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This review features heavy spoilers and is more of a critique than a review.

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The issue I expressed with the very first Shinkai films like 5cm and garden of words was that the films were unbelievably shallow and just looked pretty, while that prettiness also had no heart and soul in it, ultimately giving the films the same flavor as console tech demo video games.

Your Name improved on the writing, by going for a more engaging story, but still suffered from the uninspired cinematography, music and composition, while the story itself, if better, was still very shallow at the core.

Weathering with You improved further, by adding ... even more depth to the story and actually introducing some creative animation, not the same lens flair-abusing cookie cutter nonsense. But that film also suffered from the plot lacking some coherence and characterization being all over the place.

So in this context, Suzume ended up precisely following the trend: The art is now actually fantastic, with some great sakuga moments (closing the gates, the worms (ghibli-inspired), creative shot composition (heck, started with first person), far better emotion in the animation (the cats, the chair. Oh my god the chair was animated just perfect, it was like something out of kyoani).

The music, likewise, was great, albeit lacked tracks. I found the track that plays when they're closing the gates just chef's kiss reminded me of Nier, but the fact they used the same track 4 times is just what the heck. The tracks should never repeat so much in a film.

Which leads to the writing and everything wrong with this film.

This was a hot garbage mess. I cannot believe that in a 2h film someone greenlit to close 3 gates like that in a near-identical manner with a different background. I cannot believe that they thought it was reasonable to have FMC 'run away' from wherever she was staying 4 times in a row, leaving everyone worried each time.
I cannot believe that they thought it made sense for her to treat the MC as the love of her life after 2 days of knowing him. There was absolutely zero chemistry between these characters, they were just complimentary but were more like random classmates on a field trip than a pair. It made absolutely no sense how much she cared about him. He as a character made no sense in how we barely knew anything about him or his thought process or background to invest in any capacity. It's a frigging chair and a girl that fell head over heels for the chair. How can I possibly take that seriously? The cats were repetitive as all hell, constantly playing the McGuffin in an identical manner as some stupid goose-chase that didn't evolve over the runtime but was just the exact same but in a different city. The final reveal that she met herself is an attempt at a Nolan-like scene subversion of 'scene 1 was actually scene -1' but it was handled so poorly and so out of the blue that I didnt go 'oh wooooow, so it was her!!' it was more like "ok, it was her.. so?"
The aunt has her outburst, which OF COURSE had to be facilitated by one of the cats possessing her, because god forbid this were a natural character arc that could have evolved over 2h. No, it had to be 1h 50mins of her just sending worried LINE messages and then having one outburst. Just what the frick. No proper setup. Also the gate business, it didn't resolve in any meaninful way. It makes no sense to me. So you have some afterlife regrets causing earthquakes and it's held up by two friggin totem-cats? That myth did not get properly equated to something real to ponder on at all, even if attempted. Makes the plot just seem like a stupid excuse for drama to happen rather than commentary on some japanese social thing. I liked the IDEAS of this film, but this execution was just so insanely bad I cannot believe it got in a film. Mediocre seasonal anime have this sort of plot structure.

Lastly, all 3 of the last films were identical if you broke them down. "find me!" romance plot + japanese myth causing natural disasters + rural japan contrast to urban lands + fetishizing Tokyo. This dude is making box office killer films, why is he not going Ghibli's path and actually exploring new ideas. Right now this is like marvel/DC in how little exploration is being done. Just trying to perfect the same formula. From a film director, I would expect more.

Overall, I had a decently enjoyable time just because I liked the music and animation, but the writing was barely sufferable and I don't like that I basically saw 3 identical movies with a different skin and minor alterations in various directions (your name, weathering, suzume). I still think Shinkai is not a very respectable director from an artistic meric perspective. His work is marketable and that is fine, but I will always criticize it nonetheless unless he actually grows a pair and actually uses this funding to produce something novel.

I really, really wanted to like Mahoutsukai s2, but alas, Studio Kafka has not managed to replicate even a tiny bit of the magic that Wit did with season 1.

When it comes to adaptations of highly atmospheric fantasy manga filled with gorgeous panels like Mahoutsukai, the expectation is always that the studio will focus on capturing those elements, since that's where they can really shine. In a story about magic and beauty, sound and visual design are everything and without them, the work will simply not manage to stand on its own ground, since, in the source, sacrifices are being made in the storytelling to ... present as many opportunities as possible to bring forth a 'grand' scene with a focus on awing the reader.

Studio Wit, with season 1, did not mess around and made every other episode an absolute spectacle of sound and visuals. It's what made the show worth watching over just reading the manga. It was adding additional value by transcending the limits of the manga medium.

