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This is a decent horror anthology if you are looking for one. Nothing overly special, but I was never bored with it, and I qu9ite like the attention to detail in using actual occult terminology as reference for the stories in question. A bit of continuity is also present as well with Misa Kuroi's warnings of the dangers of Black Magic, but for the most part each chapter can be read on their own in any order. That all said, this is a very dated manga, and my expectations were set by the 1970s art-style that kind of reminds me of the Ranma manga, not ... in feeling, but in how the characters are drawn and rendered. When drawing animals, objects, rain and unique clothing the mangaka shows a strength at really using texture to add to an otherwise stock manga template, but that doesn't change the fact that the characters feel like they are straight out of the time period without deviation. 18 chapters in and every character as black hair, pale skin, and a black uniform despite Misa Kuroi constantly switching schools. It was something that caught me off guard when reading chapters back-to-back, but I did get used to it after about twelve or so chapters. One thing that has yet to do so however, is how samey the character designs are of the side characters across the various chapters, due to the above mentioned dated style. Misa Kuroi has a strong design, and a few ones that feel distinct do pop up, but for the most part I'd be hard-pressed to pick any character and identify which chapter they are from on appearance alone.

As for the stories being told, they are nothing special. As an anthology series where the setting changes after each chapter where Misa Kuroi changes schools, character development is non-existent, and each chapter lives and dies off of whether or not the occult imagery and trivia hold your interest, and not all chapters do. This is only further limited by the chapter length of only twenty-ish pages per chapter, meaning that the closest thing to character development is hints and allusions to the protagonist's past. It is fortunate that unlike the rest of the manga, Misa Kuroi is a lot more unique in terms of design, possessing a standout beauty in appearance, and with the motivation to use dark magic to bring a punishing justice upon those who have committed wrongs.

Over all I like this manga despite its flaws and would recommend it to anyone who just wants a horror anthology for a quick read, or anyone interested in the occult phenomena, symbols and rituals that the manga references.

Perhaps the most apt description for Kyougoku Natsuhiko: Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari is "a tale showing corrupt people trying to use the supernatural to get away with their crimes, only for supernatural entities to deliver justice in place of the law." That is the plot in a nutshell, and at times it feels like that is all that the show is on a basic level, and episodes survived based off of how well they executed this premise, and in how bizarre and unique the visuals were pushed. Episodes varied a bit for me, some being really good and memorable, while others were dull and faded to ... give way to the more interesting ones, a few even feeling derivative of each other. While never painful, after watching enough I guessed the format by episode 4 and it never broke, each episode is about a crime of a broken, deranged person, some of whom are more memorable, entertaining or sympathetic than others, but each has committed a heinous crime in some capacity and has blamed a yokai or specter for the atrocities preformed, and in most cases it is the person most staunchly against it being the work of the supernatural that is the perpetrator. The episode always takes time to flesh out and humanize these individuals in some capacity, and each has a unique enough design that they don't blend together.

Of course no discussion of this show would be complete without bringing up the visuals. The Art-style is unique, and despite numerous locals, characters, and set designs all looking radically different the show never suffers, and each of these blend together to enhance the experience, elevating the mood and tone of each scene and the show as a whole, complimenting its tone and themes with the unnerving imagery as opposed to subverting or dismantling it.

However Kyougoku Natsuhiko: Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari is an anime that I find difficult to properly articulate as being either traditionally good or bad, its not that that the pros and cons overlap, its just that both are very present, and for everything that I loved, their was something else that I found to be a bit more difficult to get me through an episode, and now that I've gone over the good, its time for the bad, and the most distracting aspect was how the main protagonist often felt like he was out of the loop, and inconsistent in his place in the narrative; in one episode he is entirely in the loop about the Ongyou being denizens of the afterlife, yet later on he is completely baffled by such a concept and is a stark skeptic. More than anything it feels like information is withheld not for the sake of adding to the narrative or tone, but instead to confound Momosuke who comes across as dense, at best, for not putting 2and2 together on multiple occasions and needing to be guided through similar concepts constantly, while at others he is suddenly a super genius who can easily deduce what the Ongyou could not despite many decades worth of experience in investigating conspiracies and knowledge of the next world to aid them and usually with nothing but a lucky find and equally lucky guess. Meanwhile the Ongyou come across as inept in their desire to protect the young author from the dangers that they face, purposely keeping him out of the loop, and inadvertently sending him to greater danger of putting him in their way for no other reason than poor communication between the two parties.

I'd say watch it if you are more for strong visuals and villains, and be prepared for a fair amount of cringe in the narrative whenever things start to feel too convoluted.

