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Let's start off by saying if you're not familiar with Detective Conan then you're wasting your time here, this spin-off is a parody of that series and has nothing else to offer.
If you're familiar with the series however, even if you only watched the classic episodes and nowhere near caught up with it, you can still watch and enjoy this.

Hannin no Hanzawa-San is a simple comedy/parody with short 5 minutes episodes, a catchy opening and a beautiful ending song. Is it funny? It probably won't make you laugh your ass off (though it did get a few chuckles out of me), but it is very ... entertaining nonetheless.

If you haven't noticed by now from the title, cover and trailer, this show is about the shadowy figure that represents the culprits in Detective Conan, it's presented as a character named Hanzawa (which translates to culprit), so you already know what to expect from the kind of humor this show has to offer, but one thing I personally wasn't prepared for and found to be a pleasant surprise, is how the main cast from the original series is portrayed in this one.

Hanzawa-san portrays the world of Detective Conan in a silly way, as an apocalyptic city full of murder, which is hilarious by itself, but instead of doing that as a one time joke they actually build upon it, making it some sort of sarcastic world building, and it works well.
And then there's the main cast, whom instead of being characters with roles in the story, they are used as the punchlines of their own parodies, for example in one episode Hanzawa shows murderous intent, suddenly out of nowhere Conan and Heiji start following him, they don't even interfere with what's going on at the time, they're only part of the background and never even say a single word, they're almost creepy in a funny way, makes you feel like they're watching you all the time in this world, it's a subtle joke parodying how Conan and Heiji often tend to randomly look at a person and find them suspicious for no reason, and they're always at the right place and right time for a murder case.

The visuals are surprisingly pretty good, the characters may look a bit different due to the art-style, but you'll get used to it in no time, especially if you never skip the opening song (which is simply fantastic).

There's really no reason not to watch this show if you're sold on it already and can find its episodes, it's very light and easy to watch without worrying about time, either way I hope you got something out of this review.
Your feedback will be appreciated, have a good day.

((CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS! Here's your spoiler warning, please don't let me ruin your viewing experience of this masterpiece, go watch it before you read any further! OR save yourself some time and go smash your head into a wall, that wouldn't be a very different experience than watching this anime)).

Mayoiga, Ousama Game, Satsuriku no Tenshi, Mahou Shoujo Site, Darwin's Game, Talentless Nana, and recently High-rise Invasion. What do these have in common?
They're cheaply made attempts at the survival sub-genre, and they can be summed up as a bunch of random ideas slapped together with amateurish writing. They also tend to be badly directed and animated ... as if the staff didn't care, and rightfully so, because I would've wanted to get things over with and go home too if I was working on creating a dumpster fire.

There's one secret factor though, that if one of these shows managed to pull off it'd be actually decent. Can you guess what it is?
Embracing its own stupidity is what it is!
You see, the reason movies like The Room are very popular despite being an abomination, is because they know they're bad but they don't care, you get this genuine sense of entertainment from them as if they just wanted you to have a good time, they don't reflect any ego from the writer, they don't pretend to be smart.
Now I have enjoyed most of these shows I mentioned above, but it's all for the wrong reasons, I am willing to give them bad ratings regardless of the enjoyment factor because they take themselves too seriously, they are not self aware about their own lack of good writing, characterization, or even directing.
The only exception from this list is High-rise Invasion, that show knew it's stupid and doubled down on its stupidity on purpose, which made it pure entertainment, I'd elaborate but this review is not about that, this review is about Darwin's Ga- umm sorry, which one was it again?

"Battle Game in 5 Seconds", honestly I did not expect to get a new addition to the list this early on but here we have it, an anime that's no different than the aforementioned dumpster fires, it just stinks as badly as each one of them.
One thing "Battle Game in 5 Seconds" has in common with some of these shows is how they attempt to setup some sort of a survival game, but the writer doesn't understand that games need rules, so you get these conditions where characters have to fight, collect points, form teams, etc. But we don't get to see any rules or mechanics in play aside from some vague smart app bullshit that never gets explained, because that'd require the writer to actually think for once, instead they prefer to keep things vague so they can do whatever they want, they have the characters duke it out with little to no logic and then have the audacity to have the protagonist over-explain the simplest events on hind sight as if it was some sort of a brilliant strategy, and he almost always hilariously sounds so confident and cool that he ends up reeking of rotten cheese.

Now I really want to stop bringing up this group of bad anime and talk about the one I'm supposed to be reviewing, but I can't help it since "Battle Game in 5 Seconds" is the most generic one of the bunch, I can't talk about it without feeling like I'm referring to other shows, everything in this anime feels like I've seen it somewhere before, the setting, the character designs, the overall feeling of the show, it feels like it was created by an AI that looked up the browsing history of Darwin's Game's author, it's bizarrely artificial and devoid of any form of originality!

Alright, let me do what I'm supposed to do and attempt to give you a summary about "Battle Game in 5 Seconds".
The show starts by telling us that our protagonist Akira is a school boy (because of course he is) and he plays videogames. That's all you need to know before the first fight scene abruptly begins (you can completely remove the intro and nothing would be lost), Akira is attacked by some monster and dragged into the survival game, and what was his reaction to it? "All I need to do is treat this as a game and I won't lose" and BAM he takes down the monster! Playing mobile games makes you stronger, you know? You should do that more often if you want to be awesome like our protagonist here.
So after that Akira gets killed anyway and then wakes up to find himself in another world, and we get into the typical survival game intro:
-Protagonist wakes up in a large hall. Check.
-The hall is filled with characters with flashy designs. Check.
-Every character is silently waiting for the plot, instead of trying to get to know each and assess the situation. Check
-A silly character with a silly voice appears and introduces themselves as the main antagonist and the representative of the organization that killed and isekai-ed these people. Check.
-Said antagonist randomly kills one of the characters to show how serious they are. Check.
-One character asks "Who are you? Why are you doing this?" but gets no answer, because mystery. Check.
-The antagonist attempts to explain that these characters are supposed to play some sort of a game, except instead of explaining anything they just go on about how much they enjoy being evil. Check.
You know, basically if you played/watched Danganronpa or Zero Escape you have it all figured out already.