Season 2. at least so far, has none of that. It's ironic that the very opening scene of episode 1 is a sakuga-fest, however by now it seems clear that this was just bait to capture viewers to keep watching in anticipation of something great. However, we are 5 episodes in now and that has yet to manifest in any meaningful way, indicating that the first scene was just a party trick to capture engagement.

So far, season 2 has been a clear downgrade in music, sound design, visual design, and, to a lesser extent, scriptwriting. The colors are not even remotely as vibrant, the fantastical musical pieces are entirely absent the entire experience just feels like a slice of life drama.

I see hardly any reason to be watching this over simply reading the manga, which, in my eyes, makes this a failure of an adaptation.

However, to be fair to the studio, the story offers less opportunities to 'show off' as the earlier parts of s1 did, the OP is, again, fantastic, VA work has been solid and the animation 'as a whole' is perfectly serviceable. It's simply that for an adaptation of a source like Mahoutsukai 'serviceable' is not enough.

The following review is for Magia Record as a whole, taking into account all 3 seasons.

What exactly is it that makes Madoka Magica so great? Is it the jaw-dropping story? The characters? The premise? The directing? The production quality?

I think it is all of these things and Madoka would have never gained its attention if everything didn’t come together so well into one cohesive machine.

So does Magia Record deliver on these things to be a good side story to plug into the Madoka Universe?

Short answer is: Like 80%, but that final 20% is the writing itself...

... Long answer:

Magia Record looks, sounds and feels like Madoka. SHAFT’S legendary director Shibou’s work oozes out of Magia Record just as well as it does from the original. That sense of mystique and unease that made Madoka so special are all present, with highly experimental and eccentric shot composition and artstyle filling the screen at every step.

The show’s story is even highly parallel to Madoka’s, with many of the same narratives with some adjustments showing up, creating a comfortable contrast. Same can be said for many of the characters, acting as direct comparisons for characters from Madoka.

Above all, Magia Record tries hard to extend Madoka’s universe. New concepts are introduced, further information given on some of the key ideas in the original, new takes on magical girls are presented. Such as some rather unique wishes the girls could have or the sorts of magical girls that can even exist.

But wait, it gets even better! In season 2, the show also hires some extremely talented key animators and has some absolutely jaw dropping sakuga to elevate the fight scenes, bringing a whole new dimension to Madoka that we never knew we needed.

However, that is as far as the good goes… For beyond that, Magia Record is riddled with extremely oversaturated plot lines, trying to juggle a metric ton of character arcs simultaneously and some extremely ambitious macro plots, while not really managing to flesh out the characters in a meaningful way, making the entire cast feel difficult to root for and a story difficult to follow.

The story IS coherent and one can with a bit of attention follow the trail without issue, however that doesn’t save the characters. Being a gacha adaptation, the show juggles too many characters, tries to show off too many ideas.

Overall, I do believe Magia Record is worth a watch, if you are interested in the Madoka Universe as a whole, the different sorts of additional setups that are possible with the premise and enjoy Shinbou’s directing a great deal. But if what pulled you to Madoka was really the entire Madoka-Homura story and its suspense, with the rest of the cast also featuring tightly written character arcs, you are likely to not be satisfied with this production.

Side Note: Even if what I wrote here discourages you from watching Magia Record, I highly recommend checking the sakuga scenes from s2 over at sakugabooru or a similar site. They are absolutely fantastic and a must-watch.

Before we can try to assess whether or not 86 is a good anime or not, we should first make sure we understand what is even the target audience of 86.

Eighty-Six started out as a light novel under the Dengeki Bunko imprint. What this effectively means is that the story is written for older teens – young adults as the primary target audience and is thus a steppingstone towards ‘full’ adult fiction.

Key characteristics of these works are such as: having a lighter arc structure that fits in under 300 pages each, usually having less nuanced writing, using simpler vocabulary, featuring a large amount of tropes.

It’s ... literature that is no longer ‘kid’s literature’ but still lacks that real seriousness of adult fiction, relying on simple techniques to pull audiences and a rigid arc structure.

Eighty-Six is without a doubt one of the most popular serializations these days and acts as a strong introductory work into the medium. At the same time, however, it is a work written with terribly shallow view on its own subject manner and complete inability to properly ‘read the room’, flipping between highly emotional moments and trope comedy.

Part 1 of the 86 adaptation adapted the first volume of the series, which was an entirely self-contained story that lent itself well as a prequel to the ‘main’ story. It was a story that could stand entirely on its own and was, in fact, quite solid. Thus the anime adaptation also held up substantially well.

