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I feel like this manga needs a certain mindset in order to read.
I read through the first 20-30 chapters of this manga on complete autopilot, because that's what I thought the manga wanted me to do.
I was supremely bored.

It wasn't until I started treating it differently to other SoL manga that I really became invested. Instead of passively reading and expecting it to entertain me, I started paying attention to the scenery and masterful art, and I started appreciating the manga more for what it actually was - A Journey.

One thing that really stood out to me above everything else was the juxtaposition between ... the genre’s. I can’t imagine anyone expected moe, epsisodic SoL to work well in a post-apocalyptic setting, but the writer and artist absolutely harness these elements so well that it emphasises both: The harsh, unforgiving setting highlights how young, inexperienced and innocent our main characters, and on the flips side, our cutsey, moe characters emphasise the dreadful nature of the post-apocalyptic world, despite how much they try to conceal it.

This manga has probably one of my favourite endings I’ve ever seen, it’s absolutely perfect and an incredible bitter-sweet ending to the manga, suiting the aforementioned clashing genre’s. It also serves as a perfect conclusion to the manga’s more philosophical commentary on the meaning of life, summarizing their conclusion of it all perfectly.
To avoid spoilers I’ll just leave you with a quote that actually made me cry for one of the only times reading a manga:

“Living was the best, wasn’t it?”

<3

I really don’t know where I stand with this manga. On one hand it has some of the most breath-taking moments and incredible panels that made me stop and have a little moment, and on the other it has so many short-comings that bothered me to the point that I feel like I didn’t enjoy it as much as the 8.97 score suggests I should have.
Me being the cynical cunt that I am, I think I have an automatic urge to find problems and flaws with popular works such as this, that stop me from enjoying myself to the fullest extent compared to a ... relatively unpopular average rated manga - whose hill I have chosen to die on many a times. On to the review.

I feel like an important distinction to make is the difference between the first 19 chapters… and the rest of the manga. I read a popular negative reviews that stated that these chapters are much better than the rest, to which I somewhat see why - not that I agree. The first 19 chapters provide a much different tone to the manga that quickly gets shifted into something darker and more sinister more befitting of the narrative. However I would be lying if I said the fantastic world building, character introductions and setups for mysteries didn’t entice me like no other manga has recently - only for 2/3 of the these elements to be dropped minutes after they were introduced.

The worldbuilding continues to be stellar throughout but the characters in particular took a massive hit in terms of my general interest in them, especially those set up as important only to be cast aside in favour of newer ones. Those 2 newer -important- characters in particular were rather underwhelming to me and I felt they didn’t get nearly enough development on time for us to get attached to them before they were whisked away by the plot. It just felt like they affected Phos far more than they affected us - to-the-point where I didn’t really care about them being gone. Following up on the point of poor character development, even the existing ones that I gave praise to received criminally little time actually in the plot, despite this fact they all had pretty great resolutions to their arcs, it’s just that we didn’t- really get to see them get there, they were just given a couple panels every now and then without any actual dedicated time.

Continuing on a more positive note regarding the characters: Phosphophyllite. Oh my god what an amazing main character. Regardless on how you feel about their change after episode 19, you cannot deny that what came of that was overall a fantastic experience. Starting off clueless about the world yet wanting to make a difference, to an absolute clusterfuck of a mess by the end of the story, The gradual changes she goes through throughout the story are equally impactful as they are horrifying, seeing her slowly losing her sanity lead to some of most impactful panels in the whole story. It was absolutely incredible to read and easily the highlight of the entire manga.

I talked a lot about characters here because that is my only real complaint with this manga, everything else is just nit-picky aspects that slightly bothered me; the story’s fantastic, the art starts off a bit incomprehensible but definitely makes up for it with aforementioned panels - The world building is something special though, it’s concise and fleshed out to an incredible extent with there being only 3 main locations the story takes place in really illustrates how well the writer explored these areas to keep us engaged.

This was definitely worth reading and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but I think I need something a bit more light-hearted now.

Thanks <3.

