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Dec 13, 2024
Great animation!
That's it. That's all this series has going for it for me. It's supposed to be a sports/romance anime, but it falls flat on both accounts. We don't see nearly enough sports to call it a sports anime, and we don't nearly see enough romance to call it a romance anime. I've watched until ep10 and I must tell you, if you're the type of person that enjoys frustration in romance and being denied the most important matches in sports anime, this is the one for you.
Oi Tonbo! S2 is running this season and it has some of the most exciting and unexpected
...
moments in sports anime. If you're into sports anime, go watch that, you won't be disappointed.
Similarly, Goukon ni Ittara Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi is also running this season. If you're into romance anime, it has some of the most heart-stopping and cuddly moments in romance anime at the moment. If you're into romance anime, go watch that.
Ao no Hako has absolutely none of those things. The romance is straight up bait and the sports element seem like an afterthought for unnecessary exposition. We get told how important those matches are, and yet we barely see any of them, and never the deciding play. It's just an exercise in being disappointed on every front...
... except animation. The animation is great! I can't fault it for that, but is that really why we watch anime? I leave the answer up to you.
Still, I wouldn't say it's outright terrible, just not for me. I personally know people who enjoy it, but even they wouldn't miss it if it got cancelled.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 29, 2022
(Keep in mind, this review has been written after the 4th episode came out - it may not be representative of the entire series, though from how things are progressing so far, I don't see how that could change the validity of this review in any drastic way.)
When I first came across this anime, I thought to myself "what a time to be alive!" Cute girls that are personifications of guns? Sign me up! I'm a shameless gun enthusiast, so this was supposed to be a dream-come-true. Little did I know it was going to be the most disappointing series of this season.
The story isn't
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bad or good, it's just kind of there. The one thing I'd say is that it's hard to follow at first because we are immediately thrust into what seems to be a major confrontation with no knowledge of what is actually going on and why, besides some cryptic voiceover explaining something about something. After 4 episodes I'm still not sure what's going on apart from that Sangvis are the bad guys with guns, and Griffin are the good guys with guns, and there was some AI rebellion or something. Sounds generic.
Art is ok-ish if you don't mind stills of cute girls. Most action scenes take no more than 3 stills spliced together, and larger set pieces rely on animation loops with an occasional, unimpressive explosion or a bunch of muzzle flashes and bullet trails. The characters themselves lack any expression, but I guess they're mechanical dolls so that kind of explains it.
Now, to get to the nitty-gritty: the gun models. For the most part they're well done for static models, though in some instances they lack detail or, as is the case with MG3, they are obscured most of the time so we never really get a good look at those beauties. Which is a shame, because that's the biggest selling point of this anime, and so far it's been a let-down. Especially since there are no moving parts on those guns, so the most dynamic you'll get is the muzzle flash. I don't think we even saw a single reloading animation so far. Or any kind of mechanical operation of the guns for that matter. They are just there, static models that you can't even get a good look of because they're mostly obscured or there for like 2 seconds before the scene cuts.
Moving on to the sounds, they are dreadful. The music is some horrible, generic synth-whatever that you'd only hear in a browser game. Dialogues and VA are fine, not much to say about that.
But the gun sounds... they're horrible. They're exclusively generic, stock sounds pulled from some royalty-free library that you heard a million times before while playing low-budget games. Whenever I hear a gunshot in this anime I literally have a flashback to the time I played a game that sound was used in before. It's a horrible, jarring experience and any gun enthusiast will be immediately put off by that. If they really wanted to sell those gunfights, they'd have sent a crew over to a gun range in the US and recorded the sounds those guns make in real life. It's not that difficult or expensive, but I guess they wanted to save money so they went with royalty-free sounds. Disappointing, to say the least.
