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I'm a man of Manga, and that USUALLY doesn't translate well into anime, for once, I didn't catch this show before it got an adaptation. I literally found it in a meme forum in the "hero is overpowered and climax's all" scenes.
Does that mean it's bad or good? That's always up to speculation.

Each added review I've put out, I've come to understand more and more that nothing is bread and butter. Even when publishers are fans of "I woke up after being hit by Truck-Kun and then journeyed to the guild to find out I was the Chosen One with he Cheat Ability of healing, ... that I would save the world", in a light novel that would only get 25 chapters and then proceed to get no further publications.
There's always a diamond in the rough, This might not be it for all, but at least it attempted to become different from the mold, and that easily gains it a couple extra points in anyones books.

Comparative to decent story telling, or even shows that emphasize the harem or "echii" culture, this animation doesn't rely on those aspects to be relevant while also being in the "harem" genre, which gives a lot of "The daily life of the immortal King" vibes and by god I do enjoy it for that, to the point that this should be its own genre.

I hope that readers takes everything with a grain of salt and all MAL users treat each other with compassion, this is just a website to share our thoughts on shows, be good, bad and average, be cool out there,

Red, xx

We start this review with the classic disappointment of a source reader. I have read all the source material and was keen to see it get an adaptation.
I want this to be clear, the source material is lovely, if you enjoy the genre. It's not for everyone but that mild tsundere secondary love interest take, is the cake for some. If you DID actually enjoy the show, please take a second and go read the source material, at this time it is only 52 chapters, you can read it in 2-4 hours.

Now I have A LOT of issues with this adaptation, take everything with a ... grain of salt, as some are caused from me being saddened by the actually interesting story being butchered by a company trying to make a quick buck.

I'll try to lay it out as chronological as possible, Studio MOTHER is a new studio that has only produced 2 Series, one being this adaptation. The other being about everyone's favorite "Arifureta's" Season 2, OVA's + Movie. This show not only was awful because of the writing, but they managed to butcher it further with constant CG animation anytime something moved faster than someone shaking hands.
But this review isn't about another series being awful, its about this shows issues, which is why I had to reference their previous mishaps.

-Animation-
At this time I've watched the first 4 episodes of Fuufu Ijou, Koibito Miman, and just Episode 1, I was trying to figure out if maybe I was having issues with my eyes, or maybe the director had too many magic mushrooms on the confirmation set.

The color pallet for this show is so loud AND bland at the same time its wild. They chose loud conflicting colors as the primary, then followed it up with conflicting colors in the backdrop that don't match and cause a really bad pull in and out of immersion that made me feel like the show went on for way longer than it did, at the halfway point, i thought they were doing the normalized ending cliff hanger.
Mix this with the fact you can run the show in 1080p and 480p and it looks exactly the same, really worries me overall.
Following this aspect, who cranked the contrast to 11? Like the color taste was already bad but everything looks like I'm watching it through a flashlight.

My review isn't going to include much about the story because well, as I said, I love the source material, that's the not the issue I have with watching this, if I needed to complain about the story, it would be the pacing is way too fast, and this is the same as its written in the source, its just doesn't seem to come across as-well, I don't know if that's bad choreography or just it translated bad on screen but, it just didn't give remotely the same taste.

Will I keep watching it? For sure, I love this series, its really enjoyable and has its ups and downs for its specific genre. Do I think it will get a S2, highly doubt it based off the studios output, if they're lucky the story will carry it.

Manga 7/10
Anime 4/10

-Red

I came into watching "Shadow Garden" by chance when I saw a meme that resembled a gag I'd read in a cheesy isekai manga a while back (its literally this show, chapter 3, page 34, were hes scooping money off the floor), so thought heck I'm a sucker for bad writing in isekai, lets jump down the rabbit hole.

