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Jun 29, 2022
Ao Ashi is one of the few sports anime that does not fall into the trappings of using superpowers to make sports entertaining. It expands from the basic pop culture understanding of a sport and starts delving into the tactics, skills and application of them, all in a way that makes it easy to understand.
It reminds me of Hajime no Ippo (fantastic boxing anime) which breaks down seemingly simple boxing techniques in a way that is understood by the viewers while showing or hinting at the more complex applications of them. This way, the audience understands the strengths and weaknesses of a skill,
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and understands how a certain opponent or situation can dramatically change that. in other words, it engages the audience into the sports, and gives them the understanding they need to full appreciate the skills of a character. Like a good Mystery, the writer gives the audience all the information they need so they too can guess who the killer is. Ao Ashi does the same with football and using good characters, makes football interesting to someone who doesn't like football.
Ao Ashi also manages to avoid another trapping of bad sports anime: over-dramatics. I cannot tell you how many sports anime i have dropped because characters were so overdramatic, especially when things went wrong. If you treat every situation so damn dramatically, you start making me roll my eyes. My believability in the anime starts to drop and i see it as a warning that the writer has to manufacture tension and surprise to keep the audience entertained. Ao Ashi does not do this, it seems to use the character's situation and growth to keep the story from growing stale.
The one real bad thing i have about this anime is that it does fall quite heavily into the trope of; the main character knows nothing and everyone around him does. This is a typical trope in sports anime, but the way it is used and treated in Ao Ashi is aggravating. Everyone seems to know more about football than the main character, including characters on the sidelines who never even play football. Its one thing to have a character explain a certain situation and why the protagonist is having a hard time, its another to have three characters talk about why the protagonist is failing and sucks as a footballer. Especially when two of the characters and schoolgirls who don't play football but know just as much as the coaches. I get it; the protagonist suck at football and everyone else knows better.
Also, the coaches in Ao Ashi are really bad. Instead of pointing out the weaknesses of the protagonist, they decide to let him figure it all out for himself. I understand that the protagonist needs to be able to think and improve independently, but it is to such a point that the coaches might as well not be there. The coaches are there to make the protagonist's life miserable, talk about his weaknesses and never tell him them, and finally give a vague answer to whatever problem he has and expect him to figure it out by next week. Seriously, what the hell is the point in a coach if they never tell you how to actually improve yourself. Do you know how much time you could save if you just told the protagonist what their problem is and how to fix it, instead of leaving him to finally figure out his problem after a week of thinking.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 1, 2021
Not as Gay as i thought. Seriously, that is a legitimate concern i had when looking at this anime. I have go into many a sports anime, and was immediately disappointed by how gay it was; and i'm talking fujoshi bait, naked guys jumping on each other gay. These anime often forgo the actual sport they are trying to depicted to focus instead on the hot guys with problems, dealing with drama, their feelings and any thinly vailed homo-eroticism they can fit in each episode. Seriously, i tried watching a rugby anime and 5 minutes in two guys were stretching each other with a closeness
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that is borderline sexual harassment; making sounds. I am happy to say that this is not the case (Mostly), excluding the villain who has the standard sexual predator/harassment trope found in creepy anime villains.
The end of the first episode had me hooked and i was able to enjoy a good skateboarding anime. I'm not sure how accurate this is to actual skateboarding, but it never tries to be something it's not. This anime is almost a love letter to the sport of skateboarding, but with an anime flair. The characters are quite unique, enjoyable and have a good dynamic.
The best thing about this anime is how deceptively deep it's characters and their arcs can be. It's an anime about an underground skateboarding race with silly characters, silly designs and a heavy dose of anime physics; but it does have heart.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 23, 2021
"Out" is a good delinquent manga that unfortunately becomes worse as it goes along. The concept of the story is great, but the further along you get in the story, the less important it seemingly becomes. The version of "Out" from the beginning is wildly different from the present version.
I enjoy delinquent manga and "Out" takes a fresh, more realistic take on that concept. It does exaggerate the concept and the "realism" starts to get out of hand with all the torturing and mutilation that these teenagers do to each other. The manga tries to balance the fine line between delinquents and criminals, but
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after a while it starts to fall apart. Typical delinquents are part of biker gangs, are rowdy youths who spend their time getting into fights with other gangs, and engage in some criminal activities.I understand that these delinquents often become actual criminals, but these teenagers are engaging in acts that would result in 10 of more years in prison. The various gangs in "Out" are portrayed more like militias and cults than gangs that troubled youths join.
The morality of "Out" becomes more muddled as the story progresses and what is normal becomes more disturbing and extreme. The problem with this is that there is little reason why someone would want to join one of these gangs. The gangs in "Out" become less of a refugee for outcasts and more of a fucked-up criminal organisation. The romance of the delinquent lifestyle becomes lost. Every character just becomes unlikable and you realise that they are all morons for joining such awful gangs. It would be like joining a gang but if you mess up; you have your teeth smashed, your nails pulled off, you arms broken and you get raped. Everyone becomes a psycho and you wonder why they haven't all been put in jail.