It did still feature the largest flaw of this entire series – extremely shallow and boiled down commentary on extremely serious issues. World War 2 references are galore in this work, yet are presented with little nuance, often ignoring critical additional historical aspects which completely change the perception of the stories referenced.

Part 2 of the adaptation, stepping into the second volume of the series, however, fairs much worse, with the start of the second biggest problem of the entire work – the tropes and sharply swinging moods with little regard for the burden on the audience’s ability to flip between heavy and light-hearted moments.

With the introduction of a certain 10 year old character, the story told in part 2 tries to ‘lighten the mood’ by zig-zagging highly dramatic moments of characters trying to come to grips with death, meaning of life and their own trauma and a walking trope shouting idiocy at them for comic relief. Make no mistake, this is just a symptom of a larger problem – the original author Asato Asato attempts to increase the effect of emotional scenes in the story by working in a rollercoaster of light moments and heavy moments. This however, when done without care to the degree it is done in 86 ends up jarring and making it extremely difficult to take characters seriously. Emotional moments are ruined by the sudden jokes, making future emotional moments have less impact, because investing into the story becomes harder and harder. How is a reader meant to suspend their disbelief if in one moment a character is talking about their own inability to escape death and another little girls are tripping on the ground screaming.

This sort of shallow and immature approach to story telling is one that CAN work for an immature audience, however becomes increasingly impossible to pull off with older audiences. Given the story’s target audience, one may excuse many of these flaws, yet one must also point out that Asato Asato clearly intended to write ‘one of the more serious light novels’. In this regard, 86 is a severe overreach. A light novel trying to pretend it can be a real adult novel. Plenty of light novels have been written in the past that were far more refined in their execution while trying to push for just that little extra depth over a conventional light novel. The existence of these works highlights 86’s subpar execution.

With that out of the way, 86 Part 2 is a wonderful anime production. Considering the seasons’ competition, the show manages to stand out well as one with relatively good animation and sound quality, yet with absolutely fantastic directing on both the visual and audio sides.

Toshimasa Ishii does an incredible job as the lead director, managing to orchestrate flawless visual execution and presentation of serious moments in the show, using visual motifs in just the right places, while the sound directing accompanies the work greatly, with proper use of music and silence in all the right moments. 86 looks fantastic and is an extremely aesthetically pleasing production. The dark tones are captured succinctly and without feeling fake or shallow in the slightest for as much as the source material allows it.

One of the industry fan favorites – Hiroyuki Sawano helmed a great score for the show, which while still retaining the ‘classic’ Sawano tune which hampers it in feeling ‘samey’ if the audience has seen any of his past works, still has its moments of novelty and accompanies the show well.

The adaptation, however, had light mishandling with the epilogue, trying to stretch scenes which were short in the original, possibly to fit in a full cour for a story which really only needed 9 or so episodes. This stretching can ruin the ending all by itself, by making the epilogue feel fatiguing and almost make one go ‘oh get it over with already’.

The voice castings, leave much to be desired, for the casting of Misaki Kuno for the character Frederica only further severely elevated one of the primary issues in the original, creating too strong of a contrast between lighthearted and emotional moments. The production staff had an opportunity to lessen the blow of Asato’s overly sharp tonal shifts but went the other way around and only further exasperated the issue to the show’s own detriment.
Lastly, the battle scenes, which should have been one of the primary highlights of 86, still using CGI for for most the animation moments leaves a fair bit to be desired given the show’s focuses. While the CGI was serviceable, none of the fights truly gave any sense of wonder, featuring hardly any noteworthy sakuga. It was never bad, but it was never ‘excellent’.

Overall, 86 part 2 is a 6/10 story, with an 8/10 production, featuring writing that is passable, but severely overreaching with plenty of flaws and some of the strongest visual direction in 2021. If the viewer can suspend their disbelief and honestly invest into the characters, there is a lot to like here, but as a work for teens and young adults, it pretends to be something much more, which it really isn’t.

The following review has a single spoiler heavy section which is marked start to finish. If you feel your eyes won't wander, you can skip the section and still get a great deal out of the review, otherwise skip the review entirely if you have not finished the show!

Ousama Ranking is a show that from the very first few episodes I felt could be a masterpiece. A gamechanger in the medium which there are so few of. With the industry having settled down on mostly producing the same genres with the same tropes, having a show which actually wants to push boundaries is rare. Even ... more so, when you can feel the love and passion oozing out in each scene from the people who made it.
It has been 3 years since the last time I felt a true masterpiece had been created, yet there has been a plethora of shows that have been amazing since, but none that really managed to hit that ‘near perfect’ status.
To spoil the entire review, Ousama Ranking is a show that is just inches away from being a masterpiece yet has a single glaring flaw which completely hampers its potential, eliminating it from any conversation of being one of the greats. Paradoxically, the flaw I speak of is not even a flaw. It is a decision that makes sense yet is the saddest decision ever.

