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Ok lets start my review of magi so far.
-First off need a reason to make this review so here's three.
1. I personally enjoyed magi a lot.
2. Most of the people here like onepiece, naruto, fairytail, or FMA. I can assure you Magi takes a lot of the good traits from those series.
3. Middle eastern setting. You will not see very many if any anime touch this, and this anime touches it beautifully. From the close
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Ok lets start off with Season 1.(why it's awesome and why you probably didn't know that).

Why it's awesome:
-Intro-Now season 1 starts off with the three protagonist(Alladin, Alilbaba and Morgiana) all meeting ... up and going into the labyrinth. Sound boring yet? Well Morgiana is a slave, alladin has a thief, and Alladin is magician, all of them going into what is basically a dungeon to get the legendary weapon and obtain wealth. However it's also noted that they aren't allied in the least.
-Later-So that's all good and well, but overall still sounds kind of boring. I mean going into a giant tower for loot isn't exactly interesting even if you put a lot of work into it...right?
Yup! Good thing the rest of the series moves on from that! The scope keeps getting bigger and bigger as the series goes on, right now they are having country sized wars and it's rather....amazing to say the least.(honestly i think berserk was really the only other series that did this).
-Characters-
Me personally, I find two characters that are just amazing. Sinbad(yes from the classic tales revamped) and Morgiana(the female protagonist).
1.Because Sinbad is a beast, an oddity, and well just godlike in the show. He's also not black and white.(as you will find most people are not.)
2.Morgiana is just compelling. She steals the spotlight every episode and never fails to dissapoint. Her battles are more interesting, her character more developed, and her goal more unique. It's something that really just baffles me how well this character is done.

Why you didn't hear about it:
-Magi is one of those series that really doesn't make it's audience clear. It's real audience is the FMA audience, but from the pictures you'd guess the FairyTail/OnePiece crowd was the intended target. It's a lot deeper and mature than it looks like on the surface, and goes into themes that really very very few anime/manga delve into, almost none of them shonen.


Now lets talk about the two things I think are most entertaining about the show: Combat and Comedy.

The combat is kind of unique now.Again, very similar to FMA style with a shitload of magic being thrown everywhere but reasonably so. Also, it's life-threatening. People die, they get injured critically in battle, and a lot of shit happens on the bigger fights. If you like magic or the manipulation of elements, this show is definitely for you. However there are some melee battles, just not as good imo.
+YES THERE IS A LOT OF BLOOD+(this series really isn't your average shonen action).

Tenjo Tenge is probably one of the most high quality fighting manga out there that not too many people have read.


Art: Now most of you know or have read Air Gear, so it won't come as a surprise when I describe Tenjo Tenge as "fucking amazing" on the art scale as it is made by the same author. It's got some dedicated scanlators, but if you can read it in paper, the art deserves that.Its not only just that, the art gets better by the volume, to the point where not many people have gone that far in detail in the final volumes.


Anime: Why skip? ... Well partly because the anime adaptation was so mediocre of what the series is. It dons the "like-berserk" title, only going into the rather uneventful high-school arc(which is pretty short in the manga), and what really made the series never getting animated. It falls prey to the same thing Air Gear did, mediocre/boring anime and an ending that was pretty much all filler.


Summary: TT starts out as a kind of highschool brawler, not unlike all the ones you've seen before. The manga(just like Air Gear) has fanservice and a pretty good amount of it too upfront. Then after a few flashbacks to explain the story of the group and their (pretty deep) past, we get to the real stuff. It goes from weapons, to robots, to gods. All with this really cool fighting style and in a very high amount of detail. There isn't a lot of "techniques" either, it's all just over-the-top attacks one after another.

So I'm kind of at a loss here.

I'm not a fan of Moe, it does not appeal to me in general.
I'm not a fan of HS romance, I feel it becomes really cliche and boring.


But yet I'm enjoying Chuunibyou......

I'm going to say something really stupid but, could it be that it's actually good?

... Animation- Kyoto Animation, so good/top-tier.
Soundtrack- Decent, not too painful but not exactly orchestra quality.
Characters- Hmmm, the comedy is primarily my focus. It's not great but it's entertaining that I get a laugh every episode. Still nothing on monogatari/gintama but it's consistent enough.

