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Re:Zero is not what it might look like:
in spite of the large array of waifu on display, it isn't really a Harem anime;
in spite of Subaru looking very much like a typical Light Novel protagonist, gratuitous magic, and fantasy setting, it isn't really a SAO clone;
and, in spite of having a plot built around time travel, it isn't really a typical 'time travel' story.
Re:Zero is, if anything, a partial deconstruction of all of these, and a character study of its central character Subaru.

The fact that Subaru is such an excellent character is the show's single greatest strength; his generic appearance belies quite a ... great deal of emotional and psychological depth, and each arc serves to throw him into a different sort of emotional turmoil. A lot of what kept me watching from episode to episode was seeing how his approach would change, and what changes this would cause. Because of this, if I had to pick a genre for Re:Zero, it would be a Mystery; the central thrust of the narrative is uncovering what is pivotal to Subaru's survival, and what isn't.
The show has a good assortment of supporting characters; though only Emilia and Rem get anything approaching the attention of Subaru, the bulk of them nevertheless have enough personality that they come across as more than two-dimensional, especially as each episode reveals a bit more about them. My personal favorites are Betelgeuse Romani-Contee, one of the most delightfully insane characters I've seen in some time, and Ricardo, because I am a shameless furfag.

This season of the show doesn't have one central arc; rather, the story follows a series of shorter events that are visited and revisited with a slightly different perspective. Each arc is essentially begun via the repercussions of what had to be done to escape from the certain death of the previous arc, with the stakes getting higher every time. As this season is primarily a character study, the primary questions of the series are barely addressed at all; however, enough information is present to make conjecture satisfactory - at least until it all gets answered later on. Considering the show's popularity and the number of things still not answered a second season seems quite likely.

While the show does have some action, the quality of its combat scenes only rarely ever raises above 'passable,' due to a somewhat lackluster quality of animation. Characters are well-designed and never off-model (though the CG on background characters in some scenes can be a bit too conspicuous), but the animation itself is frequently somewhat choppy, and the choreography frequently comes across as just a little awkward. The show only really pulls the stops out in terms of the animation at a few key points, though the results are memorable when it happens. The soundtrack is serviceable but not particularly noteworthy, outside of one particularly effective stinger (which the show gets quite a lot of use out of).

It's not quite a masterpiece, but Re:Zero is definitely worth at least checking out; if the first three episodes are enough to hook you, the remaining 22 will not disappoint.

Hey, look, it's Not YuGiOh!

This show feels like it combines the character designs - well, the Dollar Store knock-off versions of the character designs - from the original YuGiOh, with the general setting of GX and a card game that feels like EDH Magic the Gathering and Duel Monsters had a baby, then lobotomized it.

And that's really the issue here: the card game at the heart of DDD just doesn't have enough meat to it for the games themselves to be interesting. Where YuGiOh continually invented contrived nonsense to make its games more dramatic, this game sticks to a fairly faithful adaptation of ... its rules, wherein the game frequently ends after a player takes his third turn. The players just huck cards at one another, with the rules making Turn 0 wins perfectly easy to conceive of. The MO of every player boils down to 'blitz and win through overwhelming force,' with the closest thing to a deviation being the third opponent, who has a gimmick for how he buffs his monsters to apply said overwhelming force.

Episode structure is conveniently divided into two halves, with the first half being character interactions and the second half being a card battle. The only characters of note are the protagonists, Gao and Bal. Bal behaves as Gao's kid brother, if said kid brother also happened to be a baby dragon, and winds up right on the line between endearing and obnoxious. Gao is only really a character insofar as how he plays off of Bal, to the point where he can be best described as taking a generic Shonen Anime Protagonist archetype and giving him an extremely realistic relationship with his kid brother (who is also a dragon).

Ultimately, this show fails because it follows a very obvious formula. Gao and Bal (or whomever the episode is focused on, if they wind up branching out) have some kind of fight, learn their lesson before the match starts, have some kind of solidification of what they learned mid-match, and then decide things by throwing cards at the opponent until they die. While this happens the commentator will insist that he won't be surprised, then immediately be surprised by whatever happens next, complete with over-the-top reaction shot. Only one thing happens to break this cycle in three episodes, and it amounts to the anime flat-out ignoring the game's rules after pretending it was going to stick to them, just so that Gao wouldn't be accused of being invincible.

A good series that could have been great, the 2011 Hunter x Hunter is held back by how the plot structure was handled. The series starts out arc-based, with stories that offer fairly concrete starting and stopping points and, while the stories they tell are nothing new in and of themselves, there are enough unique ideas on display to keep them from feeling stale.

