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Nov 16, 2023
At some point, we have to stop entertaining mediocrity.
I have never met another series that falls so squarely into the "mediocre" category more than Black Clover, and this is not meant as an insult. It is an absolute, as objective as can be, accurate description of this series quality level. Never as good as to get you properly engaged and give you strong emotions, never as bad as to rage drop it. It simply, exists in between and offers a good service when you want something to watch and not pay much attention to when you eat your lunch.
A big part of this is
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the direct result of the Pierrot adaptation of 170 episodes that could have easily been reduced to one third of it. Instead of elevating the material to help the manga's best qualities to shine, they buried it under a ton of poorly paced antics and bad animation - especially in the beginning. Now, not that the manga had much more to say, but it could offer some beautiful action scenes to keep you hooked. Unfortunately for its anime adaptation, it was chosen to replace Naruto Shippuden's endless cicle of Action Anime for Little Boys by WSJ TM, consisting of what I am hoping was the last attempt to "endless" shounen battle anime. But, judging by the content, would you really blame the staff for choosing this one to sacrifice?
Black Clover has only one original thing to offer to its audience: That there is remarkably absolutely nothing original about it. Every character bit, every plotline, every flashback, absolutely freaking everything about it, has been copied shamelessly from other better manga that came before it. The one common characteristic of successfull series is that, even when they borrow themes from previous ones, they all have something of their own they want to say. When the author gives out something to the world, it is because his sense of self has something he wants to convey to a larger audience, and that is becoming obvious as the series presses on. The one question we always think of, is: "Why do you write? What do you want to write about? What do you have to say to the world?"
Well, Tabata just wanted to draw cool magic battles. That's it. That literally is all there is about it.
Black Clover pretends that it has other ideas (classism, racism, etc) but it ultimately is just that: play pretend on what made One Piece popular. Black Clover knows that rivalry as a theme is very well received to wider audiences (Naruto), but it honestly, purely, fundamentally does not understand the reason why, nor is it trying to. It just uses it to sell itself, without ever owning it. Also for some reason somebody told it that a number of female characters having inexplicable feelings for the mediocre non-charismatic protagonist also sells. So here it is, take it and no explanation or reason needed.
The characters are another exactly mediocre point of Black Clover - they are all likeable. But they are all also one-trick ponies. The cast is huge, so when somebody goes off screen for a quite big amount of time, you literally forget about their existence. I sincerely forgot that Yuno, the aforementioned rival, existed, more than once. One trick ponies as they are, when you make one "the cool, quiet, capable, few words man" he is automatically forgotten about the moment he leaves the screen. Asta, the protagonist, is less of a human and more of an amalgam of shounen MC tropes. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. "Mada madaaaaaaa" he constantly screams as a catchphrase. Why do we still bother with such low writing efforts in the 2020's.
Nevertheless, Black Clover is quite humorous. Asta really works best when he puts in his screaming into making tsukkomi (=retorts) towards the rest of the cast's stupidity. Noelle is also a good tsundere lead - as the heroine she was doomed to catch feelings for Asta from point 0, but she has a storyline of her own, she fights for her female friends and is treated as an equal to Asta and Yuno narratively, even though she doesn't aim to be the "Wizard King". (Really, how shameless. I can't even begin to count the series Black Clover is copying. Just think of literally every other well-known shounen.) Yami is also quite cool a character. Some episodes with serious battles also got exceptional animation efforts, and there is a filler mini-ark towards the end of the series that is surprisingly deep, dark and complex. That is because Tabata didn't write it, and it is becoming so painfully obvious because the entire atmosphere of the series suddenly shifts.
All in all, some people wil still like this. It's like comfort food. Familiar beats, nobody dies, plot explanations are horrendous and don't matter but nobody really cares about that. There is no twist that surprises you, there is nothing you haven's seen before, and even if you are new, it's very unlikely that absolutely anything in this will manage to move you a lot. But it is still watchable I guess. And sometimes, it's what people are looking for. Though I would recommend they should rewatch much better series, sometimes you need updated character designs. You have nothing to lose, but also nothing to gain if you watch this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 22, 2022
This is a review for the entirety of the series.
"If there is a God, he has abandonded us".
Having watched the entire series, from the beginning to the end, I can responsibly say that this is but one giant stroke of Kirito’s d*ck. Excuse moi for the language but there is no other possible way to express it.
“It can’t be that bad”, “It gets better later on”, lies, such lies. SAO IS that bad, and it NEVER gets better. It only gets more pretentious, and somehow even more insulting. I can’t decide whether this series underestimates its audience or overestimates its own ability in
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offering an engaging story. The ones of you who might have thought like me: “But it’s MAL’s 3rd most popular series, since the franchise is so big it must be doing something right, I don’t mind trash anime as long as it’s entertaining anyways” …save yourselves. Run and never look back. You don’t have to do this. Even if you have nothing else to watch. You don’t have to make yourself do this.