As of writing this review only 3 episodes were out, and I knew it was isekai fantasy, as it takes place in an academy format, which is a nice change from everyone being RPG adventurers heading to the local guild to pick up 4 slave girls. However ... something immediately struck me odd, was I watching the wrong show? Did I follow the wrong link? No, the setting starts pre-isekai.
Alright, that's something different at least +1 for creativity, but that's the only bonus points I'll be awarding for the 3 episodes.

I'm not sure if it's because the pacing was bad or what it was, but the first 2 episodes are just exposition dumps, you could start the series from episode 3 and it wouldn't really change much of what you know. The "jokes" (in quotations because I couldn't tell if they were meant to be jokes or deus ex machina) didn't land well or just were paced really poorly and heavily missed the punchline, or maybe they were there to establish the MC is kinda a lucky idiot?

Its actually kinda wild that you can show so many "characters" in this show, but outside the Tsundere main ladies and the standard pervy high school friends, everyone is just monotone stick up their ass, as if being bland is cool and/or edgy. I think the only thing I remember about any characters was the princess and the episode 1 classmates eyes are red, nothing else stands out.

If you include the dying part, there are 4 time skips in 2 episodes, that is way too much "and now I'm older" for the amount of none stop exposition you are blurting out.
You could watch each of these 3 episodes as an "episode 1" for a different story and they would all make sense. They have poor pacing, nothing is quite properly explained especially for the amount of exposition there is, the over arching tone is confusing is it ment to be serious with all the blood and it being R+ rated, or is it light-hearted with its standard isekai bright school uniforms, standard school tropes and really bad jokes that you almost think the characters are suffering from a form of brain difficulties.

One amusing point I found was the VA for Kirito is in this show as one of the MC's friends, when we were all expecting him to just be the MC.

All in all, I'm sure it might have potential, but I'll leave you with what I say about any show in a similar situation. If someone tells you "it gets good after you watch X amount of episodes" then its kinda bad story writing, especially when the number is double digits.

For those still interested,

~ Episode Recap, if you want the gist, without the timestamp;

~ Ep1: We introduced MC very mildly, he beats up some people and saves his classmate, then gets hit by Truck-kun (after the credits) and gets isekai'ed. Outside of now knowing our MC was a psychotic masochist in his previous life, nothing was gained in this episode.

~ Ep2: MC is now in this new world, with his new family, were hes born as a noble, no one in the family or staff or really anyone is named outside the sister.
He immediately goes back into dialogue of having to be the "background character" so he can masquerade at night as a slime coated assassin (Man just finds lots of slime clothes). During one of these endeavors he comes across and afflicted blob, in which he cures, turning into his first harem assassin follower. There is another small time skip, and the characters harem has gone above 5, all different races, all scantily dressed in skin tight slime outfits and all master assassins.
They solve the minor problem, and it ends with again, ANOTHER time skip, with MC coming of age to go to school.

~ Ep3: THIS is technically where you should be starting the story. Not only was nearly nothing explained in the previous 2 episodes, but it would have been better to have been left unexplained, until those characters came onto set.

So, MC finally comes to be attending the academy, were it starts out interesting looking, mild scenic shots look nice, a little world building wouldn't have gone astray, but after all that exposition were straight into the guts of the MC "accidentally" woo'ing the princess?
In classic nature everyone now hates MC because hes dating the academy princess.
More exposition dump with what looks like 2 people who believe the exercise is to hit the other persons sword? They do the money on the floor gag, which was entailed, mind you, it doesn't land remotely like it does in the manga followed by, you guessed it MORE EXPOSITION.
We find out, the relationship is all a ploy to escape the princess' arranged marriage. Some more talking about nothing and the princess doesn't wanna be around the MC anymore because shes a Tsundere. The episode ends with the MC being on suspicion of kidnapping her being the last known person with her.

Maybe this will lead to a more interesting story in follow up episodes? One can only hope.

I'm going to start this review with the bad points and try to turn it around with some good points so don't get salty if I bag it out a little, I am going to bounce back with some compliments.

