episode already shows you a glimpse of what it is building towards in the long run even if that element is going to very, very slowly crawl its way to the forefront, eventually changing its own approach to storytelling drastically as we are seeing in the early parts of season 2.

On an episode to episode basis, this show is really good at always giving you what you expect from it. If anything, some episodes are a bit *too* consistent. Namely, there are a LOT of cliffhangers. At least the side-effect of that is that the ending song is now engraved in my mind from how it starts playing over those last scenes every, single, time.

Link Click is about a photography shop that just so happens to have two of its workers be the holders of superpowers: Lu Guang has a clairvoyance that allows him to see everything happening around a picture or recording for twelve hours, while Cheng Xiaoshi can dive into the picture, taking over the body of the person who shot it. Their friend Qiao Ling takes in requests from customers, so that Lu Guang figures out how they can go about fulfilling the request, and Cheng Xiaoshi is the one that actually goes back in time to get the job done, said job generally being dealing with someone’s regret to ease their pain. It is a pretty straightforward dynamic that takes their personality in account — although I will admit that Qiao Ling is much less of a well-realized character than the other two as of season one —, primarily with Lu Guang being the more stoic one that guides Cheng Xiaoshi, who not only has the power to go back in time, but actually prefers to get right in the middle of trouble.

Another great thing about this setup is that it takes advantage of an episodic structure to explore different kinds of regrets, but since Cheng Xiaoshi inherits the emotions (and some of the memories? Apparently?) of the people he takes over, there is a threshold to how much he can stop himself from getting involved, despite Lu Guang’s constant warnings about not messing with the timeline — which happens, as expected, and this is no spoiler, but it is important that all of it begins with Cheng Xiaoshi genuinely wanting to help someone.

After somehow ending up with a dangerous power like this they still decided to use that to help other people, no doubt knowing how emotionally taxing it could end up being. Being in someone else’s shoes and knowing you are the only person that will ever have the opportunity of making it a little easier for them while also having to keep yourself in check to avoid the butterfly effect is something I would also struggle with in Cheng Xiaoshi’s position. If this entire scenario speaks to you personally in any way, then you will probably find the overall empathy that this story advocates for very heartwarming. I’d go as far as to say that is the core emotional appeal of the story, it seems as if the idea of using these abilities for their own benefit never even crossed these people’s minds.

The writers and director of the show certainly have the skill necessary to drag this execution for the whole season, leading to yet another banger — this being the last episode — that properly loops back with the first one. Script-wise, this is very tightly written. Most of the confusing moments seem to stem from weird translations to english and the fact that characters speak very fast, which from my experience is quite common in Chinese productions.

Watching a donghua can be both weird and fascinating if you’re only used to japanese animations, which I’m guessing you probably are. I can’t claim to understand them nearly to the extent that I understand the more common, otaku-centered anime, but trying to make sense of the different sensibilities is a kind of entertainment by itself.

I found it quite interesting just how much the show was willing to indulge in the emotions of every scene, every story, and how much soul it has despite not dealing with anything that is particularly impressive on paper. This show’s greatest strength is its simplicity, so much so that it could have afforded to have A LOT more exposition to explain all the mechanics of the character’s powers, yet sees no reason to do that because your attention should be in the drama and not any technicality.

Something else that is quite different is just how slow the protagonist’s progression is. They are lenses for the other character’s stories and through interacting with those stories you can glean details about the kind of people they are. I can see how some people might react to this by reading it as the main characters being very shallow, which I don’t agree with. It is very clearly intentional, so it should be read as more of a different approach than a failing. We have very little background for what happened before the show started, but there is a difference between trying to deliver that and failing or doing what this show does, which is to simply focus on other aspects of it.

I didn’t cry in any episode (that is a me problem by the way, not a criticism of the show), but I found something to care about emotionally in every one of them. Be it Emma’s pain caused by distance and the pressure of early-adult life, the sheer unavoidable tragedy that can befall some families or the agonizing process of drifting away from past friendships. Not a single person in this story has it easy. It is all very down to earth, very human drama that lends this show an attitude of living in the present (ironic, I know) that I appreciate very much.

Wanting to go back to fix past mistakes is something every single human being has thought about, you would be hard-pressed to find something more universal, and while it would be useful to be like these characters and actually do it, the show makes it a point out of treating it as the emotionally scarring thing it would actually be. Living things through the first time isn’t easy, reliving them and being able to enact less change than you would want and potentially making things worse is even harder.

The world isn’t just enough to give us second chances. These characters are getting but an inkling of it and even that may come with an unexpected price. What we can learn from it is that not only are we going to keep carrying that weight (if you know, you know), but also that we currently have in our hands all the tools we will ever have to correct things, so quit overthinking it, why ya mind overclouded?

If this review felt shorter than my previous ones, that's because it is. I might or might not do another review for season 2, hopefully a longer one. The chances of that actually happening are higher if the story indeed concludes with two seasons.

Also, all the ops and eds in this show are amazing. You are going to listen to them. This is not a request.

Wonder Egg Priority’s first episode is one of the most intimate experiences I have seen in anime and one that impressed me since the first time watching it — I think I have seen it four times by now. It is yet another one of those anime that has a name that can be seen as cute but is actually a psychological horror that, despite being very abstract in some of its ideas, still has very real themes. I like how there is a clear distinction between what happens in the “real” world and the dream world — at least in the beginning, since as ... time goes on more science fiction and fantastical elements are introduced in the “real” world, which goes well with the show’s structure of slowly blending dream and reality.

Most of the time the fantastical elements are kept in the dream world and this means that these characters are real people out there, that these traumas exist in our world. It focuses a lot in details such as beginning with a very personal event that isolates the characters instead of going for action or prologues that are desperately trying to catch your attention; or in aspects such as the very realistic, nearly rotoscopic character animation, all coming together to create the necessary atmosphere for the show to tell the intimate story it wants to tell. However, when Wonder Egg wants to do action, it does action, better than most shows out there.

It is no secret that the production schedule for Wonder Egg was a mess, needing the last episode to be released separately from the rest of the show, and this episode was even marketed as being one hour long, only to prove itself to be one recap episode and one episode of new content, this being the origin of many of the anime’s criticisms. After all, it was pure ill intention of whoever on CloverWorks decided to spread an information that was literally false. Now, considering all of this, the fact that Wonder Egg’s production values manage to be as high as they are throughout the show is even more impressive.

From the character animation, the order of events going back and forth in time during most of the episodes and the very limited cast of characters, it is clear that Wonder Egg’s priorities are different. I’d even say some of the worst moments of the anime is when it is trying too hard to be anime. Take for example the title drop in episode six, It is a bit forced and is there only so a title drop can exist. The characters always say their one-liners when finishing a fight, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. For a moment I even thought that the screaming of a catchphrase being used to solve issues was a simplification of the issues and thematically inconsistent with the rest of the show, but looking back on it now, it doesn’t bother me as much, since the priority was never the mechanics of the fights, but the literalization of metaphors. I’m also not going to pretend as if I have seen any of his other works, but the writer for this show is a Japanese TV writer, not an anime writer, which might justify some of the different sensibilities it has.

The show’s premise is quite simple and visceral. Ooto Ai is a 14 years old girl whose only friend killed herself, making Ai isolate herself and become even more introverted than she already was. One day, an entity that takes the form of an insect convinces her to buy an egg, saying that if she breaks this egg during her dreams and helps save other people, she might get her friend back. All of this honestly sounds like an RPGMaker horror game above everything else and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was inspired by or initially designed to be one.

As time goes on, Ai meets other girls that are also buying eggs under the same premise of saving someone they knew that killed themselves — in case it is not clear yet, traumas are the central theme of this story. The structure of breaking the events into more manageable chunks by isolating them through the eggs makes it fairly easy to insert other themes and comment on them briefly, calling attention to the fact these issues exist while also keeping the character’s original goals. Obviously, these girls are also affected positively and negatively by everything they witness and this makes them bond together more strongly.

