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Man, it's kind of incredible just how bad Tomodachi Game is. It's the epitome of self-insert garbage. A lot of people rightfully criticise generic isekai anime for their obnoxiously overpowered heroic protagonists, but I think many people don't recognise that obnoxiously overpowered sociopath protagonists are just as much of a power-fantasy audience insert.

There's so much to cover when it comes to the show's faults that it's hard to know where to start. That sociopath protagonist that you follow is Katagiri Yuuichi, and a lot of the show's shit writing can be attributed to the fact that every character is just a side piece in ... Yuuichi's world. Yuuichi is meant to come off as a genius of manipulation, cool and calculating and utterly cruel to those who deserve it. About half of his 'cool' moments and his tricks involve manipulating the people around him to his own benefit, and often to their own self-destruction. Thank god, then, that every character around Yuuichi is defined by one character trait and has no human nuance. This makes it piss easy for Yuuichi, and the audience, to predict exactly what each character will do. The amount of plot contrivances and luck necessary for Yuuichi's 'foolproof' plans to succeed is mind-blowing. It's great, then, that following each terrible plan of his, we get to see him or another character monologue about how fantastic his plan was, and how much of a cruel monster he is! Every game follows this formula: Yuuichi's in a game. He has a surface level plan that the rest of the cast believes to be his true plan, but we obviously know it's not because that's fucking stupid. Oh no! Something went wrong with his original plan! Looks like he's in danger, you can tell this because this is when the respective 'villains' of each game begin to gloat about how smart they are. Surprise! Yuuichi actually accounted for all of this the entire time and wrecks ass.

This highlights one of the most strange choices in the show, which is the inclusion of these three women who work for the Tomodachi Game, and spectate the games from a security room. They serve two purposes, to narrate what we literally just saw with our eyeballs, or to hype up Yuuichi as a cunning genius.
"Ha, there's no way that Yuuichi can get out of this one! He really isn't as scary as you said he was!"
"Oh? Just wait. You'll see just how much of a demon he truly is."
That's approximately how all their conversations go. The show and its whole cast are just there to jack off Yuuichi. This is such a strange choice because it destroys any mysticism or intrigue about the nature of the Tomodachi Game's management. Did they forget that this organisation kidnaps people and enforces massive amounts of debt upon them? You would think that if the whole plot of the show is that Yuuichi is making his way to destroy the Tomodachi Game, you would try to make the people who run it, the villains, more mysterious. Instead, not only do they get more screen-time than three of the primary cast members, they also aren't at all intimidating. They are just as much push-overs as the rest of the cast is in Yuuichi's presence.

The rest of the cast is, of course, one-dimensional and beyond boring. The main group of friends, our protagonists, are all equally hate-able. Tenji is so pathetically deranged and creepy that it's incredible the show thinks that "just because Yuuichi likes them now, the audience should too!" and tries to redeem him. Shibe is presented as a lovable idiot, but he's just an asshole, being rude to Shiho when he finds out she's had plastic surgery and to Kokorogi when he learns she's participated in enjo kousai (going out on dates with older men for money). Kokorogi and Shiho are just their traumas, having so little agency it's hard to even call them characters. About half-way through the show, another group of friends who were put into the Tomodachi Game appear as the 'villains' of that game. These five are the pinnacle of background characters, yet we're meant to be astounded at Yuuichi's ability to determine their friendship dynamics and personalities when the character's are walking tropes. As an example, you can tell which member of the group is the smart one because he wears glasses, and when he figures out the answer to a question that was posed by another member of his team, he says, and I shit you not, "I've solved all the mysteries." I refuse to believe a human being wrote this dialogue. Once again, they're complete pushovers for villains. Yuuichi's plan only works because a new member that gets added to his group, who is actually one of the spectating women in disguise, is a woman, and thus one of the dumbasses from the other group completely loses all ability for rational thought and almost throws the game for his team. This is the "easily manipulated by women" trope character, and it's just as stupid to watch as I made it sound. Side note: in the first place, this game is inherently boring to watch because the only reason the 'villains' of the game are so powerful is not because of their cognitive abilities and strategising, but because they literally just have more members than Yuuichi's group.

