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Finishing Megalo Box was a strange experience for me. I felt adequately satisfied, but looking back on the series as a whole, that feels like a weird thing to say for something that, on paper, is kind of a disappointment.

I started watching the series with a lot of anticipation; I’d never read Ashita no Joe, a manga that’s highly well-regarded within the hardcore manga community, but the idea of a new series with a gritty, early 2000’s anime aesthetic was highly appealing, especially in our current anime environment where good series still get released, but shows with this particular kind of look are hard to ... come by. The first episode had me as excited as seemingly anyone else in the anime community; its impeccable art direction and stellar music, bolstering a well-worn but perfectly acceptable underdog premise, had the makings of a slam dunk landing that had a lot to offer regardless of your experience with the medium. Newer anime fans could enjoy a well-made, lavishly directed show simply on its own merits, while veteran fans could appreciate it as a callback to a cherished bygone era where many encountered the hobby for the first time.

I continued to enjoy the series week to week for the most part, but even around the halfway point I became aware of the fact that there were some serious downsides that were becoming increasingly more obvious as the series went on. They’re the kinds of problems that would never be clear just from the first few episodes, because you can’t expect a show to unload everything all at once. But even as the show concluded, none of them were ever really addressed properly.

The main character might be the best place to start. If you’ve been around the block long enough, complaints about the protagonist dragging a series down are nothing new. While this isn’t exclusively a problem with anime, it might be more noticeable here than anywhere else. When compared to the landscape as a whole, it almost feels wrong to complain about Joe. He doesn’t possess the frustrating blandness of many harem-comedy everyleads, nor is he unintentionally unlikable or obnoxious. He doesn’t even really fit into the category of emotionally frail and indecisive main characters that tend to be so divisive, like Evangelion’s Shinji Ikari. If anything, his simple goal and roguish charisma make it so that it’s not difficult to get behind him and he’s never someone who annoys the audience. So then, what’s there to complain about?

To put it very simply, he’s not really bad, but he feels like he could be and should be so much more. The series establishes his goal of boxing, yes, but it doesn’t ever really explore WHY it is so important to him, how he came to value it, or really anything about his trajectory or personal story in the larger world beyond him being poor and working in seedy underground boxing matches for a living before meeting Nanbu. Even protagonists who are far more grating on a moment-to-moment basis than Joe, like Naruto Uzumaki, usually get this from the first few chapters. It’s one of the most basic and important aspects of properly establishing a character so the audience can be emotionally invested in them, and something most scriptwriting professors drill into you constantly.

This in and of itself might seem like a strange thing to complain about, but consider that both Nanbu and Sachio both have more detail put into their backstories and have a more compelling reason to be doing what they’re doing in the story, and you can start to see why some people felt unsatisfied with Joe’s character. It wouldn’t have been necessary in a vacuum, but here, it definitely makes him feel a bit incomplete.

Joe’s ultimate rival, Yuri, is slightly more developed in this sense, but still suffers from the same problem. He claims that Shirato took him in when he was nothing and gave him a future, and that's why he's devoted to Yukiko, but this is never really explored in a satisfying way. About the only thing we see of any substance is their first meeting back when Yukiko's grandfather was still alive. It's actually a decent scene that establishes both their characters nicely, but that's about all we really get and it feels terribly insufficient.

This refusal or inability to properly explore things in-depth is the central weakness of Megalo Box and why it often feels underwhelming.

Consider, for a moment, the setting of Megalo Box itself. Its futuristic cyberpunk setting, with its massive class divide where the poor are not considered real citizens and live in shanty towns while the rich live in futuristic opulence, and boxing has drastically changed with the introduction of advanced prosthetics that make the matches far more deadly. It's interesting and rife with potential. It also ends up feeling like a change for the sake of the reboot having a new gimmick more than anything else, because this is also not something that well-explored either. Like anything else, we get to see a little. The episode with the people latching onto Joe as a symbol, and the rap that came with it, was great. But outside of that, I don’t remember much else. The cybernetic boxing aspect feels even more irrelevant when Joe himself goes Gearless for the vast majority of the show; I understand that there was something of a thematic point to it, along with adding to his underdog status, but the point is, the show isn’t all that great at using the new stuff that differentiates it from Ashita no Joe despite its best efforts. This is another aspect that I noticed which makes the show a bit frustrating: when the show actually delves a bit into the aspects that would make it better and more well-rounded, the material is usually decent or even good, it just doesn’t deliver too much of it to make enough of a difference in the big picture. Personally, the episode with Aragaki remains one of my favorites for its surprisingly realistic depiction of trauma and PTSD that soldiers suffer from.

If Megalo Box was the kind of show where strong, tightly-directed action scenes were the focus as opposed to an emotional journey or worldbuilding, then all the downsides I’ve described until now wouldn’t be so important. Given that this is a sports anime, you might be forgiven for expecting that to be the case here, but you would unfortunately be mistaken. It’s rather bizarre to say, but the boxing matches in Megalo Box are probably the weakest part of the whole series. It’s not even that the emotional core of a lot of them are bad, but that the direction in all of them is rather flat and uninspired the vast majority of the time. Everything from the sound effects, camera angles, narrative of the match itself, etc feels completely worksmanlike, almost as if the staff didn’t really care much about them either. They consistently fail to be exciting in and of themselves, and mostly serve as a resolution to whatever conflict is going on at the time. This is honestly one of the most disappointing parts of the production overall and one of the other big reasons why this show ends up falling short of what it could be.

With all of that being said, I still don’t feel particularly unsatisfied or depressed with Megalo Box. I was delayed a bit in watching the last few episodes, but when I did I didn’t feel any regret for having picked up the series and given it a go. There are definitely much worse anime out there that you could waste your time on. It’s just that this could have been better, that’s all.