The first problems start to show up in the Yorknew arc: the story is primarily focused on Kurapika, with Gon and Killua primarily serving in a secondary role. The arc would be by far the strongest in the story if ... not for the resolution half-heartedly bleeding into the Greed Island arc before the entire plot thread gets dropped without a real resolution in favor of the Chimera Ant arc.

Speaking of the Chimera Ant arc, nearly half of the show's episodes are in it. While dropping everything for a bit to start a new arc isn't a problem in and of itself, freezing two thirds of the characters out of the story for 61 episodes results in a storyline that dragged on quite a bit, in spite of being based in a really interesting premise and sporting compelling themes. One of the antagonists in particular seems to exist almost entirely to delay the resolution of the arc, which makes the entire thing intensely frustrating and somewhat undercuts what should have been a satisfying conclusion to the story.

I would not call Hunter x Hunter 'poorly written', however, because of just how phenomenally the presentation of the characters is handled. The lack of real resolution to Kurapika's story arc is only frustrating because Kurapika comes across as a very compelling presentation of a fairly cliché character archetype. Leorio's presence is enjoyable in spite of him being about as useful as Krillin, and the supporting cast as a whole is very solid and well-rounded. Gon and Killua, the two central protagonists, are also worth noting, as more than anything else the interactions between the two of them frequently hold the story together when it would have otherwise come apart.

If you are reading this and wondering why I started a review of a Shonen Battle Anime with three long paragraphs about the story: there's not really much to criticize about Hunter X Hunter in those terms. Every fight - including when people aren't actually 'fighting' - is at the bare minimum interesting, with some of the most inventive ideas for powers around. Standouts include one fighter using a giant mecha buddha to hundred-hand slap someone and the only fight to ever be won through the application of APR financing. Direction is spot-on, though only rarely is the envelope pushed.

Animation quality ranges from 'good' to 'excellent', and while you are unlikely to be totally blown away by anything on display, some scenes are at the very least quite impressive. The audio has a couple of pretty good pieces of music, and one particularly terrible one featuring a sliding trombone sting that sounds not only out of place in terms of the instrumentation but also seems to be totally disjointed from the rhythm of the song.

All in all, it's a solid series; more than anything, it feels as though it was held back by the source material not yet having reached conclusions to the loose ends it leaves. It's definitely worth at least a look, particularly if you want something that will last you for a good long time.

I really did try to like this series...

The single best thing about Baby Steps is Eiichirou, the central protagonist: great lengths are taken to establish that outside of his one talent, his skill comes entirely from analysis and excessive amounts of repetitious practice. While in interactions he comes across as somewhat bland, he doesn't strain suspension of disbelief the way one might expect, because of how much time he spends practicing. This reminded me a great deal of the title character from History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, which in my opinion does this kind of underdog story a lot better.

Aside from him, Takuma is ... the only other character that really stands out in the core cast; while he falls squarely into the 'rival with the troubled past' archetype, he serves as an interesting take on it, as his principal character flaw is quickly established as being his lack of motivation. Every other character is too stock to really care much about.

Not helping this is the pacing: Ei's first match starts in episode 4, and gets wrapped up in episode 5. This is the first time that the series actually has any kind of dramatic stakes. Suffice it to say that the series thoroughly undercuts these by skipping over large chunks of the match, including what should have been a climactic ending. The second major conflict doesn't come around until episode TEN. Almost all of this time is spent either on Ei training, bland characters trying to banter with eachother, and, of course, gratuitously reusing footage.

It's this last one that finally made me drop the series. Episode 9 has a flashback to establish Ei's opponent's backstory (he's the 'I was only able to learn how to do one thing so I learned how to do it really well' archetype). Episode 10 reuses the ENTIRE FLASHBACK. Every episode starts with at least a solid minute clipped from the end of the previous episode, almost never edited, so that every episode is really only 15 minutes or so long once you cut out the opening and ending. Large chunks of these are devoted to either scenes of Ei practicing - sometimes members of the cast will provide commentary about how much potential Ei has - throwaway interactions between the characters that don't really help to give them more character, and occasionally a legitimately interesting bit of Tennis. Repeated short scenes are given to showing that Ei's grades are starting to suffer - and by 'repeated', I mean 'several more after the point has already been made'.

This isn't helped by the art style, which I intensely dislike. The characters have eyes that are half the size of their face and eyebrows that would be in the middle of a normal person's forehead, several people look like someone used a Mii as a reference, and the animation quality is nothing to write home about even at the best of times. The music only stood out to me on the occasions that it sounded alarmingly close to something one might hear in Wii Sports which coupled with the character designs made me wonder if I weren't having some kind of fever-dream after passing out during the tennis minigame.

The series has potential, but - ironically enough - its insistence on repetition buries it under a massive blanket of monotony.