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Quite possibly one of the most unintentionally hilarious animes I've ever seen. Lookism follows the story of a young Park Hyung Seok, a fat and ugly nerd who gets bullied at high school in the most oddly cruel and pathetic ways. Eventually he can no longer take it and angerly explodes at his mom and asks to transfer schools to get away from his problems. She manages to buy him housing near a new high school so that he can start a new life. After moving new housing (and also being punched in the face in front of thousands of people on the internet on ... his first day), he magically gains the power to switch between a hot body and his normal self whenever he falls asleep. Park begins to start using his normal self to work part time jobs at night while sending his hot alternate self to school.

The concept is cool in theory and I'm actually a big fan of how it works. Park switching between tangible bodies that people can see is a way better idea than just magically turning hot at day and ugly at night. It creates good scenarios in the show where he has to sleep to get into the other body or save his other body in person. However, the concept in practice ends up being disappointing as all potential with this concept is wasted because it was given to quite possibly one of the most undeserving people to use it. Park has goldfish memory and constantly forgets which body he is in when he talks to people, which leads to really annoying and obvious plot points whenever he needs to interact with a character he knows in his other body. He also is just really spineless and shallow even after becoming good looking by doing things like hanging out with people who BULLIED him. Despite gaining these powers, Park squanders a lot of it by also barely doing anything to stop the bullying going on in his school. There are times where he is actually just complicit in it and just thinks eating lunch with the victim instead of being active in confronting the bully is somehow helping the victims. There's a moment where someone humiliates one of his friends on stage by asking him if they're even the same species because he's ugly and Park just nervously laughs and says nothing about it. Like how the fuck does he not just instantly say "hey man that's really fucked up" or something? His complacence with bullying makes no sense considering his past and how much his normal life sucks because he just constantly gets bullied by random high schoolers and pedestrians.

Speaking of bully behavior, nearly everyone in this show including random pedestrians are comically massive douches. I feel like the person who wrote this show has no actual idea what bullying is like. People just randomly call Deok-hwa and Park fat pigs and are insanely cruel for the smallest reasons, you see Deok-hwa get beatup on like 6 different occasions for just existing and it just feels so pathetic to watch over and over again. All the bullying in this show doesn't even build up to teach a moral or send a message, it's just nonstop assholery. The only good looking character who's genuinely nice to ugly people is Basco because he actually DOES something to confront bullies in this show and help the victims. WHICH IS DEPRESSING BECAUSE HE ISN'T EVEN THE FUCKING MC!!!

One thing I will say about Lookism is that it's so exaggerated in the bullying and victim behavior that it becomes very unintentionally hilarious. Half the time I catch myself saying "who would say something like that?" when a pedestrian just randomly chimes in about how ugly someone is. Deok-hwa telling Park that bullying makes him stronger and fills his head with lyrics just like his favorite hero Eminem, and then cutting to an actual poster of Eminem legit had me in tears. When Park and Deok-hwa start practicing and Park's voice just COMPLETELY changes I just could not believe my ears, the audio was mixed so horribly on that song it doesn't even sound like he's singing it outside. Watching them convert to 3D animation for the ending song was so out of place and awkward to watch.

As much shit as I could give Lookism for its fanfiction tier writing, at least it was entertaining. I did enjoy the soundtrack and some of the fights even if they were really stupid and don't explain why Park is an MMA god who can do basically everything in fighting and in life. Overall I don't regret watching it just because I think it's one of those "so dumb its enjoyable" kind of shows where you can yell at the characters for being fucking stupid. I do really like the intro though, but sadly Lookism isn't really my cup of tea.

The plot of Film Red is kinda held together with duct tape and glue, there’s some inconsistencies as well as the overarching plot of Elegia and Tot Musica not being as fleshed out or interesting as the movie pretends it is. The character cameos vary from questionable to completely random like Big Mom still being alive and kicking despite G5 Luffy, Kalifa showing up for nothing, and Saint Charlos (lol). The fanservice cameos weren’t as ham-fisted as One Piece: Stampede was, but it still often had me mind boggled or slightly confused. Almost to the point of nearly taking me out of the movie when ... I thought about these appearances for longer than a second. There was also a few too many boring plot twists in my opinion between the whole "Red-Haired pirates destroyed Elegia!" to then "Actually, Uta destroyed Elegia unknowingly!" to another "Actually Uta knew she destroyed Elegia the whole time and didn't care!" Yet, despite that, I still had a lot of fun though mostly thanks to the colorful and cheerful energy that pulls me right back in. The visuals and the very Vocaloid-esque concert performances during the movie which made me glad that I spent the extra for MPX sound on opening day. Ignoring my problems with the narrative, I do appreciate how much of a love letter this was to One Piece fans with all the subtle callbacks to memorable moments in the show like Luffy being in Roger's execution pose, Ben Beckman holding his gun on Kizaru, and Luffy having his hat ripped. I try my best to be objective in my viewing of movies and separate them from the series but it's pretty much impossible with this movie as there's not much there to chew on as a standalone movie (other than the songs, nothing but bangers from Ado in this movie). So although I had a great deal of fun with Film Red, I definitely don’t think this movie is worth viewing by itself though unless you’re already a big One Piece fan.

