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Sep 13, 2020
Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu stands out as one of the biggest missed opportunities that I have ever come across in my 10+ years of watching anime. The tragedy lies not with the shittiness of the final product but rather with the disheartening knowledge of what could have been. This is the story of a promising fantasy world ruined by lazy character design and an impossibly irritating MC.
Re:Zero takes place in the ideal setting for an Isekai--a dark, immersive, well-animated fantasy world filled with many “mature themes”. True to the formula, the story starts with our hapless protagonist, Subaru, being dragged into an exciting
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new fantasy world by some unknown dark power. He quickly stumbles on a cute, white-haired girl named Emilia who he instantly becomes infatuated with. This schoolboy crush forms the basis for most of his future decisions throughout the 25 episode anime.
A central plot device is Subaru’s ability to reincarnate to earlier points in time after being killed (which happens frequently). These reset points are analogous to a ‘save points’ in a video game and effectively give him the ability to relive hours to days in order to change an outcome—albeit at the psychological toll of having to die multiple times to get there. Although not well explained, these reset points update after Subaru survives for a variable period of time.
So far this all sounds pretty good, right? Fantasy setting, Groundhog Day plot mechanics, and battles w/ blood and guts. But holy shit let me tell you about Subaru...
To call Subaru a flawed character would be an understatement. He is a steaming amalgamation of idiotic shounen tropes. All of the bad, none of the good. His dumb decisions, immature personality, frequent impulsive outbursts, annoying proclamations and empty platitudes are just excruciating to watch. He is supposed to be 18 but acts 12 and for some inexplicable reason gets a free pass from most of the cast. Everyone wants to kill him but nobody seems able to just tell him to shut the f*uck up.
As a consequence of his emotional underdevelopment, dying and resetting cause him to have wild and erratic mood swings. He frequently oscillates back and forth between happy-go-lucky denial and whimpering psychosis--sometimes switching multiple times per episode. He's too irrational and immature to connect with.
The problem of his unlikability is magnified by the fact that he isn’t just a character to like or dislike, he is the anime itself. The story is from his perspective and about how he must die multiple times to navigate his way through different situations—there’s no escape from him. I would almost prefer (and it’s a big almost) that we had gotten a cookie cutter “self-insertion” MC like Kirito from SAO.
The rest of the characters fall into a pattern of giving Subaru undue respect. I take issue with the female characters in particular because there is supposed to be a romantic subplot. Subaru’s cringy courting of Emilia is presented unironically, creating a romance story tonally similar to Dumb and Dumber’s. By the end of the first half of the series I couldn’t even tell what was meant to be taken seriously or in jest anymore.
I don’t know what else is left to say. Art, music, plot are all solid but the beating heart of this anime, Subaru, is a potato.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 30, 2019
Gantz is one of the most emotionally exhausting anime I have ever watched—but for all the wrong reasons.
I have no problems with the basic premise: Two boys—Kurono, a horny, self-absorbed and insecure high school kid, and Kato, his taller and more self-assured best friend, are killed while trying to rescue a homeless man on the subway. They are transported to a strange room with a mysterious black orb that sends them on suicide missions against aliens in the city. Along the way they interact with other people who have also seemingly died. In particular, they befriend a girl named Kishimoto who Kurono lusts after
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throughout the series.
Gantz is a story of missed opportunities. Whereas most other sub par anime in this genre use flashy or elaborate action sequences to cover up a tacky and cliché plot, Gantz does this opposite. The plot is fine, the tone is fine, the characters (at least before they were screwed up) are fine but Gantz loses the majority of its points for criminally awful action sequences.
I tried to think about what makes Gantz’ action so uniquely bad and I came up with this:
1) Terrible Directing. The fight sequences are boring, drawn out and lazy. There is never more than one thing going on at a time. There is no respect for pacing or continuity. Monsters will literally stand still in the background, as the humans bicker among themselves.
2) Annoying Empathy: One of the pivotal decisions any character in any death game anime has to make is whether he/she is capable of killing in order to survive. This internal struggle and the character’s ultimate decision can take many forms but it’s fascinating to watch. Think Phantom, Fate/Zero, Alice in Borderlands. The way Gantz handles this dilemma is just immature. The choice should be so simple, either you kill the alien who just slaughtered half of your party or you die yourself. I won’t go into specifics but the characters have a serious problem getting into a survival mentality. Even ‘veteran’ characters constantly waver back and forth between whether or not it’s right to fight to survive. This does not add complexity or nuance it simply makes the whole cast impotent and ineffectual.
