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The easiest way I can describe Twilight of the Dark Master for you is to imagine a 12 episode (at least) anime getting compressed into a 45 minute OVA. The art and animation are both really great and heavily influenced by Blade Runner - but everything else is a complete and utter mess. The story barely makes any sense and the characters are paper thin. It's not a surprise that this OVA has been long forgotten to the point that even YouTube had very little videos available on it. I can only imagine what went on at the studio behind the scenes that led ... to this being the end result.

Hitsuji no Uta is unfortunately let down by a VERY limited budget. The story is interesting and it's a unique take on the vampire origin story, but the way the anime is presented makes it hard to recommend. The overload of flashbacks to progress the story, the constant reuse of animation, and the lack of character development (despite the slow pace) is really jarring. There is also only about 4 pieces of music in the entire soundtrack which adds to the repetitiveness. I think with a bigger budget this could have been a good series (even with only four episodes), but as it is I ... can't really recommend it.

On the positive side, it did give me enough interest to check out the manga, so hopefully that's better (as the consensus seems to be).

Pure Mail starts as an interesting psychological thriller and ends as a generic romantic drama. Our main character Kei is a loner who is hinted at hiding a troubled past. He is obsessed with his computer and chats under the name 'KW' with a girl he finds out is another student at his school named Midori. He knows who she is, but she doesn't know who he is. Kei is a brooding, quiet figure; a contrast to Midori's more innocent and friendly personality. Despite there only being two episodes, I was expecting a further exploration of Kei's psychology and thought that the plot still had ... time to develop.

Yeah... well, the first problem begins about 15 minutes in where we're shown that Kei is being blackmailed by another student for cheating on exams. We get a ridiculous 5 minute long sex scene between them and this is blackmail plot is brought to our attention: for no reason. It has no impact on the plot, the girl involved never interacts with the other characters, and is completely unneccesary. This 'pointless subplot with a girl' thing starts cropping up more and more after, and it became clear that the creators decided to blend several different routes from the source visual novel together instead of just going with one route. What this led to was a fairly constant mood whiplash and side characters that didn't need to be introduced to us in the first place.

This still had good start and I give it credit for both making an effort to develop the main characters and having a coherent storyline. But, it goes downhill quickly. A part of me wishes that I just watched the first part and turned the rest of it off, making up my own ending.

Fun fact: This is the most censored release EVER in the UK. Almost 7 minutes was cut before it was approved by the BBFC.

After Evil Town I was expecting something at least decent from Hells Wind but unfortunately, I was left very disappointed. It was an echo of the first OVA, Slumking: Barely any story, weak characters, and Jack back to being a boring silent hero. There were some ok action scenes but again, a lot of still shots were present. Possible budget issues? It was released over 2 years after Evil Town so they at least had some time to come up with a ... decent production. In any case, I thought the animation and art was a step down from the previous OVA.

How about the characters? We get two new heroines: Keiko who exists solely to be kidnapped and stripped as a reason to move the story forward, and our main heroine Jun who is introduced to us with her top off. She’s shown to be pretty kick ass and was a good character to root for but is also captured and in true Violence Jack fashion… gets stripped and graphically cut up with a knife. Lovely. This just felt like an excuse to show women (and men) being abused as much as possible. The violence was uncomfortable and monotonous. Pure misery porn.

I’m probably being generous giving this a 3, but as it was slightly better than the first OVA Slumking I’ll give it an extra point. What a disappointing end to the trilogy. Well, at least fans of trashy anime will find some appeal from this one, it’s not as depressing as Evil Town.

I considered dropping the Violence Jack OVA’s after watching the travesty that was Slumking, but this was a surprising improvement. ‘Evil Town’ is set several months after the apocalypse in a small-scale underground area, split into three separate areas due to infighting. Jack is re-introduced after being found buried by some of the residents who are seeking escape. He still isn’t a fully fleshed out character but at least he talks now and has an actual personality, even if it is a bit thin. Similarly, the other characters also have something resembling a personality too, and the main villains manage to say more than a ... few words. You know, this is one of the few times I’ve watched a post-apocalyptic show where the dystopia actually FELT like a dystopia. Everyone out for themselves, cold atmosphere, a feeling of no hope etc.
The animation and art were an improvement on Slumking, and there was a great fight scene at the end between Jack and the main villain Mad Saurus which was pretty damn cool.