A recent trend of new-popular shows rising to the number one spot on the rankings, only to drop off to hang around the top 100 or lower after more episodes release. Some examples of this are rather undeserving; think Oshi no ko which I was rather unimpressed with apart from the fantastic first episode, Spy x Family was good but didn’t deserve #3 (if I remember correctly), Kaguya-sama S3 - I thought season 2 was better - and more.
Despite all the shit I just gave the top spot, Frieren does seem to be sticking around, and it is definitely the “best” anime I’ve seen to ... take the top spot for a while.

I say “best” in quotations because my main issue with Frieren is that it doesn’t particularly excel at anything apart from the unique art-style and downright gorgeous animation. All of it’s elements from the story and characters, to the fantasy world and narrative just range from good to - really good and that’s about it. There are a few key definable elements about the show that I give praise to however: The show presents demons as being inherently evil is unique and interestingly explained in the second arc of the show. I cannot stress enough that the animation and art is fucking immaculate - not only does it radiate a unique fairy-tale aesthetic but you can tell the animation budget for the next year went down the drain on this one project. Frieren’s character arc is an extremely compelling idea, although I do think it was brought down due to the lack of attention it got. However with the amount of praise I give it, I also have a fair number of complaints mainly due to the single fact that:
Frieren is basically a typical Isekai-esque fantasy story refined to the highest level. This does come with the usual-mandatory cliches and drawbacks of the specific genre, but I feel it does well to mitigate and avoid most of them by use of it’s sheer quality.

I don’t think this anime deserves to be #1, especially by this much of a margin compared to FMA. I feel like it’s a contest of which show can do the least wrong instead of the most right in order to not turn away the most people. These are exactly the type of shows I’m normally apathetic about but I watch them anyway because they rank so highly, I thought the exact same when I watched the other victims of the aforementioned trend.

Fern is a boring fucking character; who’s only definable personality trait is being motherly to Frieren and Stark. Harem protagonists are more emotive. This notion has not left me for the entire duration of the show that I convinced myself would improve. It did not.

I shouldn’t need to persuade you to read this, I mean - as of writing this - it has a 33-0-0 review ratio (now 34-0-0), that’s incredible. Please go read this manga, you won’t regret it.

Much like the title itself: everything about this read emanates a certain warmth that’s hard to generate from a typical read. From the fantastic characters and their interactions with each other, to the cozy art-style; comparable to the other rom-coms we all know and love - to the perfectly slow-paced story and the rewarding progress towards the main characters primary goals. It all weaves together to create a feeling unlike ... much else. And that’s, incredibly special.

The main narrative of the show definitely hit me harder than I was expecting. It genuinely made me want to try and reconnect with my dad whom I haven’t see in so long, and it made me want to grow a closer relationship with my mother whilst I still have her. Needless to say they handle this narrative incredibly, I cannot give it enough praise.

The obvious and loudest issue involves the ethically questionable age gap between the two love interests, but - honestly. I don’t care anymore. Maybe it’s because the show won me over with it’s other aspects, maybe I’m just used to this, or maybe its because they actually acknowledge that it’s a questionable concept in the story itself. But I just stopped caring around the half-way point. And I hope you will to, if you let this bother you, you will not have enjoy yourself.

(Just to clarify this is still ethically abhorrent and I do not condone this situation in any way shape-or-form)

But still - this manga is fantastic.

Have a wonderful day <3

Right off the bat, Tokyo Ghoul's concept is inherently cool and interesting.

Regardless of how media has twisted its perception and how the anime made it seem “edgy and twisted”, the show’s core concept is really interesting: What would happen if “ghouls” existed in modern society. Not only does this pose countless philosophical questions, but its a fun take on how humans would react if such a thing were to happen, and the show goes to extremes to flesh the worldbuilding which I appreciate. However where my issue with this area lies is that some aspects weren’t reinforced and I ended up having to remind myself ... that they existed, eg: I actually forgot at one point that the core theme of: “ghouls needing to eat humans to survive”, was a thing because it just didn’t happen past the early chapters.

