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THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Status: Finished

Darling in the Franxx - OMG, this is the worst anime that Trigger studios has produced, or co produced. I can’t say much for CloverWorks or A-1 Pictures because I haven’t watched enough. SSSS.Gridman? Not sure, haven’t seen it nor do I want to assume it.

Darling in the Franxx is a mech show which takes place in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future where the remnants of human civilization have abandoned the surface. Giant ass underground mole monsters are attacking the humans who lives in portable citadels because they have lava. It’s up to our team of teens to suit up, enter their ... giant robots, doing suggestive positions and protect their citadels. But uh oh, it seems one of the teens are can’t pilot the giant robot with anyone. Enter our insecure protagonist nr 8-10-214. He is depressed since he isn't compatible with anyone else in the team, not even the team leader Not-Rem, that is until he meets the one who Kim Kardashian changed her hair as, 002, I mean Zero Two. Together they discover what humans have long forgotten. Power of Love and Advertisement baby! And with the team they also discover where babies comes from.

So now that we got that let’s get to our main attraction. Zero Two. If you have been on any community during the winter season, you probably have seen this picture of her smiling. This has become so popular that a famous celebrity talk about her. Well that's great and all, but how the hell am I gonna search for 002 beautiful NOSE without seeing this girls smug all over my Google? Yeah that is a problem for me. Speaking of replacing older character, the way zero two referring to her partner, is very similar to how Lum does it in Urusei Yatsura. You know what I mean! DARLING!

Ah Great! Now you have strike two classic characters in one move. But, is she a good character? I would say yes. She has a personality which shines through the show and her voice actress seems to have a ton of fun voicing the character. When something is going wrong in and out of the battlefield, she is there to help out but as well tease the rest of her teammates. She hates her superiors and given the episode we get to see her backstory, it's understandable.

And now for everything except Zero Two. Oh boy does Zero Two not save this mess.

I gotta admit, the premise is nice, the art design and animation can go from passable to good and the soundtrack is decent enough but not that memorable. With that all in mind, the story, the core of this show, is horrible.

You have character repeating their arc since the story demands it, characters who speaks sense who has to apology for what they said later on. The love story is deep as puppy love that is treated true love. You have characters who are loyal to a faction switching side because they feel like it without anyone questioning why they do it. You have the enemy, the freaking giant underground mole monsters, to just accept their murderers to join forces without even establishing a scene. Oh Geese, I guess you could get away with anything with these guys as long as you have a common enemy.
There are so much problems everywhere, that I will now use my time to bring up the questions I had during the time I have watched this series.


Spoilers Ahead.

Let’s see.



What the fuck was that for our main character? Why is he so boring in a trigger show? How come the organisation haven't discovered his blood type matches the test subject? I mean, haven't they tested him and the others over and over again for the past years? How come the best glasses boi gets shot down in the story, even when he's the voice of reason? How come he has to apology for being wrong when the character are going too far with their choices? Why the fuck are you keeping fat shaming the fat boi? What's up with your lore? How come the only two characters with expressive reactions are the shit boi and girl? Why is it being so silly that one group of people with an idea of immortality through lava got so much international backing? How come these aliens got so much contact in seemingly no time? Was there really no country or organization in the world that said no to this idea? No resistance across the globe? How come no one of the superpowers tried to develop their own way of obtaining the lava. You do know that the space race and that there are several other countries that has a space program beside NASA? Why do you have multiple episode in a row where we have no mech battles, in a mech show? Why would you then drop the mother of all bombs right after these episodes? Isn’t it like going from one extreme to the next? From sensory deprivation to overstimulation? Why do you have the team being so ungrateful to when she just lose her cool, when the same person saved their lives multiple times and kept the team as a whole? What? Did they forget that she helped to reunited the team in previous? Why does episode 14 and 15 exist? Why couldn’t they be one episode instead of two? Why waste our time with a break up, if it doesn’t last a full episode? Why does the Franxx turn red here and not turn red ever again? Why does the short hair boi who seemed gay is deadly sick, but gets better when he gets together with the girl with no talent. And why does the opposite thing happen when the girl with the glasses confesses her love to not rem? I not saying I don’t understand the reason, I’m just saying is oddly specific. It’s like it trying to say that when you don’t have interest in the same sex, you won’t die earlier.

Why haven’t a revolution happened so far? Why couldn’t it happened in episode 14 when it become clear that the organization was a shady as fuck?

If you could create multiple and successful clones of Zero Two, why not just keep cloning them if they by design are more loyal and have more success rate than your average human? Speaking off these clones, why does these characters seem so unimportant to the overall story? I mean with a few tweaks and you could written off these characters entirely. Their biggest contribution outside battle, which was by separating two people from each other, got dismissed as they brought back together again. Why did you do this to your own characters? Why do you keep changing your scenarios only to change it immediately back?

