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Apr 13, 2024
Nihei's titular work, his magnum opus, is an interesting take on medieval epics. Blame is hardly interested in telling a compelling story, it's as if the entire plot is a plot device in itself, an outlet to let Nihei experiment with otherworldly designs and captivating, majestic illustrations.
Spoilers from now on.
It doesn't have a start or an ending, our hero has been tasked to retrieve the natural gene that unlocks control of the administration's commands (basically the entity responsible for the actual building of the world), which has gone rogue because of reasons. Through a predictable set of intricacies and developments (the hero's companions, the
...
traitor, the literal deus ex machinas coming at the rescue, etc.) he gets the McGuffn and (perhaps?) saves the world through it.
There, I spoiled the plot. There's really not much else to say. In a way, while banal, the story is not actually required, because Blame can work as a narrative expedient to flesh out the characters. This is what skillful writers do.
Alas, Nihei is a terrible one, which is compounded by the lackluster if not downright horrible human sketches he depicts.
To understand what I mean, consider this: Blame reads more like a 10-volume artbook full of cool monster designs and monumental double spreads. The post-punk apocalyptic world is also wondrous and alluring. The problem is... it's all wasted.
Nihei does not care about the narrative, and he doesn't even consider his human characters. They have no motivations from start to finish, they show no emotion, no internal dilemmas, and most of them come and go, getting slaughtered in no more than a few pages since their introduction. It gets to the point where the repetition becomes bothersome if not downright hilarious.
It's especially accentuated during the first few volumes. You get to see a bunch of technological fishermen, they save our protagonists, and once they reach their village, you already know where this is going. They all get slaughtered in mere seconds by a generated enemy. It's honestly pretty funny, although it spells the death sentence of thematic coherence, you get tonal whiplashes that are unquestionably not meant to be there.
As I said, Nihei doesn't care about story and characters, which leaves... the drawings. These are the best selling points, but at 10 volumes and with not many outstanding ideas, it becomes repetitive pretty fast.
Moreover, since he doesn't know how to write human characters, a bunch of scenes are badly sketched, too. He goes from extremely detailed pages to downright scuffed drafts, as if he wasn't feeling it that day.
To put it in another way, Nihei failed the "show, don't tell" test by steering too much in the opposite direction. His story heavily relies on showing stuff, but he can't do so (and that's understandable, it's a daunting task), and even worse when he cannot draw different human faces or even symbolic expressions. Characters hardly react to what happens around them, they move through sectors of the megastructure without batting an eye, even when most of their friends got mowed down 5 minutes earlier by nightmarish horrors.
To be fair to Nihei, some stuff does indeed make sense (instead of whatever happened in Biomega). We can kind of correctly imply who Kyrii (the protagonist) is, although we don't ever find out his motives. The overarching plot is confusing, to say the least, but the factions here have somewhat clear (with a few exceptions, like what happens to the safeguards in the endgame) motives. But this all goes to waste because Nihei gives no time to the reader to reflect on what is even happening.
Particularly in the earlier volumes, it's just a constant stream of gruesome battles with no reason whatsoever. Kyrii and her friend Cibo do not react or show emotions to them, the enemies have incomprehensible motives until much later, and even then these are pretty basic if not outright offensive (silicon life kills humans because they need to reproduce, never explained why that is).
The story proceeds from one place to the next, and whilst the fights look repetitive, they're cool to read... until you understand that Kyrii (and even Cibo) have immortal plot armor and broken weapons.
Most of the time Kyrii needs to take a shot against the enemies and his pistol is so overpowered that it straight up destroys entire square kilometers of structures. Sometimes enemies can dodge his shots, but then they don't. There's no pathos to the narration because it's all black or white, and even if the enemy ends up winning, he resurrects himself because the plot needs him to. He's basically unkillable and overpowered.
The narrative middle steps are hideous and confusing, too. Most of the time it has to do with characters jumping into existence and helping our heroes, even if they shouldn't. Nihei also had the brilliant idea of adding space-time warping shenanigans for no reason. They add nothing to the story and make the plot even more convoluted.
Going back to the drawings, Nihei has piss-poor paneling in most of the early volumes. He skips some steps during fights, and since all humans look pretty much the same and he likes roughly drawn monstrosities, that's a recipe for puzzlement.
It gets better later on but it's never consistently great.
Once Kyrii reaches the endgame (he does this in an incredibly confusing and undeserving way, the same goes for Cibo), the world changes for the better, as it's a bit more streamlined and comprehensible, but that's still too little too late.
Again, I know some people will find a way to make (almost) everything connect, but what even is the point? The entire plot is not even the second selling point, it's banal and insipid, the characters are worse than one-dimensional, often lacking any dimension at all, and the quality of the illustrations ranges from breathtaking to terrible. High highs, low lows.
I'll have to say that the conclusion, albeit vague and open to interpretation (as always), is quite pleasant. Not worth the slog, though.
If you enjoy reading what essentially amounts to an ADHD artbook with post-punk transhumanist designs, then this manga might be for you. For everyone else, Firepunch is the better option (although not perfect).
I guess the lesson for Nihei should have been: show don't tell is very hard, and if you do it, you need to draw good characters at the very least. Quality illustrations only go so far as to make Blame a worthwhile reading experience, and unfortunately, even then, there are much better options. He did not get it, and in fact, even doubled down with Biomega.