No shocker that the story is great, absolutely no complaints here, however I will outline one aspect that I noticed; the pacing was amazing. Chapters flowed into one another as if I didn’t turn the page and I never questioned whether the plot could’ve spent more time on certain areas of the story.

I honestly hate what the anime did to my boy Kaneki, he’s such an amazing catalyst for the reader to experience the world alongside him, assuring that he knows just as much as the us throughout the early chapters, as well as just being a great character period. His progression through the story is by-far one of it’s best qualities, especially during the second half where he’s all over the place; the story goes out of it’s way to make sure we understand his mental state.

This might be a personal issue, but I had massive issues trying to comprehend some of the art and panelling during the first half of the manga. I actually think the artist had a stroke midway through some of the fight-scenes because I swear they’re incomprehensible to mere mortals. Fortunately the fights became much wider-shot and more detailed during the second half - to the point I could actually understand what was happening.

Another - smaller - nit-pick I have is that all of the CCG character blend together. Obviously the main cast stand out due to the fact they actually get development, but sometimes “big-strong-guy #4” will take up the entire panel and I’m just left wondering who the fuck that is. My main issue is that none of them are distinctive enough from one another to the point its hard to tell some of them apart.

Finally. Would I consider this worth reading if you’ve already seen the anime.
No.
Don’t get me wrong; the manga is infinitely better, especially compared to season two. But if you’re not thirsting for more Tokyo Ghoul content - the anime served its purpose fine, and whilst its inferior, it scratched that itch we all have sufficiently. For me at least.
<3

The 'Second' instalment of Higurashi Rei is a massive step up in terms of characters, plot, and my general interest in it.

Before anything, I just want to give this credit for how accurately it depicts its characters. Specifically, Keitarou (Based), and just the cast in general, act exactly how I imagine myself and others would act in their incredibly specific situations, which is no small feat to pull off. Congrats.
Onto the actual review.

The people of Hinamizawa and Polaris can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, stuck together, yet so completely different that you can't tell. Oniokoshi-hen showed us the viewpoints of the ... people of Hinamizawa, with their biased perspective, Hoshiwatashi showed us the viewpoint of the people of Polaris, with an equally biased perspective. However, now that we've seen the perspective of both sides, it's easy - and even encouraged - to take a neutral perspective on their situation. This is the pinnacle of clever writing, as far as I'm concerned, and an incredibly rewarding experience.

Polaris itself was incredibly interesting and dynamic, showing us how these domestic abuse victims, a detail which was omitted in Oniokoshi, cope with their past and live together in their own cornered-off society. The culture and characters of Polaris were developed, similarly to Hinamizawa, except with this, it's completely new territory, meaning that it's being kept fresh and interesting just by existing.

This is almost everything I could've wanted out of a Higurashi sequel. My only complaint is that it's too short. I wish I could've spent more time experiencing Polaris and Keitarou's friends' opposition to them. Unfortunately, it does feel slightly rushed, which is why it's not a 10/10. Although its fast pace hardly got in the way of my enjoyment and appreciation.

The 'first' installment of Higurashi Rei is rather slow and uninteresting as a part of the wider Higurashi universe; however, it's very necessary as a setup for the next two arcs of Rei.

Now, I'm just going to talk briefly about how well it does as an add-on to the original. When it comes to this, it does well in some areas and terribly in others. It builds on the existing story strictly for Hinamizawa and Hinamizawa alone; this is obviously great, but the original cast barely appears, and the way we get most of our information about them is through dialogue by the new main ... cast - their children. It's not even established who certain characters from the original conceived these children with, and with the structure of most Higurashi arcs being 50% Slice Of Life, it was a missed opportunity to not give us at least a little bit of fanservice around the original cast. It was just a bit disappointing.

It felt like I was reading Onikakushi again but with a new coat of paint, which both works and doesn't considering its status as a story that takes place 40 years after the events of the original. It works because I could tell that, while it was a rather underwhelming in terms of characters, with there only being three that I liked, its purpose was to set up the next arc while introducing us to the characters and plot. It's not bad, just a bit underwhelming.

