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“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

…or something like that. Bible quotes aside, Wakakusa Monogatari: Nan to Jo Sensei is a great anime about teaching children to have a love of learning and to bring out their full potential. Of course, it is on the optimistic side, sometimes to the point of sacrificing some realism, but it’s a children’s show, the optimism is part of the charm. That said, the show doesn’t shy away from introducing some pinches of tragedy into the story, along with covering some more ... mature topics regarding poverty and sexism in an era before women could vote.

Set in the New England countryside just before the 20th century, the show is a nice change of pace from typical Japanese high schools, but that’s to be expected from a World Masterpiece Theatre anime. The open fields of grass and crops dotted with trees and ponds surrounding the wooden school really add the show’s magic and make it feel so cozy.

Regarding the original Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari, this show is quite detached. It’s much more like its own thing that happens to have some of the original characters in it than a proper sequel, for better or worse. If all you’re looking for is closure on the original show, then you might be disappointed to learn how little continuation there is here. But on the other hand, it also means you can watch this show without seeing the original (I’d recommend watching both anyway).

Being an adaptation of the Turn A Gundam anime, this manga follows roughly the same plot. I say “roughly” because it skips a lot of stuff from the original in order to get through to the end in only 5 volumes. I imagine this would make the manga quite confusing to someone who has not seen the anime because it skips over many important events and pieces of dialogue that explain the reasoning behind the things that they did include. This makes it jarring at times and it seems to jump around frequently in terms of character development and setting.

The art is definitely this manga’s ... saving grace, with its clean linework and detailing that make the mobile suits and other machines pop. It also remains reasonably faithful to the original in its art style for character faces and clothing designs, which is a positive. That being said, I did feel like Loran Cehack and Guin Rhineford could have been drawn with a bit darker skin to be more accurate, but that’s a minor nitpick.

The cast of characters is the same, but the characters themselves can feel a bit wishy-washy due to the ultra-fast pacing of the manga. This only adds to the confusion that one who has not seen the original may feel when reading it.

This does not mean that the manga is unenjoyable though, and I found it to be entertaining enough. As a result, I do recommend this manga, but as more of a recap rather than a complete retelling.

Hope, despair, tension, anguish; all of these can be found in this follow-up season of Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji. Although it picks up shortly after where the first season left off, it wastes no time in setting up a brand-new story arc for Kaiji to struggle through.

The first thing that you’ll notice about the second season in comparison to the first one is the change in the level of stakes involved. In the first season, there seemed to be a climb of more and more dangerous and high-level stakes being involved with the various story arcs until they ended up being extremely deadly. However, this season ... does not follow this trend and instead it lowers the stakes, especially towards the start, to the point where no one’s life is really on the line and the consequences of failure aren’t actually that bad. I’ve seen this factor be used as a point of criticism to say that the show is not as exciting as it used to be, but I personally enjoyed the lowered stakes as a nice change of pace for the series and a more grounded approach. After all, this is the Kaiji series, where everything is brilliantly made into an emotional and psychological battlefield which can turn even the most seemingly mundane situations and games into something thoroughly engaging and entertaining. The season is set up to contain two back-to-back story arcs, of which I thought were about the same level of quality. The arcs both have their own antagonists that come equipped with a gang of lackeys that compete against Kaiji and co.

Aside from the return of Itou Kaiji himself, the anime also features a slew of returning characters from the previous season as well as plenty of new ones. The anime does a good job of making the new antagonists into despicable villains like the ones in the first season, which is great because it makes it easier to sympathise with Kaiji as he is inevitably cheated by them in rigged games.

The art and animation are the essentially the same as the first season. It still has that striking art style that you know from the first season, and the animation quality has neither decreased nor improved to a noticeable degree. Like the first season, it also has that signature exaggerated design during basically every scene and those metaphorical depictions of how the characters feel in relation to their current standing during the games.