Each era of anime is marked by its own trends, its own conventions, its own shows that dominate the conversation and shape public perception of the medium among fans and non-fans alike. For the 2000's, Death Note was one of the biggest, and a good argument could be made that it WAS the biggest. It achieved a seemingly omnipresent level of saturation, you could not go to a forum on any given nerd hobby without people filled with avatars and signatures from the series, and its famous lines are parroted even now. Its anime adaptation was immensely popular and reached a level of pop cultural ... osmosis that was thorough enough that even people who don't care about anime obtained a passing familiarity with at least the eponymous concept. As of this writing, it is even getting a westernized adaptation on Netflix with Willem Dafoe of all people as Ryuuk.


Unfortunately, I can't really hold the series in an especially high regard for a number of reasons despite all the critical acclaim and praise that has been lavished upon it.

To get the good out of the way, it certainly has a pretty fascinating hook. The ability to easily kill anyone without leaving any proof, thoroughly avoiding any consequences, merely by writing their names in a notebook, is a pretty interesting and memorable concept. It has immense potential for all kinds of storytelling possibilities, such as the development and psychological effects that this would have on the person using the Death Note, the wider sociological repercussions of a mass series of killings that seem to be divine punishment, whether it's morally justifiable to kill criminals given that any justice system is heavily skewed in certain ways, etc.

Secondly, it has very good artwork. While Obata is not among my favorite manga artists, it would be disingenuous to not recognize his draftsmanship as arguably the strongest point of Death Note. It is not by any means easy to create polished and detailed art on a weekly basis for manga even with assistants, and yet Obata pulls it off with aplomb and a very strong aesthetic. My favorite part are probably his fantastical shinigami designs, which have a very "demon punk monster" vibe to them.

Finally, the actual focus of the plot, the cat and mouse games between Light and the investigators (whether they be L or someone else) are pretty entertaining to watch. I don't think I was ever BORED reading the series since there was almost always something going on, some zany scheme or gambit at play that kept things moving. This was by Ohba's own admission what he was writing the manga around, and I can understand that decision since Death Note must have pulled in a strong readership when it was running in Jump due to its suspense on a week to week basis.

But unfortunately, even with all those things going for it, it can't make up for what I consider Ohba's crippling flaw, which is generally that I think his characters are very lackluster for the most part.

Light CAN be a fun character to watch, but I ultimately feel that he is a detriment to the series because he isn't especially nuanced or interesting. Everything related to his "development" is handled in an extremely underwhelming manner. Any scruples that he has are quite quickly tossed aside in a manner that makes later developments to paint him as a good person prior to the Death Note as completely unconvincing. He is little more than a petulant, arrogant sociopath with a god complex who only becomes more and more unlikable and pathetic as the series goes on. He has very little in the way of humanizing traits or moments, which just renders him completely impossible to like or get behind. This may have been the point, but I don't feel that it made for a good character because you can still have a complex and nuanced villain who is still someone to hate, but who also has layers and where you understand why he became the person they did and perhaps connect with them on some level against your wishes. Light does not achieve any of that, so as it stands I just don't find him to be that great.

L is probably the best character in the series, a fun character to watch with enough bizarre quirks to make him feel more human than the other characters, even if it's an exaggerated animu way. I would honestly say that he is one of the series' biggest assets, every scene he is in is one where he has your attention. I don't think that I can hold him up as one of my favorite characters in anime and manga, but among the ones in the series, he stands supreme.

The thing about this though, is that it makes the conflict in place have a pretty clear right and wrong. I have heard a few times about the supposed moral ambiguity of the story and the idea that people debate on who to root for, but with all due respect I just find that to be malarky. Light is such a horrendous, sanctimonious individual that it is impossible to suggest that he is in the right with a straight face. His entire worldview and methodology to using the Death Note is fundamentally and horrendously flawed and likely led to many innocents being killed, he simply cannot be trusted with that kind of power. This is someone who killed a man entirely because he insulted his ego, that is his defining character moment at the very beginning of the series. He isn't even the kind of charismatic villain who you want to see triumph. The idea that anyone should root for him or want him to win is completely laughable.

I don't think most of the other characters really have that much going for them, honestly. Almost all of them are defined by very superficial characteristics that make it hard to really care about them in any meaningful way. IIt feels like Ohba only really cared about them as pawns on a chessboard to move his thriller plot along, without bothering to put some effort into humanizing them and making them compelling characters to be invested in.

There was one moment in the story where one character leaves the investigation due to anger at how he is being treated, and is greeted by his daughter who asks him what's going on, leading him to burst into tears and hug her. This was one of the few instances of warmth and actual humanity in the story where I actually cared somewhat about what was happening on an emotional level, but there was never any other time where that happened. Overall, Death Note is quite an impersonal and cold story as the characters aren't really people you connect with all that deeply.

Now, it is not necessarily true that you need super great and complex characters in order to have a worthwhile story. Some people may say that, but I don't think it's true, per se. If your story is more theme and idea-driven, then it is ok for the characters to be a bit more flat or to be more representative of ideas and philosophies, or be more timeless archetypes in order to make a point. The story need not be super emotional either, as long as it is interesting.

But for that, your ideas need to be actually interesting and you have to deal with them in a meaningful and insightful way.

Death Note never does that because it is entirely focused on its thriller elements. Ohba himself said that he wanted to leave moral judgments and sociological commentary for the audience to think about. I suppose I can understand that decision, but Death Note completely neglecting this area of the story feels like a bunch of squandered potential. All of the questions that I mentioned above regarding the premise's potential that could have been explored due to the premise are left as footnotes or passing mentions at best.

This means that Death Note only really works as a reasonably entertaining thriller; it cannot to be said to be a strong character-driven drama, nor is it a poignant thoughtpiece that presents interesting concepts and gives insightful answers.

What this basically means is that looking back on Death Note, I am just left feeling that the version of the story that I got from the premise was not at all the kind of story I would have preferred to get from it. I would have done a lot of things quite differently, such as significantly changing Light's character, focusing a lot more on societal effects of Kira, putting more character moments to add complexity to the cast and make you care about them, etc.