Despite all the rubbing of themes in your face, the show can definitely be subtle when it wants too. Some things are only left in the subtext for a while, for example in episode three where we meet Rika, we get some dialogue that we believe might relate to her trauma, the show then reveals to us that she used to self-mutilate, and it stops right there. We don’t have to see it happening or having a flashback or direct monologue about her past like any other show with less sensitive writing would do. Whoever made this decision knew there would be enough time later to flesh out her situation in a more natural way. A fictional character does not need to be completely transparent since their first appearance. If you do it correctly, the audience will be engaged enough to keep going, there is no need to halt the whole story to explore a single person before getting the gears turning again.

Rika is a character that some people might find annoying. She is so nonchalant that she barely seems to be affected by her situation and the stories she encounters in her egg-breaking endeavors, frequently teasing the other girls and making some comments you wouldn’t really make in a conversation between friends and also talks ill of the person she is trying to save. I was immediately drawn to her character because it is all clearly a facade. Rika is in fact by far the most self-conscious among the four main characters and the one who better understands their dynamics, and everytime someone says anything that gets close to who she really is instead of who she is pretending to be, her reaction is to lash out and then flee. In episode seven she says that now she is the serious Rika, meaning that she either intentionally created this facade or at the very least realized that she had built it.

Rika’s arc here is not about learning to appreciate her mother, breaking up completely from her or finally meeting her father, because neither of these would be consistent with the themes and pacing previously established. It is about trying to come to terms with herself and making a decision that will harm her less in the future. The anime does not present us with clear alternatives that will immediately and definitively solve the issue, that would be too artificial. Wonder Egg might be realistic in certain aspects of its worldbuilding and completely fantastical in others, but the themes are always kept well-grounded. At no point does the show seem interested in something as formulaic as “do X to solve Y”, what it wants to do is remind us of how complex the world and our emotions are.

Of course I’m only talking about a single character here, I’m not mentioning everything she goes through and she is not even the protagonist despite being the character that affected me the most, but for the sake of not turning this into a summary of her character, let’s move on to something else.

I don’t remember seeing anyone complaining about the structure of jumping back and forth in time as I watched the show and honestly it is very effective, but I can also see how it would be confusing for some people. After all this still follows the monster-of-the-week trope to some extent, but since the priority was never with the mechanics of the fights but instead with however many themes and real issues we can get out of them, then the structure helps prevent it from getting too repetitive. I wouldn’t want every episode to follow the straight path of characters interacting, getting into a dream, meeting the trauma and the monster, defeating the monster and then taking a step towards self-betterment in exactly that order and pacing everytime.

This is important, by the way: taking a step towards self-betterment, not solving the issue as a whole. These girls killed themselves, they lost to trauma, but can still get some level of comfort through their interactions with the main characters. They are not in a situation where they can go back in what they did, so it is great that the anime does not put finality in everything, that would diminish too much of the situation and increase the focus on simply the monster being defeated. Even though the exploration of these issues is sometimes not as complex, the fact that Wonder Egg even comments on them is already something. Most anime can’t treat stuff like sexuality as anything else more than either comedy or something extremely degenerated, while Wonder Egg manages to comment — although briefly — on the discovery of sexuality of teenage characters without being uncomfortable about it. The story recognizes that these things exist and some of the issues that might sprawl out from it while also not needing an all-out speech about any of them.

I have a decent experience with amateur writers online and more than once have I stumbled about them saying stuff like that they only add enough minorities — primarily LGBT+ characters — “enough to please that audience”, only to them not understand why their “representation” is being criticized as superficial, stereotypical or problematic. Gladly Wonder Egg is self conscious enough about these and other things. Creative writing is always, on some level, about the human condition, and there is more than one human condition. It would be downright implausible to comment on these themes without recognizing the existence of “the other” at least once, or without having the notion that different people deal differently and to varying levels of success with their issues, while also not judging these characters as weak or anything similar in the process.

One of the things that bothered me for a while was the inevitable plot twist that was clearly going to show up at some point. When at the end of episode 8 two characters accidentally spy on Acca and Ura-Acca having a conversation that begins to unravel said plot twist, I got a bit anxious thinking the show was going downhill. Well, a lot of people clearly think that the show did go downhill, but, honestly, I found the ending at least adequate. No, I will not pretend that details such as Neiru’s true identity have remotely close to the same level of development or impact that other previously established details have, but I also don’t think that anything that happens in the end completely breaks the show — more on this soon.

Thankfully, the way the anime deals with this plot twist is by immediately having the characters question Acca and Ura-Acca, receiving a simple answer for it, and then the scene diverges to show the girls’ excitement with Momoe’s date. This is a fairly simple writing technique called “shining a light” on something to indicate where the audience should focus their attention and by extension what is the priority of the scene. Despite introducing the plotline about a pseudo-conspiracy, Wonder Egg is not trying to comment on anything such as authoritarian government or censorship, so introducing this while immediately turning our attention to something else means that the characters are above the plot in priority. Perhaps the true Wonder Egg was the friends we made along the way — again, I’m not going to pretend as if everything that happens from this onward is as great as what happened before, but I also clearly did not get nearly as frustrated as most people seem to have with the direction the show takes.

At the ending of the same episode, the anime goes back and gives you another conspiracy even bigger than the last one before you even understand the implications of the first one. This is where I think a lot of the criticisms people were making began, because I will admit that most of the time it does seem like we are getting the introduction of the main villain to be defeated. If the promise that this is the conflict we are building to really interest you, then I perfectly understand the dissatisfaction with the ending. I would argue that the show always gave us some reasons that this was not the point, but again, it is not perfect and I might just be wishful thinking. Liking where the anime goes does not mean I have to find every single step of the way there to be absolutely perfect or anything.

This is one of the cases where I find it hard to fault the show too much, since Wonder Egg is already trying to do a dozen more things than most of the copy-pasted seasonal shows ever do, so I will always give it the benefit of the doubt.

However, in retrospect, we are watching a history about two guys that stopped being human and created a magical egg that is capable of summoning teenagers in the dreams of other teenagers that might or might not be from different parallel universes and that somehow saving these girls enough times is going to bring back another dead teenager from another timeline to ours, so I’m not even sure why we expected the show to have answers for all its science-fiction and fantastical elements to begin with.

Wait, maybe by introducing the creation of a girl that was artificially created to be perfect, with all her characteristics controlled exactly how adults want them to be, they actually created something that not only does not exist in the human world but also negatively affects girls that are not created artificially because they are, you know, human beings? Perhaps the idealized and romanticized view of the perfect kid that some people have is a social issue that generates dissociation in the people who are not capable of meeting that standard. Perhaps the show is trying to say something when everything goes wrong when two scientists begin to play with not only life, but also with a figure such as this, that also puts the literally artificial girl in opposition to the actual real girls as a looming presence that cannot be directly defeated. Wait, you’re telling me writers think before they write?

Occasionally, I have seen some people criticizing the anime as being “yet another story about bullying”, and this is where I want to directly address a criticism. First, because bullying is one of the themes that the story deals with, not the only one. Second, because if you think that everyone knows that bullying is bad, or how bad it is, then I don’t believe we are living on the same planet.

I do understand what this criticism is trying to say, it is when you see a story telling you that absolute control over a society is bad and your reaction is “I wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t told me!”, or something similar. What is being criticized here is that this is a common theme and seeing it too often can get overused and outdated, but we also have to remind ourselves that the fact we got sensitized to certain issues through exposure to them in works of media does not mean that everyone has gone through that. There is no such thing as excess of calling attention to a real world issue in an industry — in a story? Sure, it can get repetitive and not go anywhere, if the author seems incapable of turning it into anything and just keeps going around and around and ending in the same spot, but not in an industry. Even if I can get bored of seeing a theme or scene that I have already seen be executed similarly or even better in the past, I will still take the time to remind myself that some people haven’t. Since this anime is about traumas and essentially a call to compassion, then if I had left it primarily dissatisfied with the repetition of a theme, then at that point I would look back and feel like I lost the point — the empathy it is trying to evoke.