And of course, the most thought provoking question I had. The question that has been on my mind, ever since this anime has aired. WHY THE HELL DOES A MECH HAVE HAIR! NO NO, THIS IS A LEGITIMATE QUESTION! What kind of function would a mech hair have? I-I mean, this fucks me over.

And so on and so on.

The voice actors are doing fine I guess, I mean there was only one character which voiced sounded too much as it was recorded on a studio, but the rest were okay.

As for Zero Two, she is underused. Yes I said it! You think that the main attraction to this series would be, well, the main attraction. However it seems to she’s put on hold whenever the plot doesn’t need her. I can understand if you also want to flesh out some of the characters, which is fine and have worked for some of them. What do I mean by ‘some of them’? Well! You have some episodes that either connects with this character and other times you get disconnected. For example, you have this old scientist who supposedly lost his wife during testing of the robot. You know, the sad stuff to make this butt pinching old fart more tragic. But then you see the same old fart happily torturing children. What the fuck! You are now sending mixed signals whatever we want to feel bad for him or think he is a big jerk. So as far as this cast is, only two characters are too good for this show. I could say three but since how the fatso was okay with how he got cuckold, I'm going to stick with two.

I want to also further express on the animation. When it comes to animation for facial expressions, this one passes as any show that has been thrown money at it. Yet if we compare it to Trigger standards, this one doesn’t hold up against some of their heavy hitters. Which is, disappointing.

I have also heard that this anime had some influences from the current Prime Ministers of Japan; Shinzō Abe, which is regarding his thoughts on combating the decline birth rate of Japan. I don’t know if this is true or not. All that I am saying is that if someone told me that his idea had any work on this anime, it wouldn’t be that hard to convince me.

Also one more thing. For the who threaten Not-Rem voice actress, fuck you. If you do hate the character, then you might want to talk to the writer and not the one who is reading the script? This is really the scenario when someone is shooting the messengers, just to prove how toxic a fanbase can be.

Holy Hell! I never thought this show would turn out this. This is like a bad ending of making a mech anime. What a mess.

But if you guys like it. I guess you can enjoy this anime for it’s teenage romance. I'll be busy watching Getter Robo Armageddon where the mechs aren’t dismissed for couple of episode in a row.

Despite how crazy that show is, it's not crazy enough to put it's political agenda before it's story.


Of course I will also give you another recommendation for those who did enjoy this show. Now, if you really want to watch an anime like this. Which dwells into a pilot who is forced to pilot his mech for an war with other species in the future. He finds comfort with the women of his life, yet has to choose which one must he pursuits as he's getting slip between two worlds.

If you want to watch an anime like that, then you should watch Evangelion.

NAH I’M kidding, go and watch the original MACROSS you lazy bastards!

Status: Finished

Souten No Ken Re:Genesis - Well, this show wasn’t bad at all as I originally thought. Not great yet still something you can watch and enjoy.

Souten No Ken Re.Genesis picks up where the first adaptation left off. It’s the 1930’s in Shanghai and the good gang just destroyed the last members of the bad gang. And it’s all thanks to Uncle Ken! [Kenshiro smoke] However not all is in peace as a little girl named Plot device enters the scene. Why is she a plot device, well she possess photographic memory and the germans wants her since she remember the list. Luckily she has ... a bodyguard who is voiced by Take-A-Hinto who is our kind of nanto user in this story. However, as this story progresses, we learn that the plot device has more secrets than we knew. A story with revenge, forgiveness, sadness, betrayal and two comic reliefs is full motion. Not to mention that season 2 turns into Souten No Cult. But are these any good?

Okay let get the most distracting thing out of the way. Yes, this does use 3D models all the time and yes, the speed of said models in movement seems to laggy. This of course does not mean the show’s way of presenting the story to be bad, the later just is distracting when you are watching anything else. Although I want to confess that the 3D models are good for being a weekly show. The details of each character really work for this adaptation. I guess the studio doing this had more confidence and knew what to do with its resources, unlike Berserk 2017.

And as for the animation, you kind of get used to the lag as you go on. The action does defiantly make up for this. They are rich of techniques and gives many moments of suspense. The voice actors are also good. We have returning actors from the previous anime like Uncle Ken, who does a good job of someone like Kenshiro, but with a sense of humour. Ofcourse I need to mention the new voice actors, Dio and Gun Dad. When I saw that Dio’s voice actor was going to be in this anime and was going to use his Dio voice, my inner jojo squealed with excitement: Because I know that this voice actor will do a great job. Hell, considering the opportunity that we were going to have Dio’s voice actor against Uncle Ken, I made this video out of pure passion. And then we have Gun Dad, you know, this guy might be good enough to be consider a north star regular. There something in his voice that makes to be a great addition. Btw the voice actors name is Rikiya Koyama. Oh yeah, we have heard a lot from Rikiya this year. His reveal as the main villain is predictable, he played the silent guy for over 5 episodes he was in. I’m not gonna tell who is he, but I’m going to tell who it is. It’s the giant ass Raoh look alike with the MASK!