As it always goes for mangakas, having a few good concepts is not enough to write a persuasive and engrossing story with intriguing characters. And if you don't have any of those two, technical skills can't carry Nihei to the finish line.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 9, 2024
Back when the Nintendo DS was released, there was an uproar. Everyone and their mothers went and used the wifi connection to browse all the free apps the console offered to the users. One of them was about animation with very minimalistic graphics.
Many of those videos got lost with time, but the most memorable ones got uploaded on Youtube, and some even got so much attention that they developed into something even more massive.
The most peculiar animated videos were those of fighting stickmen. Millions of people watched them fight for minutes at a time, killing hordes of enemies or just brawling it out
...
between two of them.
This is, without much exaggeration, what Biomega is.
I wish I could speak about the series as a whole, but there's really not much to say. It starts well, with an extremely banal apocalypse zombie premise, and non-existent characters, who all look pretty much the same... and then it somehow gets worse.
As I already stated multiple times, writers should stick to a few ideas, not overcomplicate things, and stick to them. Alas, Nihei couldn't, for the life of him, do it.
Zunichi, our protagonist, is tasked with the retrieval of Eon Green, an important human who's the key to stopping the plague from spreading. This is as much as I'm willing to explain since the story decided to get over convoluted.
Since he couldn't stay on track with the zombie apocalypse, Nihei went full in on cosmic horror/existential dread. He keeps introducing new characters, doesn't explain who they are or their motivations, and kills them pretty much instantly. It keeps going, until, after volume 3, he hard-resets the world and we're transported thousands of years into the future, in a whole new dimension/planet, to fight off... the same enemies as before.
In the end, after a thousand years of time-skip to kill off 11 of the 12 main enemy bases, they kill the main enemy because of a talking bear (!) who has the power to warp reality because he got transplanted an important character's brain into himself.
If this sounds too absurd and childish to be true, I have bad news for you.
It's frankly baffling that this manga even has mixed reviews to begin with. The story makes no sense whatsoever, the characters are plot devices and look all too similar to even discern, and the author refuses to give information, he'd rather stay vague about it all.
Sure, there are some kind of fanatics trying to patch together theories and making it all work out in the end by filling in stuff he didn't say or plan out, but I'm just left with one question: why?
What was the point of adding all this convoluted story? It does not add anything. It hugely subtracts from the experience, making it impossible to follow properly without backtracking, writing down names and scattering information.
I have no idea why anyone, in good conscience, could give it more than a negative recommendation.
The main selling point, the drawings, are cool. But the paneling is atrocious, all characters look the same, it's almost impossible to follow what's happening during the fights, and the author... he doesn't care.
He keeps drawing ghastly aberrations and gory fights, over and over and over. It almost becomes comical since we don't have any character development. There's a moment during the end where a little kid meets a blind alien who helps her. He gets his brain splattered over the floor 10 pages later. It's full of scenes like these and I have no idea why.
Again, the comparison to stickmen fights comes to mind. Nihei just wanted to draw sci-fi horrors battling it out.
Sure, ok, it would have been a bit too confusing, but I'd accept that since it's easy to read and he has a... peculiar style to say the least.
Why did he feel the need to add all that complex stuff? I am baffled because I cannot explain it for the life of me. He just sabotaged his series, so there's that.
This reconfirms my theory that social pressure forces people to give highly-rated series a good grade. I've read a bunch of reviews on the net, and not one of them specified what's great about Biomega, except the art (which is reasonable).
I honestly believe anyone knows this manga is trash but they're afraid to admit it, fearing repercussions from alleged elitists.
I won't allow it.
If you want to read a good take on reality-warping dread, go give Fire Punch a try. I have no idea why anyone would ever recommend this. It's just bad and boring.
Initially, I wanted to frame Biomega as action junk food. But the problem is that it tries too hard to sound like a Michelin 3-star meal, forgetting that he's just barely more than a tepid hamburger.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Apr 5, 2024
On Way To Language is a book of essays by the famous philosopher Martin Heidegger. Published in 1959, it's a collection of writings and lecturers about language as a whole. The first chapter is titled “Language in Poetry”, where Heidegger starts to mull over the poetry of Georg Trakl.
I encourage all critics, of any medium really, to go read that chapter. It's a textbook example of what pointless overthinking does to a man.
Once I read the first volume of Shimeji Simulation, and after completing the solid Girls' Last Tour, I went on MAL, Anlist, heck, even Goodreads, to gather some opinions about the
...
manga.
Almost unanimously, the votes were sky-high and the reviewers' takes were so philosophically charged that it made me think there was some Heidegger gobbledygook going on. Alas, it was. People calling it not a manga, but an experience. Some others calling it just a simple manga, but an extremely important one at that. Others saying that it's pointless to review and that words fail at their job of describing this masterpiece. A few went as far as to say that it's some of the best writing they have ever read and that it changed them deeply inside.
Red light after red light, I started to become increasingly convinced that I was dealing with the poetry of Georg Trakl.
And in fact, I was.
__Spoilers from now on.__
Shimeji Simulation is weird. In both a bad and a good way. Tsukumizu is a genius at drawing and creating wonderful panels, meshing together page layouts and drawings. He's a very inspired mangaka, and there's no discounting his work here. At the very least, he's different and catches your attention.
On the other hand, it's odd in a bad way. As in, it makes no sense whatsoever, it's pointless and dull, with terrible pacing (even though it's a 4-koma!), that does what it does for art's sake.