One of the arguably OG Gal mangas has ended, woe is me.

If you were looking to read a Gal manga but were kinda disappointed that most of them were still being serialized and haven't ended yet then look no further. Gal Gohan is a pretty nice all around ride about a Gyaru named Okazaki finding her place in a cooking club with her teacher Yabe. It's pretty simple and cute concept as far as romance comedy goes and makes for a pretty easy/pleasant reading experience if you end up invested into the dynamic between Okazaki and Yabe. There's a few outliers and criticisms I have ... like the ending feeling kinda rushed and the odd beauty contest chapter but in the end, I don't really feel like it detracted much at all from the experience of reading the manga. You pretty much get exactly what you're looking for when you read this manga (although it kinda gets progressively hornier as it goes on but maybe that was what you're looking for anyway). This was a satisfying read since this is the first time in awhile I've had a romance ending not make me audibly say "why" in a long time. Check this out if you need something to pass the time while you're quarantined away.

Shokugeki no Souma was that underdog that I wanted to see succeed real badly. I knew it wasn't the best that shounen had to offer nor was it super groundbreaking by any means, but it had a lot of spark and charisma from that first few volumes that made me really root for it.

It's a genuine surprise to see Shokugeki end so soon. The amount of set-up and world-building that Shokugeki was initially laying out in the first half of the manga seemed like it was supposed to stick around for a couple of years longer. However, now that it's concluded I can safely ... say that this was one of the goofiest and most self-destructive last half of a manga I've ever read. If you thought the initial beginning of Shokugeki was stupid then you have not seen a damn thing until the last half of this manga. People always joke about Kubo Tite and Akira Toriyama not having any idea where they're going when they write a story but this manga somehow blows all of that shit out of the water.

You get random elements of magic thrown in when a character can steal another chefs techniques by touching their knife, characters who's blessings somehow makes other characters around them lose their clothes when they acknowledge a dish, a character that uses fucking TNT and sledgehammers to bake cakes, clown and drag queen cooks, etc. The power escalation is actually mind blowingly hilarious and had me raise an eyebrow with every plot twist and new element introduced in the manga, chapter 293 is literally only one step down from being a looney tunes sketch. I haven't felt genuine tension in wondering if Souma could beat another character in a Shokugeki for a solid 100 or so chapters. Every villain after Azami is just a braindead one-dimensional moron that thinks every chef besides them sucks until they lose and say "b-but how.." The whole arrogant villain act really becomes tiring in this manga, it wasn't even good with Azami. I've never seen a manga destroy itself this hard in 40 chapters like this before. All the hype moments of character tension and old things that were teased like the foreign schools competing or Souma returning to the diner is just immediately forgotten. So many loose ends are just straight up ignored by the ending that I actually end up preferring Naruto and Bleach's shitty "everything is happy and good" endings. Every side character and major plot point just gets dicked for a cliffhanger that leaves everything up to the imagination. I'm hoping the epilogue chapters will redeem the story at least a little bit but I'm not even optimistic about that.

As much shit as I can give Shokugeki, at least I was never bored watching this shit storm unfold. It's like watching an intermission at some sports event where clowns start jumping on trampolines and hitting each other with toy hammers. It's really out of place and stupid but you can't stop watching it. This definitely isn't worth finishing if you've already dropped it at some point, but if you're still craving a good cooking manga then Dungeon Meshi is pretty nice. Sad to see this series send off like this but at least the mad train ride is over.

Hey y'all. MAL's biggest gal manga reviewing mouthbreather here.

You know what I like? A story premise with cute shit. You know what I hate? Going full-blown harem when you're running out of ideas and need something to cater and appeal to the broadest types of weebs possible.