We don’t want to face issues all the time, it is a perfectly common reaction to shy your eyes away from something scary or sad, but fiction is always a good place to bring attention to these things, and Wonder Egg is here to remind us that these people exist, that adolescence is a confusing and troubling moment of our lives, that there are victims and aggressors, and that not all of them are helped or punished for what they did. When in the ending Ai goes back to where she began, I interpret that as the show telling us that what happened here can’t simply be forgotten. The damage is done and the connections they formed along the way are going to follow these girls even as they move forward in life. There is no simple and definitive answer such as “we dealt with none of our problems and all the issues still exist” or one of “we dealt with all of our problems and every single issue has been resolved”, because as I said previously, that would simply be implausible. The message of Wonder Egg may be bittersweet, but it is still optimistic.

Having said all of this, does this mean everyone is wrong for not liking the ending? Of course not. Just to make something clear, I didn’t even register the last scene as being a bait for a sequel until someone pointed it out to me, which proves my perception of fiction is not perfect, no one’s is. There are other issues I didn’t comment on, for example such as the lack of Momoe in the last episode — I don’t think the show needs to explain to us why she was angry at the other girls before but later was singing at the karaoke with Rika and Ai, that is very clearly just a case of her reacting to a traumatizing event and lashing out, like human beings tend to do —, but I still felt like there was no reason to exclude her. If you ask me why what happened to Neiru happened to her, I would have no answer to give you. Still. I seem to be one of the people that were the most satisfied with the conclusion. It was a decent ending to a great show, not nearly as impressive as the beginning, but also not nearly as horrible as to be close enough to ruin and devalue everything that came before it.

But then again, that is just my take on it.

Mushoku Tensei is a hard anime to review because it constantly hits you with sparks of interesting ideas and moments, only to go back two or three steps and have to build whatever trust it built in the previous scenes all over again, just to ruin it one more time. This means the show is a lot more ambitious and has a lot more going for it than most isekai anime out there, but also ends up having a lot more chances to fuck up. And oh, does it fuck up.

Its beginning is nothing to write home about. Yet another NEET gets killed by a ... truck while trying to save someone from being run over. However, Mushoku Tensei sets itself apart by having a highly traumatized and morally gray character that received a second chance in life he doesn’t deserve, in a world where his mistakes in both the previous and his current life will be important. Now here’s the issue: none of that matters.

Rudeus is a despicable person, a registered sex offender and pedophile. Lots of authors have achieved great success writing morally gray characters, but Mushoku Tensei seems at times hyper-aware and at times completely ignorant of its main character’s psyche, depending on what the plot needs. What’s the point of characters having flaws if they are going to constantly be rewarded for it? Rudeus repeatedly gropes girls and his “punishment” is getting comically punched in the face while most significant friction is going to be resolved off-screen.

Rudeus’ father in this new world, Paul, is also a registered sex offender and the show expects you take seriously the fact that he raped a woman who ended up being his maid, and that this woman later seduced him, they had sex and she ended up pregnant. What’s so funny about Paul being a rapist? Why does he have a comic “gah?!” reaction when being called out for it? Am I supposed to laugh at this? He undergoes no character development if we’re simply going to skip 9 months ahead when the babies are born and he has already been forgiven for it. These character’s can do whatever the hell they like and no significant harm will come their way. These aren’t character’s flaws, these are gags. We are supposed to find it funny when Rudeus takes advantage of his mother breastfeeding him to lick her breasts, we are supposed to find it funny when Rudeus tries to undress an underage girl while she sleeps. After Roxy leaves the company of the Greyrat family, she is only ever back to be seen being groped, again, by another person. Everything about the tone of these scenes is comical, the music is comical, their reactions amount to scenes that are portrayed as being comical. Saying “We’re scum” every now and then is not enough, you know?

You might be thinking that these characters are going to be taught maturity throughout the show, but you’re dead wrong. It takes 11 episodes for Rudeus’ mistakes to amount to anything significant, and even when it does, the person who pays the price is a tertiary character who’s name we only heard once and has nothing to do with our main characters. The worst part of it all is that this is not even related to his literal crimes against human rights — before anyone tries to say that this society is different from ours, remind yourselves that the character we are following is from our society, therefore the moral framework is closer to ours than to the inhabitants of this world. Saying that it’s how that society works normalizes the problem and brings attention to the fact that a lot of people out there would in fact walk around doing these horrible things if they got the chance. It might be a sad truth about our world and humanity, but if that is what Mushoku Tensei was trying to say — which it isn’t —, then it should take the matter seriously.

When Rudeus arrives in this world, he notes that his parents are young, because he is actually older than them. Rudeus is not a kid, he is a 40-something years-old man trapped in the body of a kid. If he thinks his parents are young, then what does he think of a literal child? Whatever he thinks, that doesn’t stop him from finding them attractive, outright harassing them — even if you make up your mind that this is not pedophilia simply because you don’t want it to be, you still have to remind of yourself that sexual assault is sexual assault, no matter the character’s ages — and saying he is going to intentionally raise Sylph to be his ideal wife. Of course, this is all still portrayed as being comical.

There are two scenes in particular that boggles my mind when it comes to this character’s morality. The first is when Roxy helps Rudeus overcome his trauma that led to his isolation and being able to step outside of his home, only to immediately follow that up with the revelation that he stole her underwear. One stop forward, three or four back.

The second scene is when Philip — Eris’ father — offers Rudeus a place in the family that is going to lead to war between the different branches of the houses, going as far as to say he is willing to put Eris tied-up in his bed so they can consummate the marriage. Rudeus does the bare minimum and refuses it, only to immediately regret the decision saying he could have had a harem of maids and uttering the words “I lost an opportunity.”. This is a half-step forward and thirty backwards. None of this has lasting effects. These aren’t issues being dealt with, they are merely existing. I know people are going to say that this is only the first season, but if you think 4 hours of content is not enough to develop a character, then I have no clue what to tell you. I’m a grown up, I can deal with sexuality in my stories, the issue is that Mushoku Tensei ranges from being weird about it to straight-out problematic. I have read stories that are much darker than this, that have even more questionable characters, but those stories — when they are good — properly deal with the repercussions of events instead of just brushing them aside.

Reaching the bare minimum of human morality is not something to be praised, especially when he is immediately going to prove that he hasn’t reached it yet, but only tricked you for a moment. If this enrages you, then get ready, because it will happen every single episode. If Rudeus not assaulting someone is such a rare occurrence that it has to be praised, then something is awfully wrong. You don’t have to pretend like every single frame in a story is perfect to like it. There is no need to mental-gymnastics your way into overlooking every weird and problematic aspect of the show just to enjoy other parts of it.

This isn’t the only glaring flaw around Rudeus’ character either. Something else that happens in this series is making every character dysfunctional so that Rudeus can seem smart in comparison. Take for example the scene in which Paul is scolding his son for hurting another kid, it takes on an incredibly convoluted path so that Rudeus can show how “mature” he is and say his father is wrong, when none of that would have happened if he simply said he saved another kid from being bullied and hurt. The worst case of this comes with Ruijerd, who has been walking around for 400 years, being hated, feared and fled from because of his green hair, yet not for once has the fool thought about dying his hair. No, it has to be our “genius” protagonist to point out that if people recognize you for your appearance, then maybe you can use a disguise.

When Eris becomes a part of the cast, out of all the different interactions that could have been used to show how she was affected by being raised in a household where her actions never have negative repercussions, this show decides to spend one entire episode talking about how she can’t do math, can’t shop by herself and can’t read. We are honestly expected to believe that she spent all of her years fighting everyone endlessly and never learning a single thing, and this gets followed by yet another arc of teaching Eris how to be a human being.

She is a kid, I get it, I just think that everything relating to these arcs is asinine. Rudeus walks up to Philip and says “What if we expose your child to a traumatic event that can potentially scar her for life so she learns her lesson?”, and the madman accepts it. They are going to pretend that they are being kidnapped, but as it turns out, that one unnamed butler that appeared on that one scene is in the play and actually wants to kidnaps them — this is among the most convoluted plots I have seen in my life and one that screams “temporary conflict created to be resolved” more than anything —, turning what was going to be an acted traumatizing event into a real one, in which Rudeus still makes things harder for Eris so she begins trusting him instead of taking the matter seriously as soon as he realizes it is not acted. This leads to an interesting scene where Rudeus and Eris are exposed to true violence and Rudeus has to confront his own mortality, but by the time the next episode rolls around it has been resolved and we can ignore that for the next couple of episodes until it becomes relevant again.