The Short version is this: Ousama Ranking attempts to be both a children’s fairy tale and an adult epic, trying to mimic western animation and by playing both sides, but ends up being neither. It is too adult to be a children’s fairy tale, yet too childish to be an adult epic.

The Long version:
Many of the most famous pieces of animation in the west are those that are designed for children, yet are entertaining for adults. Examples such as Ice Age, Spongebob, Courage The Cowardly Dog, The Simpsons to name some of the older ones, are shows that have a primitive plot, lovable characters, yet hides a great deal of detail, innuendos, hidden ideas which adults can catch and enjoy, while the ideas fly over the kids’ heads. It’s one of the primary reasons these are the greats, they are enjoyed by multiple generations at once.

Anime has never really been like this. I’m sure it’s cultural, but the matter of the fact is that shows have laser focused audiences. You have shows for teen boys, shows for teen girls, shows for adults etc etc. There are very few anime which are enjoyable by both kids and adults alike, for many of the adult-centric shows feature elements that are just not fit for kids. You’re not going to watch Berserk with your kids, not happening.
Ousama Ranking is a show heavily inspired by western fairy tales and in doing so seems to also attempt to take inspiration in the style of writing too: to present simple narratives, which kids can watch and enjoy, being able to cheer for the loveable characters at ease, while the adults can capture a plethora of deeper elements which make the show feel much more complex. You don’t need such complex characterization as in this show if it was only a kid’s show. Yet it’s there.

However, the show ends up under-delivering in both sides: for kids, this show is truly way too dark. Simba getting thrown off the cliff was a famous scene in western animation which Ousama Ranking has the parallel for, but the much more extreme were the constant battles ending with characters being tortured to near-death by the blows, blood oozing everywhere, betrayal being constant, grand narratives building on extremely complex foundations like class wars. The show is just really, really, dang dark even if it features cute childish glee every few scenes. There is a heavy contrast created here between the wholesome young naivete and the grueling reality. A contrast that fairy tales generally do not force.

SPOILER START
SPOILER START

Yet at the same time, the show has. Absolutely. No. Stakes. The only important character to die in this entire story was the character that had already died as part of the entire premise. Every single other moment of drama in this show ended up fizzling out and being resolved with the power of deus ex. It was done to such an absurdist degree, that it felt at times that the production staff itself was making a joke out of it. (Let’s just spam some mana potions and heal everyone!). This sort of execution is perfectly fine for a fairy tale, young viewers will ‘buy’ the suspense every time, yet for adults this is a hand that gets called instantly. I believe the turning point of this show where it branched out from a masterpiece to just a great show is episode 13. Hiling should have died this episode. The setup was all there: you had the perfect trap that she walked into, the character had already achieved full fleshing out, with her own full redemption from the initial outlook of being an evil character, all the main connections had been cleared up. All that was left is to now kill her off to create extreme consequences on Bojji (revenge), Daida (revenge) and Apeas (guilt). The only reason the show could play off Miranjo being forgiven by everyone is that she didn’t actually kill anyone. Bojji would have had far greater trouble forgiving her if he had known she effectively executed his step mom. That episode playing up the suspense and eventually chickening out is exactly the symptom of this primary focus of the show’s writing to not want to really deal with death in such a ‘real’ way, which would make it impossible to see it as a simple children’s fairy tale anymore. It goes without question that in a story such as this, once you create the perfect setup to finish off a character, but end up not doing so, the adult viewer will become aware that this is ‘not that type of story’ and will no longer feel any suspense for any of the future scenes, for ‘everything will be all fine by the end’

SPOILER END
SPOILER END

So it makes me question: who is this show really for? If you won’t deliver fully on either direction, no one will end up being truly satisfied.

I just spent over 1000 words going over why I think this show is a 9/10 and not a 10/10 due to one single flaw. It is a fundamental flaw, thus it carries great weight. But it’s really the only issue.
Now on to the good.