First of all, Reki Kawahara can’t write to save his life. Reki Kawahara is that one lucky guy every anime fan has ever fantasized of being: Hitting the jackpot with a fanfic that he thought of when he was in elementary – middle school and proceeded writing it in high school, without even being that serious about it. Haven’t we all sat in class, having our mind race away and thinking our ideas are the best ideas ever and fantasizing about getting awards for them, while in reality they are the cringiest middle school shit? Well for Reki Kawahara that became a reality somehow. I don’t know who to blame for this, probably A-1 Pictures. 2012 was a time when the industry’s standards were pretty low, I’ll admit to that, but… how? How did someone look at THIS series and went: “Oh yeah. THIS will be our next big franchise! THIS will influence the industry from now on!” Why? How? Is this the proof we needed that God doesn’t exist?
SAO’s modus operandi is basically this: Take a pretty neat idea, dress it up with nice character designs and fluid animation, and now write everything in the worst possible way you can imagine. I am watching anime for 15 years. I have never stumbled upon something as long and horribly written as this. The characters, with Kirito as the primal offender, are incomprehensible at best and empty at worst. Kirito doesn’t have a personality. No, seriously. There is NOTHING behind those eyes. He puts reverse harem shoujo heroines to shame. I can’t even begin to describe you how much nothing is there, because that would be like trying to prove something that does not exist. Only SAO Abridged managed to give him some personality – think about it. We needed a fanon parody to give our main character personality traits. Asuna is fine and likeable and the only good point of the first series. Problem is, the heroines that follow after her have exactly the same personality as her. And sure enough, by the end of the last series, she is reduced to a damsel in distress and just another addition to Sultan Kirito’s harem, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be a couple. They even supposedly stayed together for 200 years... only for that to be wiped off.
To break it down: SAO begins its first arc with presenting its neat idea and its hook – you die in the virtual game, you die in real life. I can understand how some people got attracted to that, it’s a very interesting premise. …And then it wastes its first 7-8 episodes in episodic vignettes showing girls besides Asuna get a crush on Kirito, because… do you seriously need an explanation? Because it’s Kirito, our Lord Savior, our Main Character, Mr. Blandy McBland himself, King of Self-Inserts and Professional Harem Instructor. “SAO is not harem” save it. Swallow your saliva right back up. Signs of it were there from the first season and by the last I can’t even name the members in two hands. There is an interesting mini arc somewhere in there, with Kirito and Asuna solving a murder case, and that somehow makes things even more frustrating: There could be so much social commentary in the case of a guy killing his wife because she ‘changed’ = gained more confidence in the game, comparing to how she was in real life. And that’s the most irritating thing about SAO: it makes you think it could have things to say, but right when it makes you think that, it slaps you in the face with the worst wish fulfillment stuff possible. During the next 7 episodes, half of them is Kirito and Asuna in a house doing nothing worthwhile, and the other half is about defeating the final Boss, which happens in the most anticlimactic way possible (they never even reach the final level of the game) and then our bad guy responds to the question of why he did all this by: “I don’t know I don’t remember.” F* you, and your mom, and your sister and your job and your broke ass car and that shit you call art. And somehow in the midst of all this, there is an AI loli that we met for only one episode that we’re supposed to think of as Kirito and Asuna’s daughter. “Papa! Mama!” She meows at every turn. No mercy.
If all of this sounds completely disjointed, it’s because it is. The episodes themselves are disjointed: Kirito and Asuna fight deadly monsters. They pause to eat sandwiches Asuna has made, because she has maxed her cooking skill, because of course, because Kirito has taught her that she needs to enjoy life, because of course, and they flirt. Then they go back to do battle stuff. Then allies appear to comment of how awesome Kirito is. Then suddenly something like politics. The tonal whiplash is hitting you worse than Mohammed Ali ever could have.
If you thought this couldn’t get worse: You THOUGHT. The next arc is about Kirito’s little sister. Who is not actually his real sister; she’s his first cousin! Not much difference you’d say? No, no, no: In Japan, first cousins can apparently bang, so no problem your otaku friends will say! It’s CULTURE! So, despite the fact that they have grown up together since babies, and despite the fact that they only recently learned that they are cousins and not siblings, somehow that in Suguha’s mind makes it ok for her to pursue Kirito romantically. And of course, there is another guy that likes her that she rejects for Kirito, again, her brother Kirito. AT THE SAME TIME, Asuna is captured by a perverted guy that threatens to rape her in front of Kirito. Because, what else to complete SAO’s set by some good old fashioned sexual violence straight out from and ‘80s OVA. And Suguha’s arc is so bad, it gets to the point where you say well, you know, at least this villain had clear motives.
