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Feb 22, 2023
(Spoiler-free Review)
I just watched this in the theaters as I'm currently located in China. Overall, it was a fantastic experience.
Story (7/10): The story of Shenhai was pretty interesting. It is about a girl Shenxiu （参宿） who ended up in this fantasy world deep under the sea searching for her mother who she has not contacted for a while. She was guided by this mysterious sea creature but ended up in a restaurant run by humanoid fish and seals. The restaurant was run by Nanhe (南河), a greedy owner of the restaurant who cares only about making money. Much of the story was very
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abstract and reflected themes of loneliness, depression, and hope. Overall this story had a very strong "Spirited Away" vibe to it, despite being original in its own way.
Art (10/10): The art was simply fantastic. Especially, in portraying the surreal world. Everything looks so colorful and it had a very strong Chinese vibe. Also, the 3D effect was simply beautiful. I would definitely recommend watching this in the theaters if possible.
Sound (8/10): The sound was beautiful. Although none of its music was particularly memorable, it fits the vibe perfectly. Also, the voice acting was pretty on par.
Characters (9/10): All the main characters are multidimensional and had many sides to them. The background story of the main character Shenxiu was done really well. Her parents divorced when she was young and she ended being neglected as her father remarried and had another child. This led her to obvious signs of depression as she seemed hopeless and apathetic in this movie as she wanders to try to find her mother. No one is perfect in “Shenhai.” At first, you will probably not like Nanhe at first but he does have a benevolent side as well despite being super greedy in the beginning.
Enjoyment (8/10): This donghua was very enjoyable. Although the middle was slow, I was overall mind-blown by the visual effects. The story was also interesting reflecting deeper themes that most animated films fail to reflect.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8 (I’m generally pretty strict when it comes to rating but this film is definitely underrated. Watch it in the theaters in 3D if possible, but even 2D should definitely be a great mind trip.)
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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May 18, 2016
When people ask what’s the worst anime out there, many respond with School Days. School Days has this negative reputation of being this absolute piece of garbage but is it really that bad? Far from contrary opinion, School Days is not nearly close to the worst anime out there. In fact, it is extremely innovative and a great deconstruction of the harem genre.
The plot of School Days follows Makoto, a first year High School Student. The plot is a rather typical romance and he became particularly interested with a girl named Kotonoha. Through becoming acquaintances with Sekai, the girl that sits next to him in
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her homeroom who was very interested in Makoto’s crush. Sekai hooked those two up but despite this, she developed feelings for Makoto himself leading to a series of conflicts. The plot of School Days does not follow the typical harem. Makoto starts off as the typical indecisive and innocent character like most harems but his paths does not follow the typical romance. In fact, School Days is about how indecisiveness corrupts someone. Makoto’s indecisive nature led him to have an affair with Sekai and to also date her while not ending off her relationship with Kotonoha. This led to a multitude of problems as Makoto indecisive nature led him to trick Sekai as well and end up being adulterous with other women and going on cheating sprees. This led to chaos is his romantic life while he hurt both Kotonoha and Sekai’s feelings leading the majority of viewers to despise him and the anime as well as the harem is so atypical and unpredictable and the constant cheating does get dragged on at certain points and felt boring at times though this was curtailed through the final murder of Makoto. The atypical and unpredictable nature of School Days help us reevaluate the harem genre rather successfully deconstructing it.
The characters in the anime are all rather despicable, at least a lot of them end up to be despicable. As we all probably already know, Makoto went on cheating sprees due to his indecisive nature. Sekai after hooking up Kotonoha with Makoto fell in love with Makoto herself and took action upon that feeling and Kotonoha seemingly infatuated with Makoto and denying the fact that Makoto is cheating with Sekai while being completely emotionally devastated. There is also Setsuna, Sekai’s best friends who protects Sekai ended up falling for Makoto himself before leaving for France. Perhaps one of the most crucial thing in this anime is how the characters develop especially with Makoto. Makoto starts off being this loveable innocent young man to slowly transitioning to this despicable lusty sex-addicted devil because of his nature for a typical male character which is indecisiveness. Meanwhile in most harem romance, the main male character does not develop much and suddenly overcome his indecisive nature at one point or sometimes even not and somehow end up with one of the main female characters. Many people claim that the characters are the worst part of School Days, however, I would disagree. The characters in School Days though very despicable are very well executed and completely serve their purpose. Despicable characters do not necessarily demonstrate low-quality characters.