At least it's not Gou/Sotsu.

"It’s not that hard to write a sequel, expand on characters and story in meaningful ways, and try to make it as good or better than the original. For most people, the standard was the original Deen anime from 2006-2007, and for a sequel to not even begin to reach the quality of that, let alone the original VN, is… well… maybe it just shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Gou is unique in that, if you’ve consumed any Higurashi content before it, it will actively hinder your experience while watching it. Yes, you will have a worse time watching a sequel if you've ... already watched the original. I am not joking. A massive reason for this is the fact that half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap; the first three arcs are adapted straight from the 2002 VN with detailed differences and a changed conclusion to serve the new narrative. This is why, if you’ve consumed Higurashi in any shape or form before this, it’ll likely bore you half to death. The episodes add absolutely nothing of value to the characters and even trivialize their arc and development from the original, making them somehow less of a character. These arcs only exist to serve the new narrative and to make sure newcomers aren’t too confused… which is so… completely backward.

Promotional material is mostly harmless; it’s literally just advertising, and that’s what it should be. I can’t decide whether I love the trailer for Gou or detest it. On one hand, it was a decently funny bait-and-switch, advertising the show as a remake of a beloved VN to then be revealed as a sequel in episode 2, and on the other hand, it would’ve been much better as a remake. This isn’t even mentioning the swarm of first-timers to the series starting off with Gou, partially due to the fact that the original Higurashi has become rather hard to watch legally. The original Higurashi Deen anime was… good, I guess, but to say it was totally faithful to the original and used its time wisely is just wrong. I was so hyped for a remake because of this, so you can imagine my dismay when I found out it wasn’t.

Shock factor in place of depth and horror.
If you’ve ever seen the original, I should hope that you came to the conclusion that the “horror” of it came from the artistically crafted plot and impactful death scenes. Taking the beginning of the original VN as an example, it starts with an ambiguous, repetitive bashing sound over Keiichi’s inner monologue as he commits an atrocity we have yet to see. It’s insightful, it’s mysterious, and most of all, it’s impactful. Then we come to Gou, which throws all meaning out the window and replaces it with unsettling images and sounds. Sure, it’s more in line with the traditional idea of “horror = scary,” but it’s such a poor choice considering the themes of the original. I’m not even saying it did the unsettling images and sounds particularly well either; they’re not thought out or even scary, really. Most of the death scenes result in the entire room they're in being absolutely covered in blood, no matter what weapon they’re using, and even ignoring the blood, everything from the characters to the animation falls in line with your typical slasher, rather than the psychological horror it’s supposed to be. And that’s the one thing anime does incredibly poorly; slashers succeed in scaring their audience due to it being live action and therefore relatable to an extent. Anime can’t do that, for obvious reasons.

It’s just not scary. In any sense of the word.

I honestly feel bad for the voice actors, who continuously put up a stellar performance no matter the quality of the Higurashi content they’re featured in. They’re one of the shining stars that I got from scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of compliments to give the show. It’s astonishing how they can put up this good of a performance even after 14 years of voice acting for the franchise, and I have endless praise for all of them. Though when it comes to the new coat of paint the sequel got, I’m not so kind. I really, really thought about this, and I prefer the original art and animation. Intentional or not, the bad art and questionable animation definitively set a tone that matched the narrative of the show. Gou’s just feels so bland and basic; it doesn’t change to match specific tones presented by the plot, nor is it good (This does NOT include the EDs, which were amazing). It’s “good,” don’t get me wrong, but that’s all I can give it, and it links back into my argument about the lack of depth the show has, and I think the animation is a rather nit-picky example of that.