Enter the Gun Gale Online arc, where Kawahara remembers that he needs to give Kirito some trauma to give him a bit of a personality. To say that this rings as hollow as possible would be an understatement, because Kirito had exactly zero psychological problems (or a psyche in general) in the first arcs. So he adds stuff that were never seen or mentioned in the first series. Gun Gale is the anime’s second season so the narrative and structural problems of the episodes have been mostly fixed, but the substance remains as bad as ever. Sinon’s character arc is interesting – SAO does it again, interesting ideas, turning them to mush – as she uses the game to face her own trauma, but she’s very quickly reduced to the same beats as Asuna and Suguha: Strong willed woman completely dependent on Kirito, rejecting another guy for him and suffering an attempt on sexual violence at her expense. SAO is copying even itself.
Then we have an arc focusing on Asuna about a girl who is terminally ill and uses the game to escape reality – again, great idea. This part of the story focuses on Asuna’s conflict with her mother and is quite decent at that font, probably because Kirito is missing from most of it. Unfortunately, it quickly melts into heavy and cheesy melodrama about Yuuki’s death and drags on for far too long.
There is a movie in between that’s not really worth mentioning (cool fights, cheesy storyline) before we proceed onto the next arc: Alicization. God give me strength to unpack this one. This is where Kawahara thought that he could seriously analyze the philosophical aspects of man against machine and what a soul really is, full Ghost in the Shell style. Why Lord? What sins do we have to pay for and you punish us like this? Oh. Watching anime for far too long. Understandable.
The franchise needs to go on, the cow needs to be milked, and Kawahara has exactly zero new ideas: IT’S COPY TIME! What piece of western fiction is unbearably overdone in anime? Alice in Wonderland. COPY THAT. What female warrior character design is really cool? Saber from the Fate Series. COPY THAT. What recent popular series begins with three childhood friends under a tree? Attack on Titan. COPY THAT. What issues does Ghost in the Shell tackle? Eeeeerrrr… we never actually understood that, so if you could just spout any mechanical gibberish mumbo-jumbo to justify why things happen in our story as we want them, that would be great, thanks. Oh, Kirito was so successful as a character that we can’t have only one of him? COPY THAT and just make his eyes green and his hair blond: Ta-daaaah, now you have Eugeo! AND Kirito's software copy! Because one of him is not enough! And if all that weren’t enough already… care to make it a tiny bit racist? Like, having bad Americans, Chinese and Koreans attacking the good Japanese?
Are. You. Kidding me. Seriously, no shame? No shame at all?
Many people say that SAO gets better in Alicization. You shut your mouths. Just because a story has slower pacing doesn’t mean that it suddenly became deeper or more meaningful. SAO never believes in the themes it seems to present – anything and everything is just an excuse so that Kirito can swing a big sword or two and save pretty girls. His harem has grown so big I can’t even name all the girls. For some reason, Asuna is perfectly fine with it and not at all jealous. And I guess that’s better from having catfights ‘that’s MY Kirito” style (there was one and it was just as bad as one could think). Even one of the villains constantly screams how much he loves Kirito (that was long overdue now that I think about it). The other villain is a psychopath and a serial killer and that’s as interesting as it gets, but Sinon escapes him because she has kept as an amulet an electrode Kirito had on his left nipple back when he saved her in S2. It would be funny if the story didn’t try to sell it completely seriously.
Either Kawahara can’t write, or Kirito’s entire concept is this series Achilles’ heel, and it collapses because it’s also its central theme. Let’s not even mention the sheer disrespect of being called the Black Swordsman – Kawahara was writing his fanfic and he wanted to use Guts’ nickname from Berserk. Dishonor on you, dishonor on your family, dishonor on your cow. But let’s look past that: The entire series is based on having a character that works as a self-insert and then constantly kiss his ass and lick his d*. Now YOU can defeat powerful foes and have all the girls fawn over you! You don’t have to do anything man, just exist and scream very loudly from time to time! The girls will love you, everyone will praise you, you will escape every pinch and you’ll come out on top every time!
OP characters need very specific qualifications to work, like actual stuff to say and palpable tension with relationships that matter between other characters that don’t have to do with the protagonist, like One Punch Man and Jojo Part 3, which SAO doesn’t have. And when you don’t have them, the entire story becomes pointless to watch because it’s God damn predictable. It’s no surprise that SAO’s most watchable episodes are the ones where Kirito is in a catatonic state. This gives time to others characters to show off cool powers and relationship dynamics. Now ONLY IF they didn’t feel the need to mention his accursed name every five minutes.
I didn’t mention Alice in all of this, probably because I don’t have to: She’s exactly the same as Asuna, Suguha and Sinon: Strong willed female character that is in dire need of saving. Actually, what Alice. She’s Saber. Kawara is pairing Kirito with Saber. Because why not. He sells and he can do whatever he wants. Also he even stole the concept of three waifu Goddesses from Mushoku Tensei. COPY THAT. But I believe that the point where we cleared every possible level was when Kirito remembered Sachi again, a girl who died in the first episodes of S1. You know when was the last time her death actually counted? SAO Abridged. Kawahara copied character beats from SAO Abridged. From the fanon parody. I wish I was making that up.