Then there’s the arc where Eris has to be taught how to dance so she doesn’t get humiliated in her birthday, which I’m not going to say is unrealistic, but I don’t appreciate the fact that Rudeus, who also doesn’t know how to dance, has to teach her how to. Our literal sex offender male main characters are going to have their flaws dealt with off-screen and comically, but when it comes to a female character, she has to be constantly taught how to do things, even by people who in theory don’t know them. We can’t have a female character learning something by herself or with another female character, that’s insane.

You might be thinking that my score is very generous considering how negative all of this sounds. The thing is, this show has lots of interesting moments, it just doesn’t manage to follow up with most of them in a way that I find appropriate or satisfying. For instance I can’t complain much regarding the production values, it is constant top-notch. It might never reach the same level of expressiveness that some shows do, but it is still well beyond what is average for seasonal anime. The action scenes are all beautiful, impressive and easier to follow than I expected they would be, but the issue is that there are no stakes. We might not know exactly how overpowered Rudeus is, but come on, the guy has literal God giving him advice later on, so all of it ends up being spectacle for the sake of spectacle.

I also find the worldbuilding to be quite overrated. The production does everything it can to keep it refreshing and I particularly like how instead of having an opening it uses the opening time and music to show montages and scenarios, though some of them still end up a bit generic. Of course, this is still much more than most isekai anime do and I will give credit where credit is due. Still I can’t shake off things like the demon society working literally like our human society, except with anthropomorphic demons. There is very little regarding actual culture building aside from what you should obviously expect, things such as the nobles having an etiquette, people from different places eating different things, yadda yadda. It’s something, but none of it is impressive.

I planned on making this review longer, but I see no value in analyzing specific episodes or something like that just to reiterate what I have already said. In conclusion, Mushoku Tensei is half as interesting as it is repetitive and problematic, and it is a lot of all of that. It has a soul, one that I can definitely appreciate, but one that is also buried beneath a dozen other things I either don’t appreciate or simply condemn.

Since I can already see the comments being made, I’ll address the matter of why I reviewed this in the first place. Some people will say I want clout, and to that I say I won’t get any clout for this, I will get hate. That is bound to happen whenever you criticize something so popular, particularly when it is something that already sparks a lot of discussion. Believe in what you want to believe, but know that I reviewed this for my own satisfaction, because I am as entitled to my opinion as you are to yours, and because positive criticism is not the only one that exists. It has nothing to do with me wanting to change your opinion, expecting the Japanese industry to take it into account or anything of the like, it’s simply because I want to and because I can.

The world is confusing. No one knows how to properly navigate it. You’ll get a grasp on it eventually and there might be people to help you out, but one day you might also drift apart. That’s a very sad notion, but it also one that reminds us of one thing: what we lived has value, those memories of old are meaningful and our connections to other people will continue to shape us long after those relations are over.

Sonny Boy is not subtle in its commentary about getting lost in the world and society. The characters are all transported to a world in which their ... school is the whole extent of said world. Everything beyond it is pitch black; you can reach for it, but you don’t know what you’ll be getting yourself into. Inside, teenagers try to make it into a functional society, but are obviously all lacking in resources and life experience to do so. Some people are more talented or stronger than others, and that is enough for social bubbles to emerge. I’m sure most of us can relate to the notion that we are getting left behind, that other people are finding their careers, finding what they are good at, have a decent idea of what their life will be like once they step out of school or even already have a future guaranteed, but we — or I — always feel like the outcast.

As someone who spent their whole teen days knowing the only path I could pursue in life was the path of art — which ultimately led me to turn to literature —, I can highly relate to coming of age stories and the anxiety of stepping into adulthood. I can barely manage adulthood even after having been an adult for supposedly four years and “getting ready” — you eventually learn that school is not as good of a leeway into working life as you were led to expect — for it for many more years, so I can see a lot of myself in these character’s emotions, struggles and decisions.

Nagara is the closest thing to a stand-in for the audience in this show, but has enough of a personality that he does not come out as simply self-insert material. Being an introvert does not mean you don’t have a personality, it just means yours doesn’t come out as much, especially in such a confusing age and place where opening yourself up to others is hard when you don’t know how they will react and harder still when you might not even understand why you feel the way you feel. Nagara’s character is used to talk about others' expectations in a very direct way in a couple of episodes, as well as the importance of social connections, while the “speaking up for yourself'' part is also shared mainly with Mizuho.

I am surprised to see Mizuho not being revealed as a transgender character later in the series, since she is reading Stop!! Hibari-kun! In her first appearance, a 1981 manga about a transgender girl going through school who also turns out to be the daughter of a yakuza. Mizuho is by far the easiest character for me to relate to because of this, because of her relation to cats — I have more than twenty of them, it has gotten out of control, someone please help —, because I would have loved to look similar to her through my teenage days — having come out as a transgender girl myself after over a decade of suffering with gender dysphoria — and because she is just very entertaining to watch on screen. I also love her voice; Yuuki Aoi sounds like she is very close to the microphone when speaking just like how all the other characters are doing, which couples with the anime’s more simplistic art style dedicated to giving each character more distinct facial features instead of just telling everyone apart from their hair color, these being techniques that invite a lot more intimacy from the audience and drags them closer to the characters and, by extension, the themes. Having said that, something about Yuuki Aoi’s voice just entices me. I believe she communicates Mizuho’s melancholic and occasionally smug personality with impressive effectiveness.

Of course, the character’s don’t stand in school for long. The first episode’s arc is a very self-contained one about rules, authority and the dangers of it, in which losing said authority leads a kid to hit another one with a baseball bat in the head. Power is a dangerous thing, it messes with our morals, it makes us scared of risking it and can be used both for good and for evil, even by the same person. Give someone too much power and it’s a matter of time and circumstance until you get yourself a war.

I believe the first episode was presented this way with airing conditions in mind. Sonny Boy overall lands itself incredibly well on the style of episodic storytelling with a narrative and thematic throughline to glue it all together, honestly one of the best I have seen yet in that department. Making a first episode that presents the audience with a simple premise in a restricted environment is a great way to ease the viewer into the story.

That structure gets quickly expanded upon as Nozomi takes a leap of faith towards the unknown world, and all the students now find themselves on a new island and with the information that there are many “This Worlds”. All weird places that no one understands exactly, all connected in some fashion that they are still to uncover, and all of it can be conquered by the kids’ specific powers — talents, as they are thematically shown to be — and give them different rewards that they then have to learn how to use. It is not hard to see what that means: its plot significance is one of adding flavor and mystery to the world to better mark the student’s progress as they peel off the mechanics of these worlds little by little, but its thematic significance is one of putting your talents and skills to use and being rewarded for your work.

However, that is just the first episode and there are eleven more to go. Yes, I’ll be going through this commenting “briefly” about what stood out to me in every episode, which I never do, but this anime is an exception and it deserves it. Full on spoilers from now on, you have been warned.

Each episode deals with a couple of different themes but there are always one or two clearly main ones. The series is more interested in discussing these themes in its surreal world than properly grounding every facet of the worldbuilding, which is totally unnecessary once you are shining so many lights on the relevance of the themes above everything else. Yes, the anime has a lot of small little mechanics the characters need to understand about each world, but these mechanisms are generally intrinsically tied to the theme of each world, so don’t expect the type of worldbuilding we are used to seeing. It is not important that we know everything about the island, how far apart things are and where everything is being built, it is more important that we understand how the characters react to their environment and how they communicate — or attempt to — through said world.

Episode two, for instance, leads to the canonical creation of cryptocurrency by everyone’s dearest Rajdhani, but really the important aspect of it is commenting on how a society gets formed à la Lord of the Flies. There are other elements to this episode, such as Mizuho having to speak for herself as I commented earlier, the fact that value is attached to things by our own decisions and how this value can be altered through the means in which these things are obtained, but episode two is still primarily about introducing Mizuho’s character and her struggles with being a kid who wants to be more than just a kid.

