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May 24, 2024
A different take from the flood of isekai that has saturated the anime market, The Executioner and Her Way of Life gives us something of a view from the other side of things.
Characters that have arrived in this world in standard isekai fashion are extremely powerful, but have a history of changing too much of the world are feared and seen as a problem to be controlled. The main character through this anime is dealing with the realities of her work as well as trying to develop as a person herself. There were several points where I thought I knew where the story was going
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only for it to be derailed rather suddenly.
The story as a whole is a pretty slow burn, the few focus characters are revealed over the course of the show, rather than all at once and it's a nice change from the info dump episodes I'm used to getting these days. However, with there only being one season and the story not being fully told, we do not get a real conclusion or full picture on anything. This is could be taken as a blessing or a curse for the show, depending on the viewer. Personally, I like when a show doesn't give me everything and I feel instead like I'm just viewing a fragment of a character's life, but I know that is not a style for everyone.
The tropes that are assigned to the supporting cast are really why this isn't a 10/10 show to me. There is a hard lean into obsession over the main character that at no point feels natural nor necessary. One character that isn't fawning over the MC is instead after the character that is obsessed with the MC making for awkward moments, that I'm sure are supposed to be funny, but feel like they miss the mark by a lot.
The show has a feeling somewhere between .hack//SIGN and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and the story overall seems like it may trend toward the latter. I felt like I was reading chapters of a good book while watching this show, with each episode leaving me wanting to watch more, but also satisfied with each viewing block.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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May 10, 2024
Oh gods, it was so bad.
The base concept, a Hero who lost his powers and is now just trying to live normally, is why I gave this a shot. It's a perfect setup for what could be a fantastic slice of life comedy. But, the show fails to even deliver on that promise as the main character who supposedly lost his powers constantly shows that he is still overpowered and untouchable for all intents and purposes.
Fine. I can enjoy an OP main character, it's a thing that keeps popping up recently and I enjoy a bunch of those shows. It's quickly shown that this is
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lined up to also be a trope heavy harem. That's cool. I've been seeing classic tropes be done really well and harem anime are fine with me...so I kept watching and for the better part of episode 2, I thought there was a chance. Then, I watched episode 3 through 5 and it was just going downhill.
Most characters have the depth of yellow sticky note, and the tropes are poorly done. Then there's constant and gratuitous nudity that somehow isn't attractive; there is a scene where the girls are fully clothed and fighting that seemed like better fanservice than full nude scenes that followed. I guess I have to give them credit for breaking expectations with that one. They failed nudity.
Sophie was cool, animation is fine but everything else was terrible.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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May 8, 2024
Coming into Akira blind, beside the title, poster art and knowing it's age, you might be interested to see a semi-futuristic biker gang beating the crap out of one another and maybe solving a slightly larger plot along the way. Probably not expecting much from animation quality.
Animation quality, however, is the single point that Akira blew out of the water. The visuals are fantastic even from a modern perspective, though the art style in particular may not be what a new fan is used to.
The story, on the other hand, felt like a slow burn that suddenly hit a gas tank and just exploded everywhere.
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Some characters were barely introduced, then used for a moment only to be killed off without much ceremony, and others were built up slowly....also to be killed off without much ceremony. Then the main characters...existed? There's a small background dump about them at the very end, but at that point you probably don't care much about it because the plot point has completely shifted and it's no longer relevant.
The movie's namesake itself is basically a red herring, and if I hadn't been watching and hoping to figure out what Akira was, I probably would have been fully bored with the movie before the half-way point.
As a marker in time, Akira is a fantastic reference. You can see clear things that it inspired, you can see how it helped show animation as not just for children, and you can see a visual masterpiece that showed the talent of the artists unaided by mass amounts of computer manipulation. I wouldn't suggest watching it for much more than that though.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 22, 2023
High octane fun from start to end.
Gives you just enough of underlying stories without feeling forced too hard. Some fairly pointless fan service, but also fits the feeling of the universe aesthetic. I can't really knock it for much beside the very ending, which didn't seem to match anything that the world building had suggested at all, but also hailed back to a very 80s-90s action overblown ending. Breaking it's own already over the top universe outline is why this loses 1 point from me.
Expect minimal plot and go into the movie with the mindset that the first 5 minutes are setting the pace for
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everything else to explode at the end.