There's a couple more points about the flaws of the writing that I couldn't find a good way to link into the rest of the review so here they are. First is that the logistics of the game shouldn't be thought about, like at all, or you'll realise just how breakable these games are. They act like the Tomodachi Game is exempt from the law and that trying to out it would never work and would just put them in more debt, but they do realise that the game is stupid illegal... right? Only the person who signed the rest of the group up to the game consented to being literally kidnapped. The other main flaw is the same one that affects something like Kakegurui, which is that the way the players are punished or rewarded is through the amount of debt they have remaining. Don't get me wrong, the debt they go into aren't trivial numbers to real humans, but at some point they become meaningless because it's in an anime, and it loses all impact when their 5 million yen debt gets increased to 10 million yen. These random numbers don't mean anything.

Lastly the animation, or lack of, is one of the most jarring parts of the production. Not a single frame looks particularly good. The style is stilted and 95% of shots are still frames with the camera panning in a direction. Every internal monologue has no flavour as you see these still pictures talking. Sometimes they don't even animate the lip flaps. This gets especially bad when an intense scene is happening. In the final game we see, Yuuichi gets bloodied and brutalised. Even though fingernails are flying and blood is running from stab wounds, none of it's animated. We just see still frames of vague shots of blood that have colour filters over it. If a character makes an insane, exaggerated reaction face when they are talking about their plans, the animation lets those down sorely. Compared to the wonderfully expressive faces of Tomodachi Game's contemporaries, the expressions here are stilted and boring, and it borders on being cringe-inducing to watch.

Tomodachi Game was deeply entertaining to me, because I have an unhealthy obsession with "survival/betrayal/death game" stories. If you don't, then you should probably stay away from this anime if you enjoy keeping your brain cells.

This review contains spoilers.

Demon Slayer has never looked better. I don't think I need to elaborate, Ufotable has consistently been raising the bar of CGI usage and choreography in their fight scenes and this newest season has displayed their finest work from the whole series so far. Paired with a fantastic soundtrack that compliments the heat action well, it seems like Demon Slayer Yuukaku-Hen could become a peak shounen. And, yet, the show's faults still left me bored and disengaged.

The two characters that we follow are Tanjiro and Tengen, one of the 12 Hashira. Some background characters that take up large amounts of screen time ... include Zenitsu and Inosuke, with Nezuko as their obligatory shounen animal sidekick alike to Fairy Tail's Happy. Zenitsu and Inosuke were already poor main characters as a part of the main trio we would follow throughout the series in season 1, and their personality and plot relevance has only degraded more and more. It felt as if they only appear to make team fights possible or as unfunny comedic relief.

Zenitsu spends the first half of the show being Zenitsu, whining, being a creep and displaying basic acts of kindness. Defending children being abused by a figure that they respect and look up to isn't particularly heroic. In that scene, we know that this authoritative figure is actually an Upper Rank demon that will become the villain of this arc, but Zenitsu doesn't know that. This isn't Zenitsu thinking he's risking his life to defend some children, it's a basic act of human decency. This scene would be fine if it wasn't the only time we get to see Zenitsu doing anything else other the aforementioned whining and creeping. The few times where Zenitsu genuinely grows serious in the wake of potential danger, he becomes a less charismatic Tanjiro, not even a character. Luckily, if you're not a fan of Zenitsu's personality, he completely loses it for the latter half of the show. Entering his boss form once he falls asleep, he spends the whole end half of the season asleep. I'm not sure if anyone found the joke that he becomes competent at fighting when he's unconscious funny after the first time around but I sincerely doubt it kept anyone laughing for the 5 episodes it takes up. Of course this also means that he's completely lost all semblance of character, (which may be a blessing in disguise), from that point onwards.