I particularly love the fact that at no point does the plot judge Mizuho for having a crush on her teacher. That sort of stuff happens. She can’t be blamed for developing feelings for a figure she sees as a guiding light in a twisted world. We are very clearly led to understand that she decided to wear a ring not because she was in an actual relationship with him, but because she saw that as a stating of her own maturity. Other characters later bring attention more than once to Mizuho’s emotional dependency, it used to be put at least partially on her teacher, but because of the blackmailing she suffered and the circumstances of being stranded, that then turned exclusively to her cats. And I ask again: can she be blamed for it? No, she can’t, and I appreciate the writing for being self-aware enough to understand that and respect her character instead of turning this into what could have been a generic villainization of teen sexuality. Please note that I am only talking about her emotional dependency and her having a crush on her teacher, I am not saying that actually being involved in a romantical and or sexual relationship with a teacher is ethical, especially considering that Mizuho is sixteen years old.

One of the great things that fantastical elements in a story allows is the literalization of metaphors. Episode three does this by using a rule that makes recluse people totally isolated within a pocket dimension of endless black curtains, all connected to each other through gaps in these curtains, meaning there is a way for them to communicate with each other. In this dimension they are all doing what they want to be doing: one guy is livestreaming Pacman, there is one buff dude that only wants to work out and a girl that is sewing multiple stuffed toys… you get the idea.

Society isolates people and that should be a given in any system created by humans. There is simply too much idiosyncrasies in our relations and personalities and it would be goddam boring if everyone was the same. Of course it can get to a point where it is detrimental to the isolated person, but that begins as a way to cope with our inability to communicate with people we feel we should be able to communicate with — because everyone else does, apparently — and our interests and passions not being well-seen or simply really hard to turn into a living. Who wouldn’t like to live in a world in which subsistence is a given and we can do whatever we want and repeat our hobbies for as long as we can stand them because we enjoy it?

Some aspects of Sonny Boy’s multiple worlds can maybe be related to the concept of a noosphere: a state of evolution defined by our consciousness, mental activities and interactions with other people, it is both above and ahead of the geosphere and the biosphere and envisions a world in which Earth is essentially a super-organism and there is a layer of consciousness and information enveloping it all. I am not claiming to be an expert on the matter and maybe the creators weren’t even trying to pursue this idea in particular — seen in the fact that they like mentioning Robinson Crusoe, so you could expect then to mention the noosphere —, but the many This Worlds in the story are described as playing with consciousness and the mind. Also, in a noosphere humans would be united enough to be able to deal with global problems and Earth can self-regulate itself, which these Worlds do by their own set of rules. I’m sorry if anyone has studied this and if I said something wrong about it.

Going back to episode three, it keeps pulling the thread of commenting about isolation with things such as no one noticing these people’s disappearance except those in direct interaction with then and these people might not even go looking for the missing ones, which is certainly how most people I know describe the feeling of being depressed and the notion that no one understands them. It also has some very direct commentary about our capitalist society through reflecting on the fact that the blue flames of the island take everything away from you that you haven’t paid for and with Mizuho complaining about people wanting to be friends with her power — what she can do —, instead of with herself — who she is. It is not a particularly complex exploration of the individual's relation with capitalism and their worth in it, but at least it is something.

This episode also turns Nagara and Mizuho into a duo, which is something we are going to see a lot more of through the remaining episodes. You get the drill: they fail to communicate, fight, then manage to properly communicate — which goes hand in hand with the episode’s theme of isolation caused by an inability to communicate — and solve the issue together, yadda yadda, we have seen that before. It is executed competently and makes sense within the story, but Sonny Boy is not a non-stop flow of impressive big ideas and unexpected twists and turns leading to their incredible solution, it is that just most of the time.

Episode four then comments more directly about how talent can distance people. That is a recurring theme through the whole show, but in this episode we see a story about an ape who wanted to play baseball, but could not because of the physical liability of only having one arm, but that did not stop him from loving the sport and ending up as an arbiter, however he was seen as the common person, relegated to a background position while other, more talented and successful people shine in the spotlights, leading him to be killed by an enraged crowd for standing up to his sense of justice. Before that all the apes were indistinguishable, having to stand out on the basis of their prowess, while some people are like the blue ape, clearly different and talented enough to steal everyone’s attention and moments to shine, which leads him to forget his origin as the target of prejudice and causing harm to another victim when the goal of being perfect becomes more important than enjoying the moment and the success he already has. Ace then goes on to say that the arbiter’s death was fair because there are common people who drown other’s talents — referring to his talent and Nagara causing him to lose an important game back when they played baseball —, but of course he is totally wrong in this. Loving something and having a competitive mindset about it can blind people sometimes and Ace does not realize this, while Nozomi, being by far the most conscious of her surroundings and constantly having insights about the other kids' psychology everytime the “camera” zooms in on her eyes, is the first one to call attention to the fact that the impressive ape in the whole story is the arbiter, for standing up for himself against everyone knowing that he would be seen as the enemy.

I know most of what I just said is spelled out in the episode, but since I am committed to reviewing the whole show I have to mention these details, because Sonny Boy constantly builds upon the themes of the last episode in the next one instead of just going for unrelated yet interesting themes or repeating the same ones like I feel other shows I don’t resonate with very strongly often do.

Nagara is also shown to not have enough control of his own power to determine where he wants to go. We find out that he can only travel to other This Worlds and not back to their original one. I believe Nagara to be the carrier of this power because he is just enough of a blank-slate to fit virtually anywhere while also not feeling like he belongs in any of them, having no clear goal in life and thus not wanting to go to any place in particular, drifting through whatever comes his way. Sure, he can bring other people with him, but it’s not as if he is going to any one place.

We end this episode with the introduction of Aki-sensei, someone the kids recognize as being one of their teachers back in the real world. Aki-sensei immediately tells them that the fun and games have ended and that there is no way to go back to their original world. While a lot of what she says is put to the test later on, Aki turns out to be a figure of authority manipulating these kids and creating even more distinction between the groups, managing to bring every single person that would be willing to trust a figure who is supposed to know what she is doing while the other groups are made of the students that want to find that out for themselves. Her primary target for manipulation is Asakaze and everything that was needed for him to trust her was hearing that he was special, that he deserves special attention and that he has a special future. Again, this is dealing with the psychology of people receiving power and status, in this case especially by someone who he sees as having a better grasp on reality and thus making her words all the more meaningful.

As soon as the sides are clearly divided conflicts start emerging faster and it doesn’t take long until we see three separate groups being formed. That is expected to happen whenever there is a society, especially when it starts to grow and people gravitate towards others similar to them and in whom they believe in. Aki-sensei is not right in her manipulations by any stretch, but her presence merely accelerates an ongoing process. The meaning of Aki-sensei in the story changes a bit once when we find out she is actually not Aki-sensei but another student playing as her, changing what was a figure of authority manipulating kids in vulnerable positions to being one of those kids, just as lost or even more lost than the others, pretending to be a figure of authority who understand the world better than they do and presenting it as necessity of maintaining the status quo while framing the other kids as potentially dangerous precisely because they are trying to lay change upon the world. Knowing all of this, it is no surprise what their actions later escalate into.

One of the most interesting ideas the anime introduces is in episode six, where they find a world that is a giant cinema filled to the brim with records from Nagara’s perspective. It fits his character considering Nagara is used to spending his days as simply an observer that takes no action and the way the mechanics are played with are interesting. What if we edit the records? What if we play it backwards? It doesn’t really matter how much this amounts to, the questions are interesting enough by themselves. Not all changes made to the films actually happen, even if Nagara is present, this probably means that not everything done to the films will actually change his perception of reality. If it is something that he can’t imagine happening or doesn’t have enough suspension of disbelief to accept, then it likely doesn’t affect the real world.

Yamabiko is a particularly interesting addition to the cast: a once student turned dog who has lived for five thousand years and finally gives us some answers, claiming that the reason the drifting happens is because their principal is God, explaining that only the school and students can get adrift and that it only happens with people from the same school they went to, no matter the time in which that happened. Though there is not much that can be said about Yamabiko and the themes revolving around his character before the episode dedicated to expanding on his background, he is still a fun and mysterious character that shares good synergy with Mizuho. He does, however, say that the kids from the current drifting still have time to go back. Our experiences through a structure like school and our teenage days shape us and once we step outside of it, we aren’t the same as when we first stepped in. Since the perception of reality is an important concept in this episode, then this means that if we changed, then the world itself changed, because our reality is simply how we see it. Nozomi, for instance, keeps talking about her compass and the light she believes will guide them home, but we don’t have to actually see that light to believe her. Yamabiko on the other hand simply can’t go back, because he has lost too much and been around for too long, to the point where he doesn’t even fit the actual real world he was used to.