Characters are there. Not much more to say. Just your typical array of tropes and stereotypes. But the biggest disappointment was the anime's focus on the AR15 pattern rifles as the main protagonists of the series. I mean, you have an anime about personifications of guns, and instead of showing of how diverse firearms can be, you choose a bunch of AR15 pattern rifles, which look almost the same, function almost the same, and are essentially different configurations of the same damn firearm. Sure, in the later episodes we get a few glimpses of other firearms, like the German MG3, G36 and MP5, we get a brief introduction to MAC-10 and a couple of Russian firearms like PPSh-41 and Mosin-Nagant, but for the most part they play minor roles and we only get a couple of short glimpses at them before the story picks back up with the AR15 family. So if you like AR15 pattern rifles, you may be somewhat satisfied, but not really.
Overall, it's a huge disappointment. Not only does this series fail to live up to it's premise, it somehow almost intentionally avoids it for the most part. In my opinion it's nothing but a cash-grab from whoever sponsored this nonsense. If you're a gun enthusiast like myself, you're not losing anything by skipping this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 26, 2020
Kuzu No Honkai (Scum's Wish) is a high-school romance/drama anime. That is the premise you are greeted with when you read the reviews, opinions and articles written about it. And while technically this description is true, it misses out on so much more nuance that hides behind the veil of this label.
Romance is about love and love is about respect, happiness and trust. This is what we are lead to believe by the countless depictions of it in the media, not just anime. Love is meant to triumph and propel the MCs to forever-after.
Or, love is poisonous and treacherous and it consumes everyone and everything
...
that touches it. It will lead to heart-break, betrayal, even death. This is the counter to the above, which is also plenty explored by said media.
But what if it isn't all that dramatic. What if love is just a facet of our psyche that makes us do things, stupid things, things we will cherish or regret, things that will strain our relationships or make them stronger? Very rarely we see love portrayed in this grey zone, as a spectrum composed of many accompanying feelings that drive our interactions with others. Just like sex doesn't have to be all butterflies and fulfillment, or rape and resentment, love doesn't have to adhere to this dichotomy of either complete happiness or utter disappointment.
This is what Kuzu No Honkai (Scum's Wish) is about. It explores the grey area of love. The place in our hearts no one likes to talk about. The moments when we confuse love with lust or friendship, when we use love as a bargaining chip, when we weaponize love to hurt others, when we cling on to lost love while trying to satisfy our present needs. It is a shameful, hurtful side of love, but a side that exists and that too many of us had to struggle with at some point in our lives.
Beyond that, Kuzu No Honkai explores the relationship between love and sex and how the two are so inherently intertwined. The saucy moments in the anime are the moments when the biggest plot twists and turns take place, and the anime treats those moments with respect and dignity, showing us the real side of sex and exploration of one's own sexuality. It's not always pretty or glamorous, but so isn't sex in real life. It too can be awkward, unwanted, or even hurtful or used as a weapon. It's the side of adult life that is rarely spoken about, but it is what most adults experience, or come across, at some point in their life.
Kuzu No Honkai treats all of those uncomfortable depictions of humanity's most precious subjects respectfully and in a believable way. Every time something happens we get a glimpse into the character's psyche - their motivations, reasons, hopes and regrets. We also see the fallout of all the hurt and shame the characters inflict on themselves and others. But it also shows us that this fallout is not the end of the world. Broken feelings do heal and we do become wiser and stronger because of the things we experience, and subject others to.
For this reason, this anime is a true masterpiece and a ground-breaking work that sits in a genre of its own. There truly isn't another work of anime that explores those subjects with such care and respect.
Couple that with some of the best animation I've seen in recent years and one of the best anime soundtracks ever, and you have yourself a clear-cut winner.
So the next time you see an anime described as "romance", ask yourself this: what is romance? What does it entail? How would you know if, and how, your own emotional baggage does not influence the way you feel about others? And if you happen to be in love, what would that mean to you? How far would you go to prove it, and how would you know if that feeling is requited or even real? And if it isn't, what would you do then?
And if you're going through struggles like that in your own life, be it on the dealing or the receiving end, just know that you are not alone. We're all "scum" deep inside, and we all have our own wish.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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