So here's what should've been the interesting part, the game! What kind of game is it? Well, the characters have super powers and they use them to fight. No really, that's it. I know, compared to other shows of this genre this feels like it's the most basic thing it could've been!
What's supposed to be the cool twist however, is the protagonist's super power, which is described as "whatever your opponent thinks is your power, becomes your power", what this convoluted mess means is that if the protagonist can convince his opponent that he has the power to turn his arm into a cannon megaman-style, then he can turn his arm into a cannon. If he can convince them he can use telepathy, then he can use telepathy. If he can convince them that he can make this show not suck, well, some viewers think the show is good so I guess it worked out somehow. Anyway, think of it as a spell that only works against you if you believe in it.
Now on paper this has the potential to be a cool device for psychological warfare, maybe someone on the level of Light Yagami would find all kinds of creative ways to do wonders with this power. Unfortunately not even that could happen because it all turned into a confusing mess not too far into the series.

In one episode Akira realizes that if one of his previous opponents believes that he can turn his arm into a cannon, then as long as that person is present in the room, Akira can activate his power and use the cannon to shoot a different opponent, even if this new opponent is not convinced that Akira has that power.
In a later episode Akira can't turn his arm into a cannon because one guy didn't believe he could, even though there were at least two people in the same room who believed he had that power, so he should've been able to activate it anyway.
So a more accurate description of this power would be "whatever suits the writer becomes your power", I hope you're not confused yet because it gets worse...
In another episode Akira flat out tells one character about how his real power works, now using common sense you'd think that a power that depends entirely on lying would be rendered completely useless if its true nature is revealed, right? Because now the person knows for a fact what your power really is, so you can't "convince" them that you can "turn your arm into a cannon" or "use telepathy", since they already know these are not your superpowers, Makes sense, right?
Except the show does the exact opposite, that character knows how Akira's power works, so now anything he tells her becomes his power, he only needs to say "trust me"! If he wants to use teleportation he only needs to tell her that he intends to use teleportation and he'll magically be able to use it. How does that work? Don't ask me, ask the genius who wrote this anime!
I wish I was making this up, actually no, nothing good comes from making this garbage up, only sheer insanity! This show completely defies common sense and acts as if it did something smart!

With that out of the way, let's talk about the characters, are you curious to know about characters other than Akira the awesome protagonist? Rejoice! You will get your dose of modern flashbacks that every shitty manga writer from this era thinks are the way to go.
The characters are basically like those toys that have a button which if pressed would yell out one recorded phrase, if you're lucky they would switch up between two phrases.
There's one girl who always says "I hate the word coincidence!" because apparently she was a coincidence according to her mother lol (sorry, I just can't!). One guy goes on about how they shouldn't use the super powers given to them by the evil admins of this game, and then he uses his power anyway just because he was in a pinch, he doesn't go through development or anything life-changing, he quickly changes his mind because he was losing a fight. Another guy goes on about wanting to fight the protagonist, but he fights on his side under the usual stereotypical dumb excuse "no one gets to kill him before I do!" but then he just kinda forgets about it and continues fighting with him for no reason.

If you're looking for character development it's impossible to have it in any functional way, and there's a reason for that.
Everything that happened in the series felt like it happened in a matter of one day, that's how rushed everything felt, the characters should barely know each other by the end of the series, they practically just met, we've seen next to no interaction between them that's not directly related to the fights.
However, as long as the series manages to check-mark one arc it acts as if these characters now bonded and have history together, it's funny because some of the side characters talk about having fought together as a team (alongside Akira), but it was just a series of one-on-one fights with no team work whatsoever.

The directing and editing, oh man, in modern days it's not often you find an anime that has actually bad editing, in this show there are times when the transaction to the next scene happens so suddenly it feels like something was cut out! Like as soon as a character from one scene finishes talking a character from the next scene start talking immediately as if we're still on the same scene.
It's not one of those problems an expert would point out from experience while a casual viewer would think it's just a nitpick, it's something you can't miss and will be confused by, also it happened more than once!
This show almost literally feels like a series of short clips randomly put together, there is so much cutting corners and awkward presentation that it feels amateurish!

The art/animation quality is nothing to write home about either, later on they even fully animated one character in CG. You might be thinking "So what? CG is not uncommon in modern anime anyway", but that's not the issue, it's the fact they animated one character that way! Not one scene, not one fight, one character! He wasn't even a monster or something like that, he's human like the rest of them. Why him?! Why did he, out of everyone and everything, turn into a CG model?!

The music, to sum it up it's too forgettable, like I could listen to the whole OSTs and not realize they're from a show I actually watched!
The only memorable part was the ending, because it's so annoying I sometimes closed the episode before it ended just to avoid listening to that ear-raping tune at the beginning.

Overall, the only way I can see someone enjoying this anime is in a room packed with wolves who are ready to rip it apart at every scene, watch it with friends who enjoy laughing at garbage getting burned as it should be, other wise don't bother, the world is vast and full of things that don't suck as badly as "Battle Game in 5 Seconds".

Thanks for reading, have a good day.