My favorite part of episode six is when Nozomi is talking about how she doesn’t want to walk down the safe paths people have told her about just to think “Ah, good going.” That’s not what life is for her. Nozomi is a very brave and insightful person and she wants to do what she wants to do, she is a free spirit that can appreciate the present more than all the other kids. She can get anxious and scared, but that is precisely why she does it. Nozomi wants to feel, wants to live and wants to take risks. Honestly I would like to be a little bit more like her, but I’m simply not brave enough.

Hoshi’s White Knight Syndrome is also brought to the forefront in this episode. He knew the school was going to go adrift and that is why he went to school that day, because he wanted to help these people, but this is not presented as simply altruism. Hoshi had always been drawn as creepy and scheming if not necessarily evil, but as we also find out, this desire of him to help others does not exist because he actually wants to help them, but because he has a god complex and wants to be a savior. Meaning, he’s going about it the wrong way.

Episode seven is my least favorite of the bunch simply because it was the first to come out as too heavy-handed to me. You see, a lot in fiction boils down to promises and payoffs. The ending of episode six and the entirety of episode seven gave me the impression that the series was going into another direction, having the newly discovered plot about castaways that have been adrift for longer wanting to punish Nagara for ruining their lives take a more prominent place in the story. Don’t take me wrong, I’d much rather this current story that the anime has, but it did gave me the feeling that that was the promise being made for the long run, that this was the direction it was taking and by the ending of episode seven I was expecting it to turn into something similar to “us against the government”, so finding out that was not the case was both a relief and a confusing moment. Even after watching the episode again to try and judge it in a different light already knowing how the story ends, my view on this hasn’t changed.

This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate anything that episode seven does, of course. Sonny Boy frequently calls attention to Nagara’s personality and the need to speak up for himself, but it is never offensive about it. Koumaru reaches the conclusion that Nagara can’t be blamed for drifting them and Yamabiko notes that God gave him that power with the intention of it being used for the drifting, which also means he can’t be blamed for being who he is since that power is so rooted in his personality. He can get more out of life by forming connections with people, but we don’t need to scorn him for that until he learns his lesson.

The world turned upside down is still a neat idea even if I don’t think it is used to as satisfying a conclusion as most of the other episodes do. It explores the idea of a stagnant society that makes its workers believe that they are changing it, no matter whether they believe it or even know what exactly they are supposedly doing, giving them a blind hope to help cope with their trapped situation. Since Sonny Boy constantly pulls threads from previous episodes it is pretty easy to relate this to Nozomi’s phrase of not wanting to walk down the safe path in life.

All it takes for Nagara to flip the world upside down is to take a step away from the safe spot. I get the message, but I feel like it is slightly too simplistic. Sometimes this anime does not deliver in the themes department as well as I would have liked, but thankfully the strength of the main characters is enough for me to see that as just a minor nuisance.

Episode eight, on the other hand, is among the amazing ones and it does a lot more for the characters and tone than any episode honestly even needs to in order to be satisfying. We jump from present to past as Yamabiko tells his sad story. In the present they are traveling along with Nagara, Mizuho and her cats, but the framing always keeps us close to the characters instead of zooming out to show the scenery, which is great to shorten the distance between audience and characters, hyperfocusing this episode in the people we are seeing and leaving the exploration of the world to the side for at least one episode. The muddier color design and music also helps a lot in keeping this episode tone-perfect all the way through.

The reason why I find this episode to be genius is because of how Yamabiko’s story recontextualizes the characters of Nagara and Mizuho. Yamabiko was a shut-in who simply crawled his way through life just like Nagara, but too a much more intense degree that leads him to completely isolate himself, instead of trying but not managing to speak up like how we see Nagara often doing, leading to a point where Yamabiko reacts violently to try and scare people away. He also brings attention to Mizuho’s emotional dependency by increasing that to the point where he turns into a dog to follow the lead of someone he trusts more than even himself, and it is these two things combined that eventually leads to the ruin of the people around him and himself.

Episode eight is primarily about ignoring your problems until it is too late. Yamabiko’s power gives him the ability of manifesting his mental state, this being the reason why he turned into a dog, but also being the reason why the epidemy hits Kodama and her friends. I don’t think it would be right to call these kids the new family Yamabiko has found, because his interactions happen almost exclusively with Kodama, being the pure guiding light — probably even motherly figure, since her power is called “M”, I know that might mean "Manipulate" or something, but we also know that Nagara has an issue with his mother who is herself a shut-in that doesn’t leave the house — so that he needs to go through life without thinking, leaving all his worries and objectives for someone else to decide. Thus, he is walking the “safe path” mentioned before.

The anime is clearly self-conscious about all of this, since not only do the personalities of these three characters relate in such a direct way, but also because we see Nagara saying he relates to it, while Mizuho starts the episode more playful and smuggy like we know her to be, but then gets quieter with every interlude to Yamabiko’s story. I have praised the anime for respecting its characters until now, but it is an even greater thing that it is willing to bring attention to how dangerous their paths can be. I agree with the message of following your own path and being yourself, but I am also not naive enough to pretend that all is well when it isn’t and, even taking in the fact that we all want to live our successful lives doing what we love, the world is not fair or simple enough to simply allow that to happen without any sort of friction. There are aspects of us that have to be fought against just like there are aspects of the world around us that we should fight against.

Since I mentioned music and tone, I want to take a short while to talk about the production of Sonny Boy. The reason why this anime feels like so much of a breath of fresh air is because it is almost 100% pure 2D animation, with as little post-processing and CGI as is possible. I’m not saying there isn’t great animation out there, but it honestly boggles my mind when I see so many people sharing sakuga moments from anime like Fate or Demon Slayer where half the screen is drowning beneath post-processing, artificial light from above to make every frame feel epic and world-defining and tons of CGI even if it is great CGI. I don’t want to sound like an elitist, I can enjoy those things for what they are, I’m not saying that CGI and post-processing have no place in the industry nor am I saying that the shows mentioned here are poorly produced, but every now and then I want to watch something different instead of having the feeling that every anime that ever comes out is trying to do the same thing to various different levels of success. I am eternally grateful to the team behind Sonny Boy for deciding to go with this style of production because it fits the tone of the series so much better then if it was trying to be flashy in its presentation.

Something else that I really like about the production is how the music is kept quiet. There are exceptions — especially in the last few episodes — for example in the more montage-like scenes, but generally the tracks are kept distant, while the character’s voices are kept closer, rarely having distractful lyrics, leaving the presentation and dialogue to pull most of the weight. What this also does is it keeps it from ever getting repetitive. Sometimes anime — especially more action-centered anime — will play the same tracks over and over again to the point where they run the risk of not being iconic and memorable, but also redundant and annoying. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert in the matter, but Shouji Hata, the sound director for Sonny Boy, worked on a ton of really popular stuff, some that I even distinctly remember liking the soundtrack — such as Vinland Saga and Log Horizon —, so, if I can interpret the production this way, I also believe that a professional who has probably been working in the industry for longer than I have lived can do all of this intentionally.

Now proceeding to episode nine, this is one I’m not so hot on either. The highlights are everything related to the cats, of course. I did not expect them to start turning into actual characters — even if very simple ones — and it adds an extra layer of charm and comedy to their interactions.

I definitely enjoyed it more the second time through, knowing where the series ends and paying more attention to Asakaze’s and Nozomi’s interactions, but the overall plot and complexity of the themes just doesn’t hold up in my mind.

Aki-not-sensei wants the power of the twins, but only one of them. Since they are both the same person, this means that she only needs a part of the person being manipulated, everything else can just be thrown away and does not add up to your value — this is interesting to think about if you remember that Aki keeps pretending like she is saving the world and reducing the values of individuals she doesn’t need and overestimating others to do her deeds.