This manga was always pretty tied with harem as the main character just suddenly attracts gals like moths to a flame when he starts to date the main girl by the name of Yame. Typical story of loser gets with very popular girl and wacky misadventures ensue as everyone tries to fuck him. I always understood why ... people disliked that aspect of the manga, but the strongest part of the story was never really the harem shit or the characters, it was the dynamic between Junichi and Yame. What begins as the main character just trying to lose his virginity actually becomes a pretty fulfilling relationship between both the characters even if the origin of why they dated had little substance beyond a dare. They have cute moments that remind me of the naivety that comes with having a first girlfriend. Not knowing when to engage, overreactive imaginations, misunderstandings, etc. The development between these two is great, and I'd love if more of the manga was cleverly written in different ways around their dynamic but it isn't. It's based around the entire posse, and I was fine with this for the most part albeit minorly annoyed, but lately the story is just starting to fall off the rails. The harem characters are like those shitty repetitive side-quests you have to complete before you actually get to the main one. Some of the harem characters are just fine in their own right like the cam girl and tan gyaru as they will sometimes normally progress Yame and Junichi's relationship forward through misunderstandings and manipulation, but others like fat tiddied loli and the shitty trap character are completely pointless and serve as nothing but brainless filler and lowest common denominator pandering. Even the loli has a chapter where she is depressed because NO ONE pays attention to her. All of this makes me think, if the best part of this manga is just the two main characters interacting, then why does a harem even exist? Never once do you ever feel like Junichi is even close to betraying Yame. All of it just starts to fall apart and slowly you stop seeing the background characters as characters but rather as just obnoxious and easy plot points. I really wish there was just more well-written side characters rather than just harem fodder that keeps being introduced like the trap or the student president. Maybe there's just something inherently dumb about having a harem in a manga where there's already an established relationship as the central point of your story.

I do enjoy this manga as it's one of the first gal manga I've gotten invested in, but the story dredging you along over and over until you get to Yame and Junichi starts to feel less and less worth it as it goes on. I'll still follow it and see where it goes from here.

Thought I'd drop this review in case anyone has thought about picking up this manga, but hasn't seen the recent shitstorm over the raw that just got released. But basically don't touch this manga unless you want to get invested for a short while just to get shit on in the most asinine way possible.

I think this manga had some nice potential in the oncoming gyaru genre storm. It was kinda cute, had an interesting spin with cleaning tips involved, and seemed like it was only supposed to get better from here. However for some reason the author went off the deep-end and thought ... "What's the fastest way to lose my fanbase while simultaneously getting closer to my series being axed? Bad chapter count and rape seem alright to me."

After chapter 8, the count turns into such a shitstorm that you'll probably be wondering how many chapters you've even progressed. It gets progressively worse and worse with each chapter as it starts to go into numbers like "8.91" and "8.93." I don't think that annoys me as much as how bad the chapters were. I didn't really mind the fanservice that much until it started getting more and more ridiculous as it went on. When you finally think "is the side-story over now?" you randomly get hit with one of the worst chapters of manga I've ever seen. This shit wouldn't even be decent quality if it was a doujinshi.

A side character you barely know that much about just randomly flashbacks into a full on rape scene where she is smacked across the head and put down by two delinquent students that start stripping her and licking her body. The chapter ends with her saying "someone please... make my body clean again!" with the MC sprinting to the class.

Yeah I'm gonna need some cleaning myself, for my fucking eyes that is. I think comparing it to doujinshi might be a bit of an insult cause I don't even think doujin writing is on the same tier as this. I don't mind scenes like this if they're done tastefully or at least add some kind of narrative to the story, but this was so far out of left field that I began to wonder if the author just had a stroke while writing this or if he wanted to pick up traction with controversy. I guess at the very least it killed my sides with how bad it was, but don't pick up this manga. If you've somehow read it to chapter 8 but haven't caught up, pretend like it ends there. I have no idea how this manga will ever recover from this if it magically does not get axed. This shit was a complete comedic and story trainwreck. Read some other gyaru manga instead.

Edit: Unsurprisingly this series has been axed now, so if you were hoping to somehow get amnesia and forget the rape scene so you could go back to enjoying a cute gal manga then you're outta luck. At least this all made for one goofy ass meme of a manga huh?

