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This story is 100% either love or hate it, there is no in between really. The following review may contain spoilers but the series is very difficult to review without such so I will try not to spoil too much but you have been warned.

The story starts out very solid but I wouldn't really give it a high score for its beginning, very fun and interesting to watch at the start but largely you feel it beginning to drag along as if feeling it becomes somewhat repetitive. Of course this changes drastically in the last part of the anime which is hands down a fantastic ... switch up to make the anime not a standard 6/10 anime.

The story itself is an incredible way to explain first contact, a lot of the science is obviously bogus as we can't expect authors to all be PhD's in physics. But it perfectly mixes semi-fantasy with semi-sci fi. As the beginning will show it is not a standard sci-fi more advanced civilization but a being closer to god than man. This is where the premise really does an excellent job of trying to world build the idea of what zaShunina really is, it starts out as an excellent poltics meets science meets magic story but quickly it becomes apparent that isn't the main premise and thank god for it cause it was truly getting stale.

The ending itself is a masterfully crafted thing, using all the foreshadowing in the world to truly bring about the idea and leaves so much open to interpretation allowing a story that you can barely wrap your head around feel much more satisfying, nothing is worse than a complicated ending but being told exactly how things ended, that being said I wouldn't mind an OVA explaining a little bit of what happened to cause the ending (you'll know what I mean when you get there.). The biggest issue I have with the end is Yukika who, although somewhat foreshadowed, seemed poorly implemented thought that could be because they had few episodes left to work with without making it obvious what the ending would be.

The characters really truly developed which is a lot more than can be said for a lot of series, you can feel the characters changing before your eyes each episode and opening up to let you peer inside and see what makes them tick, zaShunina above them all. Though Saraka's character was very stale and remained largely unchanged and somewhat boring, I didn't truly like her development as it seemed to have a huge focus and little results, though she was far from a bad character.

The music is great, a mixture of Haloesque music mixed with classical fantasy hymns. Played in the perfect tone at the right times.

The art is where it somewhat falls flat in my opinion, many praised the art and true it is far above what many CG series manage to do *cough* Berserk *cough* but that is like saying a man in a wheel chair is more mobile than a rotting corpse. The non-human CG is great and has incredible visuals and even the human CG is bearable but far from incredible, also the constant switching between classic drawn anime and CG was irritating and I would've much preferred only Kado be CG and perhaps the artifacts, everything else should have been drawn including zaShunina and his various powers. The fregonics CG being the only exception.

Overall I loved this series, no 2nd hand embarrassment from having to watch cringe worthy characters, no obscene and out of control drama, just a nice sit back and enjoy action and political series with a touch of human emotion drama. I highly recommend it to anyone who isn't a teenager not even a year out of high school who thinks they are a physics grad student already and wants to complain the direction of its 'science' any person that thinks the science was great to begin with is just an idiot that wanted to think that, the science started off pretty bad and ended the same way because it was never meant to be a true science based series, it leans more towards fantasy and tales of gods and princesses than it does sci fi.

To put it simply the series is mediocre, the story mostly suffers from the fact that it is trying to rush into the tough shit way too fast. Boruto should be fighting his way to Chunin where he would maybe meet a Jounin and get his ass kicked, yet he is fighting gods, literally. It didn't even attempt to stay grounded, the very first arc was fighting people as strong as Kaguya. Then the author gives us the insane premonition that straight up tells us way too much about the upcoming story and warns us far too early that something absolutely massive is coming on ... the scale of the world shinobi war... all within 10 chapters. The story is a far cry from the original Naruto series.

The art is obvious, it is people's main complaint and I agree, the guy didn't even remotely maintain anyone besides Naruto's look. The women all look like straight up low-quality generic Shoujo manga side characters, I will never forget when I was reading the manga how I genuinely did not know who the women I was looking at were until they told me it was Hinata and Sakura, they look awful. I like some of his ideas on looks, I actually like Gaara's new getup and I think his son looks great, though the execution is often abysmal. It feels like the guy just picks up a fashion magazine and picks at random with no consideration of character, story, or development. The guy's art is horrible is really all I have to say about it, it is by far the worst part of the series, I could get past the mediocre story just in the hopes that it will get better but the art just makes it physically painful. Obligatory: What the fuck is with Sarada's outfit in the new chapter? Shit looks awful.