And that brings us to another point: WHY does he sell like this? Are the novels better written than what we see on screen? If I’m to believe light novel readers, the adaptations are plenty faithful. So it’s not that. If it strikes a chord with 12-year-old boys I don’t know and I can never know because I never were one. “It’s not for you then”, “It’s not the first series that does this”. I know I never was its target audience, but if the story is good, we can all enjoy series that do not include us in their target group – shounen and shoujo series are being enjoyed from both men and women equally. And yes, it’s not the first series that does it, but usually such series have one season and that’s it. They don’t become multi-media franchises and they definitely do not influence the industry like that. Was he just lucky? Is most of it hate watching just out of curiosity, like I did?
I don’t believe the people that say: “New generation anime sucks, old anime series were much better”. I don’t believe in that at all, in fact, I think we have better stuff now and more frequently than what they used to have back then. But a small part of me can’t help but accept that each season is filled with isekai series with game mechanics that are all basically the same thing: Medieval fantasy world, game statistics, bland overpowered protagonist, harem. A waste of time, money and energy. 12-year-old boys will not remain 12 forever – give them another couple of years and they’ll start realizing they are being fed the same thing over and over again. Others will take their place, but how long will this keep up? As much as Magical High School Academies series, I guess.
Even if that’s the case, we have a saying in my country: The higher the monkey climbs up, the more its ass is showing. Right now, Kirito is hanging right from his big ass sword with his pants pulled down, showing his butt in full glory and expecting all of us in the audience to come and kiss it while we sing praises at how amazing he is. And I wish I actually saw him like that because that would have been at least a sign of existing personality from his part.
Kick that hollow casket to oblivion where he belongs and make him take his harem with him. There is no saving it now and enough is enough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 14, 2021
Stunningly beautiful... and incredibly flat.
I have been waiting for this movie to drop on Netflix for almost a year after it aired, in order to watch it at the best possible HD. Turns out it was the best choice, because Violet Evergarden without its art and animation would be a horrifyingly thin experience.
*spoilers
This is a movie of about two and a half hours that can be summed up in exactly two (2) sentences: Violet writes letters for the family of a boy that will die soon. Then Violet goes on an island to meet Gilbert. And that's it. That's the movie. That's the whole
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story. Plot structure? Climax? Well we have people crying, don't we? Anyways, look at how pretty we've drawn this scenery and animated those waves!
The Good: This movie is worth a watch for its art and animation alone. Forget the story. You don't even need it. Like you stare at a painting in a museum and you find yourself breathless from its beauty, Kyoto Animation delivered that exact absolute beauty with this movie. Everything is just *chef's kiss* from the tiniest speck of grass to entire buildings and attires. The biggest enjoyment factor of this movie is how happy it makes your eyes, like birthday candy. It almost made me forget the trauma from watching deliberately ugly series like Ping Pong the Animation; it healed my soul and doubled my crops.
The Bad: Unfortunately, my crops soon shriveled up again, because the story and the characters ranged from non-existent to impressive failures in emotional manipulation. Violent Evergarden as a series is what we call a "tear-jerker". Hopping on the trend of "I will make my outmost priority to make you cry" sad movies that are really popular to some people, it strives to make the viewer cry in any given opportunity. But the unfortunate truth is that there are only a handful of people that know how to earn that from the audience, and I'm positive that none of them worked in this project. I might be wrong, seeing other reviews of people who bawled their eyes out, but I can't help but looking at them in pure disbelief. Did it really make you cry, or did it make you think you were supposed to cry, otherwise you wouldn't be a 'good' person? If it did manage to convince you about the second one then props, it did succeed in emotional manipulation, because it shouldn't be like that. Seeing characters crying on screen is not a reason to cry yourself. Seeing characters die is not a reason either when it's not unexpected by what the story has already set up. Violet Evergarden only had one instance where it actually succeeded at eliciting a sincere emotional reaction from its audience, and that was episode 10 of the TV series. And that was so obvious, that characters related to that episode were actually used as narration tools in this movie. The rest of it is more like: "I am telling you that you should feel emotion x now, so now FEEL IT!" Uh, no. It doesn't work like that.