I think Ousama Ranking is one of the best-produced and tightly written shows of the past few years.
Starting with the production, the lightning work on this show is honestly unbelievably, making its extremely unique artstyle, which tries to mimic old western fairy tales, feel modern and like real eye candy. The motion is fluid, with great care put into the smallest of details, to make the characters all seem just that little bit more real and relatable. The watercolor painting landscapes for some scenes mixed with highly detailed shots for others form an incredibly vibrant and constantly dynamic view of the show. It feels alive and briming with emotion. You can only achieve this sort of animation by pouring you soul into it, to that end I applaud the studio’s work tremendously. It’s fantastic.

The sound design matches it perfectly, with each action having crisp audio feedback (the scene of Bojji kicking the firewood into the fireplace in one of the earlier episodes is honestly unbelievable).
The sound directing was spectacular, with great sense for when silence is best and when to use bombastic or somber tones, really elevating the emotional impact of the scenes.
The music itself, however, I think was rather uninspired. It followed the classic fairy tale themes you would expect in this sort of show, but none of the tracks were really mindblowing. It didn’t have that ‘my god, this music is incredible’ moment. It accompanied the show greatly, but it didn’t elevate it past its own potential.

Moving to writing, the episode directing was fantastic, most episodes had extremely clear themes they wanted to focus on (motherhood, friendship, death, regrets among many others) with most of the scenes having extremely clear intent to contribute towards that focus and explore the themes. The emotional backstory episodes were straight up 10/10s by themselves while the humorous episodes were all tasteful and without relying on tropes.

The worldbuilding is fantastic, with an extremely focused plot while still managing to create great mystique about the world as a whole, making the viewer desire to learn more.
The main narrative is executed well, being an amalgamation of many famous western fairy tales, capturing the essence of most of them flawlessly.

The character writing is extremely tight, with most characters having realistic reactions to their environment and showing proper human emotion that you would expect. There is a bit of a bias towards having everyone cry, which at times starts to border on taking you out of the experience, but the show seems to desire to put emphasis that ‘everyone cries, its ok’ which is fine. The only character I have reservation about is Bojji himself because I believe the show did not do as great of a job highlighting his motivations for becoming a King, in general keeping his ‘macro’ mentality towards others rather unclear. One may try to argue that this is by design, given that he can’t communicate clearly, but I would argue that some aspects are critical to good characterization to prevent the character from feeling like a caricature. Bojji did start to border caricature status at times.

Overall, the show ends up having 10/10 art, 9/10 sound and 9/10 writing with the flaw I spoke of being that single great bane that stops it. It was down to just a few decisions for handling which branches would be taken in the story to truly push it one way or the other, but, alas, that lack of commitment to a side ended up hampering it.

Ousama Ranking is an incredible show that everyone should watch but if you are an adult looking for an epic, be prepared for some disappointment and if you are looking for a fairy tale, this show might be a bit too large to swallow. 9/10

Not easy to assess this show, because I need to clearly separate the strengths and weaknesses of the story itself and the adaptation. The following review has some 'light' spoilers, but nothing major if you know what the story is mainly about.

So starting with the story, I think Fuyumi Ono created an absolutely fascinating world filled with really interesting and easy to root for characters.
There's a bit of everything sprinkled around: you have a large set of characters arcs, many of which are focused on imperfect characters slowly becoming better people/rulers from lived experience.
You have an incredibly complicated world itself, with gods that appoint supernatural ... beings which in turn appoints kings, which then govern the 12 kingdoms, each with provinces ruled by lords that fight for political power. And all of this while being an isekai, without actually falling into ANY common isekai tropes, heck, it never felt like a real isekai, but rather an interesting method of having 'people from a far away land' forcefully need to adapt to a new culture. Things like not knowing the language itself or proper customs become critical.
Character arcs are handled very discretely, giving a very large amount of time to develop and slowly transform. There's this great arc of three girls from completely different kingdoms with completely different lives (a maid, a princess, a queen) and how their lives shift and eventually all come together all told in parallel over the course of 20 episodes.

The MC's arc is especially meticulous, slowly building her up from an insecure teenager to a battle-hardened warrior queen, without feeling too fast in the slightest, but slowly exposing different failings of her as a person and how she overcomes them with the support of people around her.

There was very heavy use of hallucinations and prophecy for exposing her character, making me think a lot about Paul from Dune, which I think was one of the best uses of hallucinations for character study I've seen to date.
The weaknesses would probably be that it can get a little 'too' slow at times, being very meticulous about some game of thrones type of political games, moving around characters and information, like who knows what. This can lead to a lot of episodes where absolutely nothing happens, just people meet people and talk. So you really have to be invested in the world and have an interest in political intrigue to stomach some of it. Similarly, there's heavy emphasis on ritualism and customs. Ceremonies and such, which can bog down the story a fair bit.