This isn't necessarily bad, and thankfully it's a short manga at that, but Shimeji Simulation reads more like a prototype, a drawing board Tsukumizu decided to throw ideas on.
So yeah, it doesn't frankly say much at all. There are some interesting ideas here and there, but they converge into nihilism and relativism to the point where nothing matters because everyone can warp reality at a moment's notice. This is bad, very bad, although Tsukumizu does a brilliant job of masking with random ideas and cool drawings. It's still not enough, but I appreciate him at least for trying. If everyone is changing the simulation, nothing even matters. All the pathos goes away from the narration, with only apathy remaining.
Here's a perfect example of this. Chapter 38 has a very captivating premise: collective unconscious, there's stuff beneath the earth that's somehow connected between everyone. That's cool and all… but why? What's the point of digging stuff out when you can just imagine everything you need? What's the point of exploring these weird dungeons when they can go to the school festival with a bunch of imagination-spawned stuff? The entire manga goes like this after the last chapters of the third volume.
There are some good scenes from time to time, especially when dealing with comedic stuff, but when Tsuku goes for philosophical ramblings from the bookworm girl or Shimeji's sister… yeah, it's hideous. Completely irrelevant gibberish with no value whatsoever. It's also very grating on the eyes, some pages are choked full of it for some reason. This is terrible since the pacing goes from fast and swift to slow and crawling at a snail's pace.
Overall, the first and part of the second volume are good, then it starts to get progressively sluggish, before going into pretentiousness overdrive with the dream world. Only by the very last chapter of volume 4 do things get interesting again. Even then, the development is abrupt, and without a decent justification, we have to believe all these new rules that are being established with each passing page. If only there were fewer random pseudo-SoL moments, then that could have worked, but I am questioning if Tzuku would even be able to pull it off.
The last volume goes into overdrive with even weirder, allegedly philosophical stuff. It rings flat to anyone who has read some actual, serious philosophy. Not only that, but it also tries to sound profound and fails spectacularly at that (Chapter 43 with a huge amount of infodumping).
The entire last volume quickly wraps things up in the worst way possible. Nothing here makes much sense. You'll read countless analyses about what happened, and they're all mostly right since you can't make any definitive statements about what is happening in the story. Fire Punch did this better, by the way.
Because of this, I'm not going to bother with arguing why it's all a bunch of gibberish, vague and unintelligible. It's pointless, and an exercise left to the reader. If the game is rigged, the only way to win is to stop playing, after all.
I'll just add that writers, and amateurs in particular, should stick to a few good topics. This mutant of existential ideas is non-comprehensible because there's too much fish to fry. Hilariously enough, everyone will get something out of it because they'll overanalyze all the dialogue, the captivating drawings, the so-called “symbolism”... But that's all there is to it, a bunch of hollow thoughts. Above all, nobody can escape reality, not even Tsukumizu (or his fandom).
It's true, as some reviewers pointed out, that the pages ooze with melancholy, eerie sadness, and pessimism. I don't find they added much to the experience. They were okay. I also kind of loathe the amount of scenes with little girls trying new clothes on. It's more than once and to me, it reads like fanservice. It gets especially bad in volume 5 since there are nude statues and sex scenes between two kids. This might not be that troublesome to a more teenage reader, but I believe it subtracts from the story.
They undoubtedly add nothing to the narration or characterization, so I'd rather not have them in, anyway.
I didn't spend much time talking about the characters because that'd be useless. They are just a pretext not to tell a story (because there hardly is one), but to experiment with the drawings and composition. This is fine, honestly.
For example, Shimeji's sister was interesting at the start, but she ended up doing reality warping stuff, then vanishing from the narration, and then plopping back whenever Tsuku needed her. Very lame and boring.
To explain my disdain for theoretical analyses, just look at chapter 31. It has absolutely nothing to offer to the reader, except for a few Slice of Life elements. And yet, I had to read 15 lines of analysis of the complex meaning behind the kind of nuances of each dress/imagined element. No, that's too much, even for me.
There's something to be said about if this SoL manga is even meant for me. It could arguably not be. But despite what it looks like, I don't think there's much SoL in this manga. There's no “healing”, no interesting or meaningful vertical stories, and no positive outlook that shines upon the reader. There's not even a compelling character that's developed enough, since they are mostly plot devices for experimentation, as I already said.
There is, however, a moderate amount of fun stuff and outstanding panels. That doesn't suffice to me, but oh well.
All in all, I don't think this manga is (that) bad. It's still an experience, and definitely something different from the other stuff. I'm sure Tsukumizu smartly decided to make it short, given that this reads more like an amateur's take on reality-warping relativism filled with high-school philosophy, melancholy little girls, and a sprinkle of humor.
Because it's unique enough and brilliantly drawn, I'd still advise anyone who's a bit tired of the same manga clichés to give this a try. It might be worth it just for the incredible paneling work. But there's no depth of knowledge, no meaningful theories for you here… just a puddle wide enough to let all theorists have fun with their ramblings.
You can choose to view the glass half-full, and it's avant-garde. Half-empty, hipster.
IMO, an even shorter manga (2 to 3 volumes) would have drastically cut most of the worst stuff while allowing Tsuku to go full in with his weird ideas. The 6 pages one-shot was way more compelling than the entirety of the manga, to be frank.