In a similar train of thought, the series in whole suffers from the 'teenage female MC syndrome', which basically translates to wanting to convince you how awesome its protagonist is by putting it directly into the side characters' mouths. Oh Violet you're so pretty. You're so diligent. You're so amazingly good at your job. You are our Lord and Savior and the next best thing after sliced bread! Other characters pretty much don't exist if they don't talk about how awesome Violet is, what is Violet doing, what is Violet feeling right now. There is a boy in his deathbead with his family all around him, but even he feels the need to comment on Violet's emotions at that exact time. For what serves as the climax of this movie, Violet's exchange with Gilbert goes pretty much like this: "Go away, I have made you suffer." "Okay. But I thank you for your loving words anyways." "WAIT VIOLET JUMP OFF THE SHIP I LOVE YOU." (If you think I'm making it too simple, unfortunately I am not.) I won't even talk about not being a huge fan of the narrative decision of bringing Gilbert back. It didn't surprise me though, because having Violet paired up with another man would require extra narrative effort and build up, and why do that when the goal is to make the audience cry by using the least possible narrative effort and max out the artistic side of the project instead. For a story that uses writing as its main theme, they definitely did not make it their first priority.
To sum it up: Two and a half hours is way too long time to just stare at pretty pictures, but Kyoto Animation made them so pretty it actually kind of pulls through. Probably this series will appeal more to people that don't require of the movies they watch to be heavy plot-wise, and will be satisfied with a generally calm atmosphere throughout the process, but staring at pretty backgrounds was the best I got from it. 6/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 22, 2021
"Depressed teenage female MC who was supposedly hated but what we actually see is her being adored by everyone on sight, becomes slightly less depressed because she found a skeleton daddy teacher to romance."
There, I saved you some time reading the summary.
When I first started watching this show I thought the "Bride" in the title was just euphimism for a teacher - student relationship, or that the romantic undertones would at least remain undertones and it would be mostly about a girl learning magic in a magical world. Well... I was wrong about that! Not completely, but the series did seem to be way more
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focused in the romance story aspect of "boy meets girl and they become better through their interactions", rather than the "girl becomes independent through magic" aspect. I mean the second is still there, but is way too bogged down by the first to be actually enjoyable for those who can't stomach the "romance". And I definitely am one of them.
Contrary to popular belief, I can say with confidence that this is one of the worst series that I was able to complete. It didn't have bad production values, (even if it wasn't the best sometimes), the horror elements were suprisingly strong, and it had its powerful character moments, with the most impactful being the episode explaining why Chise's mom ended up the way she did. But the rest was a creepy mess. Every single aspect of conflict was always cut off or resolved in the most anti-climatic way possible. (someone tried to actually strangle Chise but kidding it was supposed to be a teachable moment so let's laugh about it, tehe~!) Most of the times there wasn't even conflict - just beautiful magical stuff in a beautiful magical world. They would serve as perfect wallpaper images no doubt, but plot wasn't a part of them. In all cases, the side characters went the extra mile for Chise by default, as per the already known female MC in shoujo character syndrome. But the worst part was by far Elias' entire existence.
I would have forgiven pretty much everything else, but the "romance" this series was trying to sell? Absolutely not. Let's ignore that he bought her in an auction. Let's ignore his monstrous, inhuman appearance. Let's even ignore that he's an ancient magical being and she's only 15 years old. Ignoring his lack of empathy and incapability of functioning beyond a toddler's emotional understanding, while this is served as something Chise is supposed to "fix" as he'll get better if he's with her, is something that I can't do and it noped me completely out of the series. If all of the above weren't problematic enough, she's even referred to as his mother in the way she handles his tantrums, because poor him he's ancient and inhuman and doesn't know better! One would think that millenia on this Earth would have taught him at least some basic stuff, but no. He was clearly waiting for a special 15-year-old redhead female protagonist to do that.
To put it into perspective, it's like someone watched Natsume Yuujinchou, shipped Natsume and Nyanko-sensei together and then wrote a romance about them. That's it. That's the relationship equivalent. And at least Nyanko-sensei wouldn't need extended therapy sessions for "understanding his feelings" in every episode.
There is definitely an audience for this series, I'm just not included. 4/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 5, 2021
The first thing that you should know about To Your Eternity, is that the rest of the series never reaches the hights its first two episodes achieved. TYE is a show with an excellent couple of episodes at its beginning, and a good one at its very end. The episodes in the middle of this vary from decent, weird, frustrating and just okay.
TYE is the story of a mysterious life form called Fushi, who is created as an orb and then assumes various forms until he gets a human one in the first episode. From then on, the series tries to explore his journey
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in life as a human, along with what it means to be one, and how Fushi himself deals with his own immortality.
Did we need enemy lifeforms to battle for that? Probably not. I understand why the Knockers were introduced, to give a supposedly undefeatable being like Fushi a challenge, but TYE shines most when it deals with natural, everyday struggles of life and death and not supernatural threats. The story is divided in arks, and the plot's MO quickly becomes apparent: The people Fushi meets die and he assumes their forms in order to not forget them. The tragedy of the deaths of those people quickly loses its impact because you can see it coming a mile away. It gives off the impression that the story just loves to torture its characters and kills them off when they could have lived just fine, only to have Fushi assume their forms.
Also, the production values collapsed (save from the last episode) in the final big ark of the series. Characters were off model, the animation was minimal, even the story-boarding and the direction didn't seem to make much sense. In some episodes it's really unnatural to watch.