Story- Here's the only part I have a problem with. The characters themselves need a push. The romance is too "shy" after they go out, which is weird because it was pretty straightforward before then.(filling the time?) I like the running gags but sometimes its like..did we really need an episode where absolutely nothing happened?


To give it some arbitrary score I say: 8/10, good anime.
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Minor praise and complaints.

Praise:
-I like how the running gag is imagination land. It's used very creatively and it is a good gag.
-I think the characters themselves are pretty well done, even the girl who naps all the time, Kumin(my favorite char btw), has enough of a presence that she doesn't feel like "generic X archetype". This is primarily Kyo-ani's fault, but all the same.
-The general combat scenes are both good and bad. Good in that I'd rather see an alternative anime with this JRPG setting, bad that they are sometimes very bland while other times pretty good(and funny thereafter).
-Original idea on the HS romance. Chuunibyo(or 8th grade syndrome in some subs), is a pretty unique.


Complaints
- A little too many moe-shots sometimes. Its Kyo-ani and they do this with everything, but still.
- Re-occuring episodes/themes. Some of Rikka's rival points or mori-summer's arcs are rather similar to an episode or two before. However this doesn't happen all that often(once or twice).
- Kind of odd scenarios where the adults keep telling rikka "don't believe in this fantasy" but then participate in it fully. Contradicting message.
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[The Good]

1. The attention to detail.
A lot of the game icons, the interface, and the actions are very similar to what actual video games are like.
-Healthbars
-Regeneration
-How leveling works
-Skills.

2. Action
... While the action is PG13, it is done very well into the lore and relation to how games work. I won't give it points for choreography, but I will for the animation quality.
-SAO-the original world, was a lot better than alfheim in this regard.
-Most of the action is true to the "classic" rpg style.


3. Animation.
Now i'm not gonna lie, the animation isn't top quality or stylized. This isn't SNK or KLK or whatever else I could list out(seriously i love animationt). BUT the animation is solid for most of the show and is well done in most of the fights. There are some pretty obvious dips in quality, but it's to be expected.

The animation quality in alfheim just divebombed though.
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[The Weird]


/SAO
1. The idea of traps wouldn't be much fun tbh.

/After SAO
-First off no action was taken against a company/device that killed hundreds of people
-Second, kirito is weak but asuna's fine?

/Alfheim
1. Racism.
There is an absurd amount of implied racism in Alfheim. Literally every non-same race person is commenting on the other person's race in an insulting manner. Why is this even a thing? they both look exactly alike too.

2. Parties.
So in Alfheim escorting a noobie to a main area is "betraying the guild". I'm not sure how but this seems like a pointless hate. I mean that's like saying "oh you are escorting a newbie to a raid in a horde territory? YOU CLEARLY ARE BETRAYING THE ALLIANCE".
-It just caught me as really stupid.

3. Marriage
The whole thing with Asuna marrying some guy while in a coma. Yeah....that was kinda stupid.

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[The Bad]

1. Game Design
I could make a whole thread on this alone but it boils down to three major things.
-No tutorial
-Meaning SAO is designed as a Trial-and-Error.(meaning you are SUPPOSED to die).
-Even in normal mmorpg's you are usually led to die at least once so that you don't reach max level not knowing what happens after you die.

+ This is just SAO. Alfheim was such a shitty game It would take me a whole page to explain how awful it was in basic game design.


2. Inconsistency.
-Kirito can move at instantaneous speeds, but then he can't later.
A) He runs up this huge wall at a ridiculous speed in SAO, then he's slow as balls everywhere else.
B) In Alfheim he literally teleports in the start, but then in a later fight he has trouble with a 3-shield group who can be avoided since the area is rather large, but he charges straight at them and fails.

-Kirito is super powerful, now he's not.
A) Kirito can regen hp in a pvp fight, but the next pvp fight he can't.
B) In alfheim kirito transforms into a giant beast, but then can't do it again.
C) Kirito can get stabbed in the face and be fine, but depending upon the guy, it could be life-threatening.

3. Plot.
-It's all awful. From SAO to Alfheim everything is pretty overdone.

4. Overhype.
-The anime barely beats other mediocre shows but it's hyped to be this great anime. Don't understand why, since the anime as-is doesn't beat anything THIS season, much less does it contend with the "best of" in any of the season's prior.