The main problem with Evil Town? Well, it’s hard to recommend something that was so unpleasant to watch. When you are recommending something to a friend you talk about the positives, and with Evil Town it’s so dark and miserable that it’s a hard sell. Its basically 50 minutes of characters being put through misery, with scenes of graphic rape and violence. This was honestly one of the most cynical things I’ve ever watched.

An improvement on Slumking sure, but you’ll have to think long and hard about whether you really want to watch this one. If you do, make sure to watch it subbed.

I went in with low expectations for this one, but it managed to be even worse than I was expecting.

The beginning is fine, we get some short backstory about how the world has been destroyed and turned into a dystopia after a series of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. We then follow a group of girls escaping some evil-doers who want to make them into sex slaves. Sounds like the start to an entertaining, hyper-violent romp, right? Well, instead it turns into a boring, trash heap. There’s no story, no character development, nothing of real entertainment here.

Answer me this: Who the hell is Violence Jack ... anyway? We are told he’s as big as a gorilla and has sharp teeth… and nothing else? It’s a bit hard to root for the main hero when we know zero about them other than they’re big as f***. What’s his backstory, personality etc.? This is the first episode, you need to give us (the audience) some information to make us care, even a little. Not even the over-the-top violence is fun or amusing, a lot of the action animation is done in a freeze frame style or presented in a repetitive fashion and it’s just a bit of a snooze-fest. I can’t believe I’d ever say that about gory violence! The art and music are serviceable, that’s about it really.

If you loved the show, you'll love this. If you were on the fence, the movie adaptation may turn you into a fan... if you're able to overlook some issues.

The film follows our heroine Violet and the exploits of the CH Postal Company, in a similar format to the show and earlier film. Violet writes letters, we learn about the sad stories of her clients, the usual. The appearance of the major brings in a break to the routine of things, and becomes the focal point of the second half of the film. I was expecting a more in-depth exploration of Violet and the major’s ... relationship once he came into the picture, but sadly most of their relationship is presented as flashbacks in an effort to refresh our memories (and save on budget?). That’s not to say we didn’t get to learn plenty about the Major, he's not on screen for a huge amount but he did receive a fair amount of character development.

The interactions with Violet’s ‘client’ and other character moments in the film aren’t hurried and generally presented at a good pace, as we now have a long runtime to proceed through them in a satisfactory manner. The overall ‘message’ the film presented (importance of spending time with loved ones etc.) was nothing new, but it worked. The art and animation were gorgeous. I think everyone knows the quality Kyoto commits to but wow, it really was impressive to watch. I don’t think there was a single frame that wasn’t lovely to look at.

There were a number of times when I thought things could have moved on a bit faster, the pacing never dragged (and again, it was better than the TV show) but a couple of scenes lingered for a little too long. Several emotional scenes were for a lack of a better term, ham-fisted. Hell, the director may as well have shown a title card with ‘you can cry now!’. Subtlety goes a long way folks.

I have two major complaints about this film. The first is that I didn't think the supporting cast's stories were wrapped up at all. A few were, but the ‘main’ supporting cast (the workers at the Postal Company) I mean what happened to them? There was no resolution, it’s the same for the characters introduced in 'Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll'. We get a full film that's dedicated solely to them and we don't even see them at all during the runtime of this.

My main complaint with this film was at how overbearing the music was. My God. In every scene that was remotely emotional the grating score was so loud and overly dramatic it overpowered the dialogue and veered very close to removing all the impact of sensitive scenes. I didn't feel like I was watching a touching drama that made me want to cry, at times I thought I was watching a tacky melodrama. Someone should have told the composer/director: 'Hey, maybe we should tone this down a bit?'. I know it’s similar to how it is in the TV show, but in a feature length movie its brunt was far worse. Thankfully, at the most pivotal scene in the film the soundtrack was nowhere to be seen (at least).