3) Lack of urgency: It’s no wonder Kato, Kishimoto and Kurono have time to navel-gaze and ponder moral quagmires because even in in supposed ‘life and death situations,’ urgency is in short supply. You’ll literally have groups of characters idly standing around, gawking as trusted friends get murdered. Should we do something? Should we not? <brutal death> Hmm that was awful but I’m still not ready to act so let’s talk about this some more. <another death> Well we have to do something but let’s first give that wounded enemy some time to recover. <another death> . etc. etc. etc.
The overall theme of this anime is unbelievable incompetence. Everyone sucks at what they are doing. Everyone. In juxtaposition to an anime like JoJo where suspense/action are built up by showing the protagonist/antagonist cleverly one-upping each other, the story of Gantz is only driven forward because the good guys and the bad guys can’t stop fucking up so much. Poor aim, missed opportunities, STANDING AROUND, sudden pangs of indecision/empathy are constant roadblocks to actually enjoying the intriguing premise of the anime. When you add mediocre animation to the mix it’s like watching a death match between two retarded, paraplegic and blind gladiators. Good Luck.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 3, 2019
What is Prison School exactly? Is it an Ecchi? Harem? Hentai? Romance? Nope! Prison School, at its core, is a bromance comedy with tons of hilarious sexual humor. The comedy is first-rate and this is probably the funniest anime I have ever watched. The humor was raunchy, the timing was spot on, the characters were bizarre and uncomfortable. It was great.
The plot can be summed up in a few lines. After a foiled attempt at peeping on the girls’ shower room, the five male students at an all-girls high school are sentenced to serve a month in the on-campus prison which is run by the
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tyrannical and estrogenic “Underground Student Council”. The series takes us through the boys’ absurd, demeaning and hilarious trials and tribulations of Prison School Life.
What’s immediately noticeable about Prison School is how blatantly unsexy the series is. For all the obscene physicality--the tits and ass--there is a marked lack of either sexual gratification or tension between the characters. It’s more than just an icy, Fem-Dom thing too—the female characters were almost completely asexual in terms of personality and response to their surroundings (I’ll come back to that later). The only sexual tension occurs between Hana, the sadistic student council secretary, and Kiyoshi, the hapless protagonist, but their bizarre and absurd interactions are skillfully engineered to make you laugh, not fap. As a caveat, I should mention that there is going to be a subset of people who genuinely find the concept of scantily clad women beating the shit out of male anime characters more erotic than comical, but I will leave it up to the viewer to decide which category they belong in.
I’ve heard critiques that Prison School objectifies women but it’s hard to know which gender gets it worse—which makes it hilarious. On one hand, the women in the series are all sexually objectified up the wazoo. T&A abound to a gratuitous degree. Some characters get more screen time for their boobs than their face. Equally unflattering for the ladies is the ultra-prudish attitude of the all-female Underground Student Counsel and the bland naivety of every other female cast member. They are unreasonable, humorless, reactionary, sadistic and domineering.
Now on to the guys. The male characters are essentially hormone-driven, loser sex slaves---they are confined, beaten and humiliated daily. But this is O.K. because they are resilient guys who take everything in stride and, on some level, kind of like the abuse. Theirs isn’t a struggle for human rights, justice, or equality—no no---they fight back to protect the things that really matter to them, like managing an ant colony, procuring a rare collectible action figure or keeping a date with a cute girl…
While every character in Prison School is ‘fleshed out’ in some sense, only the male protagonists are fleshed out in the personality department. This whole show is a parody of a young man’s awkward and graceless journey through adolescence.
Overall, I would highly recommend this anime to anyone who enjoys finely-crafted, filthy humor and has enough self-awareness not to take this anime too seriously.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 22, 2018
No spoilers beyond Episode 1—except that this anime sucks
The best way I can describe Grancrest is a shoujo version of Berserk with no memorable characters or success at world building. From start to finish this anime is a gigantic mess with few (if any) redeemable qualities.