You’ll hear the iconic floating sound effects that have been taken from the manga which have become synonymous with the Kaiji series many times throughout this season, accompanied by the familiar booming voice of narrator. These, combined with the epic and grand-sounding music, create such a lovable and engaging atmosphere to accompany the emotional roller coaster of a story which makes the anime all the more enjoyable.

Overall, I thought that ‘Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen’ was a very enjoyable and compelling anime. If you enjoyed the first season but are on the fence about watching this one (possibly due to the fact that it has a lower mean score) I recommend that you give this a watch.

“All people in this world – old, young, man, woman – are lonely at heart. I will fill that emptiness in their hearts.”

This line is recited by the so called ‘laughing salesman’ himself at the beginning of the 24 sub-episodes in the series to remind us of the show’s premise. This premise being that there is always a cost that comes with human over-indulgence. Donning a black suit and a smug grin, the salesman approaches people with a ‘problem’ which he offers to solve in a manner which seems too good to be true. Although the salesman is truthful in his words and he does ... “fill the emptiness in their hearts”, they quickly find that there is an ironic catch to each deal.

The anime doesn’t seem to have any connections between the sub-episodes that would make up an overarching plot, meaning the series is entirely episodic and can theoretically be watched in any order. That being said, the sub-episodes are well self-contained, and they quickly set up an introduction and finish with a satisfying punchline in ~10 minutes. They begin by introducing a new protagonist each time and usually reveal some type of problem that they are experiencing. This leads to them meeting Mogoru Fukuzo, the laughing salesman, where he will then offer them a magical solution. He always warns them not to get carried away, but his customers always break their promise and learn a harsh lesson in the end. Despite the strict formula in the anime, it didn’t feel overly repetitive to me personally, although this will differ for each viewer.

Because the protagonist changes in each episode, there are too many to cover in one review. However, I felt like they were satisfying overall, and they each had enough of a backstory to set them apart and keep the show interesting. Not much is revealed about the salesman himself in order to keep him mysterious, but his outward design is memorable to say the least, and he has a shrewd and uncanny demeanour that is uncommon for main characters that make him stound out.

The animation is nothing to write home about, but it is satisfactory and does the job well. The appeal (to me at least) was more the art style, which is a replication of the manga’s creator, Fujiko Fujio’s, iconic style that everyone can recognise at a glance due to the popularity of his other more mainstream series such as Doraemon.

The sound is decent. The music is fitting and relatively well-placed, and the OP and ED are above both above average but nothing too special. Overall, the sound is pretty forgettable and not particularly noteworthy, but it does the job.

I found the series to be decently enjoyable. Some of the stories were fairly thought-provoking and there are some reasonable lessons about greed desire, while others were unfortunately on the superficial side. It’s not hugely philosophical or ‘deep’ (and it’s not exactly trying to be), but it’s meaningful enough to the extent where it is engaging without being overly pretentious.

It is said that there is beauty in simplicity, and I believe that this manga is a testament to that.

Created by Konami Kanata of Chi’s Sweet Home, this short but sweet manga takes a look into the life of an old lady and her kitten, Fuku Fuku. The manga also serves as a prequel to Fukufuku Fu-nya~n (1987).

This manga is incredibly simply, with the only characters of note being the old lady and Fuku Fuku, and only the former being able to speak. Each chapter presents a self-contained miniature-story of very small scale. With the majority of the manga being set within the old lady’s ... house, the chapters typically revolve around things that a real-life kitten might experience in Japan, such as falling asleep under a kotatsu, falling asleep after eating, looking at butterflies, getting brushed, etc. Yet somehow, these activities are presented in such a charming manner through the art and panelling that they manage to be strangely compelling. Unlike some of Konami’s other cat-related manga, this one is not in colour, and is instead presented in the more conventional black and white colouring. This can be seen as a downside if you prefer the pastel style of Konami’s other manga, but personally I don’t think there is much of a difference in charm-factor between this and say, Chi’s Sweet Home, in terms of the art.

Overall, I found this manga to be quite enjoyable and charmingly uncomplicated. It’s only two volumes long, so there isn’t much to be lost by giving this cute manga a try.