Complaints aside, I did enjoy the film and it wrapped up Violet's story well. I was also SO GLAD they didn't rush the major’s and Violet’s reunion, and the whole thing ended up coming to a satisfying resolution. Violet Evergarden the movie isn’t perfect and the soundtrack can be BRUTAL at times but it is an improvement overall compared to the previous entries. I can’t recommend it as highly as the other fans on MAL but yes, it is worth the watch. Fans won't be dissapointed.

Oh, I forgot to mention: I was one of the lucky folks who watched this during its one day only run in Ireland in a 'packed' cinema. And by packed, I mean there was barely 20 other people there as that was the maximum allowed. Thanks Coronavirus!

A hentai with an actual plot? And it’s… pretty good too? Say it ain’t so.

The story follows Gen, who moves to his families’ mansion after his mother dies. Here, he’s introduced to his wheelchair bound grandmother and her mysterious silver haired maid. His family line holds a dark secret, which is slowly revealed to us during the course of the show. The mystery of his past and the inhabitants of his new house was actually pretty interesting, and the melancholy atmosphere was a large factor. The pacing was good too, not too fast or slow. Sadly, I thought the actual mystery did start to fizzle ... out towards episode 3.

In terms of presentation, the animation was nothing special but the art was appealing and above average when you compare it with Hentai from the same time period (1998). The music was good and FAR better than your average hentai. There was an issue with the sound mixing in episodes 2 and 3, the music was so loud I could barely hear the voice acting in some scenes. I watched with the original Japanese audio, so I could of course still read the subtitles but a bit strange that this was overlooked.

There wasn’t that many H scenes either. In terms of tastefulness, it was a mixed bag. Obviously, there were scenes that were included just for titillation, I mean part of the plot is that Gen’s ‘curse’ forces him to inseminate as many women as possible. That being said, quite a few scenes were actually tasteful and in general what was there was generally short. An effort was made to tie the sex scenes into the story. Hell, often it just faded to black without showing anything at all. There’s actually an upload on Youtube of the full four episodes with all of the H scenes removed.

You know what's surprising? This was directed by the same person who directed Welcome to the N.H.K.! It was odd watching a Hentai show that had an actual story, characters that had something resembling a personality and an atmosphere that wasn’t overly happy. Nothing about the show was ‘great’ but this is easily the best Hentai I’ve seen as an overall package, and it works as a show in its own right.

While the characters manage to avoid being completely stereotypical and Doukyuusei is a more 'wholesome' take on the genre, the relationship between our protagonists (Kusakabe and Sajou) didn’t feel like it developed naturally to me. I wouldn’t describe their relationship as being shoehorned into the story, and we do get some pretty typical ‘will they or won’t they’ drama, but I didn’t get the impression that I really knew any of the characters during the run time of this short film.

Now, I understand that this is a plot point as the characters are shown to have difficulties committing; the problem was that as soon as ... the relationship and the characters themselves started to show something resembling progression the film was already over. I think the opportunity was there for the filmmakers to develop the relationship in a more satisfying manner, but just 60 minutes wasn’t enough to do so. Considering this is a romance, if the actual relationship between the characters isn’t right then that’s too big of a problem to gloss over.

Besides the characters, I did like the other parts of Doukyuusei. The artwork is presented in an undetailed abstract manner, but had its own charm and personality. The sound design is naturalistic so there’s not much in the music department, but what was there helped add to the relaxed atmosphere. Those good parts aside, taken as a whole Doukyuusei is too underdeveloped as a love story for me to give it a recommendation.

tl;dr Read the visual novel instead

This review is my attempt at providing a different perspective to the overly positive and negative reviews, and to explain exactly why Steins;Gate has caused such divisive reactions on MAL (and the internet at large).