The rest of the cast where okay, not gonna find new favorite characters here however as we do have many side character to balance out with each other.

The both opening are great. One is more rock oriented with fast editing and dynamic looks, but my favorite is the first one. There something with the slow and smooth editing of the opening shoot. It’s like a gate is being opened slowly with Uncle Ken waiting for one and the rest of the thing is like a homemade music video. Just some weirdly camera angles and some rap music in the background. The second one is more of a montage of the anime, but I do find it neat how they changed it when the true villain was introduced.

What I need to comment on regarding the story, is that this is not a faithful adaptation from its source. This does not mean it is a bad thing, it just goes a different direction. You will notice after episode two that plot goes . And these changes, aren’t that great. Don’t get me wrong, I do like how miss plot device or Elika is more relevant to the overarching story, but at the same time it becomes less story about Uncle Ken and more about people around him.

One of the beauty of the original manga, was that it was more eccentric with Uncle Ken and the history of Hokuto Shinken successors as it left behind the story about gang wars. Here it seems that it’s put on hold as we need to tell the story of other branches close to Hokuto. Not to mention the manga had one of the best fights during the last chapters. In my opinion at least.

Some decisions on the plot just seems so bizarre. For example, did you know that the difference between the season 1 and 2 in universe are like 4 years? 4 years and the girl looks exactly the same? Why spend so long to get the plot started again if nothing seemed to changed? Because fuck you. Also I haft to say that, SPOILERS, I really feel bad for the sword jew, he dies like 3 times in this anime. Poor guy.

I do think we has lost something in this adaptation that we might not regain back. Like where are all the violence, the deaths are censor so that we don’t see the heads exploded per say. Where are the focus on Uncle Ken, it seems that Elika has more screen time than any other character in this story.

Furthermore, I haft to congratulate this series for finally making a human version of Frieza. After all those cosplays and reimagining, we finally reached perfection. I am not joking, the goonies seem more of a threat these times around due to how they where written. It fools you thinking these baddies are just for one episode, but then they introduce their powers and our heroes are taken off guard. I like these baits where you think the dumb raging brute would just be a dump lump of meat, yet here he seems to polling off some smart moves, for a dump lump of meat of course.

Even if we have these bad guys around, there are still some characters I raise my eyebrow at. To be more specific, it is the new comedic reliefs. It seems to be that these guys are around to push the plot around and to push jokes around. I thought they would play a bigger role, but they seems to be filler. I’m expecting more gory death than two goofballs being dreaming about getting jerked off. I don’t hate these characters, I just think they are too many scenes with them. If this anime was longer, then I might have forgiven some of the elements in the plot. But since we spend episodes and episodes of Elika and her drama, we barely had time to for Uncle Ken to shine.

With all said about this anime, this anime gets a pass for me. It isn’t a north star experience with the violence and brilliant. It’s okay, but not at the best. Would I recommend it, yeah, if you could watch the first adaptation, you can watch this one. At least this was better than DD Hokuto No Ken 2 that I can say!

Status: Finished

Yu Yu Hakusho Special - Again, I swear I didn’t just choose this anime because I had to fill out the list with something. I actually wanted to see some new content from this series. This was a part of the 25th anniversary of the series Yu Yu Hakusho.

This special is divide in two episodes. One is about when lil Vegeta (Hiei) and Kurama meet and the other is an adaptation of the Interdimensional laser chapters, basically the second last chapter of the manga with added panels from the last chapter. Yeah, the anime follows the chapters as they seemed to go panel to ... panel. Minimalistic for an adaptation, but acceptable in this case.

The cast is back and so are the voice actors for our 4 main guys. It’s good to see that even the director is back to give us this anime one more time. It just shows that this IS a short return, a reminder that this series is profitable.

You know, I think this anime does sort of rekindle my interest in the series, for that I gotta thank the writer. The character interaction are either straight taken from the source or altered for the sake of the narrative. The new dialog in the flashback seems to be incharacter back before they meet Yusuke. Yusuke is being Yusuke and Kuwabara is hilarious as always.

The action scenes are decent for what they had to work with. There is something about the action in this series that show some intelligence against even the average of demons. And can I just say that they finally animated that 5 second scenes from the manga, I have always thought how that scene would be animated in current animation.

And that’s it. I don’t think this special is any special than what it is. It’s not breaking new grounds. A good short return of the character we know, indulging in a short adventure yet again. This does remind me of those short special of Rumiko work years ago, so I guess the same could apply here. It knows that it just a simple story and it does have some fun with it. There isn’t much to complain about and there isn’t much things to praise it. This is a watch for any Yu Yu Hakusho fan.