Chari ni Norenai!, a manga about a school bicycle club where none of the members can actually ride a bike. I didn’t think it was a bad manga by any means, but it wasn’t exactly good either. I’m writing this review on it since it has no mean score (yet) and there are no other reviews.

It’s a light-hearted slice of life manga, so there isn’t much there in terms of a plot, but each of the 8-or-so page long chapters contains a decent skit involving the club members and their bikes. That being said, the overarching joke of the manga is just that the bike-club ... members always fall and crash whenever they try to ride a bike, which is revealed to be the result of them all having a very poor sense of balance. This gets pretty repetitive after a while especially considering the sheer number of these skits that are crammed into only 5 volumes.

The art is probably the manga’s greatest strength. It’s certainly not taking any risks with the art style, but the panels are laid out coherently and the drawing are crisp. However, the style is very generic and that led to it having problems where some of the characters look quite similar and can be difficult to differentiate. The bicycles are pretty detailed though.

The characters are quite weak in this manga. They all fall under different male-character stereotypes that can be found in many comedy anime and manga as they don’t offer anything particularly unique or refreshing. Because of this, the characters are all extremely forgettable. Even while I was reading it, I couldn’t remember their names because they were all far too generic and became immemorable.

It's very average in terms of enjoyment. It gives the impression of being a kind of placeholder manga that you might see a character reading within another manga due to its monotonous comedy and art.

If you want to see what a completely mediocre and unremarkable manga looks like, give Chari ni Norenai! a read.

Welcome to the NHK was the first Japanese novel that I read that wasn’t a light novel, but there wasn’t really a lot of difference between the two. I mean that in the best way possible.

Being only a single book, the novel is very self-contained, and I would consider that a breath of fresh air. The book isn’t drawn out any longer than it needs to be, and you are getting a clean slice of life from the beginning of the book until the end. The book is entirely written in first person from the perspective of distressed young man who acts as the ... main character of the story. It alternates between past and present tense and gives the impression of reading a kind of journal written by the main character that includes some reflection and context establishment by the writer.

There is not an over-abundance of characters in the novel, which I would consider to be a flaw in some stories, and only focusses on 3 people throughout its duration. The actual plot of the novel looks at the development of the main character and his interactions between him and the 2 supporting characters. This is where the psychological element comes into play. It’s all about the mental journey of Sato as he experiences the life of a Hikikomori living in Japan. The story isn’t divided into multiple story arcs and is just one single narrative.

I will say that the novel is quite blunt. It does not hold back when describing the depraved life of the main character. It can be outright disgusting at times, but of course that was likely a conscious choice by the author.

I haven’t read the manga adaptation or the anime, but since this novel was the place where it all started, it is absolutely fine to read it with no prior knowledge of the story. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is even vaguely interested in it, after all it’s not very long so you can enjoy it without investing too much time into reading it.

[spoiler free]

Short: It’s good but not that good.

Long:
I am not someone who has been following Gintama for an extended period of time, but rather I watched it in its entirety at a steady pace over the course of a few months. I also have not read the source material so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the adaptation.

As you can probably tell from the synopsis, Gintama is mostly focussed on comedy. The comedy mostly involves a funny man – straight man routine and uses the traits from various characters in the show to set up jokes. Most of all though, Gintama is a parody ... anime that uses references to real-life pop-culture, especially those that are relevant in Japan or are related to other manga series published by Jump or other similar publishers. Whether or not the comedy in Gintama is actually funny is an entirely different question. During my viewing of the show, I found the jokes to be pretty hit or miss depending on the situation. Sometimes this was the result of me not appreciating a niche reference to a Japanese celebrity that would likely only be funny to a Japanese viewer, but sometimes the jokes fell flat simply due to them not having much potential to be funny in the first place. The quality of the comedy in Gintama is subjective to say the least, with some people failing to enjoy even a single skit, and some enjoying every moment of it, but in most cases I think an average viewer would find some of it funny, and some of it not.