Story: Grancrest starts with a Romeo/Juliet style wedding between two rival kingdoms being violently interrupted by a 3rd party. This wedding would have meant world peace but now for laughably underdeveloped reasons, it cannot proceed. On the macroscale, this leads to hostilities between the kingdoms and allows the “age of chaos” to continue. We are then introduced to the
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two main protagonists Theo, a low ranking, wandering knight and Silucia, a novice mage in search of a worthy master. They form an eternal pact within 3 minutes of meeting one another and begin their quest for world domination.
Grancrest tried to create a world full of intricate diplomacy, clever battlefield tactics/strategies, political intrigue, shifting alliances and high fantasy. And in another universe, it may have come close to Berserk or Code Geass or Game of fucking Thrones but alas it did not. The main problem is that the characters and the plot line were kinda---dumb. The conflicts were dumb and the solutions to said conflicts were dumb. Theo would get himself in a pickle where he’d be outnumbered 100 to 1 and the brilliant solution was simply to just win. There’s a city in your way that’s ruled by an enemy lord? Just give an impassioned speech at the gates and get them to pledge their undying loyalty to you—done deal.
One thing I should mention is that this anime is bloody as hell. We’re talking decapitations, spears to faces, burning etc. Soldiers’ lives are worthless in Grancrest and they get slaughtered in droves—hence the Berserk comparison above. This doesn’t add maturity or gravity to Grancrest at all, instead it backfires. Imaging cutting between castle guards getting ruthlessly butchered and cutesy, blushing romance scenes between the MCs. It’s a schizophrenic train wreck.
This anime relies on characters’ stupid decisions, deus ex machina interventions and easy-to-fix misunderstandings to simultaneously prolong and resolve conflicts. It was very unsatisfying and failed to even answer some of the basic questions I had after episode 1 like how does magic work and what is a “crest”.
I recommend against watching this anime unless you feel like going on a brain cell safari.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 6, 2016
This anime is like Pizza that’s been left outside for about 24 hours—not quite a steaming pile of shit but not something that I’d recommend ingesting either.
At its core, Accel World is a mediocre MMORPG, mini-harem, shounen. It’s a tale about a high school loser, Haruyuki, joining a sophisticated VR PvP gaming subculture. Playing this game allows one to slow down time in order to PvP battle, but also lends itself into manipulating real world situations. In addition to gaming for the sake of gaming, Haruyuki follows his stubby little c*** into the “Accelerated World” in hopes of winning the favor of his crush
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and helping her achieve her goal of becoming the ultimate high ranking player in the game.
The mediocrity is strong in this anime. It lacks character development and contains many cliches and stupid plot lines. It ultimately fails to be much of anything beyond a waste of time.
Clichés vs Rules:
A cliché is born from lazy, unimaginative writing. It copies something that worked in another setting and clumsily pastes it onto the current one. One example of this in the MMORPG anime context is giving the protagonist a super special in-game power that nobody else has. We saw it in Sword Art Online with Kiritu’s Beta-testing head start and his *ahem* special power pertaining to swords. We saw it in that Dungeon anime where the wimpy protagonist leveled at x10 or whatever the pace of everyone else. Anyway in Accel World we see the same shit where Haruyuki’s character gets a special skill that lets him soar above competition. Convenient, right?
Rules are just basic, genre-specific facts that are necessary to the plot to make sense. In this case, it’s a rule that MMORPG anime should have real world stakes. Imagine in Sword Art Online if the solution for escaping the SAO virtual world was….*Drumroll*….Logging out?!?! Holy shit man. Boom. All the suspense, urgency, purpose etc. would evaporate. In SAO at least the anime characters were as trapped as the viewers of that shitty world. Accel World it’s just a game. If you lose all of your points you’ll just no longer be able to play that game. No Death, no brain-melting retardation, you just suddenly have a lot more free time to devote to homework. You have these faux emotional scenes were Haruyuki freaks out when he sees his friends slaughtered in the game and you can’t help but roll your eyes. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! DON’T DIE!!!!!!!!! Then the match ends and they get ice cream and talk.
The unforgivable part of this anime is that they hardly explore the amazing real-world uses for their ability to slow time. Everything is about leveling up and getting a stronger character not robbing banks or setting world records. The conflict in the anime is just juvenile and ultimately uninteresting.