Overall Rating: 7/10

Nakitai Watashi wa Neko wo Kaburu (aka A Whisker Away) is a love story about Muge (a teenage girl too cheerful she almost comes off as a maniac) who falls in love with Hinode (a typical bland anime teenage boy), it's a one-sided love but Muge is not afraid of flirting with her love interest and voicing her true feelings, even though he keeps ignoring her all the time.

Muge and Hinode's interactions are cute at times and cringe inducing at others, but the movie adds a certain twist that makes things more interesting, where Muge gains the ability to transform into a cat, ... a cat that Hinode seems to like, unaware that it is actually Muge.

The first two thirds of the movie are about each of the two characters struggling with family problems, and Muge keeps having this talking cat (who gave her the power to transform) appearing in front of her trying to convince her to give up her human form and just live the rest of her life as a cat.

Now this is a cool premise, Muge can't cope well with her own problems so she turns into a cat as a way to escape from them, you'd expect the third act to take this issue seriously and focus on teaching her and Hinode a lesson, well, it kinda does that, but it comes with a big tonal shift.

The third act begins with things escalating quickly and leading to the main conflict, and then suddenly something bizarre happens, it feels like they took a completely different movie and slapped it on top of this one, the movie felt like a shoujo anime with some supernatural elements up to this point, and now it's a Ghibli fantasy with talking cats and giant trees, also a bunch of new characters were introduced at once only so they can have the cliche' of appearing out of nowhere to save the main characters at the end, everything was rushed and felt out of place.

The main antagonist is just a one-dimensional bad guy and has absolutely no reason to do the bad things that he does, he felt like more of a plot device than an actual character, honestly you could remove him from the movie and make it so Muge's transformation was more of a curse than a deal, and nothing would've changed.
Speaking of, the way Muge overcomes the main conflict was underwhelming, the whole idea of the talking cat trying to convince her to give up her human form felt like a similar scenario to "making a deal with the devil", wherein you know if she agrees to it it'll be her own fault, so she has to redeem herself and fix things on her own, but the writers don't have the guts to do that, instead she's just forced into the situation and in the end she gets saved by others without doing anything herself.

The music choice felt odd at times, some scenes looked like they should've been more serious, but the music gave them a lighter tone, I usually like it when this happens (as I don't like forced drama), but when the final act feels like a Disney movie, and the movie having been more serious before, it's hard to take things seriously anymore or care about what happens to the characters.
I'd elaborate more, but I'm not a music expert, so make of that what you will.

The art is pretty good, everything from the backgrounds and colors to the way the cats are drawn, this is the first time in anime when people look at a cat and express how cute it looks, and it actually looks realistically cute and not just like every other cat in the movie, it also adds more reason why Hinode was so fond of Muge's cat form.
The animation is also pretty good, every time Muge jumps around and does reckless things you can feel the weight behind her movements, although this is something most quality animated movies have nowadays, it's more apparent here because of how energetic the main character is.

Despite me making fun of Muge earlier, I find her very likeable, romance anime writers need to take notes and make more fun and cheerful characters like her, to be honest I didn't care much about the rest of the cast (especially not Hinode), but it's fine because Muge managed to carry the whole movie on her own.

Overall this is a fun movie, I give it 7/10 (which is a high rating in my book), honestly I gave it a lower rating on my own list since I'm more bothered by the issues I talked about, but I didn't want to be too harsh on it because I know if you manage your expectations you can enjoy it for what it is.

Thank you for reading, I hope this was helpful, your feedback is appreciated, have a good day.

Another season, another Isekai, another one of these with some controversy that lead to their popularity, the interesting part is that Mushoku Tensei didn't do much different than your typical escapist fantasy targeted to shut-ins who live in basements and play ero games, in fact, there's an even more explicit show that was airing in the same season, so why did this one get more criticism?

To answer that we have to get into Mushoku Tensei's premise, basically the protagonist is a shut-in living in a basement and playing ero-games all the time (as expected from an Isekai, they even show you what they think their ... audience looks like), he gets hit by a truck and is reincarnated and reborn in another world with memories of his past life still intact.
Does this premise seem familiar? Of course it does, unless this is somehow your first experience with an Isekai, this is the exact same crap we've been getting every season, and yet what everyone got out of this premise is that it's supposed to be a story about redemption. Are you kidding me? Sure that's what the show says at some point (that the MC thinks this is a chance for him to restart his life), but my impression was different, I knew this was an Isekai and I knew Isekais don't tend to have a message or theme aside from escapism, I knew from the moment Rudeus (the MC) stole the maid's panties that he's gonna remain the same piece of shit he was in his past life so the target audience can keep projecting themselves into him (we've just established what the audience is supposed to look like, right?), I think people should've known better than to expect anything from this genre because that's what it's all about, actually I'm starting to believe that the whole point of these shows is to encourage losers like these to jump in front of trucks, thinking they'll be reincarnated, ridding the world of more wastes-of-oxygen or whatever the creators of these shows call them.

If you're familiar with this controversy you're probably thinking "but that's not all of it, right? What about the pedophilia?", yeah that's the more complicated part of it, people simplify it by splitting into two sides, one side thinks this is obviously pedophilic and that's why this show is crap, the other side makes excuses to why this is technically not pedophilic and defend the show.
I don't like this black and white way of thinking, I think both sides make logical points (to an extent), we humans can only judge things based on what we know after all, when we're faced with a situation we're unfamiliar with things get more complicated.