School Days also did a rather average job with its sound with more than 42 soundtracks including openings and endings. Most of them fit the anime rather well with some of them being rather out of place. The voice acting however is a bit disappointing at times as some of the characters’ voice sound unpleasantly whining and annoying especially with Makoto’s, however they are done with a purpose. Sekai’s voice however is just awesome while other characters do not have the same effect. The quality of the sound also is not really high-budget and doesn’t sound completely crisp and clear.
Finally, School Days did a horrendously lazy job with its animation with a lot of notable shortcuts in its animation techniques. Though the animation seems acceptable, many of it was extremely lazy and the laziness was quite notable. Sometimes the movement seems completely unrealistic and hilarious. Overall, the animation wasn’t completely awful and was OK to look at. But sometimes they pay more attention to details that don’t matter much and less attention to facial expressions. One thing that School Days tend to do is rotate images to one side which lacks purpose but personally does not bother me though it might bother others.
Despite School Days being hated, it is definitely not as bad as one thinks when carefully analyzed. It successfully serves as a deconstruction of the harem genre and does not follow the typical route of any other protagonist in the harem genre. The main issues with School Days is its fairly low budget leading it to an unfantastic job with its sound and animation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 25, 2016
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi also known as ERASED starts off promising with the concept of how Satoru can travel back in time to save people. This time he is suddenly sent back 18 years in the past after he was wrongfully accused of murdering his mother right to a time before a series of kidnapping murders take place. The first couple episodes were filled with suspense, but then we get to see that this anime falls in a predictable pattern. As usual, the main characters fails the first time and tries again the second time.
Throughout ERASED, we get a more than obvious killer
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whom we could figure out by the third episode. Because of this, the anime lacks many elements of suspense and surprise, elements crucial to psychological anime. The characters throughout the show were rather interesting however they lack significant development. The main character Satoru is just acting nice in an attempt to save the people from murders. He's also rather childish despite being a 29 year old adult in a 11 year old body even though he was supposed to hide his age. Hinazuki's mom is just a typical child abuser who had a bad past and Hinazuki is the typical girl who ends up being thankful to Satoru for getting her out of the situation. Satoru's friends also were just blindly supporting him for no apparent explanations and for some reasons act not their age but even more calm and mature than even adults for some reasons. The actions were often made to perfect the scenarios. There are no conflicts between friends, no questions asked, just trust, which is the most significant them in the anime. Airi uses the comparison of his dad stealing a candy to reason why she trusts Satoru, something I personally find illogical. The lack of doubt among the characters bothered me so much that I wanted to forget the fact that this is actually a psychological mystery anime about this guy who was accused of murder trying to prevent murders at certain moments.
The overuse of plot conveniences and plot holes are another thing that drawsback this anime. Throughout the anime,we do not get answers for many things. Surely this leaves a lot to interpretation but when important things like how does the time travel ability work. What determines how long Satoru travels back in time? There were also many points when things just somehow happen without any explanation of the planning behind it. Though not everything necessarily in story needs to be explained, the plot is filled with an overwhelming number of conveniences and plotholes that it weakens the story significantly.
Another main factor I found very disturbing is the overuse of common cliches. ERASED has used some of the most typical cliches of emotional appeal ever. These are made even worse with all these characters being completely one-dimensional. Sure, there are scenes that might make someone tear up a bit. But with all these cliches piling up used in many other anime with the addition of complete lack of real character development, it makes me quite troubled to see how overrated this anime is and how susceptible the mass is to emotional appeal.
Overall though,I find this show decently enjoyable but not so much. The overall predictability and the lack of doubt have ruined its potential for being this amazing psychological mystery masterpiece. This show is good for people who want a easily follow-able story and don't care about the typical cliche and one-dimensional characters in a sub-par anime, but it is in no way a true mystery that allows one to utilize his/her brain power.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Mar 11, 2016
“No human beings, regardless of who they might be, want to look directly at their own shortcomings.” -Satou Tatsuhiro
I came in Welcome to the NHK rather skeptical, thinking that it would be nothing super special, yet I walked out as a completely different person.
Before I watched Welcome to the NHK, I was suffering from depression and lack of motivation. I was also on the verge of dropping out of college and dealing with substance abuse. I felt as if life had no meaning and was closeting myself increasingly and not leaving the room. I was in the slow process of becoming a hikikomori, something I
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had no idea of what it meant before I watched this anime.