Characters however he does well with in my opinion which makes me suspicious that he wasn't the primary mind behind them. I like the idea of Sarada and Boruto both aspiring to the other's father's position. I think their teammate is appropriately interesting but nothing absolutely insane. Sasuke's new attitude is great but stay somewhat true to his original personality and character. There are many more characters as well that were well done, but I would be here all day if I discussed each one. He does these well and I find most of them interesting to an extent.

The ending makes exactly 0 sense, the authors conveniently forgets past actions to cause spur of the moment 'speeches' that are destroyed by past events. Example being: Hecate talks about how she came to this world and learned about emotion and how she understood it finally when the MC saved her, but she literally offers to kill the MC's best friend because she was annoying. Just tons of plot holes. The ending is honestly the worst ending I have ever in my life seen bar none, legit I have read hentai with better endings, it is the worst thing you'll ever read.

If I had to rate it I would give it a 7/10 and that is being generous. The best thing about this anime is honestly its action plot. The romance is horrendous, the drama is okay but by the end you're so numb to it that even the ending leaves you like 'of course, why wouldn't it end that way'. Honestly there are only 2 parts in it that really made me super sad, Clau and Cal both of them and that is mostly because they left so much unanswered and super rushed. Like Clau had SO much shit left to explore in her character ... and it was incredibly odd how it ended, we still have no idea what she actually wanted nor whether she actually intended to betray those people. Cal basically was just batshit crazy and all of a sudden she has a revelation where she isn't crazy anymore?

The first half is actually really good in my opinion, it was a very satisfying watch and they didn't rush. But if I had to I would split the series into 3 different parts, 'Training', 'Working', and 'Running'. Training is really good and a bit of working is also good, but the rest of the series is really meh tbh. I wouldn't quite call it 'trash' but it definitely felt like they planned to have WAY more episodes and then had the budget cut.

All-in-all the series will definitely leave an unsatisfied taste in your mouth. The ending was horrible and didn't even really end, they added characters just to try desperately to increase the amount of connections you had to people who died. Like seriously, Mio added NOTHING to the series, the entire series would've been just fine without Mio's little background story as a yakuza princess. It is definitely a great series for the action but as far as the background story goes? Nah it is a trash backstory that leaves you thinking half the characters are retarded. It has a DBZ feel to it concerning the 'power' of characters that constantly fluctuates to fit with a retconned story line, and the 'drama'/'romance' is about as fulfilling as an overcooked piece of cheap chicken nugget.

Would recommend to anyone who just NEEDS something to watch, but all this series does is try to make you cry (I'm really easy to make cry and I didn't even shed a tear). But anyone that wants a satisfying story (they should've ended it in the battle against scythe) find something else I promise there is nothing here for you.

Should you watch it? Depends if you have nothing better to watch. Super duper overrated, huge plot holes with gaping issues in character development. People seem to love the show because it has an 'angel beats' tragedy feel to it. I would avoid this show if at all possible unless you're desperate for a terrible tragedy story that makes no sense by the end.

I have never truly hated a series in my life before I watched this one, I have gotten bored of series time and time again. But I feel like the reason I even finished this season was out of pure spite for wanting to be able to write a review for it.

Maken-Ki is cliche, to its very soul it screams standard at the top of its lungs as though desperately attempting to add something to separate itself every episode. "Lets have the Tsundere make its move aggressively and early", "Lets do a heart warming arc on the main hero and his dere harem member and ... then piss everyone off with abuse for no reason". Truly it is deserving of round the house 5s if it hadn't attempted to be different so much without actually doing anything of value or effort.

The art is possibly the only thing the series actually brings to the table and even that is ruined early on by the EXTREME ecchi emphasis on 'parts' of the girls in the show. I am not talking a little bit, I mean it 100% that this art could be recoloured a bit and pass as a professionally made hentai.

The male character's standard abuse and heart of gold gets old, quick. Like faster than normal, it actually doesn't even start out funny or noble. It is old from the first instance because it is so badly portrayed. Normally the MC is abused to provide comic relief yet this series literally can't go 2 minutes without the MC being 'abused' in uncreative and unfunny ways. The 'I'm a man standing up for the women' thing plays a huge cringe worthy part of this story. That is all I have to say about it, it is just cringe worthy, he doesn't do it once or twice and learns, no he literally will do it every single time a female engages in battle, it is encroaching on sexism by the end of the show.