Nonetheless, all the characters were likeable and relatable. Even Hayase was a compelling villain and I would have liked to see more from her - not a single redeeming bone in her body, but she posed a more believable threat than the knockers, for various reasons. March was cute, Parona was strong, Pioran was funny, Gugu was precious and Tonari... ok Tonari wasn't that good at the beginning, but at least she stopped being annoying towards the end. Fushi himself is quite nice, as we can see him going from a blank slate similar to an infant to shape up his character through his experiences and the people he comes across.
When it comes down to it, I'd say TYE was an enjoyable ride, but nothing too outrageous. If the story had taken another turn and left the knockers out it could have possible been a much better and more mature philosophical experience, but that still doesn't mean it wasn't good to watch as it is. Final grade is a 7.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 28, 2021
I usually don't write reviews before a show is over, but I feel that Koikimo is really being treated unfairly. I don't know if people are overreacting because they watched the show or just because they wanted to jump on the bandwagon of bashing it purely based on its title.
Koikimo is nothing like it is often described. As someone whose relatives met and got together in similar ages (18-25), I can tell you, anyone who is quick to dismiss this series just because of the age difference is seriously jumping the gun. Not every relationship with an age gap is predatory, and high school is
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the regular age where people start being conscious of romantic relationships. Ryo and Ichika actually have a very fun and respectful rapport and banter. He is the one who is romantically pursuing her at the beginning, but people are acting like he's sending her dirty pictures instead of flowers. When did our perception get so twisted?
Koikimo is honestly, depicting one of the healthiest relationships in shoujo/josei series. People are bashing it and then clapping right under series like Higehiro, while I'm left dumbfounded and think: "Wait. Koikimo is your problem? Does anyone remember that series where the guy was blackmailing the girl and treated her like a dog? Or the one he bullied her? Or the one he stalked her? Or the one he straight out threatened to r*pe her? Or the one he called her an idiot, never appreciated her and she ended up antagonizing her own daughter for his attention? Or the one she fell off of a building because he rejected her? Or the one she got pregnant, didn't know who the father was and chose to go with the most wealthy one? Or the one she was actively pursuing a man of not 10, but 30 years of age difference - no, not that one. The other one. Or the one she was so *cutely innocent* she thought that holding hands was naughty? Or the one that he was an immortal non-human being that bought her in a human auction? And... in the midst of all of that... Koikimo is our problem????"
I'm not saying these series shouldn't have existed: On the contrary. We seriously need to outgrow the constant censorship of ideas just because some people might find them uncomfortable - art doesn't (and shouldn't) always tend to your personal needs. That's a) impossible and b) it defeats the purpose of challenging new ideas. I'm not saying there shouldn't be boundaries, especially where childlike characteristics and childhood seems to be projected as anything remotely sexual - there are lines you don't cross. But there also needs to be a distinction between series that work as "comfort food" and the rest.
Koikimo is very nearly trending towards the comfort food territory, but it still has the age gap hook to challenge so it never quite gets there. It is basically the story of how two people of 10 or so years of difference will end up together. There is no sexual aspect to the series - the romantic interest is there but it is purely platonic. There are 3 episodes left but I doubt that anything more than a kiss will ever happen in this series. They might not even get together before Ichika hits the age of 18 - it's a serious possibility, since she's 17 in the series universe. They are flirting. They are having fun. They are struggling. Ryo is funny. Ichika's reactions are funny. And that's fine. Ryo isn't predating on Ichika - he sincerely has a crush on her, and even though he teases her constantly to get the "disgusted" reaction out of her, he is actually very respectful, never crosses the line to make her uncomfortable or creeped out for real, and has never laid hands on her, not even as a joke.
It's seriously not a harmful series, not in any way. I know that anyone who might think so tries to warn others about the dangers of being predated on in high school by older men, and that is a real danger, (regardless of the age of consent, which is different in many parts of the world) but we need to understand that this is a fictional series. It doesn't depict the situation you think it does and it doesn't contribute in absolutely any way to any harmful real life situations. Seriously, what do you think will happen? That a real life high school girl will watch this and then will be made a victim by a predator? If anything, please normalize relationships that are respectful despite the odds and not the "I treat you like garbage because I actually like you and because I have a bad relationship with my parents, doesn't that make your heart melt, I'm such a misunderstood bad boy" ones.
Peace out!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 10, 2021
*spoilers*
I will keep this extremely short, as I just finished writing about 7000 words on it. I want to make only three (3) quick, summarized points:
Does a bad ending nullify what a series has offered for over a decade? No, I don't think that's the case here. Was the ending still remarkably bad? Unfortunately, very much so.
Just to be ahead of what will soon be written on the series defense: "Those of you who didn't like the ending were not able to understand Eren's character, you just thought he was an edgelord, and you just didn't get the ship you wanted! That's why
...
you didn't like it!"