Romance Angle: Props for making the main character legitimately physically unattractive. None of this good looking, tall, athletic but can’t seem to get a chick archetype. Haruyuki flat out looks like an Anime Eric Cartman. That being said, their unconventional character design makes the all-too-familiar cliché of having the school’s hottest girl throw herself at the MC even more ridiculous. Really? The class president/hottest girl in school/academic prodigy/Miss popular etc gets all hot and bothered watching this chump play virtual squash with a piglet avatar?!?! Fuck! I feel cheated by my high school experience. But seriously, the romance subplot is just lazy and irritating. There’s no chemistry and she does all the work.
Character development is absent.
Animation is acceptable but not great
Sound meh
Overall: It’s painfully clear that I’m too old for this. Ignore my opinion if you want and enjoy the rancid Pizza.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 26, 2015
Ladies and Gentlemen this is a rare example of a perfectly mediocre anime. Flawlessly bland, exquisitely insipid, wholly vapid. Watching Owari No Seraph is like eating air, there is simply no taste, good or bad.
Owari No Seraph: Nagoya Kessen-hen is the uninspired continuation of an anime that should never have been made.
Story:
Lets recap. A mysterious virus wipes out most of humanity and vampires come out of the woodwork to wage war on the surviving humans. Yu, our cliche shounen, hotheaded/immature/cocky/must-protect-everyone protagonist, has joined humanity's army to fight the vampires. He really really hates vampires for killing his childhood friends. He really
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really wants to protect his friends too. The second half starts after he unleashes his mysterious superpowers on the vampires about to kill his comrades.
As with so many mediocre anime, the premise itself is neither novel nor self-evidently atrocious.
The product is simply a sand-flavored cake.
Slow pace/shitty action:
There are a few identifiable things that contribute to ONS' mediocrity. The pacing is mind-numbingly slow. Most of the fight scenes in the show are related to training/testing of some sort. Learning to unlock your sword's potential, fighting your own weapon's demonic spirit, getting tested by the higher ups, learning to fight as a team, etc. The actual action scenes, what few there are, are usually pointless or indecisive.
Convoluted storyline:
The agendas of the humans and vampires are not well developed. The leadership and structure of the two factions are left nebulous and simple questions like why the two factions are fighting? why the vampires are so sadistic? What is a demon in relation to a vampire? etc are not explained. At times ONS try to draw clumsy moral parallels between the humans and vampires but it's just too messy and blurry to have any impact.
Art: Mediocre
Sound: Mediocre
Characters:
The characters are poorly fleshed out and easily forgettable. They will make predictable decisions then inexplicably decide to trust their mortal enemy for no reason.
In the background of the almost completely absent character development is the homoerotic attraction between Mika and Yu. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how that fits in (no pun intended). I think the core problem is that both characters are just too underdeveloped for me to know where their bond is coming from. They are "family" but then Mika looks like he wants to bone Yu. Yu seems to act differently when he's around Mika. The male vampires are all pretty androgynous and the act of drinking blood is unsubtly sexualized. Then there's that strong pederasty vibe between Ferid and Mika... I dunno...whatever.
To say that the characters are flat would be an understatement. They aren't even cardboard-flat. They are 100%, eco-friendly, RECYCLED cardboard-flat.
Yu: Brash, hot headed, annoying as fuck. Where have we seen that before? Oh right, everywhere. He's a cookie-cutter shounen protagonist. He will charge into battle screaming at the drop of a hat without thinking. He has two objectives--kill vampires; protect friends. There's no growth throughout the series and he is exactly the same from beginning to end.
Mika: Now a vampire. Struggling with his various 'urges'' you might say. I don't think it's a stretch to call his bloodlust an allegory for homosexuality but again, whatever. As a character his thought process is largely absent. Why is he siding with the vampires when they murdered his friends? If he is siding with the vampires why is he so hesitant about drinking blood/killing humans. If he is hesitant about killing humans why does he enable his friends to murder children and distrust humans so much? If being changed into a vampire has altered his thinking why does he still have such a boner for Yu? Why is he so wishy washy about everything?
Everyone else:
Too many half baked characters to keep track of. For such an vacuous anime you would think there would be plenty of room to develop the side characters but not really.