If you want something super deep, though provoking, or mellow, give Redline a pass...and frankly consider why you're even looking at a movie length racing anime. But, if you're looking for an audio and visual spectacle that feels like something of a lighting storm during a snowfall over an erupting volcano pick this up, sit back and just enjoy the ride.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 3, 2021
This show starts off pretty strong and seems to be set up for success from the first 5 episodes only to somehow manage to trip, attempt to catch itself, break it's arm and impale itself on the bones of said broken arm.
Art and sound are the only real strong points to the show. It is also, generally, somewhat enjoyable...at first. The enjoyment really started to taper off half-way through and by the last 5 episodes, I found myself wanting to fast forward through a lot of things just to get to where they were going and finish this mess.
The story could have been borderline on
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a masterpiece. The groundwork was all laid out, they were set up to address multiple fronts of conflict and points of interest; They had political policies at the ready, foreign relations, internal conflicts, deception and misdirection, so many avenues of possibility...and delivered on nothing. In the end, you could cut down the MAL synopsis to
"Princess Yona lives a life of luxury and ease...however, the sudden murder of the king and betrayal of her beloved cousin Su-won places Yona's life in mortal peril. Forced to escape only with Son Hak, who is both her childhood friend and bodyguard, the naïve princess soon discovers that Kouka is not the idyllic place she envisioned it to be."
because nothing else is ever really addressed. Heck, you can just take that, add 'She goes on a journey to see the country and finds the 4 dragons of legend, who are not all one would think them to be", and and you have literally the entire relevant story that this anime bothers to tell.
The synopsis would imply that she has some intent to take back the throne, but that is a misdirection as she never expresses any actual interest in doing so.
The characters themselves are another point of issue though they add to some enjoyment in the latter parts of the show. Hak is a badass and we have no real idea why, it's just accepted that he is and not really to be questioned. Yona is hinted at being special and has the strength of determination, but what makes her special in particular is really not addressed either. Everyone else is the show pretty much just fills some anime trope or another and fills out the reverse harem that Yona needs to acquire for some reason. I don't really have anything else to say of the characters because Yona is the deepest one there and she is about as deep and complicated as a glass of strawberry milk (made with syrup [added after the milk]).
It would be easy to tear the entire show apart, but that would be a waste of time since the show itself does a good enough job of it. Suffice it to say that all major good points come from the beginning of the show and that you should really only watch this as a reference for how to set up a good story (so like 12 episodes tops) or just because you like reverse harems and anime tropes.
I had been looking forward to this show for a long time, but it's been a major let down.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 16, 2020
Story: 2
It's piss, maybe worse because at least piss probably has some flavor based on what you put into your body. This had pretty much nothing. Few new baddie of the week powers to defeat, but really just moving on to beat DIO.
At some point they just gave up on keeping a theme to stands, and they are just never really explained to begin with, so now they're actually just purely arbitrary powers. They still like to say what they represent, but then you never see the connection.
This part of the series becomes so predictable that it's disgusting.
There are some very minor surprises in the
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fight with DIO, but that was about the most interesting part of the whole thing and the only reason I didn't give the story a 1.
Art: 9, Sound:5
These are preference and do not affect my overall scoring unless I find something extraordinary
Characters: 5
Joutarou doesn't develop, period. Joseph is still well written and entertaining, fortunately, and the other characters do actually have development, though it's oddly paced sometimes. A lot of points are lost due to the enemy and civilian characters being really lackluster.
Enjoyment: 4
It's okay to watch, the fights are still fun to watch even if the powers and enemies make no sense, but when you have a lot of dialogue focused on a crap story and mediocre characters, there's only so much enjoyment.
Overall: 4
I watched this series because it was supposed to be good, but it's not. Now, I'm basically just watching it because you need to watch some bad and mediocre anime to really appreciate the good anime out there. That's not to say you can't enjoy the show, but just because you enjoy something doesn't mean it's good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 19, 2020
I like psychological horror, and a good many things that are generally considered unnerving and that's why I trudged through this mess in the hopes of something good to be found, but no. This is the Star Wars Holiday Special of anime and somehow even worse.
The only thing I can say to the positives of this show is that the art was passable and the music (while also terrible) at least matched the awkwardness of the show as a whole.