There is also the problem of inserting a bit too much in-world terminology, much of which doesn't seem necessary at all. It really takes a lot of mental focus to keep it all in your head, there are times when a character would use like 4 terms in 2 sentences which are completely in universe and if you forgot even one, it kind of doesn't make sense. So you need to watch quite attentively.

Next, the actual adaptation. I think Pierrot did a pretty good job. For a 2002 show it looks standard. It had no sakuga moments, but a lot of very-well directed emotional scenes. The sound work was excellent, background art was great, mostly acrylic paintings.

Character animation style was very inconsistent, some stills were VERY detailed and beautiful, but many were very low quality. For it's time, it's pretty much expected, but should be noted that there WERE shows by 2002 that had far superior animation, like most of Gainax's productions.
Now the biggest issue with the adaptation, I would say, is how it decided to be very truthful to the source material to its own detriment. The first 13 episodes adapted vol 1 and were a single self-contained arc of the MC's rise from rags to riches, while also following a few other characters along the way.
Instantly upon the conclusion of that arc, we are thrust into vol2 and for a whole 9 episodes we follow a backstory of a character related to one of the other kingdoms which doesn't even have ANY affect on the current story timeline, but are just events from 'some years ago'. They build up the world very heavily, explaining many of the key concepts of how the power structure is built, but it was a huge cold shower to go from an adventure to this sort of almost documentary-like backstory of a character that doesn't even 'really' show up in the current timeline for the course of the adaptation. It's like a switcharoo.

Then it finally goes back to the main story, with this amazing arc of 3 girls and how their different lives connect. It was absolutely amazing how well the parallel storytelling was told, heavy play of multiple perspectives. All concluding with an absolutely BADASS progression of the MC.

But then it instantly AGAIN goes into a backstory of another character for 8 eps and those are the FINAL 8 eps of the adaptation. So the show basically had two arcs that were following the story and then 2 arcs that were just backstory and to finish on one of them is just idk, it leaves it a bit unsatisfying. It's almost like Pierrot were expecting to adapt more afterwards, but for whatever reason had to cancel (well the novels went on a 12 year hiatus around that time so i guess that's why).
I think source-wise, this was 9/10, bordering 10/10, an absolutely amazing story, I already picked up all 3 following vols to read over the next few days. The adaptation had really strong moments, but the decisions of adapting backstory arcs in the way they did ruin the flow heavily, which I think gimps the adaptation, that and the production quality was just standard and not exceptional. So I think 8/10.

Regardless, it's a golden recommendation from me. Anyone who really enjoyed Dune, Kubera, Game of Thrones, Akatsuki no Yona should find a lot to enjoy here. Just keep in mind, it's very slow.

It's crazy to me how this show is so popular and highly rated. It's honestly one of the worst-written shows I've seen in the past 2 years.

I can see 'how' the show can be enjoyable - if you manage to very rapidly emotionally invest into the main characters, however, I have a hard time seeing how could anyone do this unless they have been hardly exposed to any storytelling ever.

Banana Fish tries to express characters via their interactions with other characters, rather than monologue and singular actions. This means that to get invested in a character, you need to be invested in how they interact ... with other characters. However, the show completely fails at incramental introduction of character traits. It introduces a character, gives a single scene of 'easing into' the character and then suddenly gives some massive exposition about this character and instantly creates a pre-set 'relationship' that this character will have with the other characters. If I were to give character 'integration into the story/buildup' a scale of 1-10, in a well-written work, a character is introduced, giving us a 1. Then we are given scene after scene of this character in different scenarios, showing an increasingly more full picture of what that character is all about, going from 1 to 2 to 3 etc all the way to 10. What banana fish does is it starts at 1, then it has 1 scene of 'mini introduction' that puts the character at 2-3 and then by the 3rd interaction with the character, it full info dumps and goes to 9-10 and you're somehow supposed to already be emotionally invested and feel like this character is real and part of the universe. To anyone who can see past the bullshit, this instantly fails and makes the characters feel completely alien, boring and ultimately cringe in emotional scenes.
The opposite that happens is that half the characters don't have the 3rd step at all. They are given a small set of base traits and relationships with other characters and are left at that for the remainder of the show, delegated to 'ultra side-character' status, while actually being in half the show's scenes.

Following that, the one note I want to make about the characters is that Eiji is one of the most moronic main characters I have ever seen. He literally has only one role - to be a trophy wife for Ash. It's bloody moronic. A character written with zero personal motivation with the sole purpose of just enabling the character development of the true main character.