Enjoyment: Meh
Overall: Overall disappointing. The last few seasons of anime have been pretty weak so I finished this out of boredom. Watch only if you are really, really bored.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 23, 2015
KnK Series OVERVIEW (Spoiler Free):
KnK is an action, detective, psychological, horror, romance anime series produced by ufotable and based of a series of light novels written in the late 90’s. KnK differs from most anime in that
1) The core series is broken down into 7 films rather than 20+ easy-to-swallow episodes.
2) Each film has a different director
3) The story is told out of sequence, with the chronological order of the films being: 2, 4, 3, 1, 5, 6, & 7.
4) The total content of the Knk is less than what you might find in a longer anime series. The first seven core movies (i.e. excluding epilogue and OVAs)
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are 507 minutes combined. This is roughly 80% of a regular 25 episode series.
Story 7: Watching the KnK animated movie series is like being stuck in an elevator with two other people for a few hours. If you get along with them, then it’s fine but if they annoy you the experience will be unbearable. Likewise, the only characters that get any real attempt at development are the two mains, Shiki and Mikiya, so you’d better like them. Additionally, the non-linear flow of the movies forces the viewer to pay an above average level of attention to the two main characters’ plotlines, especially Shiki’s. You will have to ask yourself, at X point in time, what is going through Shiki’s head? Has she met “X” character yet? Is “Y” character still alive? You get the picture. To complicate matters further, the individual films are not always easy to follow. They tend to use a lot of surreal imagery, cut scenes and flashbacks, while introducing new characters abruptly. I haven’t read the light novels so I don’t know if this is just the narrative style or if the anime had to whittle down lots of backstory and transitions to make everything fit.
Characters 7:
Mikiya. I’ve seen versions of him in many other anime but this is the worst. I hate Mikiya…even more than Emiya Shirou from Fate/Stay Night. He’s the super trusting, loveable doofus whose endless wellspring of patience and persistence completely destroys the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. Mikiya, the puppy dog boyfriend who even a diehard shoujo fan-girl would want to curb stomp out of irritation. Mikiya, the ever cheerful, ever good natured jackass with a head-to-toe suit of plot armor. A character who consistently gets rewarded for choosing the retarded the path. What saves him from dragging this anime down is that by the 4th film I didn’t really think of him as a real character anymore, and instead, a plot device for Shiki.
Shiki: Like Onions and like Shrek, Shiki has layers. To be honest, figuring her out is probably the main conflict in the anime series. Her psyche is certainly very unique and captivating. Throughout the series she does get a fair amount of character development but unfortunately too much of it comes in the form of longwinded expositions. This comes dangerously close to violating the sacred story-telling maxim: “show don’t tell”. Ultimately, I like her character a lot and most of the important questions about her get answered.
Art 10: The animation is beautiful. It’s classic ufotable. The movement, faces, scenery, effects are all superbly done. It’s crystal clear and so damn fluid.
Sound 8: Some haunting tracks and a good OP.
Overall 7: In my opinion, KnK is an ambitious, one-of-a-kind series. Ufotable took a lot of risks with the style and format and I believe they largely succeeded, creating a dark and sometimes creepy anime with a compelling storyline. I do take issue with some of the character development. The 7-movie format and non-linear narrative style caused many key questions regarding Shiki and Mikiya’s relationship and Shiki’s psychological state to get glossed over or simply omitted between films. Often, the viewer is left to make inferences about key plot points in order to bridge the gaps from film to film. The end result is to make two characters who are already hard to empathize with even more difficult to understand.
Strengths:
-You will have no idea what’s going on at first but slowly the gaps will fill in.
-Their use of dates was critical. It was the trail of breadcrumbs that let us follow KnK’s bizarre path through the woods. I realize paying attention to individual months may seem tedious but it is absolutely necessary to follow what’s going on, and KnK is pretty good about keeping the viewer in touch with the timeline.
-Films 5 and 7 were the jewels of the series. The 5th film was brilliantly done with an extremely intricate plot, great action and some creepy as fuck scenes.
-Older viewers may not find KnK “scary” but KnK left little off the table when it came to its vivid depiction of human depravity. The 5th film was probably the closest thing to anime horror that I’ve seen.
-As a mystery-romance-horror series with a little bit of mindfuck, KnK fills a pretty rare niche. I’m reminded of Mirrai Nikki, Elfen Lied and maybe Gosick on crack.