Anyone who wants to read a good manga about these ideas should go and give SOIL a try. I'd also add Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko for the nonsense stuff. It's great. Or, at least, better than this. Lastly, if you want a more horror-y feeling that doesn't overstay its welcome, Wakusei Closet is for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 24, 2024
Operation nostalgia that does nothing of value, playing with the watcher's feelings about the 2010 masterpiece.
The problem with this sequel? Potential future? Whatever it is, is that it's lazy. Extremely lazy. It backloads the entire character development, background, and nuances to the 2010 main series while giving us a glimpse of a different path.
But let's go in order.
When dealing with this kind of anime, which is abundantly quoting and taking inspiration from the original, it's impossible to not consider parallels with the former series. The screenwriters impose it on us, anyway, since the series forces you to know all the characters beforehand. This
...
is not necessarily a bad thing.
ART 9.5/10
The original has aged respectably, but Shingo Natsume empowered everything to the max wherever it was showing signs of its age. Not much to fault, but there were a few static talking scenes that, in a 6 episode series, stand out annoyingly. Overall, Shingo is one of the few directors competent enough to deal with this boulder of a series. We also begin to see how much is "stolen" by the original. It's necessary and not a bad thing, but we'll see when it all starts crashing down when substance starts to matter.
SOUND 8.5/10
Again, it mostly used all songs, which is good. Tamura's and Higuchi's dubbers are weaker, and while for the latter it's comprehensible given the death of the first dubber, for the former it's just inexcusable. It's not a big deal but it's there.
Both the ending and the opening are weaker than the original. Again, they're not bad per se, but not as great as before.
STORY: 5/10
Here's where push comes to shove. The story is terrible and extremely devoid of pathos. It reeks of banality and goes for the pointless and trite trope of time travel. The original also had some supernatural touches here and there, but it was never the major point of the story, whereas here it's the main pull.
Time travel stories are almost always made in 2 ways: either you go for a closed space-time loop or a multiple-universe approach. Tertium non datur.
This series goes for the former. It removes all agency from its characters and makes the entire plot extremely predictable. Almost all plot points become devoid of interest because of it, although you can commend how the complexity of the loop was explained and taken care of. Alas, it's not enough.
The story in itself is also bad. It is pointless in the grand scheme of things because it doesn't add anything of value to the original series. It also abundantly cites the point of annoyance catchphrases, jokes, and even major plot points.
This is eloquently illustrated by the true ending in episode 5, which features an almost identical dialogue that we have during the last episode of the original series. It's not bad per se... but we've already seen it once, which makes it...pointless.
The pacing was very good... until the screenwriters decided to add context to the first episode by backloading it after the lovely conclusion of the story in the fifth one. This is absurd and destroys the ending, by also adding stuff that it's not long enough to make us empathize with the characters. The sixth episode is basically a compressed, mini version of the first one from the original, which makes it all the more silly. They are already heavily implying you need to know these characters and the plot points from the original... so it makes no sense. Pretty baffling decision, really.
CHARACTERS 5/10
It's not that these characters are bad (except for Tamura, and there's a reason for it...), it's more like that the series is just offloading all the development to the first one because they don't have time or a reason to develop them more. It's the correct decision... but this pseudo-sequel is just a possible path that's arguably not even canon, and definitely not an ounce as good as the original ending!
So all the characters are as good as the original... but because of that, they are lazy homages to the originals. The only one who isn't it's Tamura... which in fact just sucks. It doesn't have screen time nor does it get developed in such a short amount of time. Sigh.
There's not much to say about them, they are fine but mediocre, they don't have their own flavor, they're just a bland copy of the originals that exist to force nostalgia out of the watcher. Pretty sad.
ENJOYMENT: 4.5/10
In the end, I loathed my time with time machine blues, because time travel stories are overdone to death unless some genius does something interesting, which unfortunately doesn't happen here. Moreover, as I have stated, the entire anime is a pointless homage to the original series, and doesn't stand a chance in comparison to it, nor is it needed or pleasurable to see.
It seems like whoever wrote the script forgot that the sci-fi escamotage from the first series was not the actual pull, but just the flint that got the plot going. The characters and their realistic stories were the main focus, which is why you can consider it the greatest coming-of-age anime of all time, and arguably one of the best, if not THE best, the media has to offer.
I also don't care that this is an adaptation of a stage play since it doesn't matter in the slightest, for self-evident reasons.
Tatami Galaxy was a masterpiece that stands among the greats even today, and its warning about living life with rose-tinted glasses is hilariously applied here: take off your nostalgia goggles and go watch something better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 25, 2023
Sometimes art is stunning to look at and engages the viewer by moving his heart into the right place.
Other times, the art is just ugly because of a lack of budget, vision, and capacity.
In a few cases, while the art might stunning, it just doesn't hit right. Kind of like a weird cacophonic symphony.
This is where Inaka Isha has come to die.
This (quite liberal) interpretation of Kafka's short story is weird, and not in a good sense. It's not ugly, it's not good, it's just off-putting and doesn't deserve 19 minutes of your time.
The story is barely non-existent, the same goes for
...
the characters. But there must be some kind of pull, right? Some catharsis or something along those lines that justifies all of it.
Unfortunately for us, there is none. It's an exercise in style made for its own sake. In other words, it's weird because it has to be weird. And this is the worst case imaginable for weirdness to exist.
A Country's Doctor is not for everyone, perhaps those attracted to more experimental stuff might give it a chance, but frankly, it's just boring and dull and it really doesn't leave anything of value to the viewer.
A waste of time, to put it simply.