-I'm not joking. Black bullet, Jojo's, whatever comes out that is mid-popular blows SAO away in every regard, and that's not even counting the "best of" the season's.

5. Half the Anime was terrible.
-Alheim takes up half the season, which makes the show a lot worse than just dropping it at SAO.

6. Asuna with the whole "i'm going to rape you" thing in Alfheim. I can deal with a single scene of this but the same guy for like 5+ episodes? Come on, that's just insensitive.


7. Players don't act like gamers but like NPC's.
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Final thoughts

SAO isn't terrible. It's not great either. It's just mediocre. It doesn't have any aspirations to present original ideas, but it does have good animation and a good design.

"A decent looking virtual reality with sword fighting" would sum up all the positives.
"A video game anime made by someone who doesn't play video games" would sum up all the complaints I have with it.


I give it a 5/10.

Story:
Well it's a romantic comedy, so really there is no "plot". Like all rom-coms, the interest here is the character development, romance, and comedy

Character development: Not much. I'd like to say I'm kidding but the characters really didn't develop much in the course of the show. They remain the same archetypal characters throughout the course of the show. They get over their "trust issues", but then act the same as they did before. Also it's worth nothing that the show really just ends on them being "friendly" and not close friends.

Romance: NONE. I mean fucking nothing. No dating, no kissing, not even really any ... hinting tbh. This show ends on a note of fucking nothing happening between him and his "love interest". The most "blushing" moments in the show are thanks to the trap Saika.

Comedy: It's not funny. The jokes are limited, not really tasteful, and there isn't any good "ridiculous scenarios". It's probably the most unfunny rom-com I've ever seen. I cannot stress this enough, there is no comedy in this romantic comedy.


NOTE: This anime did nothing new in the romantic comedy genre as far as plot or themes. Everything that has been done here has been done before and better.
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Animation:

I love animation. This show looks awful. It's got animation from pre-2007, any action scenes are done horribly, and every character shows practically no emotion throughout the show. Not only that, i'm utterly surprised how lazy it all looks. I mean there is "we didn't have a budget" and then there is "we didn't care".

Note: Romantic comedies are generally of highest animation quality, however this is below average for any genre.
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Soundtrack: The soundtrack is just like the animation: Lazy, below-average, and not good.
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Characters:
(Note: I had to look up most of their names because I honestly didn't care for any of them by the end of 13 episodes).

Hikigaya, Hachiman: A fucking asshole who is negative about everything for really pathetic reasons. Of course pessimism in any situation will have some truth to it, but being anti-anything for the sake of it gets old really fast. I thought in the start he was kinda interesting, but it turns out the guy is just a fucking asshole. I cannot stress how ridiculously pessimistic and pathetic the MC is of this show, so here are some examples:
-Calls Yui a bitch before the audience has but 30 seconds to know her.
-Is an asshole to a guy who really doesn't deserve it(tennis scene).
-Constantly rejects everyone on everything "just because".(note: this does not change.)
-Is pessimistic beyond rationality. Like he's a walking trope of "how can you look at this scenario in a negative light."
-Remains the same archetype(pessimist) throughout the show and acts accordingly to any situation.


Yuigahama, Yui: The only one who actively showed interest in the main character. Airhead.
-Not much else to say, that's her archetype and that's all she does/is.

Yukinoshita, Yukino: The perfect girl. Pretty, athletic, smart. Talks down to everyone, blames people who are envious of her on why she joined the club, and is really kind of a bitch tbh.
-Again, archetype.

Totsuka, Saika: Honestly the only character that I liked. But....really all they did was take a cute/moe girl and call her a guy. That's all she is.

Saki: Unimportant side character who's only point is a subplot of her job to support her family
-Nothing to say, she only really exist for but one episode

The Teacher: Another lazy archetype/trope, nothing to see here, move along.
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Conclusion: This anime is awful in all regards.
-There is no comedy, no romance, and all the characters are boring
-The animation and sound are both incredibly lazy/poor.

ONE GOOD THING: If I had to state one good thing about this show would be that it caught me by surprise. Every romance anime I have ever seen tries to deviate from the normal/average highschool-romance in some way, even if by a little. But this show made no attempts at that, leaving me surprised that a show would actually run from start to finish with nothing surprising happening along the way.

I do not recommend this anime to anyone.