I’ve held off talking about the main issue of the first season so far, which is undoubtedly the story and pacing. The pacing is so incredibly inconsistent in the worst places. Take, for example, the first 13 episodes. I know I’ve mentioned them a lot, but I cannot stress enough just how bad they are, and I will keep talking about them until I’ve convinced you. As I said before: “half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap.” This by itself isn’t a bad thing; however, none of it is cut. Despite being a sequel, it goes out of its way to explain almost every single thing we should already know by this point. And as a result, it just feels like you’re watching the original Deen anime again. This isn’t even contained to the first 13 episodes; parts of Sotsu and later in Gou we get Matsuribayashi-hen recap when plot should be taking place.

In a post-episode 13 world, the plot does actually happen, and the story makes meaningful progress for the first time in 4 hours. It arguably gets worse. The pacing goes into overdrive to the point where major character development is cut down into 4 episodes. It gets worse. Out of those 4 episodes, only roughly 2 of them (2 halves of 2 episodes put together and 1 good episode) have any meaning, while the others are relegated to padding and murder scenes. The murder scenes in particular could’ve been done well; all they would need to do is portray Rika’s active thought processes and mental deterioration in a meaningful way as she was being killed, but all they gave us were a few lines of dialogue from her each scene, most of them being completely irrelevant.

Funnily enough, Gou’s peak was when it was acting as it was meant to be from the start, a sequel to the original. The main characters get nice development, and the story that ended from the original is directly continued.

The second half of the arc is where the actual answers are revealed to us, and most importantly, we get to see one of the best characters from the original go down a dark spiral called bad writing. Some of the decisions made here are so bad and frankly disrespectful that I couldn’t take any of them seriously. It also clearly shows that the writer has no understanding of human emotion, with many events that should’ve at least put a strain on the main character's mental state just further fueled their questionable motivation for their even more questionable goal.

Now I have no doubt that the higher-ups at studio Passione had some influence in how this was written. Considering the general outside perspective of Higurashi, especially the anime, being along the lines of a murder-thriller with lots of gore and violence, they likely pushed the people actually making the show in that direction because they thought it would make a decent profit.

Overall, this show is really bad; I hate it from the bottom of my heart, and nothing is likely to change that.

Remember: It’s not canon if you don’t like it; just forget it existed and move on with your life. - Me, when this first aired."

There is SO much wrong with this manga. I normally don't read things I don't like, but for some reason I thought it would get better the more I read, it SEEMED like it would get better the more I read... I was wrong.

Every character HAS to have a tragic backstory. This goes beyond the concept of the show because ALL the relevant characters have a tragic backstory in some sense. Not only is this a massive overload with the story's massive cast of relevant characters, but it seems to stop there. Next to none of these characters get any meaningful development outside of their ... backstory in the entire 140 chapter length. Obviously, this makes it less impactful and made some chapters really tedious. The only character with actually decent development is the main character, Aya. She goes through a character arc throughout the entire story, and it's pretty compelling. However, all other characters only exist for the plot.

I don't normally have an interest in paneling; it's much like animation and game graphics to me. If it's good, well, that's pretty good, and if it's bad, it won't impact my enjoyment too much. With this manga, however, it's sometimes impossible to keep track of what's going on, especially with the climax where so many things are happening, and the sheer scale of them. I found myself re-reading some panels over and over again and still not fully understanding what happened. The art is pretty good, though.

Conceptually the plot is amazing, it's paced well enough that it keeps getting more interesting the more you keep reading and has some cool idea that I haven't seen before. It had its highs for sure, but the lows were insanely low, and the aforementioned pacing and story composition were so off at points that I sometimes went back chapters to make sure I didn't accidentally skip one. Just to give an example: a big battle happens, a character dies, the next chapter abruptly starts a 20-odd chapter long side-story for characters we've never seen. For this example in particular, it's a literal cliff-hanger, It cuts all tension from the previous chapter and focuses on something else entirely. Another thing is that the author wants you to take this seriously, but at the same time comes up with the most ridiculous plot developments known to man. Most of them don't even serve the narrative in a meaningful way, and I can only imagine they're there because the author suddenly thought it would be a good idea.

I can't say I had a great time reading this. The climax sucked, the characters sucked and the plot was decent yet underwhelming, but I did end up finishing it for better or worse, so it obviously did something right.