Status: Finished

Flavors of Youth - I swear, I didn’t just choose this anime because I had to fill out the list with something. The keyword is ‘just’.

Flavors of Youth is an anthology movie that consists of three segments. Each individual segment is about people reminisces their past in a way in their current situation. I watched the international version on Netflix, so if I miss anything that existed on the original version, let me know.

The first segment goes like this: Hi, I love noodles. Noodles was my food everyday when I was little. The noodles in city is stale and pricey, but the ones at ... my town are pretty good. My grandma loved noodles. Everybody should love noodles. The girl I had a crush on, had long noodle hair. Noodles are life. And if you reject noodles, life rejects your happiness.
Well, they got the flavors part right and it makes you hungry for noodles, even when I ate a pizza. Thank you noodle guy!

The second segment is about models. We see a women dealing with it as her age is kicking in and as how she tries to spend time with her younger sister. We see how she is seems to be replaced by someone younger, releasing how she is replaceable. This is also about her younger sister, who wants to make cloths and cake. Okay, we got some flavour here..

And the third segment is about a man who discovers his old mixtape of conversation with his then best friend, who was a girl, but not really a girlfriend. We see how time passes between as they goes to school and trade their mixtape with each other as they go on their lives. This however changes as they are applying for the entry exam and the conversation becomes less and less. Why they don’t simply talk normally with each other? Because her father said fuck you. None of this has anything with flavour, except for the cookies in the opening.

I want to mention that this movie was a Chinese - Japanese project, which explains why most the locations are based on Chinese cities and culture. Showing these landscapes and having these establishing shot as we see time lapses is probably the best part of this movie. These time lapses makes you feel some kind of nostalgia for these places somehow.

Now my concerned about this movie except for how the character aren’t as detailed as the background, is regarding its subject. Only 1 of the 3 stories as anything relevant to flavours. Sure you can argue that flavours can be more than just food, but do mind that when we think of flavour, we think of stuff eatable!

Not about some kids recording their thoughts on a cassette tape! Okay? Nor how a woman turns into a granny! F.O.O.D! FOOD! I know the original title is Season to Season, yet this isn’t an excuse!

Alright, beside the title being kind of misleading, the plot of these doesn’t make me, that invested. With exception of the first one of course. I was more invested on the background than on the foreground. This goes both for animation and the story itself. The landscapes and the details of the noodles was amazing, yet the character animation was lacking times to times. The personalities and character interaction wasn’t interesting enough for me to not look at the background. The stories are too average for me.

Sorry, I’m just seeing the same problem on what most of these pretty background pictures has. Not a interesting story to back it up. Take it from me, stories ages less than art. What could look great back then might not look great now.

Now spoiler for the third and final segment. So if anyone who is interested, listen now.

So the manboy studies for the exam so that he could be in the same school as womgirl. He receives the mixtape but he doesn't have time to listen to it and his mother puts it away. Later turns out that only manboy passed to go to that school and womgirl didn’t. He moves away and completely forget that the mixtape even exists, even if he did the mixtape thing regularly. So year passed and she asks him if he heard the mixtape. He says no and she turns away. And now back to present, he finally listens to the mixtape and in it, she confesses that she didn’t want to pass the test because she wanted to stay with him. Wow! Way to go to handicape yourself with a goddamn cassette.

With that said, here is my summary. This movie is nice to have when eating food, but not that great. Nice background but that’s about it. Watch the first part for sudden craving of noodles.

Pease out Noodle man.

Status: Episode 8

Goblin Slayer - Oh boy, what kind of anti-Goblin propaganda is this show?

If there is any anime this year that deserves the title “Black Sheep”, then you should look no further. So before we talk about what has the show done to earn that title, let us talk about the rest. I'm not avoiding it, I'm only saying that this review is going to focus on the other elements. But oh I promise, we will get to that scene.

Goblin Slayer is fantasy world where the gods plays dice, people and other creature live in a society of ignorance and where Goblins are ... the worst enemy any beginner could ever encounter. Just look at the little blue mage hood here, she lost her first party to these goblin. And these Goblins doesn’t mess around. Luckily she is saved by not Lancelot. Btw, not Lancelot is our true main character. His main quest is one thing and one thing only, killing all of the Goblins. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They're like animals, and HE slaughtered them like animals.
HE hates them!.

Of course not Lancelot is joined by other Not-people who you might recognized as Not 2B, Not Guts and Not Dog.

Now let’s talk about Not-Lancelot, the Goblin Slayer, our main character. He is awesome. Despite what I said about this shows own agenda, he’s a good hunter. He knows not to be too careless, he gets the job done in a efficient way and he is not afraid to finish the job even if it has some moral obstacle. People like to compare him to the Doom guy because of his hatred and attitude against enemies, but that he is more caution and plan ahead. Personally I would say that he is more like a diet Guts from Berserk, since Doom Guy I know is that kind of guy who would turn a pillow into a weapon if he ram it hard enough.