Throughout the review I'll be using the term 'VN' to refer to the Steins;Gate visual novel. For those unaware, Steins;Gate was originally released as a visual novel in 2009, but wasn’t translated into English until 2014 (well after the anime originally aired). I’m well aware that attempting to adapt a 25+ hour long Visual Novel with 6 endings into a 24-episode anime is obviously going ... to result in content being cut. So, a good amount of my complaints would have resulted in a significant impact on the running time if they were remedied.

Sadly, this is a result of the problem with Japan’s seasonal tv schedule. If an anime adaption only gets one season it has to fit a long story into a maximum of 26 episodes, each only 21-22 minutes long (not counting the opening and closing songs). That being said, some complaints I have would have had no or minimal time impact if they were resolved. I did try to look at the anime as its own ‘thing’ and avoided trying to directly compare it with the VN at every scene. The problem is that even if the VN did not exist many of my criticisms would still remain, but most issues exist as a result of changes when the story made from the journey from text to screen. As a consequence, I’ll be referring to the VN throughout to help support my arguments.

Time Travel
At the beginning of Steins;Gate, there’s a scene where Kurisu is giving a talk on time travel at Okabe’s university. Her and Okabe briefly debate, and Kurisu gives a 20-minute-long lecture on the various theories on time travel to serve as an introduction of the concept to the viewer. She goes through each one giving the audie- Oh, wait, that scene was cut from the anime. Instead we get a 30 second scene where Kurisu supposedly embarrasses Okabe with her knowledge of time travel which ends with her admonishing him, and Okabe is shown dejected.

I understand the viewer complaints that the way time travel is presented in the anime feels both overly simple and convoluted at the same time; and the reason for that is because scenes like the above have been completely removed from the anime. In the VN we have many scenes of round table discussions between the characters and Okabe's inner thoughts to guide us through the time travel concepts, consequences of it and so on. The anime spends less than 10 minutes total (that’s NOT a typo) on the actual theory in comparison.

Honestly, even with my pre-existing knowledge I became confused trying to follow along as there's such a shoddy job done of explaining the time travel aspect during the course of the show. I think fans are too willing to excuse the pretty blatant shortcomings, and (being a bit presumptuous here) I think its because the show does a good job of making the viewer 'feel' smart. I think the directors of the anime either didn’t want to ‘bore’ the viewers or realised that they didn’t have adequate time to discuss the concepts in any great detail, so their solution was to only include a few brief scenes explaining it and then to move on quickly as possible so that the viewer can’t stop and think about how little it all makes sense.

The authors of the VN made a huge amount of effort to make it as plausible and clear to the reader as possible, and it shows. It captures your imagination and makes you think about the long-term impacts of the characters decisions, the alternate worlds theories and so on. The only scene in the anime that I thought that made a decent effort was Suzuhzas talk with Okabe and Kurisu in episode 14, and even that was very brief. Describing it as ‘butchered’ is putting it mildly. The VN is like reading a good Hard science fiction novel, while the anime is like watching a half-baked Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

Characters
A common complaint even among the bigger fans of the show is that some of the characters feel two dimensional, even stereotypical. In the entire run time of the anime, I thought only Okabe, Kurisu and Suzuha received a decent amount of character development. Simply put, most of the characters only show up when they’re needed to move the plot forward and aren’t given enough time to expand on their background, personalities and so on. As an example, this is why it feels a bit odd when Ruka and Faris suddenly express romantic interest in Okabe despite barely showing up in the previous episodes or interacting with him one on one directly. The reason? Their character arcs and daily conversations with him and the rest of the Lab team have been excised. I’m not going to claim that the characters from the VN are on the level of a Dostoyevsky novel, but they are believable as characters with their own thoughts, fears and failings. In the anime, the characters feel thin because THEY ARE thin.