You're better off just skipping it all together.
2/10 because at the very least it's not more of the same and the drawings are... peculiar to say the least.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 9, 2022
Goblin Slayer is a perfect one-shot idea. The first episode could be considered the exact representation of what a one-shot would have been.
Even then, it's not without flaws (torture-porn with sexual innuendos used to shock the viewer and make him believe the series is actually deep).
As always, since I don't believe it's possible to review a series without spoilers, I will share examples of what I am saying.
ART
The art of goblin slayer is pretty bad overall, with a few particularly hideous low-points. The pilot is easily the best one, which is a smart thing to do since it hooks the viewers in and lets them
...
give the show a chance.
Unfortunately, everything falls apart from the second episode. The character designs are as generic as they get, with the sole exception being the iconic Goblin Slayer.
A few of them are barely fanserviceable, like the Sword Maiden and the childhood friend, while the others are lacking in details. The entire cast has a monotonous and generic feeling to it, which is extended to the entirety of the enemies (the few of them that there are, at least), too.
The problems don't stop here. The backgrounds are generic, if not outright bad, with no inspirations (even though it might seem like cheating, Mushoku Tensei established the high bar for aesthetic setting in a fantasy, and this show doesn't even come close to looking remotely as good).
The animation is terrible all around because of the amount of low-quality CGI models for both the enemies and Goblin Slayer himself. The contrast between 2D and 3D is grating on the eyes, especially with GS. We see him properly animated, and in the next scene, he turns in this low-fps 3D model that glaringly sticks out like a sore thumb.
The tightness of the budget was just too restrictive to animate most fights properly, too.
The directing ends up being poor, probably as a consequence of the low budget, which causes confusing fights. Lots of pan shots to cover expenses during the filler-y episodes, too.
Visual effects are generally horrible, given that most of the blood is rendered in a disgusting 3D jelly-looking red goo. Redo of Healer had a better rendition of blood, somehow.
SOUND
The OST is surprisingly good. Not only both the Opening and the Ending are captivating and in-tone with the show, but a few of the insert tracks are also on point, and I listened to them even after the show finished.
Sound effects are nothing to write home about as they do their fair job.
Voice acting is a bit generic and clichè most of the time, as the lines get delivered with this forced enthusiasm from the Priestess, that sassy tone from the Dwarf, the tsundere-y troubled voice from the High Helf, etc.
It's not bad, but it doesn't even feel like they are trying to do anything more than the bare minimum.
There is, however, one peculiarity: Goblin Slayer. It's pathetically obvious that they were trying to score for the silent hero protag, but he just looks (hideous CGI, terrible writing) and sounds like a socially inept and borderline autistic character. It doesn't sound cool, it just sounds cringe. And given the fact that he's the most important and iconic character in the series, it kind of ruins everything.
For this reason alone, I am almost tempted to suggest the viewers watch the English dub, where GS's voice actor sounds better and more pertinent.
STORY
There is no such thing as a story in Goblin Slayer. The entire premise of GS is that the author wanted to create a novel based on his D&D 4.5 sessions. He's not even subtle in hinting at it, given the number of references around dices, from start to finish.
The premise is interesting, but that's about it. A hero entirely fixated around killing low-level monsters because he has a personal vendetta against them, to the point of looking autistic. Given his aesthetic, it captivates the audience to, at least, give it a try.
Truthfully, Goblin Slayer's problem is that it doesn't really need a story because everything it has to say, it says during the first episode. There are no plot twists, GS's background is easy to imply from the very first episode (traumatized as a child), and the author doesn't care about it at all (the Demon King is defeated off-screen by 3 Mahou-Shoujo, pajama-wearer little girls).
The attempts at a "story" are utterly useless, uninteresting, and add nothing to the narrative, and sound as generic as humanly possible.
World-building is the worst offender of them all, though. It's also kind of pathetic how most reviewers don't even point these giant plot holes and contrivances out, but I digress.
There are serious, gigantic flaws in the way the world is conceived.
First of all, we are shown a world with no actual governments that can take care of their citizens. Not once do we see guards handling attacks even when there are threats to the cities (episode 8, 12). The security of the world is handled by mercenaries who get their missions from private enterprises (the guilds). Does anyone understand how dumb this sounds? It's all in the greedy hands of random patrons!
Not only that, but the low-level goblins that should mostly be a nuisance suffer from a whiplash of exposition.
The writer tells us that goblins are an annoyance, low-level threat that should be handled by the lowest-level adventurers, but the anime shows us constantly that goblins are, in fact, a serious threat that should not be underestimated.
First of all, they keep killing people left and right and creating nests right outside of cities, or under them, in the sewers. We are told they have an insane, exponential ratio of reproduction (episode 1, Goblin Slayer's speech).
Second of all, they are insanely dangerous to porcelain-level adventurers at the very least. Why is that a thing? What's the point of a level system if anyone can take any quest anyway? And what's with that chick over the counter that wants to establish a training program to stop having adventurers killed? You dumb idiot, perhaps stop giving them those quests!
One might argue that goblins are already the lowest level monster there are, but that's only told to us, whereas we are shown that it's clearly not the case and dozens of people are slaughtered viciously without a pause. Not only this, but the sheer number of goblins is perfectly capable of overwhelming an entire army without proper preparation (episodes 11 and 12).
Third of all, there are multiple levels of goblins! Both the shaman and giant ones are incredibly stronger than the lower ones, and there are even domesticated wolves and goblin kings which are capable of using advanced strategies.