To follow up on this anti-Goblin propaganda, our main character seems to be intentionally building his own harem. Yeah you will see that all the girls he gets contact to him, will start to fall in love for him. I mean he does have a job, but it’s not a job I would see that would attract many wanted attention. I guess it’s true what they say; Fall for the goal and girls will fall for you. But Goblin Slayer doesn’t care of all the thots in thotsville, he just wants to kill all of the Goblin. Which makes me wonder if he ever will come across a female Goblin.

For the rest of the cast, I see them most as supporters than characters of their own. There’s of course nothing wrong with that. What I am saying is that seeing who is the guy who calls the shoots is always the Goblin Slayer, regardless how experience the rest of the other party members are in their area. Maybe I’m too used to teams that everyone is special (question mark)

The animation is decent, yet seems to be not on the same level as the manga expected it to be. Some moments where characters supposedly to have extraordinary reaction has been tooned down. Some of the fights looks more stale and has less things going for them. Even with Goblin Slayer being as a 3D models, he doesn't move as that much. Yet it still noticeable when 3D is switched to 2D. It's not Berserk level but it's not great either. There is also a moment in episode 7 where we stare at some birds eyes as nothing is happening in it’s reflection. Okay...

My biggest concern of the animation or editing is however on this moment, just watch.

[Scene where Rat is smashed]
[Laughs]

They zoomed in on his face! Not like a trick where they changed the shoot, they grabbed their video software and just zoomed on his face like an armature!

I know I do it sometimes, but a professional studio? Da fuck ha [Laughs]

The opening is good, it begins with slow and quiet, until it turns into sharp as the beat speeds up. The ending seems nice as well, I like the helmets point of view.

Okay now that we have gone through the most of it, let’s talk about the scene.

During the failed attempt to slay Goblins in the first episode, one of the party member, who was the female fighter who knew self defence, had her cloth ripped right out off her, bend over in doggy style and raped by goblins. Yes you heard it right, a girl, who was around 15 years old, was raped on screen.

What. the. fuck!

Now I just want to make things clear; this show was aired late night and we didn't see the stick go in the jam. Yet seeing how suggestive this scene was, we can understand perfectly that this was a rape scene.

Let me tell something. First; #NotAllGoblins Not all Goblins are depicted as violent, barbaric rapists made of deepest evil you ever can think of. I know Goblins who are hard working, social competence and not at all acting as they are depicted in lore. My goblin friends are offended as hell and no matter of time is this anime ever gonna regain people trust.

Second on a more serious note; First impression is very important. I mean, very important. Your first impression is what people will think of you the first time seeing you in action. If you are running towards the people you’re gonna meat with a hot dog in your hand, you are gonna be known as the hot dog guy. And here, this series will also be known for as having a rape scene in the first episode. Yeah, fans are gonna have a hard time convincing the general public to that this anime isn’t trash from what they heard about the first episode. And if you are going to convince people, please only use this anime in your argument. Don't use whataboutism, it doesn't strengthen your argument consider how other shows are different in story and character. Especially if the show is Berserk.

The point I’m coming across here is that I don’t have a problem with having a rape scene, you can have them. The problem here is how it was handled. Rape is one of the those subject that are very sensitive for the general audience. It’s one of the mines in the minefield that could really blow up if you don’t handled it well. And from the reaction, we can assume that Goblin Slayer didn’t handle it well. I am not saying that it promotes rape, What I am saying that it wasn’t use for anything else than that just to established the goblins naughtiness. Think about, what other points was it to show an on screen rape? I mean, there must be some purpose other than show it than just imply she was raped. Was it for the female fighter? No, we never see her again. Yeah, as much some like to praise this series for showing character with trauma, they seemed to just cast away this perfect example of a character going through a traumatic experience.

Image people who wanted to see the this gimmick, image going through episodes without seeing another goblin rape scene again? Damn it! I was promised goblins on girl action, why do not serve me more of those scenes? My pants are down now show me the goodie! If you are going to have a gimmick, then you better focus on that gimmick on the first episodes. Sure you kill goblins, but when are we gonna see goblin fuck again? This expectation has made me look at the female cast as potential goblin victims. Oh a new female character, is she gonna be Goblin food? I see a character with big breasts, is she the new plaything for the goblins? And I am not comfortable with this.

Now this wouldn’t had blown up as hard as it did, if it wasn’t for Crunchyroll putting the wrong age-restriction. Now you could say that Crunchyroll wasn’t aware that the anime was going to have that scene due to how they publishes the anime 1 hour after it has been released in japan. That’s fine and all. What I am saying is that the anime is based on a manga and light novel, which is accessible for everyone to see. You see what I mean? If I could find the translated chapters within 4 minutes, then Crunchyroll should had no problem doing the same. This should had been done much earlier than what has happened.