Alrighty, so we have another Sword Art Online show in the sequence that is in the "gaming" anime genre. But as you probably noticed the "gaming" is in quotations for a reason. There seems to be a stigma on this genre that, if you are going to write some media content for it, you won't bother learning anything about it nor anything in regards to anything ... actually, just write on a whim with your 300IQ brain for solid deus ex machina actions shots.

SAO Alternative: GGO is no exception to this stigma. Throughout the entire show I consistently felt myself pausing mid episode just to take in the level of "On what planet did you write these people from?".
It seemed like every player in GGO which is labeled as a "hardcore PVP tactical battle royal" style game, had a hard time grasping any sort of game mechanic, for example;

- Using cover to evade bullets or hide from your enemy, this seems very straight forward, but not once but multiple, MULTIPLE times there are teams displayed in a tournament draft standing at a crossroad or any sorta open area with no cover, pointing in every direction saying "yea man this direction is clear", like what? what? You had to have someone pointing in every direction to establish that? You had to put 4-8 members of your squad out in the open to determine if someone was on the road? That was just the tip of the ice berg.
- We have a character say his "favored terrain is Urban" combat, such as a city, while he is in a full green camo attire, if that's the terrain you wanna fight on WHY ARE YOU NOT DRESSED FOR IT! (this wouldn't be as such a peeve if the character wasn't THAT character)
- Endlessly firing on your enemies position will eventually kill them?
- Endless ammunition, except for plot purposes. (Claiming you have 700 rounds in reserve, then killing 2 people and saying you're down to 300 after 2 bursts)
- Duel wielding grenade launchers with ease one scene, having to brace one with both of your legs the next?
- Not wearing helmets? Dying from something because the player chose to not have something that is "cosmetically" unappealing? GJ2 I'm looking at you.
- Teams being placed more than a 10 minutes trip apart, meaning the map is large enough to accommodate that, even with 25 teams, that's a LOT of downtime and comp games that have a large portion of downtime, aren't really fun to watch.
- A whole lot of "Leader", "Captain", "Friend", "Partner", "Comrade" call outs, I want to know the dudes name, I want to know who side characters are and what they're about, when someone is just refereed to as "Leader" by everyone in his squad it gives off a HUGE red flag.
- From previously watching the GGO ark in SAO its told that there is a point buy system in the game, but they're never actually told what they do, giving the impression that Karen's character is just "unnaturally" fast and not a point buy? 10/10 balancing, someone should call Ghost Crawler and tell him hes in an anime.
- People resigning because they didn't want to be shot? What? You're in a shooting simulation game, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SHOT MATE!
- Being within 200m of 2 teams shooting at each other, in a leveled field with no cover, and not having vision of them?

---------------- End of "gaming" related peeves

(Shallow Characters) -
Besides maybe a handful, most of the lead roles just had nothing really to them, the characters wern't really fleshed out further than 1-2 lines in a bio page about someone. Not to mention non-lead roles were literally the same people just named differently all wearing the same skivies.

(Scene focus and direction) -
A lot of weird scenic shots, like yea we get it, its another world, but it just looks like mountains from a hiking adventure with some rundown houses and so many still shots, like usually still shots are thrown off by a panning camera, or like something else, but when its a long shot, and you can barely see someone, and the only thing moving on the screen is the 6 pixels that make up their mouth its like, please do something different.

(Deus Ex Machina) (Did i mention deus ex machina? DEUS EX MACHINA) -
Soooo much deus ex machina, and oh man I can not stand that shit.

(Pacing) -
Its kinda weird and over the place, the action scenes are decent, fast paced and usually enjoyable, but they then get followed up by 10 mins of standing still "explaining" how something worked. Now this would be ok, if it didn't come off like, opening a fridge (obviously with explosions and me screaming and what not), then me saying "see, it keeps my beverages and food cold, allowing it to have prolonged life and eat it at a later date at which i see fit and that's how I'm able to give you this product here and now rather than buying it anew" and then you going "Whoa, that's crazy planned thinking". Its just explaining shit that's either obvious or so basic that "she shot at them while they stood still, impeccable" is dumb and boring.