Every character in this show has a ridiculously inflated anima (male femininity) to the point where I feel like 80% of these characters would have made 10x more sense as females. Heck, we have scenes of guys cheek slapping each other in anger. Add to that the fact this show seems to take place in a parallel universe where 99% of the population is gay and it just loses all sense of realism.

Banana Fish feels like it was written for young teens, while trying to present mature themes, becoming a silly bait and switch.

Art and OST weren't bad, but ultimately forgettable and unimpressive.
I would not recommend this anime to any new viewer, nor an old one. The only good thing I got out of this show is that it gave me a very clear-cut example of how an author can fail to create emotional investment into a new character by skipping mandatory character building steps.

TL;DR review:

A Whisker Away is a typical highschooler romance drama aimed towards young teens. From a writing perspective, nothing in this story is innovative, it follows a cookie-cutter "MC sells her soul to the devil without realizing how bad of a trade that was" scenario that then has to be fixed.
The characters are typical, with the 'serious on the outside, wholesome on the inside' male lead and an 'overly eccentric and goofy on the outside, yet deeply troubled on the inside' female lead. They both have typical development that you would expect from a 1:40h runtime shoujo movie.

The only redeeming aspect of this show is ... the art, but even that is nothing special, at least given what I would expect from a movie.
I counted 4 genuinely good background shots and a few good atmospheric scenes. The animation itself was passable, with zero sakuga moments and some blatant animation mistakes.

OST was fine, no tracks stood out, but they did their job.

Story - 5
Characters - 5
Sound - 7
Art - 7
Enjoyment - 3
Overall - 6

If you're under 14, you might like it. Anything older and the amount of cringing you will feel will exponentially grow by each year. The art did not justify suffering though this.

And so we are finally at the finish line… [A sort of review of Re:Zero]

And so it has finally ended…
To be honest, I think 25 episodes was just the right amount. On one hand, one cour would not have been enough to really capture the story. Arc 3 was instrumental in showcasing that the novel does have world building and the story is much more grand than the first two arcs might have one believe. If we had finished on arc 2, it would have looked like the story was entirely focused only on Subaru, his suffering and that the rest of the world doesn’t ... really exist.
It got to a point where I was theorizing that the entire world of the show was just a product of Subaru’s mind. That nothing was real and it was all in his head. If there was no arc 3, I would have really believed this to be the case, but now it’s clear that the world of Re:Zero is, without a doubt, alive and full of storylines.
On the other hand, if we had more episodes, I feel like the show would start to get stale. The thing with Re:Zero is that, whilst the writing is REALLY good, it’s still fairly simplistic. It gives me very strong Kawahara vibes (author of SAO) in that he is an extremely skilled writer, but is creating a product for the general public to consume, not avid readers. It’s like a gourmet pizza. It’s gourmet alright, but it’s still just a pizza.
So if we had another cour or two, I feel like the hype of the show would start to go down towards the end. People would start to get slightly bored.
And so 25 episodes is just the right amount to perfectly get across what Re:Zero is and to hook people to go and read the light novels. Luckily, with all this hype around, a lot of people have taken up to translate so I expect many volumes to be done in a very short amount of time.
The people who REALLY got invested in the idea of Re:Zero, will now have an excellent LN to pick up, while anime fans will be able to end this show with a good impression.
It reminds me of Spice&Wolf, actually. Funnily enough, done by the same studio, that show also ended on a very good note to hook the viewer to try the LN without getting even slightly stale.
So with that said, on to some reviewing!
The best way I could describe this show, is a very, VERY long movie. Each arc felt VERY much like a separate movie with way more content than a movie would normally have.
The thing with most LNs and anime shows in general is that they’re made to have a slow plot progression. After every big plot checkmark, there will be a fairly long period of “settling down” on the new “level” within the story. There will always be a lot of time spent on increasing the depth of the characters or on building the world. These moments where any events that happen don’t really “mean” anything. They’re just there to help us develop our understanding and view of the characters.
I think Re:Zero is exactly about this concept and approaching it in an entirely different way.
It’s a show where character and world building happen while having huge plot developments and then using “Return by death” to reset said plot development, but keep our new understanding of the characters valid.
It’s pretty ingenious and VERY different from everything else that dealt with similar mechanics.
It’s how I always envisioned time travel stories to play out. Using different timelines as a means to learn something to then use in the original timeline.
This parallel of an MC that is constantly changing due to the events that surround him and the cast that change only based on the events of the one timeline they’re in. The fact that towards the end of the show, White Fox managed to really make these characters feel “alive” is proof of their extreme competence as a studio and the brilliance of the author.