This only stress the problem with that I mentioned before, the story seems to only be interested in Goblin Slayer and none of the other characters if doesn’t involve our hero. Lil mage gets a time-skip after her first encounter, which is direct after she has witness people getting raped and murdered. Btw did I mention this was her first time, and she seems to be fine afterwards. Yeah yeah you get used to it, I understand. What I am concerned about, since I didn’t read the manga or light novel, is that if this series has any chapter or episode dedicated to someone else than Goblin Slayer.

Maybe that the point, question mark?

But hey, it only have been a few episodes so far. Maybe in some weeks it might get to the point of being a dark fantasy deconstruction that some people call it. But as far as I have seen it, it’s too mediocre for my taste. #NotAllGoblins

Status: Episode 5

Super Dragon Ball Heroes - SO IF ANYONE WHO DOESN’T BELIEVE DRAGON BALL HEROES ISN’T A THING, GUESS AGAIN, HERE WE ARE WITH AN ANIME INSTEAD OF 1 MINUTE PROMOTION.

For real though, I have nothing against the game nor the premise per say. What I am asking is this: Really? You think your fanbase is so addictive to your IP that they just can’t wait less than a year to get new content? You really want to milk Dragonball so bad that we need filler content just so that your audience doesn’t forget about it?

This anime is one of those original net animation ... from Toei, which is basically Toei way of releasing their content very cheaply.

What I am saying is that this anime is cheap as it comes with very underwhelming character interaction. You know how the people outside the fandom think Dragon Ball is? Just fight after fight with no thought outside of presenting the fight themselves? Well this anime is simply that. You get some fights and that's it. But of course we have a story to tell.

Dragon Ball Heroes or Super Dragon Ball Heroes takes place some time after Super Dragon Ball has ended with Goku and Vegeta training with Whis once more. But uh oh! A new evil looking glasses character shows up and tells that his ‘friend’ Future Trunks has been captured in prison planet! I personally would call it planet less a dank place and more a planet with giant ass chains, but I digress.

And from here on out we meet some characters which our heroes are thrown to and we get to see more fanservice. How come they are here? Well there are many reasons for each characters to be here, but to summarize it, it's because of Money and Fuck You. I believe that there are some people who want to see Golden Not-Freeza in all his might, but I doubt that it was Toei top priorities to make your wish come true.

So about what I said earlier regarding how this show is just fights after another. I wouldn’t call this a bad thing per say. Considering how this is Dragon ball, you could make this the best feature by having the characters adapt the situation of their unique enemy. This is what most of the Dragon ball movies and special tried to do. The keyword was tried. Here the fights are just boring to watch. There is no weight behind each battle, nor any flashy animations that would make this at least look nice.

To give you an example, watching these fights are like going to a fast food restaurant and only ordering fries from the menu after another. It's gives you a kick at first, it then start to tastes the same, and then you wish you had added something more.

You might say this is just to be a promotional anime for the game, but we already have the commercials for it, and ton of them, so… what?

I also most congratulate Toei animation. You somehow made it boring to watch Goku Goku action. I-I-I just can’t believe you actually rushed that fight. You even made fusion, freaking fusion something that lacks all of it excitement. Hmmm, maybe if you actually had some stakes or at least had some fun it might would had been enduring. Since serious Dragon ball nowadays is something that would not work due to how the series never gonna permanently remove any important characters, I was hoping that this would rather be comedic Dragon Ball. Alas, this wasn't a comedic entry.

Okay but what about the NEW characters? We have evil glasses guy, Fuu, he's… eh. We have not-Broly/Raditz, he’s a saiyan, he's… eh. I can’t remember his name. I'm not joking, I know he's named after a vegetable, has the power to control people and turn into a giant ape, but he's freaking name wasn't even important to remember. Hell I remember his voice actors name more than his. You know, the more of these saiyans appear on screen, the more I appreciate Freezas genocide. I mean Jesus Fucking Space Christ, how many non trained saiyans were there to be over a thousands times stronger than Goku in this multiverse?

There is one thing that makes this anime belong so far low on the list. Even if this anime is average at best, there's this attitude Toei has. Toei made this when we were going to have a arguably better Dragon Ball product very soon. Like guys, don't you think that you should spend these resources on the movie and not on an animated advertisement?

This isn't strange for Toei to go all out on their current main IPs. Yet I also haft to ask this; why the fuck couldn't you spent this amount of resources on doing mini series for your other older IPs? You know, those others who are or had anniversaries? How about Sally the Witch? Fist of The North Star? Cutie Honey? Hell Teacher Nūbē? Or even Kinnikuman? You could do every episode on Kinnikuman day. Or even better, MAKE A GODDAMN CARTOON ABOUT YOUR MASCOT! IT'S BEEN OVER 40 YEARS! But I will talk about that another time. Oooh do I have plans for it.