Thinking about it, barely any of the characters in Okabe’s circle are even properly introduced to us. Here’s an example: right at the beginning of the VN Okabe tells us who Mayuri and Daru are, the nature of their relationship, how long he’s known them for etc. In the anime, I mean they’re just there in his life and it felt as though I was expected to already know who they were supposed to be. In the first episode Okabe says he’s known Mayuri ‘Since they were kids’ and Daru is his ‘Super Haker’, that’s it? Could they not spend even 30 seconds properly explaining who they are to us?

I also want to address another common complaint, and that is that characters, Okabe in particular, seem to make irrational or hasty decisions. The VN is in a first-person view, so that you see everything from Okabe’s perspective. I cannot emphasise how important this is to the story, because you feel all of the things he feels. When he is deep in thought about a problem, or going through a personal crisis it endears you to him and helps you understand his perspective. So, when he makes a decision that seems irrational it is expressed clearly in the VN why he is making that decision, and it is usually after a discussion with the other characters (again, a discussion most likely not present in the anime). How does the saying go, ‘We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions’? Why didn’t the anime show more of his point of view? Its been a long time since I’ve seen Death Note but a lot of that show took place in the characters heads with their thoughts spoken out loud to us, hell I think that was one of the main reasons it was so successful. Is there a reason anime is adverse from doing this more often?

Before I move on to the next section, I want to give a concrete example of the problems the anime has in regards to character actions. There’s plenty for me to choose from but I’m going to bring up one scene in particular that really bothered me. In episode 23, we are re-introduced to Suzuha and she tells Okabe about WW3 and the need to re-write the past. How do you think he should react to this shocking revelation? Maybe by asking some questions about: How did World War 3 start? How is almost the entire population of earth wiped out? Is SERN responsible for it? Why is Suzuha wearing military fatigues? How about, you know, just expressing some joy that Suhuza is back alive in the flesh?

Well, he does none of these things. In fact, he barely even offers any resistance when Suzuha tells him that she needs his help and he also doesn’t ask for more information like he clearly should. In the VN, he acts as you would expect anyone in his position would by collapsing at the absurdity of the situation and refusing flat out to help Suzuha due to the trauma he’s faced. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him to agree to come along which is done in part by answering the many questions he (and us) have about the situation.

Pacing
The next thing I want to bring up is the pacing. Episode 1-12 are often described as being ‘slow’, and a common view is that not a lot happens in these episodes. But, the consensus is that they are necessary, especially as the stakes are raised in the next half of the show. My thoughts? I’m going to make a crazy claim here, one that is probably going to confuse most folks and say that the pacing is… too fast. Episodes 1 to 12 (around 4 hours) are covered in chapters 1 to 5 of the Visual Novel, and even if you read at a pretty brisk pace it’ll most likely take you more than 12 hours to read those chapters. Why is it that people can make it through this part of the visual novel without too many problems yet I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they dropped the show after a few episodes?

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is an example of a slow-paced anime, this isn’t. Steins;Gate problem is not that the pacing is slow, its problem is that there is no ‘hook’ for the viewers established in the early episodes to make them continue watching. Yes, we have the time machine and we can send messages back to the past but the show does not successfully garner viewer interest because they haven’t brought any mystery into the equation. The VN makes the implications of the time machine more interesting, and also brings in intrigue as we wonder about SERN and the other characters impact in the story. Hell, SERN is barely even mentioned in the early episodes of the anime. Even the interactions (again, almost all removed from the anime) that you have with the other characters were entertaining enough on their own to make me continue reading the VN.

In reality, the anime moves at a quick pace. If you re-watch and go on a scene by scene basis a lot of ground is covered by the anime in each episode. Too much in my opinion, there’s not enough breathing space. This is a problem I also had with Violet Evergarden, another anime commonly described as ‘slow’. This is something that’s actually quite tough for me to argue in a manner I’m happy with, but here’s one example to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. When the time leap machine is created, it done as an afterthought. Kurisu seemingly invents this ground-breaking piece of technology in less than one episode (barely one morning?) while in the VN it is shown as a difficult several days long effort by all involved. Its importance is not given enough emphasis. Keeping the story moving is fine, but the show went from A->B here far too quickly, it does that a lot in fact.