The twins are fighting over the fact that one of them has a single strand of hair more than the other. Clearly the point of this is that people overestimate the worth of some things only to pretend like they are better than others — and if these are the same people, then it can be seen as him not being able to deal with the fact he is not perfect by externalizing it into an enemy. Their power to reverse everything makes them forget the whole fight and they end up fighting eternally because you can’t simply go back, your experiences change you and nothing is accomplished by trying to go back to square one as if nothing had happened, he has to accept his own flaws and not try to reset everything to zero, but do things differently with the knowledge and experiences he gained on the way. Aki of course gets to him before he can realize any of this and the result is that by killing a part of himself, he kills the whole.

Maybe I would enjoy this episode more if it had been done with a character we already knew. Sonny Boy focuses its characterization in the four main faces of the show while leaving other characters very superficial and using them almost exclusively to explore themes. While I don’t think you can criticize the fact that the secondary characters aren’t that fleshed out since this anime is trying to do twenty times more things than most anime are, I still felt like bringing a wholly new character for this episode ultimately hurt the effectiveness of the message more than it did any other episode.

There are two characters in this show who try to mimic God: Asakaze and Hoshi. In episode 10, we see Asakaze being tricked yet again by Aki, who takes him to see the principal — God — who asks him to kill War, the character we met in Yamabiko’s flashback. Kossetsu — who we find out has the ability to read other people’s thoughts — convinces Nozomi to come along. Kossetsu loves Asakaze, but he loves Nozomi, so she wants Nozomi to help change him to a state where he might end up at her feet. Obviously, only tragedy could come from this.

Asakaze was so obsessed with the concept of a great mission reserved to him that he allowed himself to be manipulated by Aki and ended up losing sight of everything that doesn’t relate to pursuing Nozomi. He confessed to her, but got rejected because she couldn’t respect him. Asakaze then says that he was probably obsessed over her because he felt like he could never be as strong as her. At this point he realizes he should let her go, and, after conquering the world “War”, he actually manages to create death when Nozomi falls off the cliff and into the nothingness at the bottom of war, not managing to save her because as it turns out, his power is spontaneously activated. He did not want Nozomi anymore, therefore he couldn't use his powers on her. Asakaze’s power was born out of his need to keep everything and everyone at his reach. God definitely knew this and tricked him along with Aki.

The War we saw in Yamabiko’s past was still walking around, but the one we meet here is completely empty, falling to the bottom of a deep gorge yet never actually reaching it even though there is one; stagnant. Only Asakaze can bring him to the ground and his reward for that is a weapon.

War is a manifestation, a world himself, and conquering him grants you with the power to kill. There is a chance he was even tricked by God as well, since he was killing people before Asakaze, but God of course never bothered with telling him that death is a phenomenon that can happen there under specific circumstances. Since we find out that the drift was caused by the combination of Nagara, the cats and Mizuho all using their power unwillingly; Nagara creating worlds, the cats copying the kids and Mizuho putting them all in stasis because she doesn’t want to see anyone die, then conquering the world “War” gave them a power that could go against Mizuho’s power.

I like the way the world “War” is presented, as a hard to climb mountainous area that is then abruptly interrupted at the top by “a gorge that goes down forever, but the bottom is crimson.” The fall is the only thing you can expect after warring and whatever lies at the bottom of it is not going to be good. It stretches forever and is a wound delivered in the world itself. It might take time, but it will take its toll.

There might be more to be said about the imagery of War in this episode, but honestly this is all I’ve got.

Episodes eleven and twelve are a two parter to end this amazing ride. As you can expect to happen after Nozomi’s tragic end, the next episode is dedicated to mourning her loss and dealing with themes of grief and death. It is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. I had a slightly hard time breathing through the entire montage opening of Mizuho and Nagara honoring their friend and seeing how far their friendship has come. It hurt seeing both of them cry, it hurt seeing two people seeing their friends crying at their side at different moments of the episode without knowing what to do about it. And, above all, it hurt seeing Mizuho say goodbye to her cats.

Years of trauma and emotional suppression rendered me completely incapable of crying out of emotion, so every story that gets me even close to it surprises me. Last time I “cried” was recently and there was but a single tear, I can’t even remember how many years it was since the last time that I actually cried my heart out, with sobbing and sniffing and stuff. Fiction is what helps me deal with this, and I’m goddamn grateful to Sonny Boy for being on the list of stories that got me close to crying.

As my favorite author — Steven Erikson — once said, “Grief is not something you overcome, but something you get used to carrying the weight of.” I might be paraphrasing that, but you get the idea. We might not see Mizuho and Nagara for long enough after Nozomi’s death to see the full repercussions of this, but we know they are going to carry the weight of everything they lived in these two years adrift for the rest of their lives.

After ten episodes commenting about how things are hard to change, we finally begin seeing some clearer changes in these last few episodes. It began with Nozomi’s death, but we also see how Yamabiko has now completely turned into a dog and doesn’t speak anymore. We see how Rajdhani’s gaze has changed and he reflects on the fact he is growing more apathetic with time. He tells us the story of a man who could not accept reality and would create images of his home and his girlfriend that were not accurate at all, trapping himself in the made-up ideal world of his mind, which relates to the relationship between Asakaze and Nozomi.

Rajdhani also tells us the story of a student obsessed with the idea of creating “death”. Perhaps this can also be interpreted as a character trying to mimic God, since he is trying to create something that was previously impossible . First time through I was sure this was Hoshi, but it is very clearly War, my bad on that. We get the information that he conducted experiments in death and suicide and can assume that he got his badges from that. He created death by rendering his identity completely void, having no desires, no reactions, no emotions and no opinions. He created death by going against everything that defines a person, becoming a mere shape.

As Rajdhani puts it, “Life is an endless exercise in vain effort. But it’s precisely because it’s meaningless that I think the brilliance of this moment in life is so precious. Because that one moment belongs to that person alone.” Ultimately, the message of Sonny Boy is wholly positive. It is realistic enough to recognize the worst parts of life and it does not pretend everything will go right simply because we want it to, but it also finds it important to remind us that, once again, everything we have lived up until that moment is what has shaped us and thus has value. We don’t have to change the world, we just have to find a place to belong in it. Nozomi’s will still lives on, her compass still points to the light, unwavering in its determination, and her mark in the world and in her friends will long outlive herself.

And in episode twelve, we get the confirmation that Nozomi had always been right. The light had been there all along, she was the only one who could see it because she was the only one who's outlook on life matched what the story is trying to convey. It takes an astronomical effort to even get there because that is how much time they lost and enduring how much the world is going to strike you down is no easy thing. They only manage to do so with the combined efforts of Nagara, Mizuho, her cats, Rajdhani and Asakaze — handing them another compass, presumably the original one. But, even after getting to the light, there is this one beautiful scene where they are only able to capture the light by the efforts of Mizuho’s and Nagara’s hands. I always found it interesting that “light” was used for the analogy of the path in life. I mean, try to grasp a light like how Nozomi was doing. She could only reach it, but could never quite hold it, at least not alone. It is light, after all, and it will slip right between your fingers.

The last episode gave me a twist in the stomach when it felt like Nagara and Mizuho weren’t going to talk, but thankfully it was just them having a hard time talking about it. We get to see glimpses of what their life is going to be from now on: Nagara getting a shitty job — yo that’s relatable, kind of —, Mizuho’s grandmother having passed away, Nozomi and Asakaze ending up in a relationship in a world in which they can respect each other. Well, now that I think about it, I don’t think anything that they do in this last episode proves that they are dating, but they are clearly in better terms than their copies that went adrift. If the copies are still adrift and those are the parts of them as people that conflicted with each other, then this original version is the one where things went better for them.

In the past, Nagara ignored the dying bird. Now he cares about the birds that have lost their mother — you could say they are stranded just like the kids were —, but Nozomi had already thought about that and took the only surviving one with her, deciding to taking care of it until it is able to fly by itself, instead of trapping the bird and not allowing it go where it needs to go in life. This interaction shows us that Nozomi is still one step ahead, still striding forward in life and doing what she believes is right. She might not be exactly the same Nozomi we know, but her essence is still the same. Yet again, I wish I could be a little bit more like her.