As for this, eh. I got not much else to say about this show. It's a online video series made by Toei, what kind of quality did you expect? You get some good voice acting from the series standards and the newcomers seems to be doing a good job, but else seems to bland.

If you want to watch Dragon Ball Heroes, just watch the commercials or play the game. You could skip this one okay. You ain't missing much from this. Honestly.

Status: Finished

Ito Junji Collection - You know, of ALL the production team in ALL animated studios in ALL the world, and you just HAD to choose Studio Deen!

I know people, which include even me, like to joke about how Toei animation isn’t that top notch when it comes to producing animated shows. But unlike Toei that could create quality content every once in awhile, Studio Deen seems to have a problem on creating an adaptation that is on par nowadays. For those who wants to defend Studio Deen, this anime is not the hill you want to die on.

Ito Junji Collection is a collection of ... Ito Junjis work that works as an anthology series. This means that we will see a collection of separate horror stories. Now as this anime might seem to have no problem regarding having continuous story with just show different scenarios. Yet! They find a way to even mess those things up. I’ll explain that one in just a moment.

As you might know, sometimes some scenes or some moments needs to be compromised. The artwork of the creators can be very unique when someone going to copy it, especially when you are going to animate it. But when you do compromised things, you need to remember that it should still show the quality in of the artwork in another ways. With that said and done, do you think they did a good job? Because I don't think they did a good job.

You have choppy character movements, goofy execution, gray visuals instead of good contrasts, scenes that has less impactful cinematography one chopped still image. They even photoshopped an image of a spider in one scene. I’m not even joking, the spider looks so fake that I noticed the second it appeared on screen.

They even compromise still shots! Wow! This isn’t something that moves that much or in the background, it’s in the center of the screen and it’s a still shot! You couldn't even bother giving this horrendous women some time.

And that's what the anime fails to do, to make the character look intentional horrendous. The details and the contrast from the Black and white from manga are gone. The charm of the surreal illustrations are tooned down and how they are delivered in the story is watered down. This is a shame for any horror story, especially for this anime.

But Taff, you have just talked about the animation and how it reflects the story elements. You haven’t actually talked about the story ITSELF.
Well here is the thing, despite Ito junji being a good artist, he isn’t always a good story teller. He usually make stories where people does illogical choices regarding how they feel and know about the situation. Some are excusable, others are not.

With that I mean that character does some stupid shit that makes you think if they just wanted to die. Now now, I do understand when something that motivates them to do something else with affection or with the information they have at hand, this can easily be understanded in stories like Tomie and Lovesick Dead. When someone is madly in love or distracted, they do stuff they would normally wouldn’t do.

What I’m saying is that not all stories does focus on these topics. It’s the mentality of the characters. How should I put? If a character saw a train coming towards them and they yell that they needed to move away, they would still be in the rails and not even attempt to move from their position.

Sometimes we have stories like the circus where we are to believe that none of the audience objected when each and everyone of the performer suddenly died infront of them. I mean, characters are yelling that the circus is cursed and then get murdered in front of the audience. Is really nobody in this massive audience going to do anything? In fact, when the host speaks to the audience that he needs their help to recruit replacement for the now dead performer, they all seemed to be willing to join in because of the girl. Wha-what!? This would make sense of the audience was cheering for these murders, but they aren't doing that. They show a clear disgust of what has happened. See this is why episode 8 is the worst episode.


And sadly, this anime has more of his lesser work than his best work. And the team didn’t even looked over these things. Hell, you could argue that they even made some stories worse.

Isn’t the productions team job to evaluate someone's story to another medium and sloppy copying pasting it?

For those who wonders, yes there are good parts in this anime. Like I said, the collection does include good stories. In Fact most of them are in the Opening.

For example: it has the Slug Girl, Long Dream, Tomie, Lovesick Dead, My Dear Ancestors, hell they even have stories of our favorite pathetic and pale boi! Yes Souichi is finally in animation!

However, if you expect these character to appear frequently, then you are not in luck. Yeah, Lovesick Dead that supposedly have a continuing story spanning 5 chapters, only has one. This is coming from me who liked that story allot.

Even best pale and pathetic boi doesn't get that many episode where he is featured. If this series was just about him, then this anime might have been much higher on this list.

Can we also talk about the OP? I get an impression that they fought that getting into the mood for scary imagery was by having a rock music and present their monsters like they are a crime fighting team. In other words, I think it doesn’t fit the show. Now the ED, is more fitting.

I mean this anime is just a waste of time.

If you want to read Ito Junji collection, that is fine, you got many chapters which will are a feast to the eye. But this anime, ohohoho, you can just skip this one.