I watched the English Dubbed Version and this is what my review is basically going to be about. Just recently hooked on the Police genre of anime from B the Beginning this is the one that has really given me the most amount of Conspiracy with Supernatural powers-clashing goodness sense B.

One of the things that really stood out to me about this show was the use of booby-traps and interesting misdirects to set them off as opposed to the standard formula in modern police raids by having a bunch of cops storm the place and either getting everyone apprehended or setting off an explosion ... trap as they rush in and end up just serving as fodder for the plot. Disarming the traps only to have them go off added an extra layer of tension to the story, and made the scenes where the police infiltrate enemy bases or places where they set up bombs all the more exciting and unpredictable.

The dub's voice acting was solid in a hilarious way (some voices are bad, and others are good for me but I am not an expert on acting here), the animation started off mostly slick (albeit with a few static moments), but once the OVAs continued production past the fall of the Japanese economy in the 90s the last two OVAs suffered from a dip and led to the climax feeling less intense than the buildup, but otherwise the story was still a stellar mix of conspiracy intrigue, raw violent battles of massive mayhem and unrestrained edgy characters (which I mean as a positive) that made this show an experience of rushing adrenaline and excitement balanced out with a look into what Japan's broader views were of the time on patriotism and communism and an interesting conspiracy plot not unlike FMA Brotherhood.


I can genuinely understand the hate and its no masterpiece, but I genuinely did like this OVA.

This is one of the worst anime that I've seen in the past few years,
I usually like the chaotic urban setting but this show made it feel claustrophobic and cluttered beyond what I thought was possible. None of the interesting ideas or attempts at characterization was given enough room to breath and so everything felt like it was rushed so much that I blinked and missed everything that I would've liked.

Zap is every kind of annoying in character and the anime felt like it was constantly going out of its way to make him as unlikable as possible having him attack and troll Leo for ... no good reason other than annoyance at being asked to watch over him, being a troll to Zed, and even tricking Klaus into fighting in an underground fighting competition just to weaken him so that he could finish him off in a fight later that episode. Every time he was on screen it felt like it was the Squidward torture-porn of anime and when it felt like the series wanted me to feel sorry for him I just felt a mix of "he deserved this" and "Shut up you waste of screen time" (i'm not a big schadenfreude person) which was especially tiresome as he is the side character with the most amount of screen time, and what I feel is attempting to build a slowly blossoming friendship between him and Leo was happening at an aggravatingly slow pace in an anime that recklessly drops rushed and claustrophobic episodes making it jarring and without anything to really anchor them as common interests just made me wish that Leo and Zap would stop being on screen at the same time (preferably Zap just stopping to appear period).
That said Leo was an OK lead all things considered, and Klaus is a somewhat interesting character to have in a position of power because of some of his mistakes and how they affect the plot, but every other character is barely anything but sakuga fodder without the narrative weight behind it to give it meaning. Even characters that didn't seem so bad in concept weren't really made to stand out in execution, mostly because many didn't really get enough screen time to feel like they were main or major characters.

The antagonists, who should've been the highlight believing that the world was their plaything, were barely with a presence, much less a personality. What I felt was the show trying to build them up as a force-of-nature-type of villain with individual characteristics was making them out to be boring and uninteresting caricatures of villains instead:
Femt's debut sold him as a man-child without redeeming qualities or an interesting path to follow and the line at the end of episode one only sold the character to me as trying to be as juvenile way as was physically possible. Aligura's debut was even more boring, with the runaway train gimmick and fusing her ex-boyfriend to someone she found to be physically attractive making her about as interesting as some school girl crush blown into stupidity as her defining character; attempting at being funny and chaotic (and failing at both) without anything else going for her. This is sad because I really felt like an antagonistic force who saw the world as their play things and would cause chaos to be an interesting villain-type to see in action.

In episode 3 their is a board game that is compared to chess and it is a giant drain on that episode, I have no idea about this game's set of rules which makes it a boring thing to watch without understanding how it works and the justification of if being "too complex for mortal minds" just tells me that the writer had no idea how to make an interesting game (and/or how to explain the rules of a game).

On another note am I the only one who was bothered by the fact that a SECRET SOCIETY who is supposed to be a well-kept secret of Hellsalem's lot not only has a business card (Episode 7) but is also shown to work in the open to stop such problems like Blood Breed and Aligura's Runaway Train? They're more like police officers than secret-society members, especially as nobody is really given much of anything (aside from Leo) besides working for Libra and going out for Lunch.