Take the situation in the Venice-like city. The entire place is infested with goblins and no one does anything, not even the guards. And don't give me that bullshit "my PTDS is making me unable to act, and I don't want adventurers to die (which further proves the point that goblins are strong monsters. Meanwhile, her Aligator familiar is not used to kill the goblins for some reason? Stupid plot is stupid)".
Even during the final episodes, the goblins are planning on throwing a large-scale attack on the main city. These creatures are far from being weak because the writer is incapable of creating a valid justification for having Goblin Slayer on one hand and weak creatures on the other. It removes tension from the battle if they are just easily farmable, and if they aren't, then the world should reflect that.
The pacing is also all over the place, there are surprisingly few fights overall, a bunch of episodes are reduced to deal with god-awful character development, for some reason. There are also occasional asspulls coming out of nowhere, which are justified as unironical dice intervention ala d&d 4.5 (episode 7, GS resuscitates and kills all the enemies with the power of friendship and hatred).
Also, the last battle makes no sense. The Goblin King is smart enough to understand human language. He saw all the mercenaries grouping on GS's farm. Why the fuck did it continue with the attack? By retreating and choosing a better window he would have probably won the stalling war for the farm. Not only that, but he decided to attack with his weakest troops first. The goblin giants would have been way better as vanguard soldiers. This is a textbook case of plot-induced stupidity.
There's also a broken teleportation scroll that's capable of one-shotting any enemy because it teleports high-pressure water. I am not going to argue against it that much, given that it was properly foreshadowed and used only once, but what was the point of GS saying "I am not telling, in case the enemies capture you and you reveal its power". Dude, are you dense? The goblins are barely smart enough to throw shit and stones at you and you are going inside a goblin nest.
If your allies end up being captured, the chance that they are tortured and asked specific questions about magic trump cards is far outweighed by the fact that perhaps, your allies could use said card if you end up being incapacitated. Extremely stupid reasoning, which only exists to excuse the shock effect.
CHARACTERS
Probably the weakest part of the show.
Let's start with the enemies. As a consequence of what I just said, the goblins are theoretically both low-level, easily killable monsters and at the same time actual challenges for the protagonist and his friends.
Goblins as a whole are uninteresting, bland, cardboard cutouts characters. They hate those with words and have nothing good going for them. They are stereotypical malevolent beings.
Even then, there is this retarded exchange of dialogue between Priestess and GS where the first one asks if GS needs to kill the little goblins. What kind of question is that? Introducing moral questions is fine and all, but they have to make sense in the first place. We are clearly shown and told repeatedly that goblins are nothing but disgusting raping monsters. Stop treating the viewers & readers like mongoloids.
Goblins are overall generic and terrible enemies. They offer no design ideas, no new fighting quirks, and are supposed to be evil because they are evil. What a snorefest.
There's also the demon king and their secret sect, but the writer doesn't know how to deal with a big overarching story, so it just goes for satirical subversion (spoiler: it doesn't work and looks goofy).
One humongous problem is that... characters don't have names. It might sound stupid at first, but how can you grow attached to people you don't even know? They are entirely defined by the characteristics and archetypes that denote their d&d classes. That's it. Even their personality is dull and void of any kind of novelty. It gets even worse once you realize this is the power fantasy of someone who played d&d. Do you know what's the first thing you do when creating a character through the sheet? Writing down its name.
There's also the magic trio composed of the lizardman, the dwarf, and the high elf. They come to ask Goblin Slayer for help against a goblin's nest, in their quest to stop the Demon King Armies, as ambassadors of their respective reigns. But as we already said, the Demon King is pitifully killed off-screen, and after they take care of the goblin nest they somehow decide to remain with GS and form a party with him.
Why? They had a way more important job at hand. What about the rest of the demon armies? Why did their reigns not call them back after their quest was completed? It's never explained. And this hurts character backgrounds. It's as if the writer is moving these cardboard pawns on his chessboard. It doesn't feel organic, but artificial.
The Sword Maiden arc is cringy and has quite a bit of sexual references thrown around. One of the strongest gold adventurers has PTSD vs goblins, to the point that she'd rather fuck the entire city than tell the guards what is happening downstairs, in the sewers. And don't give me the "oh, but the sect might understand that's her weak point and use it against her" excuse. People are fucking dying! Women are vanishing left and right, the number of goblins is increasing exponentially!
Just tell the guards to go kill them all until it's too late. The dark sect will never understand what is happening anyway. Everyone considers goblins to be one of the weakest monsters, the first thing they'd think is that the Sword Maiden just doesn't deal with such petty squabble.
And why is there a pseudo-resurrection ritual that makes recently-dead people come back to life by having a virgin rub herself against your body? I wish I was exaggerating, lol.
There are also blatant lies coming from the characters, too. Goblin Slayer goes to the guild to get assistance for what is a large-scale attack prepared against the city. For some reason, he even has to offer everything he owns. For some reason, the mercenaries initially ask for gold and change their opinion only once the guild girl offers a broken contract to help her unrequited love, Goblin Slayer (wonderful world-building). And during the last lines of the last episode, Priestess tells Goblin Slayer how everyone wanted to help him from the beginning.
There is no way people are gobbling up this shit with a straight face, is there?
They wouldn't have pissed on Goblin Slayer if he were on fire moments before getting a guild mission, without even considering the fact that the Goblin King would have massacred the town, a few days down the line.