On one hand this show is obviously sexualizing underaged girls, as in there's fanservice for you the viewer to enjoy if you're into this stuff, that's undebatable and worthy of criticism, also there's the argument that all males are presented as perverted pieces of shit, which is not a big deal but can be off-putting.
On the other hand people have defended the idea that Rudeus expresses love and sexual desires (to say the least) towards very young girls (despite having the mind of a 40 years old), by pointing out that he's now in the body of a little boy, and he was a virgin in his past life who never experienced love, so it's understandable that he'd act this way, and although I think the show is still obnoxious with its unfunny ecchi scenes and the sexualization of little girls, I agree with that point of view.
Honestly if the fanservice was toned down I would've had no problem with this show, sure Rudeus would still be an unlikable piece of shit, but it'd make sense that he'd get excited when a girl hugs him and asks him to never leave her alone, despite her age, not every character has to live up to our moral standards, as long as the point here is not to normalize the immorality to the viewer of course, and that's where Mushoku Tensei is messed up, as the writer clearly doesn't showcase controversial topics with the intention to discuss them, he's just a pervert, same as the character he's made, plain and simple.

Controversies aside there is more to this show than these discussions, so yeah the review isn't over yet...

The plot is nothing special, it's basically a slice-of-life adventure without much of a direction or end goal, the MC establishes a goal at some point but then in later episodes he acts as if it wasn't that important and gives you the impression that he could change his mind at any point, it's just all over the place, so as I explained earlier don't expect anything from this type of show, it's a feel-good story, it has some conflicts but it never gets serious enough for you to care, it's like the writer has some good ideas but he picked the Isekai genre because it's the laziest of all genres, so why should he bother putting any effort into the writing?
For example there was a big family issue in an early episode, one that would normally ruin a family and change it forever, but Rudeus solves that by spitting one simple lie, suddenly it cuts into months later, where everyone is happy and have moved on, the show treated what could've been an interesting conflict as just another problem for the MC to solve easily in order to look like a smart guy who even saved his own family from getting ruined.
Another example is when Rudeus has to face his fear of leaving home, apparently he has been through a traumatizing experience in his past life that made him afraid of getting out of his house, and upon facing that fear it's established that what he's really afraid of are the people not the streets. So one day his tutor Roxy takes him out on a walk, which makes him feel very anxious, but then he simply realizes that the people passing by are not laughing at him, but instead greeting Roxy, and now his trauma is magically healed!
This has two thick layers of stupidity, the first is that psychological trauma does not get treated so easily, it goes through long sessions of treatment, and even after the person finally recovers it can still be triggered back at any moment. The second one is that, not only is Rudeus now okay with walking in public, but he's completely fine with a big audience watching him dancing with a girl of high status, and she's the one who gets nervous!

The dialogue is mostly basic, although it has a couple of moments where it stands out, it ends up trying too hard and coming off as an attempt to just make Mr. Great MC look great, like the time when Rudeus gave his father a mouthful because he acted like a shit parent, not gonna lie, half of what he said was well thought-out by the writer, but then it felt like he overdid it with the rest of the conversation, I was surprised that his father even continued to listen to him instead of slapping him a second time.
If I didn't know any better I would've expected that to be a trigger to Rudeus' parents getting some complicated feelings about how creepy their 5 years old son is and whether they should, I don't know, exorcise him or something, since he has the brain of a 40 years old pervert, but of course I can't expect that from an Isekai aimed at shut-ins who play ero ga- okay enough with that.

The humor can be cringy as hell, the MC constantly gets himself into uncomfortable situations because he's a pervert, and he still hasn't hit puberty! I can't imagine what season 2 is going to be like when he does! And yeah they already announced a second season of this, as always the Japanese audience couldn't care less about the controversy westerns are raging about, if only they had good taste in anime though... We could've instead gotten something like, I don't know, Urasawa Naoki's many other manga that haven't been adapted into an anime, but who am I to judge?

To be fair Mushoku Tensei can be pretty entertaining at times, because some of the characters are likable, like Rudeus' parents (despite his father being another dEgeNeRaTe mAlE who thinks with his dick), and his tutor Roxy. Unfortunately from episode 5 onwards we're introduced to a bunch of other characters who vary from the boring beast woman, to the absolute piece of garbage Eris whose only redeeming quality (if you can call it that) is that she's giving Rudeus the shitty treatment that he deserves.

Another thing I like is the fact that despite being a typical Isekai, the MC is not unbeatable, although Rudeus is definitely over powered there have been at least three times throughout the 11 episodes that he was beaten by stronger characters, but this is too basic to be much of a compliment, it's like I'm saying "I like that this Isekai is not complete shit like the rest of them".

The art style is probably the biggest reason this wasn't treated as just another Isekai and brushed under the rug, what seems to be a new studio "Studio Bind" decided that Mushoku Tensei will be their first work and they really put their all into it (hopefully they'll be wiser with what they adapt in the future, oh wait, they already decided it's gonna be more Mushoku tensei).
The art is colorful, the lines are crispy, the backgrounds are detailed, the animation is fluid and the choreography is well made, also the effects from magic look beautiful. The character designs are very basic and feel like we've seen them in other shows before, but the way they're drawn is pleasant to look at, I'll give them that.

The sound is not bad, the OP is nice (despite being short) and I loved the way it just blends into a scene in every episode instead of being its own thing that the episode cuts into, I hope more shows use this idea in the future.
The voice acting is also decent for the most part, with Rudeus having two VAs, his child form is voiced by Uchiyama Yumi (Pack/Re:Zero), and his former adult voice which narrates his thoughts is voiced by Tomokazu Sugita (Sakata Gintoki, Kyon/Suzumiya Haruhi), both do a great job at making Rudeus' awful personality tolerable and fun at times.
My only criticism here is that each voice sounds like a completely different person, and although that's to be expected, you'll get the feeling that Rudeus would've been a more likable character without the narration of his former 40yo shut-in's thoughts, but also would've been more boring in return.