The art and animation in Gintama is fairly average. It accomplishes what it intends to do without being overly boring or exhaustive to the viewer, but by no means can I praise it for being a highlight of the anime. The characters, especially the main cast, have pretty good visual deigns and are very expressive. I can also give them credit for having some sakuga in the important fight scenes. That being said, the animation undoubtedly takes a turn for the worse during the newer parts.

In terms of the “story” of Gintama that exists alongside the comedic skits, I believe it to be in some cases both a highlight of the show, and also one of its biggest flaws. What I mean by this is that some of the arcs of the show were quite well written and were executed in a very satisfying way, where others were pretty lacklustre. What I believe to be the absolute peak of Gintama was a series of 3 “serious arcs” starting at around episode 300. When I was watching them, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the show took a turn for the better. That being said, by no means did I think the 300-episode supposed build-up was worth it. And to add to that, what follows these arcs is basically the worst part of Gintama. I do not know the story of why the figurative ball was dropped during the end of Gintama, but either way, it happened. The show could have, and should have, ended way earlier than it actually did. This is because the part of the story known as the Silver Soul arc (which includes the movie and specials ‘Gintama the semi-final’ and ‘Gintama: the Final’) was a wholly unsatisfying, anticlimactic, and mediocre ending. I don’t mean that as in “It didn’t end the way I wanted it to so I’m going to say it’s bad”, but rather the entire arc would have just been better off not existing in the first place. I can’t go into depth without spoiling it, so that’s all I can say about it.

The music in Gintama is pretty good. Most of the openings are memorable and I found enjoyment in listening to them after finishing the anime. The soundtrack is also good, and I didn’t feel like the background music was lacking or misused.

In terms of recommending Gintama, I’ll say it is definitely NOT a good choice if you are still getting into anime as you probably won’t find it very funny. I also wouldn’t recommend picking up this anime just to watch the supposedly legendary (once #1) ‘Gintama: The Final’ or even to see the much praised “serious” arcs. Since Gintama is fairly long, I feel like the best reason to pick it up is simply to watch a long running show. To address the unignorable high mean scores that Gintama has, I don’t think they are an accurate representation of the show’s quality. There is probably a multitude of reasons as to why they are so high, but either way, I would suggest not going into Gintama expecting it to be as good as these ratings would suggest.

After reading other manga ranked in the top 10 and thoroughly enjoying each of them, I was looking forward to reading the highly regarded Oyasumi Punpun. I was very disappointed.

Story: 4/10

The story of the manga follows the life of a boy, Punpun, through his early childhood to being a young adult. It also has sub-plots for other members of Punpun’s family and childhood friends. The idea of having a manga like this is fair, and could have been made into a decent manga if it had been done differently. The thing that I don’t like about the plot of Oyasumi Punpun is the sheer ... amount of edge. It seems that the manga has deluded itself into thinking that more edge = more realism, which is a fine line in manga writing that this story completely crosses over and abandons any sense of meaningful character relationships and experiences in exchange for complete bullshit. One of the main features of the story is Punpun’s relationship with a girl from his school that is introduced early on in the manga. This is one of the worst parts of the story. It is clear that the mangaka only uses the relationship to make the story seem more “relatable” and “deep” to the reader as it shows no evidence of actual thought going into it, and instead is used to put in random non-sequitur sexual imagery and dialogue to make the story appear more mature.

Art: 5/10

The drawing skill shown in Oyasumi Punpun is saddening to me. The level of detail in the backgrounds and some of the characters is great, but for some reason Asano and his editor thought it would be a good idea to draw all of the main characters in one of the ugliest art styles I have ever seen. All of the Punpun family members are drawn in the style of a kind of cartoon bird, which was a terrible decision in my opinion. Fans of this manga will try to tell you that it is “deep symbolism”, but in reality it is just an excuse to make up for the lacklustre characterisation in the manga and appear to have more depth than it really is.