There is also Goblin Slayer. Truthfully, there's not much to say about him. As I already stated, the writer is going for the silent hero protagonist with a tragic past, but his lines are cringe and outright poorly written (50% of them are "yeah"), and his V.A. is awful at his job. Did his background make sense? Yeah, but that's nothing to write home about. It was predictable from the very beginning and does not add depth to the character.
It gives him a solid motivation, but it stenches clichè. It again proves my point that Goblin Slayer would have worked better as a one-shot.
Because of his "unique personality", he attracts a bunch of girls. Priestess, the Childhood Friend, Guild Girl, High Elf, even Sword Maiden...
Another cliché off the list, I guess.
There's barely enough content to criticize these characters given how restricted to their own archetypes they are.
Also, there are a few citation tertiary characters, such as Guts and Lancer. Yeah, that's about it. If anyone thinks this show is better because of them, please stop.
CONCLUSIONS, AND BONUSES.
In the end, Goblin Slayer is a victim of the curse most writers suffer from. Interesting idea and premise, dreadful execution.
There's also something to be said about shock factors and mature content as a whole. I always subscribed to the notion that mature content doesn't imply maturity of the plot, and Goblin Slayer is a perfect example of this. From the first episode, the anime doesn't spare excruciatingly detailed rape scenes, copious amounts of violence coming from monodimensional, drooling, despicable green monsters.
It almost feels like Goblin Slayer's idea got replaced by the copious amount of excused sexual rape scenes. Did they trigger me? Hell no. Were they needed? Not even one bit.
Does that make the story more mature? If we consider the age classification, yeah. Otherwise, it's just artificial and thus phony. One key aspect of writers is fineness, violence all over my face to make me empathize with the poor girls getting raped left and right is not treating me with respect, and that doesn't allow me to respect this anime as a whole. A bit off track, but I truly believe the damage Gen Urobutcher did to modern anime is bottomless. He showered the watchers and readers with dark and grim stories, forcing a positive correlation between depth maturity and violence. But there is no such case.
TL;DR A Generic Self-Insert Empowerment Fantasy that tries to pass as a dark and mature story forgetting the importance of good characters and lacking in finesse.
And now, for some executed scoring
ART SECTION 7/20
Direction 1/4 (hideous fights, boring taking scenes (especially Maiden & GS during episode 8)
Character Design 1/4 (goblin slayer is iconic, that's about it. And even then, that fucking CGI...)
Backgrounds 2/4 (sometimes good, but as generic as possible)
Visual Effects 1/4 (the blood looks like jam)
Animation 2/4 (mostly nonexistent, and there are surprisingly few fighting scenes)
SOUND SECTION 13/20
Voice Acting 2/6 (GS is so bad that I have to gut a lot of points. The others are okay)
Insert songs 5/6 (good and catchy)
Opening-Ending 4/5 (on point with the show)
Sound Effects 2/3 (solid)
STORY SECTION 4/20
Premise-Setting 4/4 (Interesting)
Pacing 0/4 (all over the place)
Complexity 0/4 (most fights are resolved in a cheap way or with overpowered stuff)
Plausibility 0/4 (goblins are a real threat and everyone discounts them as weak)
Conclusion 0/4 (lol)
CHARACTERS SECTION 2/20
Second Characters Personality 0/4 (doesn't exist)
Main Characters Personality 1/4 (autism overload)
Backdrop 1/4 (only goblin slayer is justified)
Development 0/4 (completely negligible unless we consider developing an harem for GS)
Motivations 0/4 (what are those? The characters are moved by the writer like fucking mannequins attached to the strings)
BONUS SECTION 8/20
Pilot Quality 3/3 (even with the rapey goblins, very good)
Target Audience 1/3 (I am not a teenager anymore and this edgy stuff is geared towards grown-up kids at best)
Tonal Whiplash 2/3 (That one sex scene with both Sword Maiden and Priestess is dumb)
Historical Value 0/3 (Nihil)
Catharsis 0/3 (Nada)
Memorability 1/3 (people will remember it for the rape scenes)
Originality 1/2 (Goblin Slayer [character] seems interesting as a concept)
VERDICT: 34
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jan 8, 2022
This show is genuinely hideous, with one exception.
There is nothing meaningful to discuss about it, and I can't even try to spoil some stuff to present my case, a cursory glance at the first episode clearly shows how terrible it is at... everything. I am also left wondering why "Vampire" is even in the title, given the complete absence of vampires from the anime.
It should have been a promotional material for the detective-style game the anime was based on, but it ended up being a disgusting promo that arguably caused fewer people to be interested in the game.
Because of the lack of budget, they just
...
skipped solving any case (which is the main reason one would have downloaded the game, to begin with) and resolved them off-screen during the last episode. This appalling decision makes me question what was the point of a promotional material that doesn't even hook you into the meat of the game, but on the contrary, keeps you from touching it with a 10-foot pole.
I would usually try to briefly analyze the story/art/sound/character departments but there is just nothing of value all around. It's all pure, unadulterated garbage.
There is barely any animation, and when it is there, we are dealing with powerpoint-level stuff, everything is recycled to nauseous degrees, sound effects are ear-bleeding, visual effects are actual, unironical stock effects that you can find in Youtube videos back from 2006, the "jokes" aren't fun and just don't work, and even if they were, the comedic timings are all over the place, the characters themselves are annoying, the voice actors are amateurish, random stuff keeps happening for no reason whatsoever, with no continuity between episodes...
