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Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: Devil May Cry: The Animated Series

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Half demon, half human hunter, Dante owns a business that takes care of all your pesky demon problems. Spanning across 12 missions, Dante helps humans who are plagued with demonic murders find peace...for a fee.

Pros:
-Episode 5 breaks from the mold in an interesting and comical way
... -Each episode being essentially self-contained as it’s a different job for Dante each time is an obvious and unoriginal choice but serves the DMC universe well given Dante’s profession

Cons:
-Chooses to borrow from successful anime that came before it rather than try to carve a style all its own
-While the source material is poking fun at itself, the animated series takes itself much more seriously than the games ever intended and thus the anime ends up full simply following suit to every other mature action show
-An excess of reoccurring characters that don’t push or further the story or the characters in any way

Rating: 5/10

What did you rate Devil May Cry?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: Dagashi Kashi

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Kokonotsu has dreams of being a manga artist but is stuck running and possibly taking over his dad’s sweets shop in the country. He’s against the idea until the very passionate and very rich, Hotaru comes to town to try to get his family to come work for her father’s world famous sweets company.

Pros:
-Sticks well to its goofy slice of life premise for each episode
... -The perviness is self-aware in ways that other anime are not and succeeds in using it for comedy rather than titillation
-Building an entire show over a love of gas station junk food and always sticking to that concept make this show funny from start to finish

Cons:
-The romantic subplot is distracting but maybe it leading to something else in season 2

Rating: 8/10

What did YOU rate season 1 of Dagashi Kashi?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: Hetalia: Axis Powers

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Have no idea what happened in the great World Wars? Fell asleep in history class? Have no fear! Hetalia is here to give you a fun, quick rundown of what went on between each of the countries in the most quirky way possible, by having each country represented by a person!

Pros:
... -Fantastic and unique concept
-While not all the jokes land, the ones that do are hilarious and unexpected
-While voice acting is purposefully clownish, the distinctions in region are accurate and helpful in maintaining the plethora of cast members

Cons:
-While the quickness of the show is appreciated, sometimes the story is blown by without you even grasping what it was trying to tell you
-In the quickness of episodes and the brazen comedy, show fails often in its mission to teach the viewer about the great world wars, often leaving most story lines and characters to be forgettable

Rating: 6/10

What did YOU think?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: Your Lie In April

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Following the passing of his mother, Kousei, a prodigious child pianist, finds that he can no longer play the piano like he once could until he meets a beautiful violist who changes his world for the better and for the worse.

Pros:
-Romanticizes the world of competitive classic music playing in the most beautiful of ways
... -Beautiful original and classical piano music throughout
-Tugs at the heart strings at every turn effectively especially in the final few near perfect episodes
-Characters are perfectly frustrating as middle school age kids can be

Cons:
-Story runs around in circles at many points in favor of stretching out more episodes

Rating: 8/10

Rapid :fire: Review

Title: Doubt

A/M: Manga

Synopsis: A harmless cellphone game about Rabbits turns into a murderous killing spree as a handful of teens are caught in a deadly game of Werewolf in which one of them is the murderer and they are the helpless rabbits.

Pros:
-Moves at a nice clip, is over before you know it and doesn’t try to overstay it’s welcome
... -Gives enough of a cliffhanger to make you curious about the next installment

Cons:
-A copy and paste of every slasher film, television show, game or book that has ever been made
-Predictable from start to finish, almost laughably so
-Characters are all drenched in cliché in a way that unfortunately missed an opportunity to poke fun of, in fact, had this manga been a farce, it would have played much better than it did taking itself seriously

Rating: 4/10

What did you give Doubt?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: Afro Samurai: Resurrection

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Afro finally has the Number One Headband which makes him the fiercest warrior in the land, that is until two people set on having their revenge against Afro steal the headband has his deceased father’s remains. He must now get it back by any means necessary.