Overall this show is enjoyable if you can look past its controversy, but I wouldn't encourage you to do so and I don't recommend you watch it unless you've been really drawn in by its animation or whatever else, even in this case I still think there are other more enjoyable shows, from the same season too.
I only give it a 5/10 for its high production value, I would've given it more points for the enjoyment factor but I keep remembering the cringe-inducing humor over everything else, so it's fair to judge it based on what left the strongest impression on me, right?

If you found this helpful your feedback is appreciated, have a good day.

This show is both a reboot, a manga adaptation, and a videogame adaptation at the same time, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken (2020) is a reboot of an anime that was cancelled decades ago and was adapted from a long running manga, why's that important? Because since it's been animated before the people working on this project won't bother putting any effort into re-animating the same thing, so it was expected that they were gonna rush the pacing.

I've made a comparison between the two versions, and so far this reboot managed to fit 30 episodes worth of ... content into 15 episodes, at first it doesn't seem so bad as the first 4 episodes managed to set things up properly, but then it starts to become apparent when you see the big progress Dai (the MC) has made by training off screen, which doesn't feel earned at all.
If that wasn't bad enough, there's a scene where the two protagonists, Dai and Pop, depart on a boat, and suddenly it cuts to them in the middle of a forest running to save a little girl, it's like the director isn't even trying, you can tell there's a lot of content that's been left out between those two scenes.

Now to be fair the story isn't deep or anything, so rushing the pacing might be better than spending more time than needed on each arc, however, there's a limit to how much you can rush a story before it feels amateurish.
Imagine playing an RPG where the dungeons are too short you get from one boss to another in like five minutes, there's no build up or time to grind, but defeating regular enemies gives you too much EXP that it's easy to over-level.
You get to the point where nothing feels earned or satisfying, you're only playing to get things over with, that's the feeling I get from this show.

Speaking of videogames, you're probably wondering if there was actually a Dai no Daibouken game, well don't ask me, I don't play Dragon Quest, but I know the franchise and I know the manga was inspired from it but has an original story, so technically it's not a videogame adaptation, but it does take place in the same universe I guess. Why's that important? Because CGI.

The use of CGI in this anime is weird, it doesn't look cheap but doesn't work well either, because ironically the art style is too 2D (if that makes sense), so the CG effects don't look like they fit, when a fire ball is shot for example it doesn't feel like the characters can touch or interact with it, it looks so odd and out of place.
And doesn't help that there's a fight scene animated in CGI, it looked like they randomly slapped a scene from the videogames.

Speaking of animation, the people in Toei Animation are probably the most talented at faking good animation, most people look at the bright colors and call it "great animation", but what I see when I'm watching this show is still images, lots of them, combined with the CGI I talked about, they use those effects to make it look like things are moving, there are even times when they use the classic method at faking animation used in sword fights, where a still image of the character moves closer to the camera and then it cuts to both characters standing still implying that the slashing already happened, not to mention the many times they close up on a character's face and move only their mouth, so yeah the animation may look good at first but if you pay attention you'll see that it's actually cheaply made most of the time.

The atmosphere of the show screams Toei Animation, to be fair it fits with the Dragon Quest franchise, but it gets annoying when the violence and overall feel of it is toned down compared to the manga and the old adaptation, some scenes don't look as dark because of the bright colors, it might be a personal preference, but it was a problem I couldn't ignore.

The music is nothing special, there aren't many tracks made yet, only a few that keep playing in every episode, there wasn't a single scene that stood out because of the music, the show will probably get better music when it gets to the part where the old adaptation left off, but for now it's just mediocre.
The opening and ending too are, in my opinion, pretty forgettable, even though I listened to them more than once to give them a chance I can't remember them at all.

With the production stuff out of the way let's get into the story and characters.
The story is nothing original, there's a demon lord with an army almost ruling the world, the protagonist who lived his entire life on an island raised by monsters, is visited by princess Leona, he saves her life when she gets attacked, so she sends him a tutor who trains him to become a proper hero and go fight the demon lord army, a pretty generic story that has nothing more to it aside from Dai's tutor Avan having a bunch of other disciples that Dai gets to meet along the way.

The characters on the other hand are probably the strongest point of this series.
The main characters are pretty much the same stereotypes you'd expect from a typical shounen series, Dai is the brave good-natured hero who never gives up, Pop is the coward who grows a pair when things get serious, and Maam is the reliable strong female who, despite not being strong at battles, is very good at supporting the group and making crucial decisions, the three are nothing special individually but they work very well together and have good chemistry.

What I consider the best part of the series though is the antagonists, being a demon lord army that wants to rule the world you'd expect them to be one dimensional villains, and although some of them are, but most of the ones introduced so far are surprisingly more than that, they each have their own unique personalities and actually care about things such as honor and glory, they don't just fight for the sake of being evil, there was even a time when it's shown that some of the soldiers from the Demon Lord army are good people (or good monsters, to be more accurate).
You might say not being one dimensional doesn't necessarily mean they're deep and interesting, which is a fair point to make, but it does make you care about both sides during a fight and that makes them more fun to watch, not to mention some of those antagonists go through some interesting development.

So overall how do I describe this adaptation? Is it bad just because the old version was better? This reminds me of two popular shounen series that got rebooted, Fullmetal Alchemist and Hunter x Hunter, both started off rushed and toned down, but got better as they diverted from their old counterparts, so although those were made by entirely different people, I can say Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken has a lot of potential and I'm having high expectations from it in the future.
As for right now I can't give the show more than 6/10, which is a decent rating because I did enjoy watching it after all, but nostalgia played a big part of it.
If you want my advice, keep the show under your radar but wait for another 15 episodes or so, it's hard to tell if it's gonna be worth your time right now, or you can watch the old version (if you can find it that is) and then get onto this adaptation, since there aren't many differences aside form the deleted content.