I am also pleased to see Nagara and Mizuho not turning into a couple. This would have come off as weird and even thematically inconsistent I would say. Since Nagara and Nozomi never ended as a couple, then him ending up with Mizuho would send the message that she was the second option, or maybe that he was looking for the wrong person in Nozomi. The point is, either of these options would have diminished the characters. If they ended up as a couple, then a short arc where they learn to respect each other and brings attention to the morality of Nagara being suddenly romantically attracted to her after finding out Nozomi is with Asakaze would have been completely necessary not to break their dynamic. Either way, I’m much more satisfied with their current friendship than I would have been if any of these characters ended up feeling like a trophy.

I don’t think there’s much more to be said, at least not now. Sonny Boy is about and trying to say a lot of stuff, much more than most anime I watch are, and it accomplishes that in a shorter runtime than most do as well. I barely mind the fact that secondary characters are abandoned or that not every episode is tone-perfect. I didn’t expect it to be and neither does it have to. While I can obviously appreciate several different kinds of stories, my tastes are always changing and I am slowly becoming aware of some elements shared between most if not all of the stories that are connecting with me on a personal level in the past few years. While I would not dare to reduce this anime to a single theme after having said all of this, I just wanted to share one more idea: this story is about the loss of innocence, but it does not end there with a negative outlook on life, it takes the extra step of being about hope for the future and acceptance of our past; acceptance, not surrender.

I’m pretty sure I have told someone that I wish I had watched this anime when I was eighteen or something, thinking that it would have been fundamental in forming my outlook on life — pretty sure it would have lead me to take on the nickname of Sonny Girl as well once I accepted my dysphoria, wait… I actually like how that sounds… — but I take that back. Stupid-ass eighteen years-old me would not have been able to appreciate it the way my current jaded one can. And that is fine, at least that is what Nozomi would try to teach me.

I ended up having a lot more to say than expected while also feeling like there was a lot more to be explored. Chances are I’ll add this to my favorites list and my score might even change as I let these thoughts ferment in my head, but I’ll sign out now.

Oh, and also sorry for the heavy usage of em-dashes — I love these things.

(I should rewrite this review at some point)

Helck is literally the most fun I ever had with fiction.

It doesn't sound like anything particular innovative, and it isn't really, the Demon King was defeated and they're holding a tournament to choose the next one, does the twist that the guy who killed him is in the tournament and goes around with a funny face saying that he hates humans makes it more interesting? Of course it does.

Helck has a lot more comedy in the early part than the rest, i'm not going to pretend it's a series that "starts childish but get serious" or anything, it's ... just a series that happens to mix stupid comedy with interesting twists to plots we have seen before.

But, if that's the case, then why did I gave it a 10?

Because it's freaking amazing.

Even tho Helck's name is in the title, almost the entire manga is presented to us from Vamirio's POV, she may seen like just a tsundere, but she's actually really likeable and cautious, since we follow her trying to discover the truth about Helck, it allows us to see not only Vamirio's character better, but also makes Helck's past more powerful, I didn't expected this series to give me the strong emotions it did, but I understand that because the series relies so much in her, a lot of people might not enjoy it that much, I also feel that the author understood this and porposefully made the first arc more comedy-heavy.

Big gentle guy and small angry demon girl are a lot of fun to follow.

I noticed the artwork getting significantly better as the series goes on, i also think that this has the best usage of lightning in shot composition i have ever seen, not just black or white backgrounds, the character design is also really good.

If you feel like Helck's strength is going to make it not fun to read because he will punch his way through everything, keep in mind that Vamirio is almost the protagonist of the series and that characters like Azudora have fights that are a lot more detailed than Helck's, and honestly even tho I would enjoy more tecnical fights, the fact that the strength of those characters is actually a plot line and not just a gag makes me forgive it easily. Also, having such insanely powerful punches makes up for some incredibly well executed scenes later on.

If you're going to read Helck, I can guarantee you'll laugh a lot, and save some of the pages because you want to look at then for the rest of the day, but unless you find yourself so invested in Vamirio's character as I was, then this will probably just be an entertaining series for you.

This review is spoiler-free, I won't give you any information you wouldn't find out by searching it or by reading the first chapters.

An absolute joy to read, both on it's visuals and the writing.

"Land of the Lustrous" is captivating, it looks like nothing i have ever seen and has an amazing use of the constant black background to craft loads of striking scenes coupled with dialogue that perfectly fits what it's trying to convey, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a masterpiece if didn't had this specific artwork. While it may not be as detailed as most manga are, this kind of composition works ... together with the narrative to create an absolutely outstanding piece of art.

Our protagonist is androgynous looking like almost every character in the story, his goofy and lazy personality allows for a much easier start and for us to easily relate to the character of Phosphophyllite, it tries to drag you in as soon as it can and doesn't waste your time, early establishing the main, elegant-looking enemy and the element that makes the entire story flow as it does, the physicality with which the Gems are broken. Not only does it look great, but it adds to the overall whimsical feeling and plot, by chapter one you already know what can happen to these characters and the chance that they can be rebuilt, it makes you ask questions about the moon and it's dwellers constantly, but you'll have a long way ahead to get those answers.

Reading the first chapter again surprised me by how many things it established I just didn't knew where that important and the great foreshadowing, it's very clear that Ichikawa Haruko had a very good grasp of what she wanted this series to be and created a structure in which she could execute all that.

It already starts off pretty interesting and good looking, and from then on, it goes to develop and entertain you with different things that have a believable relation, I never doubted the reasons of a character to be where he is or do what he does, and I definitely never doubted the flaws the characters have, they're not perfect, you may think that they would be after knowing how they look, but the first three chapters talks about three different characters and how they are far from perfect.

While the moon is one of the main elements of the story and being taken to it is clearly a sign of the characters losing, I felt that maybe it wouldn't have too much tension and payoff to the great buildup, I was terribly wrong, i'm not talking about the answers the series gives later on, even tho they are great, i'm talking about how satisfying it is to watch our character's tales.

Every time they broke beautifully, they get rebuilt and as result become easier to be broke again. Some series where characters can't be killed use things like cutting of a limb to take something away from the characters, so having immortal characters that can be rebuilt and not knowing exactly what happens on the moon may sound like the tension would be drain out by the circumstances, but it doesn't, the series actually manages to have a incredibly good body horror aspect both visually and narratively, which creates some of the best looking fight and presentation scenes I have seen in my life.

I could go on about the specifics, but that would be spoiler territory, and I don't want to ruin anyone's possible amazing experience with this masterpiece, I strongly recommend this and it's anime adaptation to literally everyone, as even the CG looks great.

Fascinating concepts, great character development and portrayal, this manga manages to masterfully balance fantasy, horror, action and comedy in a package that I can easily say will be my favorite manga for a very good time, maybe for the rest of my life, since one of the reasons I don't read too much are because most of then don't interest me and I just find anime to be easier to consume.

I can't praise this as much as I wished to, so i'll stop here and go watch something as you go read it, and I hope you find it as amazing as I do.

So far, this is a big disappointment.

After having watched two great somewhat similar shows this year, I was looking forward to this one, specially after having seen how the show looks, which I believe is the main reason most people are giving this one a try.

Unfortunately, the production is the only good thing about this show, and on some cases even that is a issue, specially on some action scenes, when the character's don't even look like they inhabit the world of the background(or just stand there doing nothing for no reason at all).

The main issue I have with this show are the characters. Most ... (if not all) of them are very generic tropes with generic designs, some of them do have interesting traits, but they're left pretty undeveloped, and most of those characters exist for pretty much no reason. Seriously, there's an absurd amount of character's being introduced at a nonstop pace, and we don't know (or remember) most of their names, which makes it even harder for the somewhat interesting characters to have any development, most of those characters will probably be killed at some point (they already started being killed actually), and that's also a problem, since we know nothing about they and have no reason to care about the main characters because of how superficial they are.

There are even some small details that apparently are plot holes, since I doubt they'll ever be explained, but I don't want to give spoilers.

This show has a lot of obvious issues, and I don't think I can recommend it to anyone, unless you want to look at some gorgeous artwork, but you'll probably end up being betrayed by it.