But I suppose in the end I can't really be that hard on it, since I was entertained reading it. It just isn't anything more than a 6 out of 10 for me as an experience.

Naoki Urasawa is frequently considered one of the greatest authors in modern manga. His plotting is incredibly tight and densely packed, his characters feel grounded and have complexities not afforded to most characters in manga and anime, and overall his stories since Monster have felt very adult in their themes and ideas without falling into the pitfalls common of seinen manga, who abuse the narrative freedom afforded to them by packing their stories with an excess of gore and sexual content to make their stories "edgy". For many anime and manga fans who want to show the best the medium has to offer, many will ... frequently point to his works.

So years back, after being blown away by Monster, when I found out he had actually penned this story, a retelling of an arc from Astro Boy, I was pretty damn excited to see what he had come up with. I was familiar with the franchise and some of Tezuka's other work, having watched several episodes of the 2003 Astro Boy anime and played the Omega Factor videogame years back, so there was an actual investment here that went beyond just reading another Urasawa story.

Needless to say, I was completely blown away by what I read.

Pluto is, at its core, a work of science fiction in the tradition of Ghost In the Shell and Blade Runner, i.e it is primarily concerned with the question of makes someone "human", and what point the line between a sufficiently advanced machine and a human actually is. Like Ghost in the Shell, the world that the story takes has had robots integrated into society for quite a while, so the story is not about them as an emerging force but rather what kind of society would exist where these beings who are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from humans, and how that grey area creates a lot of problems and interesting implications.

What makes Pluto not only work, but work very well, is two things.

The first is that it is actually reasonably intelligent. When it comes to a work like this, it can be hard to have new or interesting insights into what is essentially a very speculative future at best where many ideas have already been shown and articulated in a smart fashion in other works.

As with basically any story that deals with this "what makes a human?" theme there is some ground that is retread, but Pluto has some pretty great compelling ideas of its own to offer. It has an understanding of what it is like to live as a minority and a second-class citizen, and shows how simply because that group might be protected by the laws doesn't automatically mean everyone will accept them, because hatred simply doesn't work that way. Even when hatred is not present, contempt and indifference can be just as harmful, with many of the human characters displaying a casual disregard for any robots' well-being despite them having rights and being ostensibly their own people.

Hatred is in fact one of the central themes of the story, and it shows itself again and again as a force that cannot create anything positive or meaningful. Some people in the story hate robots so thoroughly and hold them in such contempt that they have formed explicit hate groups dedicated to maintaining human supremacy (in one of the more on-the-nose parallels they are basically the KKK for robots). But ultimately, hatred is one of the main things that define humanity and we can't simply not feel it; the point is made that any succifiently advanced robot will someday have to come to terms with experiencing it. That is one of the story's more laudable accomplishments, portraying crimes of passion, something we condemn in our regular society, as one of the spiritual rites of passage that makes a robot truly enlightened.

Secondly, Pluto has amazing narrative economy and is able to provide compelling characterization and development for characters who honestly aren't around for all that long. The mystery of the story and the way it unfolds is extremely captivating, making for a great page turner as things become more and more tangled in past political and social events. Urasawa employs a very "Steven Spielberg"-esque sentimentality to the writing, where it could have very easily felt mawkish and banal if not the compelling sincerity with which it is delivered and the general intelligence and imagination that went into the setting and ideas of the story. When the characters suffer, you will really feel for them, these Pinocchios who play at being human so well that you can't help but cry with them. The manga's cast is immensely likable and interesting, with the standout being Gesicht who is probably one of the best main characters of manga to date. They embody by far one of the most interesting aspects of the work, which is the dichotomy that comes from humans who have shut themselves away emotionally and become much more machine-like as time goes on, versus the advanced robots whose kindness, sincerity and empathy make for a fascinating contrast.

While the manga ends up losing some steam and its ending comes across as a bit anticlimactic, it ties up pretty much all its loose ends and is generally an engrossing read. While it can be easily argued that it is overly optimistic and sentimental, it has enough substance to be able to get away with most of it, similar to a smart person whose opinions you disagree with. The story can be a bit on-the-nose sometimes (it actualy references Pinocchio itself once, which I found unnecessary), but its heart is in the right place.

A final note is whether familiarity with Astro Boy or Tezuka's other work is necessary, since the series does have shout-outs and references to other works in his canon.

I think that the story is strong and does enough of a good job of explaining itself to stand on its own, but I do think that yes, you will get more out of it if you are familiar with Astro Boy in some way, whether it be the manga or one of the anime adaptations. Seeing Urasawa's take on these characters is one of the main pleasures of the series, for sure, and not one you'll be able to appreciate if you weren't already introduced to them beforehand.

Hunter x Hunter is a series that will you probably see a lot of acclaim for on the internet, and it has a tendency to be warmly received by a lot of people unsatisfied with the writing in most shounen manga. When it comes to battle shounen that reach the highest of highs and transcend being adolescent power fantasies with mediocre writing and simplistic morals, the two series you will see frequently being praised are HunterxHunter and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. While I get the impression that it's become more common for people to be critical of HunterxHunter due to a variety of reasons (it ... happens to anything that becomes super popular, people tend to scrutinize it harder since they come in with bigger expectations), I feel that HxH does so much good that it largely deserves its acclaim.

A lot of people unaware of HxH's reputation might mistake the series for a saccharine and light-hearted adventure romp, and they might have good reason to suspect that, given the presence of its main character who appears to be just another idiot shounen hero, not one but two "mysterious cool guy characters with a secret past", and another big abrasive dumb guy with an enormously kind heart. The boy wants to find his long-lost father and follow in his footsteps by becoming a "Hunter", which is basically a catch-all professional who can perform a wide variety of tasks, but who are usually superpowered in some way. The beginning of the story follows Gon and his band's quest to qualify as Hunters, each with their own personal reasons for doing so. The series' OP is very cheerful, and the soundtrack is a whole is bright and optimistic.