Another nice addition to the recent trend of Gal/Gyaru manga I've been seeing recently. But I think Sono Bisque Doll has the best potential out of all of them so far with its unique premise. It is rare to see a manga talk in-depth about something like cosplay or dolls as much as Sono Bisque does. The art style is very pretty too, reminds me of Shojo manga in a nice way. Only complaint I have so far is that Gojou is a bit too apologetic/dense like other romcom MCs. Yet I still think Goujou's unique hobby and skill set definitely does set him apart ... from other MCs though, so he doesn't really feel too much like another romantic character trope and more like his own person.

I'm excited to see more of this manga in the future. Will probably edit this review when it's finished

I think the question as to whether you love or hate One Piece has already been answered for most people, myself included. So in this review I don't really want to focus on One Piece as a whole, but rather the half of One Piece that I like to call "Toei Timeskip." Whether you love or hate One Piece, it's really hard to deny that its current state is a fucking travesty right now. Damn I'm pretty sure I'd even give pre-Toei timeskip an 8 if I could, but I can't because everything afterward goes down the drain. I was tolerating it for awhile, but ... they really went full Toei on the Dressrosa arc so my patience has run thin on this anime.

The most glaring issue to me is the pacing. Regardless of whether or not you care for the quality of the show, I'm sure you still want to at least watch some damn anime at the end of the day. Yet you have to go through roughly 5 minutes of the Toei logo, long ass theme song, and the narrator recapping the last episode. Then when you get to the actual show, it's just another 4 minutes of the same shit you saw last episode until it finally gets to the actual content in One Piece. And even then, the actual content might just be a flashback episode or a bunch of unnecessarily drawn out talking/running scenes. I can't tell if this was a ploy from Toei so they wouldn't catch up to the manga as fast or if it was just a way to fill up the 22 minute segment but either way it's infuriating as hell. I just want to watch some goddamn anime, not "One Piece: Recap Central."

Another issue is the animation. I have no idea how it got this way. I'm not gonna speculate on whether or not it's because of Toei's big work load on other anime or if they stopped caring, but either way it looks awful. There's so many reused stiff animations that look like super floaty, almost as if the characters all have a devil fruit that lets them fly. It's clear that Toei can do better as their opening themes and movies have good/great animation (second gear in the movies looks orgasmic), but for some reason we are stuck with this animation for now and it looks like it isn't getting any better. To top the animation off, the cheap sound effects make it even more unbelievable. So many sounds are reused that you'll notice it even if you aren't trying to listen for it. Most sounds have this weird static effect attached to it for some reason even if the attack does not call for it. It takes all the impact out of the attacks, the only thing that gives the attacks any impact at all is the VAs which arguably is the only thing carrying One Piece right now.

It's a shame that One Piece is in this state cause it's one of the Shounens I have the most passion about. In its current state it is just a solid 4. I'd recommend reading the manga if you care about seeing the story without any of the bullshit that Toei puts in between. One Piece is really awful right now and I hope it improves in the future.

This is one of those anime's that should just reside in the tumblr gif/screenshot territory because it is so devoid of substance that I'm surprised I even managed to sit through 22 minutes of every episode.

I don't think it takes much for me to laugh nor am I elitist about humor, and with that being said I still cannot find the joke in Umaru-chan. I think I could watch 22 minutes of my little cousins playing Fortnite and eating food and get the same amount of substance as I do from watching Umaru-chan. There is no development, no likable characters, and no good comedy. ... I'm just watching some lazy piece of shit play games and stuff her face and order her sibling around for 12 episodes with occasionally other characters thrown in.

The only emotion this anime was able to invoke from me was realizing how much I wanted to punt Umaru for being an annoying ass brat. 1/10 watch something else.

This anime's pretty damn stupid. I know that's the whole point, but that's not to say stupidity can't be enjoyable or funny. It can be, but there's a fine line between dumb fun and just plain dumb. Aho Girl is definitely the latter. This anime is the sitcom of comedy anime. I almost feel like there should be a laugh track played after everytime Yoshiko gets punched, flashes her panties, wants a banana, etc. The comedy in this show is really obsessed with telling the audience "this is the funny part, laugh please."

Even the "level-headed" character (Akutsu) is pretty stupid/annoying in his own right. ... Somehow I feel like he's more retarded than the main girl. He really doesn't offer much besides beating the ever living shit out of Yoshiko and then apologizing occasionally so we can pretend that there's actually some progression. This anime is pretty unfunny and mind numbing. You'll probably enjoy it if you're into minion-tier slap stick humor and need more seasonal anime crammed down your throat but this isn't for me.