------------------- End of Peeves (Yay?)

(Story) -
The story isn't really anything to write home about, but in this anime day and age we all know about the fabled, "Lets make an anime about this LN or Manga that has a built up to be lengthy story, and only bring out 1 season that barley covers the first 10 chapters so that people purchase the original media" and that kinda shit is annoying.
There are far too many shows that deserve squeals and endings that will never be, this not being one of them. In the instance that, its more written as a one-shot, there's no real BIG story, but its straight forward what the course of the show will be, and it all gets wrapped up at the end so you're not like, "DAMMIT WHY"D THEY CLIFF HANGER THIS SHIT AGAIN!"

(Audio/Art) -
I did mention this in peeves, but there are a lot of nicely drawn section that aren't the action scenes, though they did throw a decent amount into that explosion budget.
VA was pretty good, would have been superb if it had on point characters to match.

(Action and enjoyment) -
Now I'm not gunna lie, I do really like the action scenes in the whole SAO series, and if i was to put aside my game peeves, this is no different, its easy on the eyes, fast paced and silly OP characters mulching others, as silly as a bunch of it looks, you can't say that a lotta the scenes are pretty darn cool and really chill to watch after you get home from work and don't want to actually think about shit.

------------------- End of Compliments

TL;DR
Do watch if -
You like your regular SAO quick paced OP action scenes and a quick rounded story ark.

Don't watch if -
You get triggered by the way the anime game genre is, where the authors are more writing fantasy, in the sense that they want to write what ever they want to write, but use the gaming genre because its the "in thing" then don't actually look into the product itself or do any research about it, just throw some random ideas and shit together and go Michael Bay.

Should I start this manga? Do you like bread and butter Isekai? Yes? Then jump on this train because it only gets isekai'er? from here.

-Moderate Spoilers- (If you don't want a quick plot overview skip down to the pros and cons)

MC-kun has died due to an accident in japan and is reincarnated into another world with RPG elements, from here he is given the class of one of the weaker roles, "villager" which means he is unable to help his newfound friends on their adventures to end the world destruction.

As the story presses on, poor MC-kun is betrayed and on deaths bed, only to be ... face to face with a goddess, revealing that MC-kun would be AGAIN reincarnated into the same timeline in an attempt to get strong enough to help his allies with their fight.

Pushing forward MC-kun alters the natural timeline when he is a child allowing him to delve into the Dragon-kins dungeon of trials, for me this was at least interesting, goals had been set out and things were making progress.

But all good things must come to an end, Isekai Death-Pit (Where something that should occur over 2-5 chapters is shoved into 2 pages and explains why the MC deus ex machina'd their way into being either OP or not dead, i.e poor writing)

At chapter 10 there is a time jump of roughly 2 years and MC-kuns Allies are in trouble, low and behold though, just before death, MC-kun comes and saves the day, not only with the powers that he was granted in the previous chapters but a whole bunch of other things that aren't explained nor probably will ever be.

After these events and MC-kun is reunited with his allies, you'd expect him to help them save the world like he originally set out to. You will be sadly disappointed, from here MC-kun decides he will miraculously arrive in times of peril to save his allies...... and in the mean time do his own thing.

---------------------------------------------

Pros:
RPG - Elements (I usually like them)
It has dragons and dungeons?

Cons:
RPG -Elements (but god damn are they over-used)
Main Goal became a weird plot
Isekai Death-Pit (Where something that should occur over 2-5 chapters is shoved into 2 pages and explains why the MC deus ex machina'd their way into being either OP or not dead, i.e poor writing)

Will I continue to read it?
No, after the most recent release (chapter 13) where the main goal was just kinda walked over and replaced with, "I will save you whenever you need help" you can't just deus ex machina the whole plot point so you can write a sub-plot. That absolutely killed it for me, dropped.

Should I start this manga? Do you like Echii and I'm not talking soft-core stuff, there are sections of this manga that could just be classified as hentai. If you can live with that, and the story getting slower and slower then yes you should pick it up if you like Isekai with a strong harem driven, OP MC.