To put it simply, Dorohedoro lacks common sense, it's insane, chaotic, and over the top, this gives it room for creativity and style, which it has a lot of.

The story is basically about two worlds, Hole, a place where humans live, and the magic world, a place where magic users live, and apparently there's conflict between the two.
In Hole they used to hunt magic users (like in the medieval era), and magic users used to experiment on humans, it seems like that's in the past, but honestly it's still hard for me to tell how much the relationship between the two sides have changed, the ... world building is kinda lacking in this aspect.

Aside from the stylish setting, the selling point of this show are the characters, we have Kaiman, a man with a lizard face and no memories of his past, apparently he turned that way by a magic user and is looking for him to turn himself back to normal, he goes around looking for magic users to bite their heads and have the man inside his mouth talk to them, he only says one thing though "you are not the one", supposedly until someday he finds "the one".
What's that? This doesn't make sense? Well get used to it.
Next we have Nikaido, she's Kaiman's close friend, she cooks for him and helps him look for magic users, she's also pretty strong.
These two are the main characters from Hole, there are a few other side characters as well, but instead let's talk about the rest of main characters from the magic world.

Despite seeming like antagonists at first (since they're Kaiman's enemies) this group of magic users get the treatment of main characters, the most interesting member is Shin, a magic user who has the ability to chop people up to pieces while keeping them alive (you'll see all kinds of crazy magic here).
There's also Noi, Shin's partner, a huge muscular woman who has the ability to heal wounds.
En, the boss of some organization of magic users, he has the ability to turn people into mushrooms.
Fujita and Ebisu, the weaklings of the group.

The show is made of CGI but looks really good, the pale colors and dirty look on the characters make them look like they're in 2D and fit with the steampunk setting, only when the characters start moving you can tell from their fluid movement that it's CGI, also the backgrounds look beautiful.

The music is fitting for the show's chaotic nature, especially the OP, however my favorite is the second ED, it's very funny.

That's all I have to say about this show, it's an action/comedy series that doesn't take itself seriously, although it does care enough to flesh out its characters.
Dorohedoro is not a masterpiece but it's a fun watch, especially if you're a fan of steampunk settings and stylish designs, also if you're having trouble understanding what's going on in early episodes, don't worry, just give it time.

You ever feel conflicted while rating a series because even though you enjoyed watching it, you know it's badly written and has many flaws?
I wasn't conflicted while rating Kyokou Suiri, just wanted you to understand why I'm going to rip it apart despite giving it a decent rating.

There are 3 characters worth talking about in this show, Kotoko (the female protagonist), Kurou (the guy Kotoko has a crush on), and Saki (Kurou's ex-girlfriend).
The story is about Kotoko and Kurou solving paranormal mystery cases, or at least that's what it's supposed to be.
Stories like this usually go one of two ways, either get into a story ... right away and follow it until the end, or introduce a concept and make different stories/arcs following that concept, and it seems like Kyokou Suiri is stuck in the middle, it wanted to go the second way but the adaptation stuck with one major arc that took over 9 episodes out of 12.
Now this wouldn't have been a problem if the first 3 episodes managed to set things up properly, but unfortunately they didn't.

The biggest problem of this show is Kotoko's qualification as a spiritual detective or "Goddess of Wisdom" as spirits like to call her, in most shows the protagonist has to have some sort of a skill that's displayed for us as early as possible so the story can get into the main plot, for example if the protagonist is a detective they start by solving a case, if they're a boxer they have a boxing match.
So, what does the "Goddess of Wisdom" do exactly? She proves her incompetence right from episode 1, surely you wouldn't expect a "Goddess of Wisdom" to lack the wisdom, but here we have Kotoko stalking Kurou, forcing him to go out with her even though he's clearly not interested, asking him to accompany her to a dangerous place where she's supposed to solve a case, approaches a monster that's obviously stronger than her, almost getting herself killed, causing the monster to bite off Kurou's arm.
You may not notice the complete idiocy of her actions, because hey, Kurou is immortal and can regenerate fast so there were no consequences, but then you remember that Kotoko didn't know he was immortal!
Goddess of Wisdom? She's more like Goddess of Bullshit! I'm not even joking, you'll know why I chose the word "bullshit" specifically.

Next we have the first arc, which is basically an episode and a half of Kotoko talking to a giant snake about some case, they literally sit and talk for the whole thing, the case has been closed but the snake has questions about it, and after long explanations and twists about the truth of the case, which seemed far-fetched and didn't make sense, we learn that the whole time Kotoko was making shit up to go along with the snake's nitpicks.
What does this mean? When Kotoko tells Kurou that she was only bullshitting the snake, Kurou replies with "I think I understand your true power now", so you're telling me that this is Kyokou Suiri's way of displaying the protagonist's skills? Kotoko's "wisdom" is not an ability to analyze or investigate or deal with complicated situations, it's the ability to bullshit others? I wish I was making this up!
Now let's make one thing clear, the most effective way to lie and manipulate others is by telling the truth and twist it with just the right amount of lies, we've seen fictional characters who are known for pulling that off brilliantly, but Kotoko's case is different, she makes up stories and lies as much as she can, and none of them are consistent, this is something that most people are capable of! Not only that, but even if her lies were clever, would you call that "wisdom"? I sure wouldn't.
If we want to talk wisdom, wasn't it wiser to tell the snake to get over the case, especially since it has nothing to do with him? I mean, it's not like he was a threat to Kotoko, in fact he spoke to her with respect as if she's a higher being, so there's no reason for Kotoko not to tell him to shove his questions up his you know where.
Making shit up and completely twisting the truth was not wise at all, it was totally unnecessary, and why should we, the audience, care about a case that's already been closed anyway?!