However, upon watching the series it becomes more and more obvious that the series' creator, Yoshihiro Togashi, was not interested in producing a run-of-the-mill battle shounen.

To begin with, the series isn't just about fighting. Even in just the first arc it's emphasized that Hunters do a lot more than just fight, and the main characters participate in a lot of different competitions that seemingly have nothing to do with one another, like a race, a cooking contest, survival in a jungle, etc. When there IS combat, it's governed by a set of specific rules and conditions pertaining to the intricate "Nen" system, which adds a lot of variety in terms of the powers the characters have. In that sense, it's comparable to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure where the characters can have very off-the-wall or seemingly useless abilities that can prove horrifyingly useful.

Other than that, and what I would consider HunterxHunter's biggest strength, is its unpredictability. It not only fails to conform to a lot of expectations in battle shounen, but seems to delight in openly defying or criticizing them. And in doing so, it is nearly always compelling. Its main characters are not the absolute strongest out there and are rarely the central players of any conflict they find themselves in, and what parts they do play often mean they can't brute force their way against the main antagonist of the arc and might not even be able to beat them at all, meaning they have to accomplish their goals through other means.

Its characters are relatively unique compared to other shounen series. Many shounen series have enormous casts of characters who are superficially interesting or likable but just as many who feel superfluous and irrelevant. Hunter x Hunter also has a large cast but not only does it feel smaller, the majority of the supporting cast has SOMETHING that makes them unique or interesting. In fact, it could be said that Hunter x Hunter later on almost feels like an ensemble piece. As Gon and Killua are often not at the center of conflicts and instead have their own goals and parts to play in the broader narrative, a lot of time is spent on other characters, who sometimes get just as much or even more development than the main characters, whose own development is anything but underwhelming.

In particular, I have to praise the nuanced characterization of Killua, my personal favorite character, who can go from adorable to an absolutely horrifying murderer at the drop of a hat. His relationship with Gon, and both their individual character arcs, forms a strong emotional backbone for the narrative. In addition I have to confess that the development of the villains, particularly the soldier ants in the Chimera Ant arc, was a nice surprise and especially compelling. I won’t say much about it, but some of these characters will likely end up surprising you.

Characters can not only die, but do so frequently, and if they don't die, their actions and mistakes often have long-lasting consequences and affect their development in a significant way. This means that there is a significant tension present in the story, because even if you aren't under the impression that Gon and Killua may actually die, they may NOT achieve their goals or have to live with some sort of horrible failure.

Which is another thing worth mentioning about this series; not only does it push the envelope in terms of the tropes and story structure it uses, the content in the series is quite shocking in how non-shounen it gets. The series had a number of subversive elements to begin with, like the character Hisoka being a gay pedophile, but the series gets darker and darker as you find out more about the world culminating in the famous Chimera Ant arc which is honestly the darkest, most horrifying and depressing story I have ever seen in a shounen manga. It honest to god does not feel like something that should have been allowed in a shounen magazine, although I'm glad that the author was given license to go that far since it easily works to the arc's benefit.

The arc seems to have a bit of a controversial reception among the fanbase, likely due to the deteriorating art quality during serialization and several hiatuses, but many, like myself, consider its dark nature a major plus and the arc as a whole to be brilliant even if it is too long for its own good.

The world and scope of the story is completely staggering. The more is revealed about the world the more it seems like we don't know anything at all. It also seems like a haphazard collection of various ideas the author had and wanted to discuss, but it doesn't feel incoherent or distracting, and only makes the world richer. Every single arc of the story has a completely different focus and genre from the previous, from a battle exam arc, a psychological crime thriller, a deadly game, and even unspeakable horror. This is also another significant strength of the show because it offers a lot of variety and it feels like it could potentially deal with any type of story and genre while making it interesting to watch.

And finally, it would be remiss for me not to devote some attention to the exceptional quality of this adaptation of the story in particular. Studio Madhouse deserves some serious props, as this is by far one of the most consistent and well-produced shounen anime adaptations I have ever seen. Not only does it have no "filler" (anime original content), it does not abuse flashbacks to the last episodes like certain other anime (cough Naruto cough) to pad out the episode because they don't want to run out of manga content to adapt. There is a lot of ACTUAL animation in the show with the overall visual quality and polish being very well above average, and when it comes to the really important fights and emotional moments you can be sure that this series will deliver in spades.

The series also possesses a highly memorable soundtrack composed by Yoshihisa Hirano, who also worked on Death Note (you might find some of his work here reminiscent of that, especially Chrollo's theme). While it starts off decent, in the more dark and dramatic arcs like Yorkshin and Chimera Ant the compositions become amazing and easily one of the highlights of the show. While I don't care for the opening too much, the ED's are better. In particular, the incredibly hype "HUNTING FOR YOUR DREAM" by Galneyrus is widely agreed to be central in many people's enjoyment of the Yorkshin arc.

With all that is so good about the series, I feel much of the criticism that is thrown at it is due to the aforementioned subversive elements in the series. While Togashi's ambitions in deconstructing the elements of most battle shounen are frequently praised and celebrated, it also tends to have the effect of making the endings of arcs in the series feel a bit anti-climactic to some, especially since a lot of them don't end in ways you would expect. This can leave you a bit miffed and unsatisfied, especially given Togashi’s habit of leaving small plot points unresolved from one arc to the other, presumably to be followed up on MUCH later…which is not helped by his habit of taking extremely long breaks, making following the series very difficult for many. In particular, I can think of one admittedly pretty significant development in the Chimera Ant arc that felt like it was written for an entirely different series, but to go into too much detail would involve spoilers.