Devilman Crybaby is based on the 1972 manga with the same name but without Crybaby. Even with questioning naming for the show, title of song and excessive use of sexual content, this show is one of the most exciting adaptation I’ve seen in my 7 years of doing this. Devilman Crybaby is about Akira Fudo and Ryo Asuka, two teenagers who lives in the modern age of Japan where one day they found out that demons are starting to appear in secret night clubs. They plan to record the demons in action, said plan backfires and Akira then turns into himself into a demon. However ... instead of killing humans, Akira has become Devilman who protects humans by killing the demons. Now Akira has to live a double life while living with his girlfriend's family.

Even when this is, an adaptation of an old source material, it is presented just as fresh. And no, you don’t need have any previous knowledge to enjoy this one. Even if you have, you will still enjoy all the new things that is in this adaptation. A modern adaptation that DOES take advantage of the internet and AMPLIFIES sorten elements higher than ever before. This not only further proves that Devilman is a great story, but it also timeless because this is a story of people. AND demons that ACT like people.

If you are wondering why the characters looks so different from their original counterparts, then you should now that the director is Masaaki Yuasa. His art style might be trouble to get used to, but if you accept his surreal design you will definitely enjoy how expressive the characters can be. And for a series that is all about how sending a message, this does give the audience both hope and despair.

This marks the end of the description, since I really believe this anime should not be spoiled.

I highly recommend this for those people who liked Berserk, Evangelion and Parasyte.

If there any words I would describe Devilman Crybaby would be these:

Explicit
Tragic
and ...

Damn

There are plenty of people who are aware with the 1995 animated movie, but hardly the same with the original manga published in 1989. It’s a shame since it does build its own world better and have more fleshed out characters. Even if most of it is for laughs.

Story:
You see, the original Ghost in the Shell Manga is the most lighthearted and more comedic than what this series has produced so far. Well except of those Tachikoma shorts. However, this still treats the issues like cyber-terrorists with most respect. They just present it, as it was a common thing, not a new thing like ... they did in the movie.

Instead of having one message of about the creation of a new entity made up of digital information, this manga also provides the message of child experiments, poverty and police brutality. As well to paying homage to the movie Blade Runner.

Art & Character:
If you expect the Major to act identical to the movie, then you might be surprised on how goofy she can be. Her type of expressions may look like it belongs to 80’s teen character, but she eventually shows her more mature side that we will come to know and love.

The rest of the cast seems to be more focused here than in the movie, where they were pushed aside. Even if we only focus on four out of all Section 9. Still, it’s something.

Enjoyment:
Most of the 11 chapters are episodic, with exception of the last ones which covers the incident of the puppet master. If you can’t decide between watching the movie or read the manga first, then you can watch the movie and then admire the manga afterwards.

The reason is that moments in the movie including the puppet master is underplayed in the original to an extent. Again, this manga shows a more mundane side than something as a warning from the future. I personally enjoyed some these moments. There is just something funny about Major and a cyborg engineer having a causal conversation about how they would experience death.

Overall:
Even if most chapters are episodic, the manga is only one volume. Short and sweet. So, if you ever consider reading, all that I can say is, that it’s worth your time and your mind.

It also predicted the dilemma between America and Syria. Just some fun trivia.

Story:
Ghost in the Shell was made by the legendary director Mamoru Oshii and it based on chapter 1,3,9 and 11 from the manga. It’s about hackers, brainwashing and the concept of blurring the line between human and machines. The future might be filled with these things, but a special unit called Section 9 will make sure that the future of Japan is secured.

Or was it Hong Kong based on the scenery?

Anyway. I’m going to tell you right from the bat, if you expect this to be mainly about action, then you might be turned off. This is a thinking man’s action movie ... that brings up allot of philosophical questions.

You know, the one who would later on inspire the Matrix. It has many slow moments, but also treats its action with the energy it deserves.

Character:
Major Motoko Kusanagi, the main character in this movie and leader of section 9, is different than her other interpretations. I call her Major with Identity Crises because how serious and tuned down she is in comparison with her manga counterpart. Even if she is a human with full prophetic body, she sounds and stares like a robot which makes some scene uncontrollable, especially with the Kubrick stare.

Art & Enjoyment & Sound:
This movie has probably the best-looking anime for it’s year with a stellar soundtrack and includes many iconic moments such as; the opening scene, the fight with thermo-optic camouflage, those many fingers and the climactic battle with a walking tank. However, this movie builds heavily on the scary thought that a new entity can be created from the vast digital information, again like the Matrix.

Overall:
Overall, this anime is very mature and ask the audience what they think is a ghost. For example, there is a ton of nudity in this movie. However instead of acknowledge it as something sexual, it’s basically saying: yes I have a chest, what about it?

I might not be so keen to always pick this movie up, but if I ever want to point to an anime that proves the industry can produce an animated movie that has thought provoking messages. Then I’ll always point to this classic sci-fi movie.

It’s also scary how this movie about objects coming to life was released the same year as Toy Story.