The final and Biggest problem with "Out" is the never-ending, convoluted and complicated plot. You can basically split "Out" into two story arcs. The first arc is good but the second arc never stops becoming more complicated. The story is simple enough but there are more plot-twists than M.Night Shyamalan's entire career. There are so many plot twists that you stop caring about what is happening because you know it will be reversed, and reversed again. Instead of the plot is moving foreword it is simply rocking back and forth. For this reason i will not be reading anymore of this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 24, 2020
Ao Ashi is the only Football manga that i really like. It has a very standard plot but it is executed so well that it easily overcomes its limitations. The characters are well thought but nothing spectacular, the story is fairly predictable and there is little originality to the manga. However, Ao Ashi is a manga that is very much greater than the sum of its parts.
Pros: The football knowledge in this manga is great, but is easily explained and enjoyable to understand. This is one of the standout aspects of this manga, actually making me appreciate football more. It is much more of
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a realistic take on football, without any superpowers or special moves. I especially like the focus on the fundamental skills of football instead of each character being only good at one thing. As a person who does not like watching any sports, this got me invested in the matches.
The characters designs are especially enjoyable to look at. All of them have fairly diverse designs: varying in height, eyes, hairstyles and general looks. They are not lazy designs that simply change the character hairstyles so you can tell which character is which. Each character is well thought out in design.
Cons: As i mentioned, in terms of originality and story there is little that stands out from other manga.
My Biggest con has to be the fact that everyone, apart from the players, seems to know exactly what to problems is and how to fix it. It's as if everyone knows better than the actual footballers. This is mainly a problem for one of the characters: the daughter of an important sponsor of the football club. Even though she is not a football player, we get to listen to her explain what the problem facing the players are and how to fix them. Every time a player is doing something wrong or has a problem, we cut to her and she starts explaining things. She is also pretty much a blank character who has no personality other than liking football; in other words she is a stand in for the author, explaining things and setting up story points. She is also almost always right and knows best. I really do not like this character.
As well as this there is another character who is always right and always knows best. His actions and manipulations seem to be praised rather than being seen as exploitive. These types of character are unlikable and simply a hindrance to the story.
My final con is mostly personal preference, but i like to see characters in sports manga take more losses than what happens here. At the moment, the matches often seem very one side with a couple of missteps. Once the players break through a confrontation they almost always score. The matches are fairly clean and without any random factors, which makes for a much more predictable match. The randomness and constant changing situations needs to be felt more to make it more entertaining.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 2, 2020
Bakuman is an anime that take a realistic look at the journey to becoming a successful mangaka. I can certainly see this being rather highly rated but for me it fell far shorter than i expected. My two biggest problems with this anime were its lack of good characters and story, which ultimately made me drop with anime 16 episodes in.
While Bakuman is realistic in technical aspects and probably from a mangaka's view, this does not make it a good story. The first few episodes had a strong start focusing on the skills and requirements needed to make good manga. Unfortunately after that the
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story just keeps repeating itself. "Our protagonists make a manga that ultimately doesn't win an award or rank high enough so they start making a new manga". Rinse and repeat.
As well as this i find that almost all the characters are bland and boring. Even our protagonists have this problem and Mashiro's arrogance just makes him unlikable. Top that off with a bland and pretty much none-existent romance and you can see how this hinders my enjoyment. The saving grace to this is the character of Eiji Nizuma, who is the best character in all of the anime. He is an eccentric mangaka who seems to embody the creativity needed for such a tough job. He has the kind of passion that you wish you had.
That is the final and probably most glaring problem i have with Bakuman; a lack of passion. Not from the author but simply from these characters. The Manga they make seems to focus on the art and there is little focus on making good stories, characters and character arcs. We get a little gimps of a story that is mildly interesting and we never see it again. That lack of passion and creativity is what really got me, Bakuman was a technical view of a creative industry without the focus being on creativity.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 13, 2018
My problem with Kuroko no Basket is something that seems prevalent in some other sports anime; over dramatics. That is to say that there seem to be a lot of over dramatic points in the anime that happen a lot during each basketball match.
There are literally multiple scenes in which the characters face some sort of obstacle and say "Oh my God, what are we gonna do!" and then this obstacle is overcome. These obstacles often revolve around someone being taller that the other players, or jumping higher, or moving faster. These obstacles are always overcome by simply having one of the main
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characters suddenly be able to jump higher or move faster. There is little thought to how they can overcome these problems. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't happen so often in each basketball game and the simplicity of basketball does not help this. Perhaps if these moments were explored in better ways you could make the game more entertaining.
The worst of the over-dramatics are the numerous points in which they make a big deal about the other team scoring having more points than them; usually only 2 or 4 points ahead. They make such a big deal about this and take the time to dramatically show how bad all of the characters are feeling each time. I don't know much about basket ball but i do know that they often score 50 points or more in each match so this makes it rather annoying to see the momentum of the game stop because the other team is ahead by 2 points. It's hard to get invested in a sports anime that takes every opportunity to make the smallest things more dramatic.
The art and animation is quite good but it does make it quite hard to distinguish between the good teams and the really good teams. This distinctions is not done so well in this anime, which means that whenever they need to show that a team or player is really good it always ends up with them looking like they have superpowers.
The story is fine but most of the characters are quite forgettable, which is not something you should have in an anime about a team sport, especially one with only 5 players.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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