Regardless, I feel that HxH brings so much to the table compared to other shounen manga that it’s one of those works you should watch, even if it’s just to have an opinion on it. If nothing else, it is certainly interesting and unique, which is a lot more than many manga and anime can say. It is one of the most consistently enjoyable shounen I have ever read, and while there arcs that are better or more fun than others, and while I have criticisms I could make about various things, in the end the show was so damn enjoyable from start to finish they don’t seem that important.

The first Digimon Tri movie was overall interesting and was a promising beginning for this series of movies with a more introspective, subdued and adult tone, but had a few issues that kept it from being truly great, mainly the sloppy construction of the Taichi dilemma and the conflict between him and Matt (not to mention the stupid cell phone flashback being repeated ad nauseaum).

This second movie has a problem which the first didn't, in that it starts off much more slowly. The first movie had the advantage of novelty and being an introduction to the older kids and their day-to-day lives, meaning it was ... automatically interesting. The build-up to them meeting their Digimon was very well done and it had a great payoff.

However, we don't have that in this movie because obviously everything's already been introduced. The first 20 or so minutes are mostly slice-of-life shenanigans with the kids and Digimon; it almost feels like a filler episode in some ways, there are some funny bits and small glimmers of characterization present but it isn't THAT engaging.

Fortunately, the film eventually gets on track, by starting to focus on the interpersonal drama and conflicts, with the stars this time being Jou and Mimi. Their drama is much more cleanly written and constructed than the stuff with Taichi in the first movie, which made sense on some level but was a bit silly when you thought about it and focused on the wrong things. This means that it is possible to be truly invested in it without being distracted by glaring flaws.

I will also say that the comedy and character interactions was spot-on for the most part. A few things like Leomon's disguise had me laughing out loud. I will also say that despite what feels a bit like shilling, this movie made me alright with Mei and Meicoomon who I was a bit iffy on in the first movie. I don't love them or anything, but Mei in particular grew on me a bit after this film, so I'm ok with her now.

Without spoiling much, the final fight scene is pretty nostalgic and finally provides fans with what they've been wanting for years (you can guess from the poster what happens). It ends with a dark cliffhanger that makes me eager to see what other things they have planned.

As far as the film's production/technical aspects go, I don't have much to say. The animation didn't really impress me at all, but I certainly didn't find it bad. I actually noticed that they used a BGM from the first two series in the final fight scene, which was a small detail that I appreciated. I will say that the final "plot twist" scene has a problem in that it was easy to see coming, but was executed and staged reasonably well which means I'm alright with it.

Overall, while not having the same novelty as the first movie and having a slow beginning, I would have to say that in some ways this film is better-constructed. I'm not sure which one is better atm, but I do feel comfortable saying it's a worthwhile follow-up.

Kokou no Hito is probably one of the most interesting manga I've read in a long time, in the sense that it completely defies any expectations you might have upon reading it for the first few volumes.

In the beginning, it seems like a decent but fairly standard shounen sports story; the main character is a lethargic loner who discovers an aptitude and passion for mountain climbing, he joins the school club, he has a rival, there's a cute sports club manager who seems interested in him, etc. There's nothing necessarily WRONG with it, and it's good enough to get you invested, but if that was ... all there was to Kokou no Hito, it'd be too milquetoast a story to get the critical acclaim it's received from its small cult following.

As it turns out, the manga goes completely off the rails around the end of volume 3/beginning of volume 4 and becomes a completely different type of story altogether. So far as I understand, this is essentially because Kokou no Hito was at first a collaboration, with Yoshiro Nabeda as writer and Shinichi Sakamoto as artist. Around that point of the story, Nabeda left the manga and Sakamoto had to finish the whole story by himself.

You might expect that the manga would crash and burn under these circumstances, since we usually expect that in these kinds of partnerships, the other party is out of his depth and will produce a directionless and frankly weak story. However, in this case, it's very clear that not only did Sakamoto rise up to the task beautifully, his ideas on where to take the story were far superior to anything Nabeda had written or could probably come up with.

Under his pen, Kokou no Hito came into its own and became much more like what you would expect a good seinen manga to be; the story became a far more lifelike and psychological character drama, showing the difficulties of Buntarou's choices and his struggle to become a "solo climber" in life as he is constantly beckoned by the outside world to come back again and again. This is a change that comes in VERY abruptly and feels about as unplanned as it probably was, but in a way, it ends up working out in the story's favor; it is ultimately a tale about life, and life is very unpredictable. A life lived in optimism and innocence and can change very abruptly. In fact, you could say that the manga grew up with its main character, which just makes the story more powerful.

Despite speaking very little, the main character has a surprising amount of charisma that makes you thoroughly invested in what's eventually going to become of him. Unlike a lot of manga where the main character is merely a bland template for the audience to project themselves onto, Mori is a fully realized character who carries the emotional weight of the manga on his shoulders; seeing him grow up, experience life, be tempted, fail, and change, is the heart of the manga.

The rest of the manga's cast isn't necessarily as compelling as Mori, but they pull their weight. The new characters created by Sakamoto are interesting, have their own goals and complexities, and bounce off Buntarou wonderfully, despite how little he speaks. The characters from the first few volumes who do show up again in the story feel so much more like real people than just the simple shounen archetypes they were beforehand, and Sakamoto takes them in completely unexpected directions that feel very genuine.

Of course, it must be mentioned how the art contributes a lot to all of this. In the beginning, the art showed promise, but was pretty rough in a lot of areas; some of the characters looked like they had parts of their skulls missing, the necks were overly long, and the proportions in general were just wonky and inconsistent. Around the same time as Sakamoto took over the manga, the art began to improve at a rapid pace; not only did the characters' designs become more consistent, the art became much more polished, realistic, detailed, and ambitious. It is honestly one of the most beautifully illustrated and aesthetically pleasing manga I've ever read, and it is amazing to see Sakamoto reach the heights of his artistic potential.