If you think that I may be exaggerating, the next arc only proves my point, Kotoko really goes all out here with the bullshit!
I'll try to explain Kotoko's role in this arc without spoiling anything from it, basically there's this urban legend and Kotoko has to make up stories and post them on the internet to convince people that it's not real.
Note that from people's perspective it's only based on rumors and only the main characters know it's real, but apparently people can be too stupid that they need someone to write stories on the internet to convince them that ghosts don't exist!
And it's really hilarious how others look at Kotoko in admiration as if she's doing something brilliant, while all she's doing is writing posts on social media about this urban legend.
If the writer managed to make the behavior of the people on the internet convincing and had Kotoko struggling with trolls and clever people arguing with her and making their own theories about the matter, it would've been somewhat entertaining, but no, the comments are presented in a very lazy way, like the people commenting are too bored and uninterested.
And if that wasn't bad enough, suddenly we learn that Kurou, on top of being immortal, has the ability to "change the future" but in order to do that he has to, well, I don't know what, since the show never really explains how it works, all you need to know here is that there's magic, but in order for it to work Kotoko has to pull off her bullshit.
Yeah, it's an asspull so any sudden changes in the people's behavior will have magic shenanigans to justify them, if they suddenly agree with Kotoko's bullshit she says that Kurou's power is working!
How hard was it to make a fake twitter account and talk to people to research their behavior and use that as your reference? But no, Kotoko's unimpressive skill wasn't even enough to solve the problem, we needed Kurou's magic for that.

There are a few other problems worth mentioning too, like how despite being only 12 episodes long the show is not afraid of spending multiple episodes in one place with the characters doing the same thing and not moving at all, the last few episodes felt like they were dragging on I just wanted them to end, the same can be said about the first arc, which as I mentioned earlier is all about Kotoko and the giant snake just talking.
Another problem is the underwhelming role of the spirits, they are supposed to be crucial to the story and yet they barely do anything important.

To be fair though, regardless of the bad writing, Kyokou Suiri is very fun to watch, mainly because of the chemistry between the characters.
Kotoko is fun, it would've suited her more if she was presented as a straight up stalker that lacks common sense and lies to people all the time, because that makes more sense, but to be fair "Goddess of Wisdom" fits her visual design more. One other thing that annoys me about her character though is how she casually talks about how she lost her eye and leg even when it's irrelevant, she doesn't seem to do it for self pity, in fact she's cheerful and positive all the time, which makes it weird. It's like having an orphan always joke about how he has no parents, you wouldn't know if it's a cry for help or lacking common sense.
As for Kurou, it seems from the show's narrative that he's supposed to be this sweet guy with a monstrous power and a dark past, but his behavior and face expressions make him look like a psychopath, and the fact he's voiced by the same actor as Yagami Light doesn't help, I found his backstory interesting though.
And lastly, I haven't talked about Saki have I? the most likeable character in the show despite being Kurou's ex-girlfriend, ironically she's wiser and more mature than Kotoko, also Kurou seems to get along with her more than he does with Kotoko.
What I appreciate the most in this show is that it doesn't complicate and dramatize the relationship between these three characters, Saki and Kurou are not interested in going back together, which I'm grateful for because the last thing the show needed was a love triangle, this managed to keep the atmosphere light-hearted, even when Kotoko is jealous of Saki it's never accompanied with sad music or a serious tone.

As for the animation, it's solid, too bad they don't do much with it though, I mean what can you do when all the characters are doing is talking? But well, I really like the art style and character designs.
The music is also very good, it's pleasant to listen to, and the opening is catchy I never skipped it.

In conclusion, Kyokou Suiri is a fun show but a terrible story, if you found it interesting and want to judge it for yourself go for it, at least you won't be bored, otherwise I'd say there are countless other things you can invest your time in than this.

Darwin's Game is just a mediocre action/ super-power disguised as a survival game anime, it doesn't really belong to the genre, nothing about it feels like a game, only people trying to kill each other with no rules except a convenient one where players can surrender so the protagonist doesn't have to kill in order to win.

I like the survival game genre because it has tension, with creative rules that result in interesting situations (one example is Life is Money, a manga about a survival game that has the players kill each other by yelling and cursing, the setting is hilarious but creative), unfortunately Darwin's ... Game has neither of those, it feels like the writers are afraid of adding any rules because it'd make writing the show more difficult, they did add a few mechanics like getting points and using them to buy weapons, and gave the characters super powers, but nothing is explained with a set of rules, everything is kept vague so the writers can do whatever they want.

Just like most modern anime Darwin's Game has to follow certain cliches for no reason, the protagonist is an ordinary highschool boy just because, it's just mentioned for no relevant reason (you could make him an office worker and literally nothing would change), and the trigger for the supernatural elements of the show is a mysterious gaming app that's installed on his smart phone (which I've seen happen many times in other shows), also the heroine falls in love with the protagonist for no reason, and of course the protagonist's parents are non-existent.
The only reason they add these cliches is because they apparently make the show relatable for the target audience, I guess everything teenagers in Japan like is gonna turn into a cliche' at some point.

These problems make the setting mediocre, but what about the production value?
The art style is ugly and the face expressions are exaggerated, it's hard to tell if it's intentional, but even if it was it doesn't make it cool or interesting, just uncomfortable to watch.
The animation quality is also lacking, it's average at best, the character poses and movements are weird and have mistakes that I expect from a show from the 90s, not the new decade.
The soundtracks are forgettable, I don't remember any of them, and the voice acting is the same as most other shows, it's not bad but there isn't a single character with a unique performance, you could check the lists of each VA from this show and find other characters that sound exactly the same and belong to the same stereotype.