Weaknesses:
-You will have no idea what’s going on at first but slowly the gaps will fill in.
-Characters (Mikiya in particular) will make hopelessly stupid decisions
-Longwinded explanations of abstract concepts.
-Lack of backstory for many characters
- Lack of chemistry (in my opinion) between the two MCs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 4, 2015
Psycho Pass 2 feels like a cheap reboot. In episode 1 we get another introduction to how dominators work, how enforcers are expendable, how some inspectors follow the rules while others think for themselves, how Sibyl can change its mind on lethal force, etc. After the first episode it's like they skip to the 2nd half of Psycho-Pass 1 where instead of hunting Makishima they go after this guy named Kamui. I’ll leave it up to you to stumble through this mess of a sequel but it suffices to say that Kamui is no Makishima—in no small part due to the series’ lack of a
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Shinya equivalent to act as a foil Kamui.
But it almost doesn’t even matter because ask yourself, do we really need another Makishima? Remember, the great mystery Season 1 (evident from the first episode) wasn’t the evil master plan of Makishima, it was the true ‘nature’ of the Sibyl System. Makishima was a tool for revealing these creepy revelations (which I won’t spoil) to the audience and Akane. With that in mind, in Season 2 you can’t just insert a new, watered-down Makishima to fuck shit up and expect that to suffice. That’s like making bank robbers the main villains of a super hero movie sequel. I’m way more interested in Sibyl.
This brings me to Akane. I loved her character in Season 1 because she broke away from the hero/heroine tradition of blindly following childish idealism. She demonstrated an ability to work within the system and make compromises when necessary for the greater good. Starting the sequel, I had really hoped her comfort with this moral grey zone would be explored and tested. How far would she support a corrupt system? What's her breaking point? How is she able to reconcile her duty with what she knows about Sibyl?
Sadly, Season 2 never addresses these questions and Akane largely behaves as if she never learned the truth about Sibyl to begin with. She lacks the fire she had in Season 1 and seems almost blasé when witnessing Sibyl-sanctioned atrocities. Even in her private thoughts, she doesn't reflect much on the lessons learned in the first season. This is not just problematic for character development but also for the plot, as Akane and many characters who directly witnessed Makishima manipulate crime coefficients (helmets) in Season 1 are baffled by this concept in Season 2. For some reason the old cast still treats Sibyl as infallible despite demonstrable proof to the contrary.
The characters are either predictable to the point of boring or unpredictable to the point of irrational. The only unifying theme amongst the cast is that they are all universally forgettable. What started off as a bizarre and intriguing dystopian (or utopian depending on perspective) society in the first season has evolved into a silly, fucked up Disneyland. Sibyl and all of its instruments come across as inept, brittle and feeble. It seems like every episode the police or the military get hacked and lose control of a secure network or automated system. With so many vulnerabilities and blind spots, it begs the question why the chaotic events unfolding in Season 2 never happened sooner. The awe of Sibyl is just gone.
Expect plot holes galore. It’s too convoluted to go into great detail but just prepare to be disappointed.
Season 2 keeps the same gritty feel from the first season. The blood and gore content go up a notch and the death scenes are a hard 17+.
In Season 1, a single murder was a really big deal. I alluded to this concept in my Code Geass review but briefly, different animes place different value on human life. For example, Ein from Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom can be depicted killing 20 nameless soldiers without any moral implications whereas human death in Full Metal Alchemist is less gratuitous and treated with more reverence.
Anyway, In Season 2’s ham-handed effort to satisfy its viewers’ bloodlust, it clumsily altered the value of life in the Psycho Pass universe. Now we can have 10 detectives get blown away without anyone giving a shit. Atrocities, mass casualties, piles of dead civilians? No big deal. Your friend got murdered last episode? Who cares! Out of all of the flaws in this 11 episode waste of time, this was the worst. Not only did it trivialize everything about the new plot, but it changed the conscience of the characters I grew to like in the first season. Fuck you Season 2.
Season 2 is a violent, low IQ detective story rather than a psychological thriller or critique on human nature like the first season. Maybe if you go into it with reduced expectations then you’ll get something out of it. Personally, I could have dropped it by episode 4 and not missed much.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 29, 2015
This series opens with the time-tested anime narrative device of granting extraordinary power to an ordinary guy. Although it is an extremely common premise, that doesn’t necessarily doom the series to the tired Shonen formula. I see it like moving a pawn as your opening move in Chess—everyone from novice to master starts there. And so, to gauge the quality of an anime’s storytelling one needs to watch how it plays out.