Each episode is 1 minute of intro/ending music with 3 minutes of content, so you already have an extremely short show, which is fine...which could be
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fine...which had all the potential to be fine, but they didn't even do anything with the time they had.
The story is...questionably existent. There was one they hinted at to start then just kinda threw it out the window and managed to not even end with.
The gore is just silly, the blood is silly, and it felt like they dropped the sister's voice actress part way through and just put onii-chan on repeat for a while before realizing they needed her for a few more lines.
Character story is hinted at, but barely elaborated on.
Even if you manage to perfectly cut away all the intro and ending music, I would suggest saving yourself from the 36minutes of "content" Pupa has to offer and just stare at a blank white wall or sit in a dark room for that time instead. It would be a better use of your time and far more enjoyable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Apr 15, 2020
9/10 Overall is more accurate.
The third and second to last episodes were pretty cringy and the robots were never really explained well or ever made sense.
Otherwise, Darling in the FranXX sports a very strong multi-level narrative that really builds well upon itself in all the right ways and keeps a pretty realistic approach to the overarching situation. Spoilers follow though, I'll try to keep them at a minimum, there are things that need to be noted in particular.
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Let's get the negatives out of the way:
1)The third and second to last episodes really pushed the power of love and friendship to an absolutely disgusting level. Like,
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if you chopped out most of those two episodes and just skipped to the end, you'd have had a fantastic ending that would have left just enough for the audience to imagine what happened since it could easily be assumed anyway at that point. Fortunately the ending really wrapped up nicely and brought the show to a decent close after that mess.
2)The robots were never really explained well or ever made sense. You expect some level of science magic in an anime sci-fi, but typically you get a little more insight than you can sum up in a sentence;
'We reverse engineered the enemy's technology and that's how theirs worked.'
Really, that's it. If you just wanted to watch for what the deal with the robots is, you'd be disappointed anyway. It's hardly addressed, and comes at a point where you probably no longer care because of other science magic things going on.
With that out of the way, we look at the positives.
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The good:
Darling in the FranXX sports a very strong multi-level narrative that really builds well upon itself in almost all the right ways. Story and character development is gradual, but fairly natural feeling overall. The art direction is phenomenal and the sound is well done.
To address the story further, the main characters are teenagers. While pretty normal for anime, this actually drives a lot of the interactions and relationships and ends up making several levels of the narrative as the show explores young minds trying to figure out things that they were never taught, addressing puberty, and (loosely) trying to explain why these kids need to be the ones piloting the robots. There is some awkward fan service...I think? I know the parts, but to me they didn't really pop out as an unneeded addition (beside one very specific bit[melting clothes]). It was primarily used to give the viewer an understanding of the focus group and what they didn't know.
The group we're focused on is very personality diverse and there is probably at least one character a viewer can relate to. The mentality of the characters is pretty realistic, if you actually consider the conditions of the story. They might be in their rights to be a little more rebellious, but the psychological aspects of the show do seem to be well addressed and given the personalities of the group it fits.
Other parts of the narrative include addressing/overcoming differences, bringing up the question of what is human, questioning what love is, and giving one more scenario of what happens to human kind when you pursue technology at the cost of the planet. There's more to it and these don't really hit on how it's handled, but those are some of the major points that stuck with me.
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Addition(4/19/2020):
I just keep coming back to sound track throughout my day lately; humming it, thinking about the songs, re-analyzing it. It's just fantastic. The opening theme in particular just gives me wonderful chills. The tone it's sung with and the emotion in the song were conveyed well even if you don't understand the words, but getting a translation really seals it and stands alone as a pretty good summary of the show's theme. I don't like noting opening or closing songs much when it comes to giving points to an anime, but this one just does so much justice to it I feel it worth noting.
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This show was well worth the watch and I believe actually deserved a lot of the fan fare it received.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jul 17, 2019
Set up to be a hard contender for my favorite slice of life anime of all time, Hanasaku Iroha is a surprisingly in depth story with a very basic grand scheme.
With little description, you could probably just call it the story of a girl in a kinda crappy situation that learns to make the best of it and grow up a little in doing so. However, there's a lot in play throughout the series that is hard to describe without spoiling the show and much of what made this a work of art. To spoil it would spoil it, but not saying why it's so
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well put together...well, I just have to hope people are willing and able to find out.