The Appeal of Chaos in anime like in Narita's works is to make the chaos feel Fun, exciting and with a build-up that equals a "holy OMG, did that just happen" payoff unlike any other. Without that this anime feels like it is missing everything that makes chaos work in a narrative and exaggerating everything that can make chaos a source of melodrama when done wrong past the point of being tolerable.

I can't believe that I didn't get around to watching this anime until a YEAR after it aired. This show is definitely at the top of my "anime that need another season" list, and the translated online novel I read was also really good. Now that the Light Novels have been licensed I've pre-ordered the second novel and am waiting for the first. I love reading books and this is definitely one of the best Light Novel series I've read.

I love Mysteries and I love Fantasies, growing up with Shonen Jump Action-Adventures I'd always wanted the shows in question to delve further into the plot-twist ... element in a detective-like fashion, and before Rokka, the closest that I'd got was the Soul Society Arc of Bleach. Rokka stands on its own merits beyond filling that ever-so-specific niche for me, however.

As a big fan of mystery shows Rokka was refreshing in how it followed the basic rules of mystery writing to a tee, save for the use of the romantic-interest. The main draw of a mystery-show was "that the viewer should be able to try and figure out the mystery as well as the characters provided that said viewer is Shrewd and Willing to do so" (quote one of the rules of writing detective fiction that I read while doing research, it sums up my own personal enjoyment quite nicely) and when it first turned to the locked room mystery I was a bit hesitant that they would pull a "magic trick out of thin air trick" to explain the situation but through clever exposition and world-building the magic system is explained to the extent that it can be seen as a legitimate mechanic and the last-minute revelation of the initial fog being a dummy to throw everyone off guard was a good twist to throw in. Also of note was the absence of one of my biggest pet peeves in Detective Conan: the detective coming across a clue by random chance instead of on merit of logical deduction and observation and knowledge. In Rokka what we get instead is an ah-ha moment of Adlet figuring out the fog-mechanic which is much more tolerable and closer to the rules of writing a good mystery as opposed to having lady luck stuff a clue in the detective's, and thus the viewer's, face.

I think that the mystery element really sells how intelligent and dangerous the Fiends/Kyouma really are as a threat. In most stories the inhuman threat come across as dangerous because of their inhuman powers and supernatural abilities, but in this world they are presented not as overly egotistical Beastmen or lumbering near-immortal Titans but as a force that is intelligent and crafty enough to trap the only ones capable of defeating them in a locked room but also to plant a spy to sow discord and mistrust so that they would kill each other. Though I am aware that their is a good percent of Kyouma who are lacking in intelligence that doesn't change the fact that their is a highly intelligent force that commands legions of supernatural, horned entities all for the sake of winning a war against humanity.

None-of-that takes away from the action, in fact I would say that the action is definitely a highlight of the anime despite happening so little. All of the action scenes are well animated, directed and choreographed with the battle of Hans and Adlet vs Chamo being one of my favourite fights in this show. That being said its a good thing that the action isn't overly intrusive on the main appeal of this show: the mystery.

When I re-watched the series I was able to pick apart and take a real good look at all of the little hidden clues that the series tossed at you ahead of time; pieces of what were initially treated as throw-away lines or just the basic world building and character establishment that were the game
changing clues to clue the viewer in on who the seventh really was.

Where the series lacks is in the characters, I would say that they are a decent 7 myself, but not all of them have been fleshed out to be as interesting as others. I am aware that they are further developed and given more nuance in the novels, but until the anime gets more seasons
(which I am really pushing) they are an unfortunate flat note. The 3D CG was also handled a lot better than in most other shows, though I do not usually like it when they are mixed in here it was done a lot better and I think that the teams behind this anime were trying to make the Fiends/Kyouma as uncanny as possible to sell them as an alien threat, a species that is able to remind one of basic inhuman enemies in similarly crafted premises but trying to make them stand out. In any case I've certainly seen worse, and because only a few episodes actually featured the Kyouma specifically I'd say that this CGI is quite tolerable.

The rest of my scores for the individual parts that MAL provides up top are over all score is that the story, mystery, action and my own personal enjoyment is a 10, the sound and music are a good 9, the art only being boggled down by semi-OK CG is an 8 in 2D and a 4 or 5 in 3D.

I would recommend this anime to anyone who likes to make theory crafting about plot-twists about action-adventure anime/manga and invite you to flex your critical thinking muscle to try and figure out the mystery and to people who have long wanted to find a mystery show that is able to balance out the mystery and fantasy element with the fantasy interfering with the mystery.