-Moderate Spoilers- (If you don't want a quick plot overview skip down to the pros and cons)

The story hits it off with MC-kun being Summoned to another world by two adventurers who wished for a powerful familiar but in-fact had the spell reversed on them making them ... MC-kuns "slaves". We're only a the start and its already saucy!

From here MC-kun strives to be an adventurer and get favor in the land. Good the objective has been set, and on-top of that it's not a hard one. These come to fruition and the slightly harder and harder challengers come up to contest MC-kuns ownership over his "slaves".

After some time the kingdom is in need of assistance against other races and MC-kun is required to give assistance. From here on the story isn't bad, nor is it overly good, but if you like the easy on the eyes echii and OP MC-kun then you might just get a kick outta it

-----------------------------------------------

Pros:
Slaves
Echii
Interesting start prospect
Nekos

Cons:
Too much Echii (For me to enjoy it, the "plot" needs just as much story impact as the actual plot does, if the "plot" is just a cover for a poorly written story then its not worth my time)
Slow story progression

Will I continue to read it?
No,though I don't have a lot to say about the overall manga itself, the story just ended up lacking that finesse that originally struck me when i read the first couple chapters, its originality went out the window and the excess "plot" without having enough actual plot just made it seem like poorly written hentai.

Should I start this manga? That's the question that always plagues my mind when trying to find something to read while waiting for my beloved stories to be released.

-Moderate Spoilers- (If you don't want a quick plot overview skip down to the pros and cons)

The story starts off with MC-kun along with his class being transported to another world (Isekai, who'd have thought it) where they are to be collectively trained up in order to save the world from other beings. Unfortunately for MC-kun, he is betrayed along his journey and finds himself inside what would be a bottomless dungeon, the story follows his grind ... to get out and find out who betrayed him. Sounding pretty good so far for the start-up, looking like a decent isekai lets see how it pans out.

MC-Kun drudges through challenge after challenge with the core idea to survive and be reunited with his allies, during this trip he finds another companion who vows to help him in said quest in exchange for free'ing them from their binds.

They continue on their merry way until they reach the end of the dungeon. This is where the shit hit the fan. Chapter 14.5 quickly wrapped up what should have been 2-4 chapters in only a couple of pages, and from there the entire setting, character design, goals and ideals, just changed. It was really weird when it happened because i re-read that chapter about 3 times not being able to figure out if I'd missed something or it was just poor story telling. From here on it was just your standard bland emotionless MC who finds and saves girls for his harem while one shotting his way to victory.

--------------------------------

Pros:
Interesting start for an Isekai
Difficult and gritty goal set
Betrayal
Dungeon Setting

Cons:
After chapter 14.5 the entire thing just fell apart
Goal was completely dropped
New sub plot was shoved in
Isekai Death-Pit (Where something that should occur over 2-5 chapters is shoved into 2 pages and explains why the MC deus ex machina'd their way into being either OP or not dead, i.e poor writing)


Will I continue to read it?
No, it started out very well and I was reading it eagerly as it came out, but after chapter 14.5 where the Isekai death-pit standard of time leap followed by over-buffing without explanation it became drool, that paired with the original goal and problems being forgotten like they never happened made it a drop for me. I did read on into the "new" plot but it was a major buzz kill for me.

(Possible minor spoilers ahead)

To start off, Gamers! has your typical romcom triangle love complex setup, so don't get your hopes too high if you're thinking its super about gaming (this seems to be a reoccurring thing for the "gaming anime" genre)

Story: 6/10
Story begins with our loner gamer MC being invited into a new "gaming" club, past episode 3 this club is never seen again. From here it turns into a love triangle circus comedy of who likes who/pin the tail on the donkey. The story could be summarized into about 6-8 episodes if the MC's played a lot less I'M DENSE cards, but that's ... for comedic effect which makes up the whole story so if dense characters irritate you i have some bad news.