I hope this is enough to prove my case.
One thing I want to stress though is that this anime shows how important the budget is to make people laugh. Granted, the jokes are shit anyway, but even if that weren't the case, the pitiful amount of budget wouldn't have allowed enjoying this even from an ironic perspective. This is why I had to increase the speed for a less-than-3-min-per-episode anime.
Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, you have stuff like inferno Cop that with a similar budget still manages to get a few chuckles from the viewers (I thought it was repetitive after a few episodes, but still better than this pile of dregs). Why was that? Novelty effect + way better comedic timings and jokes. Inferno Cop didn't take itself seriously, it knew it was shit from the get go, Vampire Homles didn't.
The only exception comes from the OP (which is recycled as the ED, lol). Whilst not pathetic, it is still dreadful and tiresome, given the fact that it occupies 1/3 of the running time of each episode. I am fairly confident that almost the entirety of the budget was spent on the singer.
Avoid like the plague, there are better trash anime, like mars of destruction, Skelter Heaven, Ex-Arms, Arifureta...
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 18, 2021
Jobless Reincarnation is guilty pleasure at its core.
The premise is just bad, senseless, and edgy just for the sake of it. The story as a whole shows a dull fantasy setting that doesn't really add anything to it, the characters are okay for the most part, and the pacing is on the slow side, but that's to be expected when we're dealing with a quite literal coming-of-age story, even with its fair share of time skips. Descriptions are usually bland or outright bad because our protagonist can only reference dating sims, light novels, and the like.
The worst offender is the amount of perverted and
...
sexual references scattered throughout the volume. It still doesn't reach a critical mass of disgustingness, but even one stupid panty reference is one too many. From what I gathered, it'll get worse from now on.
Even then, it's still a somewhat pleasurable read. It isn't good by any means, but it isn't particularly bad per se. It's just... mediocre. If I wasn't already overall fed up with this isekai bullshit I'd probably enjoy it quite a bit more.
After all, this is apparently one of the first of its kind, not the creator of the genre (or rather, the trope), but one of the most popular isekai LNs in Japan nevertheless. Goes to show how mediocrity is usually aptly enjoyed by the masses.
Truth be told, I started reading it because a friend of mine highly suggested I check out the anime. And the anime adaptation blows this thing out of the water.
Jobless Reincarnation Vol. 1 is akin to a deconsecrated host. It's okay, it doesn't excel in any direction, it doesn't have a distinctive flavor, and doesn't even stand its own as a meal. You might eat it, but in the end, you could even forget you ate anything at all.
It's pleasurable in its simplicity, and because of that, entirely forgettable.
2 stars is a bit on the low side, but I can't give half stars, which means I'd rather round it down than up. 5/10, as balanced as it'd be.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 10, 2020
A show that marketed around Yuasa's name that has nothing to do with Yuasa's works and his brilliant direction, let alone writing.
The amount of disdain I ended up having when I finished the last episode kind of forced me to make a review just to share with the world how disappointed I am with studio SARU and Yuasa in general. They could have easily skipped all episodes except the first one and the last two and nothing would have changed. Actually, I probably would have enjoyed this show more.
From the mastermind behind PPTA, The Tatami Galaxy, Devilman CRYBABY, and so on and so forth
...
we are getting this absolute pile of dregs? Absolutely senseless.
I won't delve into the specifics because the show doesn't even warrant a thorough analysis and/or discussion. They wasted all the budget on the first episode which is actually a quite decent one. After that everything goes south, unfortunately.
The music is somehow bad, tracks don't match the scenes and feel anonymous and without charisma.
Characters are cardboard placeholders, they die like flies, sacrificed on the altar of Shock Effect. They don't even care about each other, not even when they are blood-related or long time friends, they just move on because whoever wrote them is terrible at his job and should probably be fired.
And then there's Daniel. I have no idea who thought that having a buffoon running around with not even lame jokes but annoying lines was a good idea.
For some reason, we have a gamer kid who spends half of his screen time talking in English. And this is where most of my enjoyment of this trainwreck (or shipwreck, given the series) comes from: people doing or saying dumb shit.
I cannot for the life of me care about the protagonists when the scene is completely ruined, each fucking time, with some weird English line thrown around to make it cooler.
The main theme was a sci-fi cataclysmic disaster that is basically left to rot until the last episode to have a senseless ending thrown together to give some kind of... closure? They also waste entire episodes with filler stuff that doesn't have a place in this kind of work. And when you feel you are wasting time with filler episodes in a 10-ep series, you know something is seriously messed up.
The story as a whole is terrible. Its main premise is thrown away after the first 2 episodes, random stuff happens, and then we get LE PROFOUND SOCIAL CRITIQUE that has the same depth of a puddle. Yes, nationalism bad, but also proud Japanese people have gone through worse and will muddle through this shit too. Great social commentary guys, I feel enlightened.
Whenever they try to adapt a novel that was written in the past (1973 to be precise) while trying to modernize it by making it take place in the 2020 (the same thing that happened with Parasyte and because of that they fucked that adaptation too), weirdly enough they fail hard.
Pretty sure Yuasa had nothing to do with the series as a whole, perhaps some brief supervision, and maybe he was the reason behind the incredibly cringe, vomit-inducing rap dubstep scene during the second-to-last episode, since we know he loves these kinds of things.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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