Story: 8/10
The story begins with Izumi, a geeky 12th grader, getting infested by an extraterrestrial parasite. This parasite, Migi, misses his intended target, the brain, and instead takes up residence in Izumi’s right hand.
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Across the world similar, infestations are taking place with most of the parasites reaching their victim’s brains, completely destroying the consciousness of the host and assuming control of their bodies. Unlike Migi, who survives on the nutrients within Izumi’s blood stream, the other parasites sustain themselves by devouring human flesh. Out of a mutual desire to survive from the other hostile parasites, Izumi and Migi form a mutualistic alliance while trying to live a normal human life.
The first half of this anime straddles the line between plot-driven and monster-of-the-week. I don’t have a problem with this as it essentially allows for the main characters and plot to develop separately, saving their intersection until later. The second half is when we start to run into trouble. When that ‘intersection’ finally arrives it is somewhat underwhelming. Many (but not all) of the plot elements that were painstakingly set up in the first 12 episodes are either unceremoniously negated or forgotten about later on. By the 2/3 mark, Parasyte becomes a different anime, with the plot losing a large portion of its scale and sense of urgency. It is still a great watch.
I found the story to be far more mature and introspective than pretty much anything I’ve seen since the first Psycho Pass. This anime generally succeeds in everything it sets out to do.
Characters: 8/10
Despite a few exceptions, only Migi and Izumi receive significant character development. Non-main characters are generally simplistic and sometimes appallingly forgetful of or indifferent to previously witnessed atrocities. They make it look easy to snap back from watching a bloodbath to resuming life ‘business as usual’. I found that part distracting and inconsistent with the story’s more serious tone. Even the notable ‘fleshed out’ exceptions did feel somewhat engineered—strategically set up to be killed off for the sake of advancing a narrow plot point. To be fair, isolation is a major theme in this anime and thus there really wasn’t a place for Izumi to interact too substantively with others. However, there are several interesting characters who, at least in my opinion, received too light a dusting of personality or longevity to fulfill a deep purpose.
Izumi: The concepts of change, evolution and hybridism are central themes in the storyline and are embodied in the main character Izumi. He starts out as a wussy high school kid but after fusing with Migi he begins to change in every way possible. There is a fascinating interplay between the biological effects of sustaining Migi, the psychological repercussions the duo’s violent encounters and the natural process of maturing into adulthood. Izumi’s metamorphosis happens steadily, inevitably and irreversibly. To some, Izumi’s character development will seem rushed or disjointed but I disagree. As anime viewers, we have been force-fed the cliché, shonen character development formula--loser gets superpower, struggles with power, finds inner badass after an internal monologue, uses the power of angry emotions to power up and defeat the villain, rescues girl. While Parasyte begins with Izumi fusing with Migi—an undeniable ‘super power’, the series is too ambitious to settle for such a simple, linear tale. Instead, the “rushed” development simply cuts out the filler and makes room for a more mature story later on.
Migi is one of those characters who almost everyone will love. If I have any problem with him it’s that he’s too likeable and distinct from the other sadistic and nightmarish parasytes. He’s cute, deadly, witty and very very handy :). I say this half in jest but their companionship does mitigate some of the terror and solitude that a horror-tagged anime might suggest. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, and the literal and figurative synergy between Izumi and Migi is really fun to watch. Their versatility and teamwork makes me wish I too had a co-pilot in my body.
Murano: She is Izumi’s love interest. She’s a boring, well-adjusted Japanese high school student. I wouldn’t call her a cardboard character but she’s definitely put in the story to serve a well-defined role in the narrative. That being said, her purpose goes well beyond just propping up a romance subplot; she serves as a barometer of, and anchor for, Izumi’s humanity. Everyone in the series changes to some degree but some much faster and divergently than others. This will make much more sense as you watch the series but I thought she was a very important--albeit somewhat uncharismatic—piece of the story.