Speaking of characters, just like any other anime, we have a bland protagonist and a heroine that stands out in comparison both in personality and design, you gotta make the protagonist relatable and give him a waifu, right? That's more important than having actually interesting characters, who needs those anyway when you have stereotypes?
A few episodes in you'll start to notice that Kaname (the protagonist) wants to protect his friends and doesn't want to kill anyone, even his enemies, why? For no reason, the guy was supposed to be a blank slate for relatability's sake, but now he has one of the least relatable traits ever, and has literally no background or clear motive that makes sense of it.
Wanna know the funniest part? His power revolves around mass producing weapons, he fights by spamming machine guns and grenades, and it's not like the writer did this to make things more complicated, no, he goes all out but somehow he manages to win without killing anyone, he even had a one on one friendly fight against a guy who only uses his own fists, and Kaname used machine guns and grenades like there's no tomorrow!
That's not the only irritating thing about Kaname though, everyone around him acts as if he's some great leader, but literally neither of his allies had any reason to join him, they start as enemies and suddenly change their mind and follow him, and it's not because he has charisma or the ability to persuade others with words, no, he wins a fight with nonsensical plot armor and somehow everyone's impressed.

Now let's talk about the fights, to give you more reason why I'm not being harsh on this show.
You know the feeling when you watch someone who sucks at videogames playing a difficult game? Watching this show can be as painful sometimes, the characters act in ways that lack any common sense.
In episode 1 after Kaname has the app installed, he's targeted by another player, now imagine yourself in his opponent's place, your prey is sitting right in front of you, he's unaware that he's taking part in a killing game, his guard is lowered, there's no one around, you have a knife on you, and you have the power to turn invisible, what would you do?
Of course you wouldn't be stupid enough to pull out the knife in front of your target, point it at him, and walk slowly towards him, giving him enough time to realize the situation and run away, right? Sadly I can't say the same for the first antagonist of this show.
And how did Kaname win the fight? A car came out of nowhere and crashed into his opponent! It was so bizarre I thought at first that maybe Kaname's power is to summon cars and crash them into people! The writers unapologetically had the first antagonist die in a car accident in the middle of the fight!

In conclusion Darwin's Game is not worth your time, maybe unless you are one of those people who can "turn off their brain", but even then I can think of at least 100 other shows that are worth watching over this one.

After 22 movies there isn't much they can do in terms of mystery, so what they do is turn the series into a battle shounen.
I know Detective Conan movies always had overexaggerated action, I'm fine with that, but they weren't missing the mystery and how the characters used their brains to overcome every problem.
This movie is just pure action with a lot of explosions and almost super powers (it's hard to imagine anyone was actually looking forward to see Makoto go super-saiyan and beat up bad guys), and the murder case was too weak even for a spin-off.
Overall this movie is not bad as a ... standalone, but don't expect it to live up to the main series.

Battle shounen, a genre designed to attract a large audience with the least amount of effort, it doesn't require any research or studying, only basic knowledge of what people would like, and this pretty much sums up what Kimetsu no Yaiba is all about, since it's one of the most basic shounen anime I've ever seen.

-The story: it's nothing new, a young boy named Tanjirou has his family massacred by a demon and then trains to become a demon slayer.
The story could've been interesting but it suffers from laziness, the writer tries to avoid any complicated conflicts that would require effort to solve.
For example, the ... most interesting part about the story was how Tanjirou had to protect and tame his sister Nezuko who turned into a demon...
[Spoiler]
She gets brainwashed early on by Tanjirou's mentor to be friendly with humans (if he could do that, then why not brainwash more demons?), and she turns out to be strong enough to protect herself and others and even fight other demons (even though she doesn't eat humans, which was established to be the way demons get stronger).
[/Spoiler]
The writing is also too lazy, the characters narrate their own stories, nothing is shown in an interesting way, the writer spoon-feeds you everything.
Even simple moments such as Tanjirou talking to a girl in early episodes, he literally narrates their conversation instead of showing it to us.

-The characters: nothing about them stands out, Tanjirou is a copy/paste from Midoriya Izuku (My Hero Academia), he's too nice and perfect.
Nezuko is not a proper character since she acts like an animal, she nods and listens to Tanjirou's instructions which means she understands human language, but she can't speak for some reason (she used to speak normally as a human, and all demons so far can speak except for her, so it doesn't make sense, but I guess the writer thinks it's cute).
Urokodaki, Tanjirou's mentor, a strict oldman that becomes a father figure for Tanjirou, he's an interesting character but we don't know much about him.
Zenitsu, it's early to judge him, but so far he's one of the most annoying comic relief characters ever.

-The world building: the lack of it is confusing, at first it gives you the impression that demons' existance is not commonly known among people, but later on you notice that they are everywhere.
Maybe it's early to tell if there's going to be anything interesting about the world, but so far it's too basic, it's Japan in the 20th century (not sure which decade) and it has demons, that's basically it.

-The action: this is the best part about the show, I give credit to studio ufotable, it's known for having high quality animations, also the writer came up with creative superpowers that made some cool fights.
The only problem is that due to the fast pacing most fights have no build up and end very quickly which makes them forgettable, the only exception was a fight in the early episodes when Tanjirou was trying to learn how to use his superpower.

-The pacing: it feels like modern shounen anime are trying to avoid the slow pacing that Naruto and One Piece are infamous for, but the problem is that they end up too fast paced that you have no time to care about anything.
Tanjirou met a demon slayer and then started training to become one, right after the death of his family, he didn't have time to grieve which took away the shock and sadness of his loss.
And there are many other examples of this problem but I guess you get the point.

Overall this show is worth watching if you want to see cool action (at least it doesn't try to be more than that) but don't expect much from it.