It also plays a very large role in Kokou no Hito's storyline, because of Sakamoto's decision to use visual metaphors to depict the characters' psychology and state of mind. Instead of merely telling us that Mori is conflicted, he chooses to draw Mori splitting in two and running in opposite directions, for example. All of these scenes are meticulously drawn and show a large amount of technical skill, which gives Kokou no Hito a distinct identity, increases the reader's engagement, and shows the incredibly strong artistic vision that the author obviously had.

As strong as Kokou no Hito is in many areas, I am remiss to give it a perfect score for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the way the narrative is eventually structured is interesting, but i'm not sure that it was the best way to go about it. Essentially the story becomes non-linear, in that it frequently skips ahead, shows us a little bit of the present, and then goes back again to fill in the blanks. It can leave one a little confused and wondering what exactly is going on when it first starts happening, but readers who are paying attention should be able to figure out what happens when and get the general gist of the story alright.

The more pressing issue is that towards the very end of the manga it feels like there's a bit too much skipped over; there's a specific period of the main character's life that really feels like it should have gotten a bit more time and attention than it did, since the changes that the main character goes through because of it are very big. while i still found the manga very compelling as this was happening, I couldn't help but feel that a bit more time to flesh out this particular period would have gone a long way towards making the manga even better.

Regardless, even with those problems, Kokou no Hito remains one of the most memorable and compelling manga I have ever read. Starting with volume 4 the manga has such an amazing vision, gripping character development, and gorgeous artwork that it's impossible not to be captivated. It is not a work that everyone will enjoy; it doesn't really pull any punches in its depiction of life, as life isn't always a basket of roses. It is in many ways, pretty depressing, and a dense story at that which requires more of a reader's attention than the average manga. But if you a want more challenging, experimental and adult coming-of-age story, you won't be disappointed. I would highly recommend reading it, even if you don't like sports manga, because this isn't your bargain-bin sports manga, it's a work that stands out and became something excellent.

It struck while reading Himizu that it is in many ways the archetypal seinen manga, at least as far as public perception is concerned.

The shounen demographic at large focuses on power fantasies and more simplistic, idealized characters and values and in the case of battle shounen, more of a focus on action (shounen jump's motto is, after all, "friendship, effort, and victory"). The seinen demographic, however, tends to have a far more cynical outlook on life, unafraid to show the raw ugliness of human beings and a higher focus on the psychology and flaws of the characters, and tends to be a bit TOO liberal ... with its narrative freedom, including a lot of gore and sexual content (though of course many of them still remain great stories).

All of this is consistent with Himizu's artistic goals; it is a story about ugly, weak people. The main character despises others with ambitions and dreams and hides this under speech about wanting normalcy. His closest friend is a bucktoothed spineless weasel who skips class and is a pickpocket. One of their initial acquaintances is a fat slob who wants to be a mangaka because of some meaningless dream he had the other night. The main character's love interest is a plain-looking, bizarre girl. About the only well-adjusted and respectable character you see is the mangaka, who actually gets published and has his ambitions realized.

This is all fine, as it's been repeatedly shown that a character's moral fiber has nothing to do with how good of a character they are, and in fact many times horrible people will be far compelling than a straightforward good guy.

The main issue with Himizu is that...it isn't horrible, but doesn't EXCEL in anything it really does, barring one or two minor things. It tries to have the psychological storyline with pathetic, weak characters common to seinen manga, but while most of them aren't really BAD, they aren't really that great either. Besides being weak and terrible most of them don't have that much in the way of psychological complexity, excluding the main character who is by far the best character in the manga. Sometimes having simple characters can be fine, but here the characters, while "realistic" to a certain point, just don't have as much going for them as I would like.

The storyline also spends a lot of time focusing on these other characters, and while these subplots are never really BORING, they also distract from the main conflict that the MC is going through since the characters in them just aren't as interesting. The storyline left me...confused at what it was trying to achieve exactly?

The manga's art isn't bad. There are a few moments of genuine greatness, like the representation of the "demon" that haunts the MC's mind, which is very effective and disturbing, but otherwise, it's mostly just ok.

Overall, besides the confused story structure, there isn't much WRONG with Himizu, per se, but it just feels very average in its execution of the typical elements of seinen manga. I have seen many others which have done what Himizu is trying to do in a much more interesting and frankly better way, like Homunculus or Ressentiment. I don't regret reading it by any means, but it is a story that I would have probably liked much more like 5 years ago when I hadn't read as much manga as I have now.

Steel Ball Run is the (at the moment this review is being published) last completed arc of the long running Jojo's Bizarre Adventure saga, a franchise that has lasted more than 2 decades. While each part of the series has always had its own contributions and spin on the formula, Steel Ball Run in particular stands out from the crowd for one big reason.

Sometime after concluding part 6 (stone ocean), Hirohiko Araki decided that he was through with the limitations of the weekly serialization format and the shounen demographic, of which he had worked in for several years. He figured that with a series that ... had gone on as long as Jojo, there was no point in continuing it if the series did not grow up with its audience and become a more ambitious and challenging manga. So to that end, while Steel Ball Run was initially serialized in Shounen Jump for some time, it was eventually moved to its sister magazine Ultra Jump, and announced as part 7 of the Jojo saga.

This turned out to be for the best, because Part 7 is almost certainly the best Jojo part to be completed at this time, and honestly the crowning achievement of Araki as a mangaka.

Inspired by ambitious western storylines, both from movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and serialized tv stuff like 24 and Lost, Araki created a sprawling epic that is by far the longest Jojo part at 24 volumes. The story functions as a wildly different retelling of part 1 (phantom blood) in a new universe, and when i say wildly different i mean that. there are no vampires, no ripple, the characters equivalents in the story are completely different and some characters don't exactly function as equivalents at all, the premise of the plot is not the same whatsoever, etc. It is more accurate to say that part 7 borrows various elements from the first four parts and repackages them in a completely new way, while still keeping a number of nods and shout-outs to the old Jojo universe.