Artwork: 9/10
Masterfully done, a 9/10 easy. The backgrounds were beautifully constructed and the character faces were very finely drawn. I was particularly impressed by artists’ ability to convincingly depict a wide variety of emotional states. At different points in the anime, the features of anguish, hope, coquettishness, anemia, fatigue, confidence, pensiveness, terror etc. were expertly captured with a rare, subtle elegance. The parasites were also very well drawn, especially the way they were shown to distort human faces and bodies in a way that was eerie rather than purely gratuitous. The fight scenes—though often brief—were superb, with the parasites executing an eerie, T-1000esque fluidity. My one complaint with the art is that Murano and Izumi’s mother looked uncannily similar. I found it weird, distracting and altogether too Freudian for my liking.
Sound: 9/10
I liked the intro and found it ipod worthy however it may be to angsty for some. The 9/10 comes from the music in the episodes which were very memorable. I felt like it accentuated emotional or dramatic scenes very nicely. There is this really haunting and delicate piece that is played during introspective and tragic sequences. It’s like xylophone music but it sends chills down my spine.
Overall: 9/10
Overall it was an a great, high-quality and thought-provoking anime. The bizarre premise, insectoid motifs and strong theme of isolation remind me of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 1, 2014
*sigh*
This is one of the most annoying romance animes I’ve ever watched. Now either hit the “not helpful” button or keep reading to find out why.
Story 3:
I chose to start InK because I heard it broke with the romance genre’s stale tradition of ending with a high school rooftop kiss, and instead actually followed the characters into their adult lives.
InK’s longitudinal narrative style was the one positive thing that I can say about this train wreck of an anime (that and its surprisingly accurate use of medical jargon).
This anime is about Kotoko, a ditzy, klutzy, dimwitted, high school girl, and her one-sided
...
pursuit of her school’s super-perfect heart throb, Irie. The central conflict revolves around Kotoko’s struggle to get Irie’s attention and to get past his incredibly cold personality. You see, Irie, in addition to being good at everything he does, is a complete douchebag and sees Kotoko as nothing more than an annoying flea.
The narrative goes from high school to college to graduate school to working life. Unfortunately, despite spanning over 10 years, neither the characters nor the storyline ever matures. By episode 20 the characters are largely indistinguishable from their younger HS selves in episode 1. The humor is based almost exclusively around how bad Kotoko is at everything she does. As you can imagine this gets irritating pretty quickly.
Art 6: Fair
Sound 6: Nothing special either way.
Characters 2:
Everything about the characters was awful. They were awful as individuals and they were awful as couples. The side characters were little more than plot stick figures. Everything was awful.
Kotoko lacks just about every trait that a decent woman should have. She has no autonomy, no pride, no self-respect, no brains, no talent, and no ambition. Well that’s not true, she has ambition. Her sole ambition in life is to get the attention of her high school crush… an attraction based on infatuation rather than anything substantive. That’s about it. She’s willing to endure being humiliated, hit, bullied, and insulted by Irie because well, it’s Irie-kun and he’s way out of her league anyway. Basically, she should be thankful for whatever she can get…it’s really that simple. She sends out the wonderful message to young girls that if you just try hard enough with a guy who treats you like shit, you too can spend the best years of your life in an emotionally abusive relationship. I got the eerie feeling early on that if Irie decided to give her a black eye or some broken bones she’d find a way to blame herself for it. I felt pity for Kotoko throughout the series more than hope or encouragement.
Irie: In addition to being a major tool, Irie is one of the most emotionally vacant anime characters I’ve seen. Stoic characters can be great but they have to have some substance. Irie was just too robotic to really connect with. The whole detached genius thing got old pretty quickly. His character development was severely stunted too.
Relationships: All of the relationships in this anime lacked chemistry and most were severely cringe worthy. Now, there is something innately charming about a romance where two ‘opposites attract’—Beauty and the beast, Romeo and Juliet, B Gata H Kei lol. However, InK’s writer took that concept overboard and turned it into ‘complete incompatibility attracts.’ This is stupid and creates an environment where any character can fall in love with any character for no god damn reason. You’ve hated someone for 15 episodes? No problem, just have an abrupt, out of the blue declaration of undying love to them in episode 16. You’ve just met someone? No problem, get love struck and rearrange your whole life to accommodate them.
Enjoyment 3:
This was painful to watch and I had to take several hiatuses from the series. The only thing that kept me going was the solemn duty to write a scathing review so others could be spared my misery. You’re all welcome.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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