Characters: 7/10
Surprisingly the characters where a nice change of pace to what is normally seen. There was your regular troupes, but it wasn't on the normal character it was a bit of a switch around from the norm, which was a nice breath of fresh air for a change. Each character had their own little likeable feature and it wasn't a case of really playing favorites too much.

Sound: ?/10
As per my last review, I don't pay a lot of attention to the music, so it either wasn't enough to hook me or I'm just tone deaf.

Art: 7/10
The art style was your standard moe try to get everything colourful and cute art style, but it wasn't super over the top, backgrounds looked crisp and not rushed to save money/time and the comedy scenes were done nicely as well with the change of art style for reactions.

Overall: 6/10

TL:DR
From the original premise of the show it changed completely into something that i wasn't really expecting, this is a reoccurring thing with game related anime, but it turned out not so bad, for a romcom it faired alright though the last episode may leave you disappointed (SPOILER AHEAD) as it really ends in episode 11 and episode 12 is just filler.

Would I recommend it?
Only for the character aspect, as far as Romcom, Comedys and the like go, it was about on par with everything else. = No

(Possible minor spoilers ahead, if you haven't seen the first ep you have been warned)

To start off, this show title doesn't give a very good description of what the actual content entails, “Recovery of an MMO Junkie“ would make many think (well at least what I thought) a show entailing possible game rich functions, ideas and the such. Unfortuantly though it has more come across as more a pre-tense for the show and it revolves around a RomCom based structure, if you liked “Kiss Him, Not Me ” there's a good chance you'll like this show, they show many similar things and the comedy ... aspect is roughly the same.

Story: 5/10
MC meet MC2 out of random thing, they for some reason click, they have some comedic events and some down spells, standard structure for a RomCom, but what adds from that? So far nothing. Besides ye ol gender bender trick its pretty straight forward.
5 outta 10 you say? Man that doesn't sound that high, and no it doesn't but that's mainly because of my own pet peeves I might add. The show points out the MC is a previous MMO nut, and claims to be an “elite NEET”, from there the MC proceeds to need constant assistance on basic MMO structures and proceedings, doesn't sound super “elite MMO nut” to me.
MC runs into someone who wants to help from seeing them fail too often, this screams Deus ex machina, but its needed for the plot to progress, which is kinda annoying to swallow but it will be allowed. From here its just happy go lucky RomCom standard, you know whats going to happen, you know how its gunna turn out, there's not a lotta variety going on. For the comedy aspect, id say your usual troupes are had, the embarrassment to get a couple giggles, but I only really felt anything in one or two scenes over 4 episodes.

Characters: 5/10
The characters are there, and they each have their own feel about them, but it's more a each has their “thing” than each having different personality's, It has a very RomCom feel setup which is a given, MC1 is nervous about everyone and talking about things making them bashful/embarrassed when doing anything. MC2 just playing the tough card but inside they too act the same. MC3 is like MC2 but plays the envy card, and finally MC4 for the laughs, more confused to how there was a lacking of the tsundere card, gets a thumbs for that atleast.

Sound: ?/10
Wouldn't be able to give you a rating for sound, because I haven't really noticed it, besides the opening and ending.

Art: 4/10
Flat art style is very generic, in game looks like every other show on the market, and when this is 90% of the show representation kinda doesn't help out. A lot of the time spent is still background shots and talking phases in basic settings (A tree, a blue brick castle, a fountain) Not a lot going on, nor does it really stick out as creative or interesting. Outside of the game MC art style is a little more creative which gives some nice flair but not enough to out weigh the previous problem.

Overall: 5/10
It's not bad bad, but its got a ways of being good, if I hadn't have seen “Kiss Him, Not Me” I probably would have thought more of it, but it feels very similar in design THUS far, it could change in one episode and become a 9 you never know.

TL:DR
If you like RomComs, give it a go you may like it, but don't start this show if you are thinking it will have a decent gaming environment aspect. Seems very generic based with some tweaking, this is my opinion and you might like it, as they say each to their own, I will watch it through till the end but so far its seeming like shows I've already seen.