Yeah... no.
Unfortunately, it is much, much deeper and more serious than that. I am sure that this is true for a part of the audience, but if you wish to defend the ending, please find something else. In short, what is actually true is:
1) Having Eren amount only to a sacrificial lamb for his friends and for the extinction of the Titans, without asserting or respecting his personal, selfish desire of seeking his freedom, is taking away from his character more than it would have been acceptable. 2) Mikasa's inability of moving forward and growing as a person away from Eren, according to his wishes, sets a really unhealthy standard for female characters and romantic relationships which is falsely promoted as virtuous. 3) When a manga of this caliber has dealt with so many things during its run and still chooses to end with romance, and the "power of love", at that precise point, Attack on Titan stops being a story about war, freedom and politics and reveals itself to have actually been a story about a young girl in love all along. Which was not what the audience was reading Attack on Titan for all this time.
Still, all of the other stuff Attack on Titan has taught us, doesn't go to waste. I always thought of it as a 10/10, now I deducted a grade because of the last chapter, making it a 9, but it is still a worthwhile series. I would still recommend it, it has many things that matter, we don't need to cancel it all because of one last chapter. Even stopping in chapter 138 would be good enough for a completed story. Being one step short of a masterpiece really stings, but there isn't much that can be done about it now. Still, the criticism that is been going around is plenty valid, and it would honestly irk me to see it diminished to 'ships' and 'chads'.
Peace out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 26, 2021
Warning: Random manga and anime spoilers ahead. Skip to the last paragraph for the resume.
Yakusoku no Neverland 2nd season is what happens when you try to compress a story that could have lasted for at least 4 seasons into 2. Now, that being said, contrary to popular belief, the manga counterpart of this story actually sufferred from the same severe flaws in storytelling as this season does. I would definitely be on board with changing the story into an anime original one, but unfortunately, they did the one thing they shouldn't have done with it: tossed away all of the manga's interesting and well
...
crafted elements and only kept the poor ones.
This second season is actually very loyal to the spirit and philosophy of the Promised Neverland as a story. "Would somebody please think of the children!" The stakes are high but the danger is minimal, the element of surprise went up to smoke from episode 4 onwards, and everything kept going way too conveniently for our heroes. What made the first season so special was the suspense, the well crafted schemes, the battle of wits and the characters' unwavering spirits. Their victory in the end was hard earned and it came with a severe price. In this season, there is absolutely no price. Everything works out perfectly for our heroes due to continuously appearing 'Deus ex Machina' tropes as a solution to all of their problems. We've hit a dead end? Musica appears. We've hit a dead end again? Minerva's pen appears. Norman is going off the rails? It's okay, Emma just offered two contrived lines and he and his crew had a complete change of heart.
Speaking of the characters, Emma gets diminished into a basic shounen peace maker protagonist (she wasn't very far away from that in the first place), Norman actually tries to do something but not everyone can become Eren Jaeger in two episodes, Ray and the others are pretty non-existent and Musica is a perfect angel crafted for the sole purpose of providing all the solutions for a happy ending. What, there were other characters? Isabella was in it? I guess. Peter Pan- um, Ratri, was as useless an antagonist as any random monster? Yes he was.
And still, despite all of this, every episode was watchable. Despite some CGI monsters, the art was on point, the script was flowing and there are no boring moments, although I don't doubt that the easyness of each solution could make people rage, especially in the last two episodes. I also liked the ending in comparison to the manga: If you can ignore that an entire potential season 3 was put into a ten second powerpoint presentation, it was a nice change from the manga that the mamas went into the human world with the children and were able to lead normal lives, in contrast with the fairy tale rule of "adults can't go to Neverland". Also, Emma never suffered from amnesia, which was proved to be kind of a useless price in the manga as well.
To sum it up: The potential was there. The writing just could not support it, either in manga or in anime form. Is it worth a watch? That depends. It isn't boring in any way, but it can be pretty disappointing if your expectations are too high from the first season. I'd suggest to read the manga and then take a look if you have nothing else to watch - and keep your expectations moderate.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 10, 2019
Have you ever heard of the term "family with benefits"? No? Does this sound like something that you should never, ever hear, or that it should never, ever exist? Welcome to Super Lovers!
Don't get fooled though; Super Lovers knows exactly what it is, and its audience knows that fully well. It's just shounen ai sibling fantasy comfort food for shotacons. There is a certain trend in romance stories that appears quite often, and that is yes-we-are-relatives-but-not-exactly-since-one-of-us-is-adoptive-so-it-is-taboo-but-it-doesn't-really-count. Trying to both have the cake and eat it as well, Super Lovers falls straight into this category, throwing in the age difference in order to satisfy more fetishes.
...