All in all a waste of time to watch, I attempted to watch the second season (I guess all you need is Oppai and vaginal outlines in Japan to generate enough profit for a season 2) and I couldn't get past the first episode. I wanted to throw up, the characters are near unrecognizable personality wise, and they go from Oppai and ecchi that was already bad in season 1 to just blatant hentai and super moomoo tits that look like they belong in an 80s super Oppai fetish doujin.

This series is bad and the creator should feel bad.

This series left me feeling odd when it ended, this of course could be attributed to the energy drinks and sugar I had consumed in order to stay up and finish it before I went to sleep.

The series will ultimately hook you in immediately, it isn't the kind of series I found myself able to stop watching in order to finish the next day. The characters seem oddly empty at first, very little explanation behind many things involed, and almost no fulfilling back story. These things are normally an immediate turn off to anyone that seeks out drama tag anime, but the story isn't horrible. ... At the very least it has a somewhat unique concept, a concept that of course could use much better explanation but unique nonetheless. While you will feel very little for the characters at first you seem to grow along side the MC as he comes to terms with everyone having their own reasons for the ways they act. This is probably the best part of the entire series, it truly has good character development, you can see the change. You may shrug when you see the MC at first, then become interested when he slaughters what is the closest thing to a god on the planet single handedly, question his sanity, and ultimately feel like you can understand him. Unlike most MC's his 'trump card' isn't something that he just activates in a dire situation, he has to use it tactically and his main enemy possesses the same thing.

Many people will point you towards the novel saying that is much better and I can't confirm nor deny this. A visual novel is much cheaper to produce as opposed to an anime similar to LN and Manga, so it makes sense that it has more information available in it. If you aren't interested in playing Visual Novels (like me) then I can safely recommend this anime as a good time passer. Many people just simply prefer to watch an anime and there is nothing wrong with that, this series is far from being like Rosario + Vampire where the VN/Manga is amazing and the Anime is shit. The anime for this show is good and the VN is amazing (or so I have been told) so even though you will miss out slightly, you won't be rolling in your grave and calling it wasted time.

Definitely think the show would've been better with 24 episodes to expand on the story more.

I think the best part of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is hands down the way it portrays a musicians struggles. As a person who has performed piano since I was young I know all too well some of the problems faced by many in this show. But that isn't what the story is actually about, not at its very core, the story is much more psycho-dramatic in my opinion. Many will say it is melodramatic to which I can understand why they would see that, but the story delves far more into the psychological side of things for Kousei, Kaori, and even Tsubaki. Not ... many people will be able to understand what Kousei experiences when playing Piano at the beginning and this is where the psychodrama begins. The thoughts of suicide and depression Kaori harbors and expresses and the intense jealousy and conflicting heart on what she loves and doesn't. The mother's effect on Kousei(and the others) surely affects the watcher's emotions but it focuses more on the psychological part of their story.

As well, this story is ultimately a romantic drama piece but the romance portion, despite supposedly being one of it's main tags, seemed more like a side piece. We obviously have Tsubaki's struggles internally and Kousei's occasional conflict, but the interactions between the 2 are much less romantic than I felt they could have been. The romance between Kousei and Kaori couldn't have been better in my opinion but Tsubaki's and Kousei's definitely could have been. It takes far too long for the viewers to actually see real feelings beyond close friendship truly blossom and by the time it rolls around I honestly couldn't care less about her feelings at that point because from my point of view she was too hesitant and lost her chance, the end.

The biggest complaint I have about this series is that it feels like it should have been either longer or shorter, clearly the drama between Kousei and Kaori developed really well it felt like it ultimately began to drift from it's original plot and seemed to be attempting to extend itself for no particular reason other than to further the interactions between Kousei and Kaori, many of the things they waited to delve into (Tsubaki's feelings for example) should have been done sooner before I was too engrossed in the idea of Kaori. The surgery idea that seems to be a favorite amongst mangaka to give ultimately false hope and attempt to roller coaster the reader's emotions (Seo Kouji I am looking at you) is a pretty unnecessary addition to this series where it becomes very clear that there is no hope the moment it is revealed and the death flag is raised.

All in all a very good series that I would heavily recommend to any drama lover but just like all series I have opinions on what was good and what could have been better. I would love an epilogue but not a season 2.