There are another series of issues I want to bring up that I’ve not seen many others talk about, all of which significantly hindered my enjoyment of the show:

SERN
SERN is presented as an actual threat in the VN. They are part of a wider conspiracy involving the Committee of 300, an ever-present group of shadowy figures who appear in the other Science Adventure games. The committee of 300 and their relationship with SERN is completely removed in the anime. In the brief moments the anime talks about SERN it presented as an, honestly really generic evil organisation. The ‘dystopia’ SERN is responsible for is presented in such a boring manner too, I mean it sounds like your average dystopia present in a mediocre action film. Where’s the sense of danger? The VN did such a great job of building a picture in your mind about how disturbing the society of the future will be if SERN succeed. I actually think this lessened the impact that Suzuha’s letter had in episode 16. Because we know how important her mission is in the VN, we understand how distraught she must be at not accomplishing it while I didn’t care nearly as much while watching the anime.

Tone
The VN is hardly adult in comparison to most visual novels out there, but it touched on some disturbing themes, showed some dark character moments and had a fair amount of bad language. I don’t think something needs swearing to make it good, but it was impactful when the scene needed it. The anime, simply put, is sanitized. Here’s just one example of a change for the worse: In the VN, when Okabe goes to Moeka’s apartment to get information on her d-mail Kurisu tells Okabe to kill her if he needs to… and he tries to! It shows you how desperate the characters are to succeed and given all the events leading up to this moment it makes sense too. In comparison, Okabe has to muster the courage just to throw a single punch at Moeka in the anime.

I wouldn’t call the atmosphere in the anime ‘happy’, but it was just so different to the VN. I’m not saying the VN wasn’t filled with humour or softer moments but when it was serious it FELT serious. The anime does not capture the despair, melancholy and pain present in the darker sections of the VN. I thought episodes 16 and 21 came somewhat close to the atmosphere of the VN, that was about it.

Art
I’m not going to claim that the original VN is an artistic masterpiece but it has a distinctive style; if you send me a screenshot from the VN from any scene I’ll immediately know ‘That’s from Steins;Gate’. Its expressive, using a bright mix of colours and shading. The art in the anime on the other hand is a bit dull and lifeless. It looks like any other show out there, there's nothing to set it apart. The style of the characters has been subtly changed too, and I feel as though part of the overall personality and charm of the them and the world of Steins;Gate itself has been stripped.

Music
The music is one of the few things I enjoyed from the anime adaptation. It was done by Takeshi Abo, who also composed the music for the VN and the other Science Adventure games. This was the first anime project he worked on, and I’m not sure if it was due to a tight schedule or not but a good half of the soundtrack is taken from the VN and the actual OST is rather short. In terms of the anime soundtrack, some tracks are general ambient tracks to build the mood but there’s some memorable themes at the more emotional points which suit the anime well. If you’re not familiar with Abo’s other work, two old-school ones I can recommend are ‘Rhyme Star’ and ‘Marionette Mind’.

I want to explain why I'm being so harsh with the low score. This is a straight adaptation, meaning that it adapted the full plot of the source material without making significant changes to the story, characters etc. But, as I've explained above they've only put in the 'highlights' and ignored everything else. Everything about it is just so watered-down. I can't think of a single reason why you'd watch this versus playing through the visual novel, other than a lack of time. The VN is just so much better in every department. If Steins;Gate was an anime original, I'd probably give it a 7/10 but as it isn't I'm going with a 4.

I actually had a lot more to talk about but I think the above just about summarises my main complaints with Steins;Gate. Hopefully I’ve changed some minds on MAL as I wanted to provide an extensive counter argument to the overwhelmingly positive reception it has. I’d strongly recommend folks buy the game from Steam, and install the fantastic improvement patch from the Committee of Zero. El Psy Kongroo