Inosuke's only slightly better. Whilst he lacks even that small emotional scene that Zenitsu was given, his character stays the way it was in season 1 throughout the whole show. It stays that way except for whenever the plot calls for him to be serious, where his stupidity and brashness would cause the situation to get needlessly complicated. It's kind of incredibly seeing how shamelessly the show makes him switch personalities from pig menace to intimidating fighter on a dime whenever the plot requires it. Whenever Inosuke is within the presence of the demon he suddenly gains brain cells despite that kind of treatment not appearing in the past. Inosuke also highlights another problem that plagues the show, possibly it's biggest fault, the amount of plot contrivances needed to get to the end point. Us suddenly learning Inosuke can dislocate his joints at will is passable since it's clearly played for comedy and prior to combat, but us surprise learning he could always relocate his organs and be poison immune during a high stake fight where we earnestly thought that he was defeated is just disgusting. It's a prime example of creating drama without owning the responsibility. For all we know, Inosuke also has limb regeneration and echolocation skills with his giant boar ears.

Plot contrivances plague the major fight that makes up the meat of the show. The sheer amount of times Tanjiro is on the verge of death, only to be revived and given new strength either through the power of friendship, sister or avenging the death, and then to find out that his new strength was easily countered is incredible. Tanjiro being rendered unable to continue moving happens within the first 10 minutes of their fight, yet the fight continues on for the next hour and a half of runtime. The various tricks that the Upper Rank demon has hidden is understandable as there really shouldn't be any reason our heroes know about them, but Nezuko suddenly growing adult demon strength and then reverting and calming down after Tanjiro sings her a song from her childhood that has nothing to do with their current situation is beyond my suspension of disbelief. Nezuko only serves to save people and be god in this arc. She saves Tanjiro twice directly and one more when Tanjiro suddenly can deal the strongest amount of damage he ever has despite his injuries when he remembers that she.. exists? Nezuko being able to cure the poison that was the main point of tension during their fight like it was nothing is just bullshit. Whatever demon magic logic is used to justify this power isn't the point, it's the fact that it was made such an important deal during the fight, yet immediately ceases to exist once its over. It's not even entirely clear how she managed to save the cast from the final dying explosion the demon creates, nor why she can save them all despite how far away they all are from each other, but can't save any of the surrounding environment.

Speaking of the Upper Rank demon, these two villains are likely the second least interesting so far, just ahead of Enmu. Daki and Gyutaro lack the amount of charisma or intimidation that previous villains had. Rui, the spider demon, was always framed with dominating camera shots, his design itself being creepy and disturbing. The way his attacks, the threads, were presented were gracefully lethal. The arrow demon and the temari balls demon (remember them?) weren't nearly as intimidating, but they were charismatic at the very least. Daki's not a villain you yourself find intimidating, nor is she one that's fun to watch or fun to watch get defeated. She complains about beauty and ugliness, half of her lines use those two words. She's annoying, but not annoying enough to find pleasure in her defeat, she's a poor villain. Gyutaro is similar, he's framed with a bit more dominance than Daki, but his voice (obviously not the VA's fault) and mannerisms lend themselves poorly to that quality, making him equally as uninteresting. Their backstory is actually decent, analysing the way that their bond is strengthened by their differences, the way that they depend on each other despite their shortcomings. Since we're given these emotional scenes moments before they disintegrate out of the show, its hard to say that I was invested in them especially given how lame they were as villains.

Tengen's character is... fine. He presents unique perspectives on death and living life to the fullest from the other characters in the show, and had the show more focused on his life and his character, I'd be happy to love him. However, considering how much screentime is dedicated to the fight, its hard to see him as anything but a decently strong fighter. There isn't much logic or consistently to how powerful he is which proves itself to be an issue when one second he's beheading them in the blink of an eye, and the next he's struggling to stay standing. His dialogue is the least bloated out of all the characters, with Tanjiro especially never shutting up and giving extremely long yet full-of-nothing monologues.

Ultimately, Demon Slayer Yuukaku-Hen finds itself to be a serious drop in quality from the first season. Whilst its fights have never looked better, the amount of hand-waving needed to elongate them strips the fights of their suspense and value. It's less than stellar characters make up the whole cast of the show, and while it started fairly strong, no shounen can survive without exciting fights. Maybe next season we'll finally get Inosuke character development.