Story: 9/10
The primary story as we are given is basically a teenage girl thrust into a cold relationship with her grandmother, living/forced to work at the grandmother's Inn, while trying to learn to cope with her duties and all other relationships. Underlying stories run rampant throughout the show, however, and in the end tie a lot of the primary story together.
A note here would be that the story is pretty slow paced, and if that's not your thing this show is not likely to be your thing. It progresses very naturally by a realistic timeline, and where several episodes can be only days of length in their world you aren't going to see a ton of development in an instant.
That same realism factors, to me, quite heavily into the information you get about everyone in the delivery of the story. By the end you have a pretty solid idea of where everyone is from, how they get there, and why they do what they do, but it's not a complete picture of everything. The entirety of the show takes place in less than 1 year, you can only expect people to reveal so much about themselves in such a time, and they did a hell of a job making that reasonable.
Art/Sound: 10/10
These are a little difficult to rate on a hard line (and I'm ignoring the opening/closing because those don't really matter for the show itself). The art style was fairly reserved, but they kept a lot of accuracy between scenes, and small details were not left out of consideration anywhere they appeared. Motions were fluid, natural and included everything down to nervous ticks. If there was an area that could have been improved while keeping the feeling of life put to animation for all its flaws and features, I certainly missed it.
Sound was masterfully done, though not memorable in itself. The scores worked to help the scenes, but as background detail. The sounds and songs aren't likely to stick in anyone's minds, though instead work to help enforce the scene itself and what you are meant to remember.
Characters: 8/10
Some of the tropes went a bit far, which was off-putting. There wasn't a really apparent reason for the characters to have hard stereotypes forced in several scenes and it actually detracted from those episodes every time I saw them included. Usually it's a love story trope that gets me cringing, but not this time, just the characters themselves, and it's a shame because I think that I might have given almost everything a 10 if this hadn't been a factor.
Enjoyment: 9/10
Characters hit this mark a bit, as noted above, but also trying to recall Japanese culture to understand story elements. I feel like this is one of those shows that hit home for many people in Japan, but has so many elements that are unnatural to foreigners that we can't fully appreciate it. Even with some research into culture and history it's hard to actually relate to the mentality and it hurts the enjoyment, like it or not.
Overall: 9/10
A very solid show for the target audience, and definitely one of my favorite anime of all time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 3, 2019
Jin-Rou is proof that a superb soundtrack and amazing animation does not make a movie good.
Story: The initial concept is interesting, a large arena is set up for political turmoil, we have factions, and a gritty, realistic scenario. Then we get the main character's mental conflict, which is a brilliantly executed setup...then we get pretty much a fluffed up bunch of nothing.
The main character doesn't really develop, the factions don't really do anything that you weren't expecting after the first 20 minutes and you're given no actual information on why anyone is actually doing anything as radical as they are. There's the initial idea of
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people don't like the special police force (about 5 minutes in) and then you're mostly left to assume what reasons anyone may actually have beyond 'probably some political power play'.
The entire movie only wraps up the red riding hood theme, which would have been fine if they didn't feel the need to ram it down your throat every few seconds to make sure you know for certain that they are definitely talking about red riding hood. Just so we're clear, the theme is red riding hood, not another thing. Talking about a wolf, and girl in red, house to visit, you know the one. Red riding hood. Is that written in a way that's annoying to read? Because that's what you get for your movie story.
Art/Sound: For what they were working with, the soundtrack set a perfect atmosphere, there's not much more to say for that end. As for the animation, there are some reused assets, but nothing detrimental there. The world felt realistic, for lack of a better term, which is odd for an animation. The art direction made great use of subtle movements, gestures, and less prominent differences between characters looks to really give off the feeling of realism. Where most animation will accentuate differences, their choice in doing the opposite was perfect.
Characters: The main character was sort of fleshed out by the end, with nobody else really changing. Nobody was particularly interesting or memorable.
Conclusion: This movie felt like it would have been handled better as something like a 8-10 episode series so they could have actually developed anything. As it stands, it's like a weird flesh-covered skeleton; Aesthetic touches are done, the structure is there, but there's no meat in the suit to fill it out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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