Perhaps the best example of the differences between the two is between Jonathan, the main character of part 1, and his equivalent in SBR, Johnny. Jonathan was a enormous hulk of a man, a quintessential british gentleman who was the archetypal hero, pure, selfless, courageous, brave, and noble. Johnny Joestar is a young, scrawny, cynical, ruthless, and cunning paraplegic mostly out for himself. Indeed, while the Jojo's of each part almost always had some sort of flaw, they were all fundamentally heroic and selfless. Johnny, on the other hand, is the most flawed and morally ambiguous of them all, but this only serves to make him more interesting. It is very easy to say that he is the most psychologically complex and compelling main character in the series yet.

This more nuanced style of characterization extends to the rest of the cast as well, with Gyro Zepelli, Johnny's co-star, being immensely charismatic but also highly fleshed out and interesting, being much more than what his initial showy persona would have you believe. Other characters like Diego Brando, the newly reimagined and much more sympathetic counterpart to Dio, Hot Pants, the mysterious racer with a horrible secret, Lucy Steel, a young girl way out of her depth who shows extreme courage in dire situations, and Funny Valentine, the most well-intentioned Jojo villain and certainly one of its memorable and charismatic.

No longer shackled with the restraints of the shounen demographic, the story deals with adult subject matter much more openly and maturely than the previous parts of the series (keeping in mind that Stone Ocean is probably one of the most adult shounen stories ever), such as domestic abuse, sexual relations (both consensual and otherwise), homosexuality, etc. However Araki uses this newfound freedom carefully and responsibly for the most part, never indulging in the excesses that a lot of seinen manga, even ones that are overall pretty good, seem a bit too willing to dive into. The series still feels like Jojo with all its wonderful peculiarities, but simply more dense, adult, and without limits as to what subject matter can or cannot be depicted.

As good as a manga as it is however, there are a few things keeping it from being perfect.

Firstly, it is important to talk about Araki's art, which had been going through a process of continuous evolution that seemed to reach its zenith in SBR. Now with much more time to work on the pages, even with the increased page count, the art in SBR is far more lavish, detailed, and realistic than in previous parts, with some incredible craftsmanship in some pages. However, unlike some artists such as Makoto Yukimura and Takehiko Inoue who have unquestionably only gotten better with time, Araki's artistic evolution has come with its ups and downs. While the overall drawing and visual storytelling have overall improved quite a lot, the variation in character faces is much worse now, with many characters looking very similar to one another. This is honestly disappointing as Jojo was always a manga that had a lot of diversity in the character designs, and now not only do a lot of the characters look quite similar, their faces aren't even as expressive as they were before. This is an area Araki will probably improve in with time, but as good as the art in SBR is overall, it unfortunately is not an improvement in all areas.

As i've already said, SBR is by far the longest Jojo part. While this is in large part because of the story's legitimate length and complexity, and mostly the result of a more dense and meticulous storytelling approach, the manga does drag a little bit in a few places. this is mostly evident in the final stretch of the manga, with the last confrontations being extremely decompressed and taking quite a long time to end. they are still fun to read but honestly could have been shorter than they were.

Overall however, even with these caveats and other nitpicks and flaws I could point out (such as the uncomfortable sexualization of Lucy Steel in promotional art and the story itself, which wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't only 14 years old), SBR still stands as the best Jojo part, and a display of how much Araki has grown as a storyteller and artist throughout the years. It is a complete success as an evolution of JJBA, keeping most things that were good about the previous parts but with much more sophisticated storytelling and mature storytelling sensibilities. Of course, not everyone is going to enjoy this new type of Jojo, but if you are a fan of the series you should at least give it a read.

Bleach is a series that is in a very awkward position in the manga community. It used to hold a large amount of prestige and popularity as one of the pillars of shounen manga, along with Naruto and One Piece. Naruto has since ended and One Piece is still going strong, with Bleach now finished as well. While sales of it in its later years were still quite good for a manga in general, it was a far cry from its original sales and it routinely tanked in the ratings in Shounen Jump until its conclusion.

The premise of Bleach is quite similar to Yu ... Yu Hakusho, to the point where I've heard the pitch for it was rejected by WSJ initially for that exact reason, and kubo had retool to it to make it more original. A kid who is unusually spiritually aware gets thrust into a whirlwind series of events thanks to a mess-up by a shinigami, a spirit who helps govern affairs in the afterlife. The series starts off as an episodic monster-of-the-week-esque affair, where Ichigo and Rukia solve various problems. particularly the extermination of Hollows, creatures created from the souls of humans who are consumed by anguish. Eventually the series begins having a more traditional battle shounen structure with defined arcs, beginning with Soul Society.

Soul Society is widely considered the high point of the series; it upped the stakes, introduced us to the larger Bleach mythology, and presented a decent narrative for the main character.

Up until this point, I would say that Bleach was a decent but not great series. It wasn't really anything more than a standard battle shounen, but this wasn't really a problem because the overall writing was competent; the manga knew that in order for the action to have weight you had to have a solid emotional backbone, so it gave us enough information and focus on the characters to make us invested in the manga. It wasn't breaking any new ground with shounen storytelling but was good at doing what it was trying to do, and had at least a couple of interesting things going on like a main character who wasn't a copy of Goku from Dragon Ball, and a mexican-american supporting character.

This was also helped by the fact that Kubo, whatever other problems he may have, is legitimately a talented illustrator, who can come up with numerous unique designs for characters on a weekly basis and keep them consistent, which is an impressive feat in and of itself. His art also demonstrably changed and improved throughout the series, going from a rough style where most people were square-jawed to a graceful and more delicate style with some cool brushwork in the later chapters. Reportedly Kubo actually doesn't use reference much, if at all, so the fact that he can rotate all these different characters in his head and just draw them is a sign of strong draftsmanship on his part.