One would expect though, that a story with such a theme, would be ripe with drama and conflicts and generally lots of trouble. Nope! Super Lovers has none of that! It doesn't want you to worry, or make you feel uncomfortable (which it inadvertently does by the sheer factor of creepiness). It just wants to make you sit back, relax, and enjoy the daily lives of a "family" of hot men where the oldest one humps the younger one and nobody sees absolutely any reason to call the police, they just laugh at how cute it is. Enter nice looking still shots and only the smallest possible amount of any kind of movement in animation, courtesy of DEEN.
Now, the main issue with Super Lovers is how it tries to present a completely toxic and illegal situation as completely normal and cute instead. The story could work, in the hands of someone who would actually want to do something more with it; Make a clear distinction between familial love and romantic love and point out the problems in such a possible relationship. But nope! Super Lovers seems to believe that there is no distinction between those two kinds of love if you are adopted and there are no blood ties! You could easily have a drinking game every time the words "family" and "brother" are being said in each episode. You wouldn't survive the night. And yet... kissing and humping seem mandatory as well. Who in the right mind thought of making this connection I wonder.
If that wasn't enough, what makes this even creepier, is the fact that even if Ren is a teenager at 16 years old (I guess?) the series goes out of its way to really stress the fact that emotionally and sometimes mentally, he's still a little child. That makes Haru's doting on him feel like he's taking an advantage over a confused child who knows no better and molests him - even if Ren is supposedly of an age when he's capable of making such kind of decisions for himself, it still feels like child grooming - and I guess, that was the point?
The supporting characters are absolutely pointless. They do nothing to contribute to the story in any way. If they weren't there, absolutely no one would be able to tell the difference. Because that would demand the existence of something akin to plot. And there isn't such a thing here. Nope.
Now, I've watched my fair share of yaoi - yes including all kinds of hentai - but what I found peculiar here, so I'm writing about it, it's how hard the creepiness factor hit me in the face in this one. If you think about it without prejudice, it's just the romance with 9-10 years of age difference, a doting seme and a grumpy uke. But throwing the concept of family, and stressing it out so intently, and showing those people live supposedly as "SIBLINGS" in a "FAMILY", and also stressing out how small the uke is and how he needs protection and someone to look after him and raise him, really hit some creep-o-meter levels that shouldn't even be possible.
Also, dogs. The creator obviously has a thing for dogs - see Hakkenden. No, throwing in some dogs and making constant metaphors and analogies with dogs will not make such a sick situation any cuter! The audacity of it all!
In conclusion, if you're into yaoi and have a special fetish with fake siblings, watch it why not. If you are not please don't do this to yourself. Run away. You can still make it! I'm into yaoi so I'm giving it a 5, but here I'll give it a 4/10 - sometimes it was mildly watchable so I won't go any lower. Personally, off to the second season I go - trying to see if it's going to be any creepier.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 9, 2019
Don't watch this.
I find it irritable to say the least to read so many good reviews of this, which are obviously just borrowing fame from the first series. I honestly wonder how much can something we enjoyed make us turn a blind eye to every fault it produces afterwards, and why should it, since this is a different series from the first!
So what did we enjoy in the first series? Hououin Kyoma's persona, the romance with Kurisu, the d-mails to the past, and the perplexed, nuanced and dexterous story-telling. Now forget EVERYTHING, because this series has absolutely none of the things we loved in
...
the first, and not any redeeming qualities by itself whatsoever.
Kyouma is dead because Okabe is depressed (which would have been a nice idea if handled correctly - and it was most certainly not), the romance is being ridiculed by adding Mahou and trying to persuade us that she has feelings for Okabe by shoving it down our throats, and the Kurisu AI is the main one at fault for that, the time-travelling is saved for the end and it's absolutely ridiculous, and the story-tellling is just horrendous. Almost all of the previous faults could have been forgiven if each and every episode (aside from the episode Okabe and real Kurisu meet again briefly) wasn't such a chore to watch! It was boring, the storyline with Kagari made absolutely no sense, the bad guy was cartoonish and too obvious from the get go, all the episodes were really badly structured, so none of the angst the series repetitively screamed that you should feel, managed to elicit any kind of emotional reaction from the viewer.
Like all of the above shouldn't be considered enough, this thing is barely moving. This gets even worse when they tried to add in action scenes. It was pretty sad seeing Suzuha trying to move and do things while the budget wouldn't let her. The sound, well, it was there I guess. OP was ok.
If this didn't have the name "Stein's Gate" on it and its fame to carry it, it would have been lost in the depths of our conscience the next day it finished airing. Seeing it rank so high, I can't help but feel of how unfair this is to much better series that don't get the recognition they deserve. The first Stein's Gate is worthy of being one of the most beloved anime series to recent date. This thing here, has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Bottom line: Don't watch. Especially if you liked the first series, it will leave a really bad aftertaste. It was never needed in the first place, but it didn't manage to add a single good thing in the franchise. Just rewatch and enjoy the first series if you need a reconnection.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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