In the beginning, I was not so impressed mainly because of its rather subpar animation, but then again Welcome to the NHK was made in 2006 and didn't have a high budget. However, despite the low quality animation, the art had this old classic feeling toward it and I quickly became accustomed to it and overlooked its flaws due to all the other aspects of the show being simply outstanding.
The characters of this anime are amazingly realistic as well. Throughout this anime, we get to see them develop. Satou is basically a hikikomori or in other words a shut in who chain-smokes cigarettes and gets drunk often. Because of his reluctance to see the sunlight, this in result caused hallucinations as well, something clearly realistically depicted in the anime. Despite all this, Satou tried to be a good person to the people he late become close to. He meets this girl named Misaki, who is extremely mysterious but very vulnerable deep down inside but wants to aid Satou by forcing him to sign a contract to meet every night. Satou also met his apartment neighbor Yamazaki, who is at school learning video game developing and is a huge hardcore otaku, and together they focused on making a erotic game. There is also Satou's childhood friend Hitomi who is Satou's long time crush. All of the characters including the side characters in Welcome to the NHK are very useful in the development of the story and none of them are unneeded as we see these characters develop and change attitudes throughout the story. The relationships in Welcome to the NHK are also very realistic, none of them are idealized as every character has their own range of problems. Finally, every episode in the anime serves a purpose and none of them were just specifically fillers. Combined with amazing voice acting especially on Satou's part and a purposeful and well fitting soundtrack, every episode became very enjoyable to watch.
As the story of Welome to the NHK transgresses, we get to understand how Satou overcomes his fear of society. Each and every of his sessions with meeting sessions with Misaki was purposeful and filled with deep questions. Each and every incident and obstacle Satou comes across are not usually huge, but successfully depicts the hikikomori problem. As I watched Welcome to the NHK, I saw Satou as the future me if I have continued down the path I was taking.Through seeing myself in the main character's shoes, I took in innumerable lessons and ideas that made me understand my own problem. One crucial lesson I took is how we should see our own shortcomings instead of blaming everything on others. We should understand that we need to fix ourselves before blaming society as always blaming others is not salvation. We don't have a obligation to help society but at least we should understand that we are not perfect and stop being a drag to society. Throughout the end, we get to see many of the characters not taking the most ideal paths they thought but a path that nevertheless made them happy also showing that there are many paths of life throughout life and not achieving your ideal dream is not the end of the world. This also changed my attitude toward life as I realized that dreams are not the end goal. One can always adjust them, and one could always find happiness no matter where life leads as long as one changes his/her attitudes.
Thanks to watching Welcome to the NHK, I made a life changing decision to pull myself together instead of falling to complete ruins. The impact of Welcome to the NHK on my life cannot be underestimated and I am forever grateful that I suddenly decided to pick up the anime so if you are depressed or just want something to keep you back on track, Welcome to the NHK is the anime to watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 19, 2016
(Spoiler-free Review)
No Game No Life is an anime that looks good on the surface but really has no actual substance as expected of an ecchi fantasy.
Story (5/10): The concept of No Game No Life was rather creative. A pair of antisocial genius hikikomori siblings beats a game of chess and ends up in a complete fantasy world where everything is decided upon simple games. There they decided to try to unify the world which was divided into many races. However, it does not get more creative than that, as the pair of siblings team through every game easily defeating everyone in the way. The plot
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was entirely predictable with no surprises.
Art (10/10): This is one part of the anime I have to praise. The art was simply fantastic. The colors felt dreamy, bright, and so suitable for this setting. The animation was smooth and without problems. It was simply delightful to watch this fantastic animation. The only problem I had with the art is how they don't draw nipples during scenes of fan service which is a little bit disturbing.
Sound (10/10): The soundtrack is also very praiseworthy and suitable for this anime. The opening track "This Game" was extremely suitable and I actually felt like I was going in a game. The ending track "Oracion" was also extremely pleasant to listen to. The voice acting in this anime was superb and every soundtrack felt right.
Characters (4/10): This is the part where this anime fall a bit short in. The side characters generally serve absolutely no purpose except for comedy. Sora and Shiro, despite, being extremely likable adorable intelligent siblings do not experience any events that change their attitudes of things. From the start to the end of the anime, their characters stayed rather static.
Enjoyment (8/10): Overall, this anime was very enjoyable, despite being extremely shallow. The fantastic art and the sound and the pretty interesting setting just wants to make you click the next episode one after the other. However, it does not really leave a major impression.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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