Character: 2/10

The characters in this manga are bad. They can be classified as either pretentious and annoying, overly self deprecating to the point where sympathy is impossible, or just plain pompous and presumptuous. Especially towards the end of the manga, there is a clear pattern of a character ending up in a sad situation while having an inner monologue about the meaning of life. Wow, how creative and original, not pretentious at all.


Enjoyment: 2/10

I fail to see how any reasonable person could enjoy this dumpster fire of a manga. Maybe people just love wallowing in self pity while looking at a bird masturbating for the 500th time by the end of the manga.

Overall: 3/10

Having also read Umibe no Onnanoko, this was not my first time reading a manga by Asano Inio, but I sure hope it will be the last. Please do not read this manga. If you want to read a coming of age story about a boy in Japan, read The Flowers of Evil or Onanie Master Kurosawa instead of this rubbish.

The Aku no Hana manga is one of greatest coming of age stories I have seen, it is a well written tale of deprivation and redemption set in a small town in Japan inspired by the place Shuuzou Oshimi, the mangaka, grew up in. The anime version of Aku no Hana is a dreadful attempt to capture the feeling of the original manga in shockingly bad animation.

Story: 3/10

The story follows the plot for the first few volumes of the manga. Not much is left out, nor is any filler added. So why is the story rated a 3? It's because holy shit it is boring ... to watch in the anime. It is horribly drawn out to the point where I audibly told the anime to get a bloody move on. Between the snail pace and the other sections of this review, only a shred of the enjoyment from the story of the manga is even possible in the anime. Additionally, the anime has some pretty bad translations of seemingly simple words that really make or break the story. For example, basically the whole motivation of one of the characters is trying to another 'pervert' in the town where she lives, but unfortunately pervert is translated to 'sicko'. This is a seemingly small thing to get upset about but in my opinion it gives the impression that the translators did not even understand the point of the story.

Art: 1/10

I will admit, the backgrounds in this anime are beautiful to the point where they are some of the best I've seen in anime, and for that reason it was tempting to give the art section a slightly higher score. However, the characters, who are the focal point of the anime, are animated so badly that it cancels out any possible credit for the backgrounds. To elaborate, the characters are not animated in a standard anime style. They appear somewhat similar to characters in Devilman: Crybaby and Ping-Pong, which are two anime that I think have fantastic animation. Aku no Hana failed miserably to become like those anime that have somewhat avant-garde art styles and instead became what is without a doubt the ugliest anime I have ever seen. The characters are hard to look at because it's that bad. It doesn't end with just bad art for the characters, the actual animation is also dreadful. The movements of the characters appear unnatural and have the fluidity of a badly drawn paper flip book, not to mention random pauses that made me think my computer was buffering.

Sound: 2/10

Sound? What sound? One of the most important parts of any anime is so scarcely used in Aku no Hana that it gives the impression that there was no-one at the studio who was employed to put music over the animation. The opening song changes several times and each was quite good, hence the 2 instead of a 1. The problem with the opening songs are that none of them even remotely suit the anime. On top of that, the animation part of the openings is the most boring and basic stuff I've ever seen in an anime opening.

Character: 1/10

Complete dogshit. I will be excluding this anime from future 'most hated anime characters' lists that I may write on forums because they would all be from this anime. The characters here are basically unrecognisable compared to their manga counterparts. The terrible animation makes them not even look vaguely similar to the manga and look more like a live action adaptation instead of anime characters. Due to the appalling animation and pacing, the characters have lost all appeal and characterisation that they originally had.

Enjoyment: 1/10

This was the longest 13 episodes I have ever watched. It was incredibly boring and even a little bit insulting. I failed to find even a shred of enjoyment while watching this. The only reason I didn't drop this dumpster fire of an anime was so I could give it a fair chance before I reviewed it.

Overall: 2/10

I'm sure you have a good idea by now of why I hated this anime so in short, if you haven't read the manga, read that instead. If you have, just pretend this anime doesn't exist.