The meme is just over halfway through chapter 103.

I started reading because I looked at the top review for the manga and it read "this damn manga made me laugh SO MANY TIMES, and made me cry EVEN MORE times." -AIIpha. I decided I had nothing better to do and coupled with the fact I'm a romcom junkie, I just had to give it a go... Wow. I genuinely can't accurately describe what this manga did to me over the course of 2 months of reading.


-To start off the story/plot is really good... surprisingly. You wouldn't think a stereotypical romcom would have a decent plot but I really liked this one. It moved ... at such a slow pace to allow us to enjoy the superb characters and comedy without it feeling pointless, yet not so slowly that when it was time for the main plot to kick it felt jarring and unnatural. Not much to say here as it has virtually no depth to it as it's not the focus of the manga for 75% of the time.


-The comedy is incredible, I laughed so much I lost count, even when I didn't laugh I appreciated the attempt and that alone made me smile. I actually believe this manga has some of the best comedic moments in the form of visual gags, they were all fantastic and nearly all of them had me laughing. Obviously not all of it was gold, there were a few repeated jokes that got really annoying but listen I'm trying to be biased here.


-Characters... Holy shit there's 16!?!?!? AND I LIKE ALL ALMOST OF THEM!?!?!?
A common troupe in long-running romcoms and just manga in general is what I call "character padding", basically the writer for one reason or another feels the need to add pointless characters to the story to keep us entertained, this normally ends up poorly; as the characters feel poorly written and just not-meant-to-be. This is not the case here (thank god I was so worried at the time).

All of the characters are incredibly endearing, even the later ones that showed up whom I sighed at, at first turned into characters I actually love and kept me reading along with existing incredible cast.
When it comes to character quirks it's extremely hit or miss, they can either be incredibly funny and entertaining or make me want to skip the chapter. Yeah all but three... 13 characters with incredibly funny and personalities and I got to enjoy up to 150 chapters of them all.


-Art. It's overall good, no complaints whatsoever and it shines especially with the character designs.



I can't describe this manga any other way than happiness, I felt pure bliss for almost the entire duration of me reading, possibly partially because it's one of the most wholesome things I've ever read, it's the definition of light-hearted entertainment with the FIRST cliché tripped into boobs scene being at chapter 150. There were mildly erotic scenes leading up to that which did annoy me at first but that quickly turned into insanely funny comedy as soon as Rin was introduced and after that all I could do was smile at the pair of tits instead of being annoyed at their existence. (This is not a joke, I had to take multiple minute-long breaks between reading because I was laughing too much at these)

At around episode 145 characters start getting conclusions to their progression, this is also when it stops being so light-hearted and the story begins to speed up a lot. Almost every character I care about got a satisfying conclusion to their aspirations and love interests which plays into the feeling sheer happiness I mentioned before. I can't even say the story is bad after it picked up pace, it's nothing ground-breaking but it was interesting enough to grip me and after spending a month and a half with some of my favourite characters of all time I hardly cared about the story despite how good it was, I just wanted to see everybody happy at the end.


I went into this show with the promise of tears, I can confidently say that might've happened; but not for reasons I expected. This manga had so many character arcs going on at once and it tried to conclude them in a manner that had impact without taking too many pages. As a result the author unfortunately used a LOT of teary eyed characters to try to replace the impact felt through thorough character building, unfortunately this meant that I came to expect tears from characters and happy scenes all around, this expectance obviously prevented me from getting too emotional as I could so much as predict what was gonna happen. Don't get me wrong some of these pages are still fantastic and contained great writing, it was just the expectation and the pacing that prevented emotions from me...
However I did cry twice. Once was at the end when something completely unexpected and a frankly masterful and incredibly emotional conclusion to one of the more troubled characters. The second was interesting... I cried when I closed the last volume. I was finished and I just sat on my bed and started crying.
This is the hardest case of black-hole I've felt in years and I hope this conveys how much this manga means to me and how incredible it is.
Thank you.