Another point that must not be missed is how this show managed to go so mainstream, while taking so many story risks. By this I mean that the story itself was not filled with fanservice and over-positive outcomes towards the main cast like in most other light novels. One of the greatest issues with a lot of current light novels that deal with world-transportation is that the MC ends up being invincible from the very start. There is always huge risk involved, but the MC always ends up winning and never suffers even a little bit.
Re:Zero throws this entire concept out of the window and tries to tell a realistic and gritty tale. A tale of what being stuck in another world could really mean. The constant helplessness, powerlessness and the feel of isolation. All these emotions are VERY difficult to stomach for a viewer and are generally avoided by these young new LN authors and anime studios. They try to tell a story which the viewer could self-insert into and feel better about themselves fantasizing about it.
Self-inserting in this context is really a plague of extremely boring and WORTHLESS story-telling where the viewer doesn’t learn anything. It’s just like watching fireworks. They look cool, sure, but do they have any value apart from looking cool? Almost none.
Good storytelling is managing to play with the viewers emotions, making him care for the characters within the story and to learn something along the way.
Re:Zero does this job perfectly. It’s taking the concept of “stuck in another world” and creating a story WORTH TELLING. A story that exists not just to make money, but to actually have artistic value in itself.
The word is really artistic value. Can anyone really say that the majority of these recent trope stories have any artistic value? That they make a person really think about things and feel more emotions than what a drug would give?
Re:Zero is a slap to the face of this type of worthless storytelling. A wake up call for authors that it IS possible in this day and age to attract an audience towards a story that is not glorious, but actually gritty, brutal and can make the viewer feel sick to the bone.
I genuinely dropped the show for a while when Arc3 started because the pitifulness of Subaru felt like too much. I couldn’t handle watching him completely lose his sense of reality in front of everyone. It was a horrible experience.
However, I never, not even for a moment, think that I’m dropping this show because it’s bad. I did it because it was so good at showcasing something so horrid. I just wanted to wait till enough episodes came out to actually reach a conclusion and not be stuck on such a pitiful state. I basically binged the remaining 10 episodes in 2 sessions of 5 episodes each. 5 weeks apart.
Now, here’s the big question : is Re:Zero really that good?
No, It’s really not a masterpiece. As brave as this show was, it still let itself be restrained by the genre. It simply wasn’t a multi-layered show. It had the core ideas presented from the start of the show, but didn’t attempt to explore any concepts TOO brave, nor did the show feature very strong multi-layered personalities. They still felt like characters from a fantasy work and not people that one could write essay after essay about.
Re:Zero just wasn’t attempting to express ideas that people could talk about for years in the future.
The parallel to draw here would be shows like NGE, which manages to talk about real world problems at length and make people really THINK about the problems surrounding our society.
Re:Zero does not attempt to make use pose such questions. It simply has a tale it wants to tell. This means that, whilst within it’s own boundry, the show is absolutely amazing. The boundry itself is too small to really reach the epitome of what an anime or a story in general can be capable of.
I will rate the show a 9 out of 10, with the distribution being:
Adaptation quality : 10/10. White Fox keeps proving itself as one of, if not the greatest studio when it comes to really capturing a source material.
Story : 10/10. A brilliant tale that felt like a movie from start to finish. At no point in time did it feel boring or slow. Everything had a meaning.
Characters : 9/10. Subaru will go down in history as one of the most realistic MCs we’ve had in anime in a long time. The rest of the cast have also shown a high level of complexity. However, the show didn’t have anyone of the level of truly masterful characters (ex Holo, Shinji).
Realization of it’s purpose: 10/10. The author had very clear ideas that he wanted to get across with this story and he did it flawlessly.
At the end of the day, the purpose itself of the show just wasn’t grand enough to warrant a masterpiece status so a 9 is as high as I would go.
Re:Zero should go down in history as a new addition to the “must watch” lists to NEW anime fans and viewers who want to really see the “stuck in another world” genre expressed in a truly artistic way with actual value.
It’s not a deconstruction of a genre, but it’s definitely a very valuable work that shows where the genre can be taken.
Now if a writer were to take this entire genre and the groundwork that Re:Zero has laid and then attempted to break the 4th wall of the genre (actually connecting the fantasy world with the real world). Making the story not about an MC who is basically an immigrant from reality, but a story about taking shelter in the fantasy world to escape the real world or to use it as a means to better himself, then we could find ourselves a masterpiece.
If we could just have a writer as competent as Tappei Nagatsuki(Re:Zero) write a story based on the ideas of Reki Kawahara(SAO) with the writing prowess of someone like Nisio Isin(Monogatari) then we could really see this genre taken to the absolute limit.