However, upon peaking with soul society, Bleach has only really gone downhill. The next arc started off at relatively the same level of quality, but gradually devolved into a horrific slog that took YEARS to resolve and failed to give a satisfying payoff, to the point a lot of people stopped caring. It was at that point that Bleach took its nosedive in popularity and quit being a super popular manga.

The main issue with Bleach overall, and something that actually began in Soul Society, is that the cast of the series is horrendously bloated. It is common for shounen series to have excessively large casts, but I think Bleach is probably the worst manga I've read in the number of superfluous characters who are completely forgettable and have no good reason to exist. Tite Kubo has admitted that when he runs into writer's block he usually solves it by creating like a dozen new characters, and it shows. Instead of working with the cast he already has and giving a few select ones get the lion's share of development and screentime over several years, Kubo just creates more and more of them and just shuffles them around giving focus to everyone equally.

This creates two problems. Firstly, a lot of the characters end up being very shallow because Kubo can't afford to give that much depth and focus to all of them. Some characters start off important and interesting, like Chad and Kon, but ultimately are sidelined because Kubo seemingly doesn't know what to do with them. Some of the characters you even forget exist really, like Ichigo's school friends who barely appear in the series anymore.

Secondly, it creates extremely bad pacing often because the manga devotes a number of chapters to fights between minor characters which we know don't matter in the grand scheme of things and which we know very little about to begin with, and which thusly we have no investment in.

As if this wasn't enough there is just some plain bad writing in terms of how some of the character arcs are resolved and how certain characters end up defeating opponents. Orihime's character arc seems to be building up to something important in the Arrancar arc but eventually has no meaningful payoff, and the last time she gets any real focus in it it just ends up being a horrible note to leave her on that makes the reader feel as if she's regressed in her development. Ichigo's fight against Ulquiorra feels like a complete copout that only receives a somewhat adequate explanation in a completely different arc, which still does nothing to dampen how much of an anti-climactic asspull it really felt like. Elite enemies that have been built up for hundreds of chapters are defeated by bit players and other characters besides the people who were supposed to be the main characters (and unlike HunterxHunter where this happened and felt subversive and interesting, here it was boring and unsatisfying).

The Fullbringer and Thousand Year Blood War Arcs are in my opinion actually an improvement compared to the Arrancar arc in multiple ways, the former because it brought back the focus to the people who were supposed to be main characters, and the latter for tying the series together somewhat cohesively and answering a lot of hanging questions that have been around for years.

However, for the small amount of good it did, it has culminated in what is by all accounts a pretty lackluster finale that feels like it was meant to close off the series in a hurry because god knows why it lasted this long. To say that it was anticlimactic and unsatisfying would be a big understatement. I hear this is because Kubo was pressured to end the series by Jump management. I don't know if this is true or not, but if it is, it certainly explains a lot. It's a reflection of one of Bleach's worst problems, editorial decisions that led to extremely lackluster storytelling and a bunch of unsatisfied fans.

Bleach was actually the first manga I ever read online. I was very young and impressionable, and at the time considered it amazing and gripping. However I eventually stopped reading it due to laziness, and by the time I would have liked to pick it back up, my tastes and preferences had changed a lot as I had grown up and been exposed to more media, and most people seemed to agree that it had jumped the shark, so I was content to just leave it unfinished.

Upon getting caught up with it on a whim, and now finishing it, I would say that the manga is honestly probably not worth picking up for new readers, the main reason I continue to read it myself is mostly out of curiosity. It started off on a relatively high note, and then just drifted into mediocrity with a really terrible ending. There are much better manga even within its own genre, and when compared to some of the really impressive output in the manga industry, even Bleach at its peak was just ok.

I do not usually read shoujo manga; I tend to assume that they're probably not my cup of tea. I do read josei on occasion, but i just can't really imagine most manga meant for young girls would appeal to me. Taiyou no Ie has taught me that these kinds of stories can still be reasonably compelling in their own right.

Taiyou no Ie is a story fundamentally about people moving forward and finding where they belong. It is especially noticeable since this is what Mao's entire personal journey is about, but it is also quite prominent in pretty much every character in the story, ... from Sugimoto dealing with her crush on Hiro, Daiki returning home and dealing with his conflicting feelings towards Mao, Hiro trying to get his family back together so he won't be lonely anymore, etc.

Speaking of which, TnI's characters, while manga-esque in most typical ways, actually do feel reasonably human and well-crafted and have compelling backstories and motivations. Even Mao's father, who looks like the biggest asshole in the series, eventually turned out to be one of my favorite characters once we found out the circumstances behind Mao's mother leaving. Without giving too much away it completely changes your perspective on him and makes him a much more sympathetic character with understandable flaws. Bottom line being that there are no "villains" in this story, just people who may do things that aren't very kind to one another because they are weak or lonely. By the end of the story pretty much every character is in a different (and pretty much universally better) place than where they began, so in that sense it has pretty decent development for the cast.

Taiyou No Ie's plot works well because while the tone is usually pretty light and fluffy it has at least some content with teeth in it, notably the tragedy that splits the Nakamura household apart and the relationship between Mao's parents. This content is not presented in an excessively dark or gratuitous fashion, and is welcome because it makes the story feel more genuine and relatable. Even when it becomes a bit of a love polygon it never really becomes overly dark or dramatic, which I would consider a good thing since it was never that type of story to begin with.

The artwork in this series is pretty decent, having a delightful cutesy look common to shoujo manga that perfectly fits the story. it does suffer from some common comic book problems of certain characters overall looking too similar to each other, but it's generally pleasant to look at anyway and it isn't such a huge issue that will impede your enjoyment of the work itself.

I wish I had more to say about this manga in comparison to other reviews I've done but to be honest, Taiyou no Ie is honestly not that complex of a work. It had a simple goal of telling a good shoujo story with decent characters and accomplished that pretty comfortably. It is pretty much the ideal shoujo, delightfully sweet with just the tiniest bitter aftertaste. Consider giving this a read if you like shoujo stories, it was worth my time to check this out.