Pros:
-RZA’s soundtrack is aces and perfectly underscores each scene
... -Beautifully dark and shadowed art design that perfectly illustrates the underbelly of this world
-Like the show, Resurrection mixes old world samurai era with mid 2000s technology in an interesting and dynamic way, yet, well blended way
-Better than the show so much so that Afro Samurai should have just been this movie instead of having its previous 6-episode story arc

Cons:
-Infantile and clichéd script, story concepts and character development
-The Ninja, Ninja character in concept is interesting but come across hokey especially with how much dialogue he gets

Rating: 6/10

What did YOU rate Afro Samurai: Resurrection?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: My Hero Academia

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Midoriya has always dreamed of being a hero. He’s given the opportunity in an expected way from his idol, All Might. Now he must prove his worth amongst other students with special powers, some more powerful than Midoriya’s, one of whom happens to be his childhood rival who is determined to send Midoriya home on a stretcher.

Pros:
-Every character is delightful, and the side characters are given just the perfect amount of screen time. Leads are fully fleshed out and have complex relationships with each other and themselves that carry the narrative
-The show never betrays its lightness. While ... it has some tender moments, the show stays relatively fun
-Trite but highly effective and relatable messaging about what being a real hero is all about

Cons:
-Doesn’t really present any new or interesting ideas to super heroes or even the genre of super hero anime

Rating: 8/10

What did YOU rate Season 1 of My Hero Academia?

Rapid :fire: Review
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Title: March Comes in Like a Lion

A/M: Anime

Synopsis: Rei Kiriyama was once considered a prodigy, a professional shogi player by middle school however this came at a price. Now, 17, he is living alone and away from the pressures of the shogi community and his dysfunctional adoptive family. Rei is finding his place in life when old friends return to disrupt his quiet life. He must find a way to deal with his complex emotions and decide who is truly willing to help him along his journey.

Pros:
-Rei is such an effective protagonist and his emotional inner monologues are the best thing about the ... show
-The shining characters beyond Rei are Shimada and Kyoko. Kyoko’s complicated backstory with Rei as well as her tempestuous relationship with a married man is one of the most daring and honest characters that anime has ever tackled
-Show is best in its quiet moments with its wide shots of the city or Rei looking off into the distance. The show can be picturesque when it wants to be
-Gives an accurate insight into what depression and anxiety looks like in various forms as exemplified by the characters with the heavier storylines

Cons:
-While the side characters seem integral to Rei’s character development, they seem to take more screen time than necessary
-The Kawamoto sisters pull focus from the more interesting themes and story beats and could have been removed from the story entirely in favor of Rei finding character development through other side characters
-The show fails to make shogi feel interesting to watch to those not previously familiar or interested with the game

Rating: 7/10

What did you think of season one of March Comes In Like a Lion?

Rapid Fire Review
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Title: Sorekara, Kimi wo Kangaeru

A/M: Manga

Synopsis: Four separate short stories of gay male teen couples enduring high school angst and the pressures that eventually push them together or tear them apart:
-In “Then, I Think of You”, Yasu and Takashi must decide if one of them will leave or if both of them will stay in their small nothing town to be together.
-In “The Final Command”, a dinner party makes Sano reminiscences of a dark-ish period in his life when he fully submitted to the bully of his class.
-In “Young Oh! Oh!”, an unplanned ploy to dissuade the advances of a female classmate ... lands Sako in a relationship with a boy that he does not want. Or does he?
-In “It’s Darkest Before the Dawn”, Kaname gets terrible news about his family. He decides to run away with his closest childhood friend who helps him explore his sexuality in ways that he is not fully prepared to handle.

Pros:
-The inner monologues in each piece are lovely and even have a few life gems to remember
-“The Final Command” is 1/3rd the length of the other stories and, yet, tells the strongest story due to its brevity, lack of explanation and dark subject matter
-Sex scene is realistic and honest without being gratuitous or exploitative

Cons:
-Suffers from a what many Shounen Ai or most romance manga suffer from which is that two, arguably three, of the stories have little to no obstacle, high drama and somehow a forced romantic conclusion
-The spoken dialogue between the characters feels formulaic and predictable as are the outcomes of all the stories
-The manga suffers from lack of variety. The four stories seem to have almost the exact same characters assuming different hairstyles and varying degrees of angst or broodiness. With the exception of one, the manga is a paint-by-numbers romance manga that had missed opportunities to throw the reader a curveball.

Rating: 5/10