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Oct 7, 2024
Today's case is a particular one. My client, Frieren, last name Sousou No has been accused of the most vile crimes an anime can be accused of. My client, currently topping the charts, is alleged peak fiction.
Silence please! I understand. This is a major offense, and I am here to challenge said allegations.
Now before starting my defense, I'd like to introduce my client:
At its most basic level, Sousou no Frieren is a rather unassuming anime. Between the fantasy races we've all grown accustomed to, the clear European influences in its toponymy and topography, going all the way to the recently deceased demon lord, this is
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the fantasy setting we have seen time and time again, the isekai genre's bread and butter dare I say.
But it doesn't take much peeling to get under this particular skin layer, which, might I add, is a stunning work of art. But even that is but an appetizer for the journey that is inside. Because yes, my client is a journey. The journey of millenar elf Frieren and her newest team. Even the final goal of said journey, which I won't reveal in this affair, only serves as a vaguely defined end purpose as you, the watcher, enjoy the world and your new bandmates.
Now now, this might already sound like the allegations are correct, but there's more.
The external journey isn't the only thing that matters. Many a Coco Melon plugged child have called my client slow and boring, dreadfully so. But it is paced well enough for the double journey unfolding. Because more than the physical journey, Sousou no Frieren is also an introspection, not only from our timeless main character, but by a varied cast of side characters, who share their regrets as a fairly sizeable amount of them have lived long enough to regret something, the passage of time being the prominent theme of the anime.
And yet, as you have probably noticed from looking at the characters tab on MAL, the vast majority of them appear to be at least somewhat young. Your eyes aren't decieveing you, and the reason is very simple. Sousou no Frieren, despite handling the heaviness of all ages, also talks about the value of memories, the experience that shapes the newest generation, building pn their ancestors' foundations. After all, in a century, a lot can change, and a lot has changed, and exploration of those changes is just another aspect of Sousou no Frieren's greatness.
I hear your boos, it seems like I have written myself into a corner. Spending so many precious paragraphs gassing up this anime, how can I beat the allegations now. It seems like Frieren is doomed to perfection. How tragic...
...is what I would have said if my argument ended here.
Indeed, Frieren is a great show, one might even call it amazing. But I shall withhold the term of peak fiction, for one single reason, that has everything to do with this anime's biggest quality. As I have stated, Sousou no Frieren is a journey and the destination takes second place to said journey, and this strength is also its biggest weakness. If the destination takes second place, then the trials cannot be taken seriously. No good trials means no good struggles. And let me ask you, what is the point of these amazing characters if they cannot pull at your heartstrings, facing seemingly unsurmountable odds.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have felt emotions from Sousou no Frieren. The issue is that the emotions I have felt are not strong enough for the qualifier of "peak fiction". The anime remains a very enjoyable watch, and one that I'm not ready to forget, but to call it peak fiction is only hyperbole when there exists several worse offenders.
This was my case, now it is high time we let the jury decide.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 12, 2023
What happens when you take one of the most beloved shonens of its era and give it a glow up that looks hard even by today's standard? The answer is both something that makes it to the top 10 of MAL's rankings, and something that isn't as good as you would expect from my description.
The original Bleach running ended on a pretty good change of pace. The last arc had a pretty fantastic build up for a disappointing climax, when Kubo is normally an expert at doing the opposite. This arc also starts pretty well. It's tense despite suffering from the we need more syndrome
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all shonen anime go through, the new bad guy of the season is as charismatic as the last one and it seems that Kubo has figured out how to write a nice story instead of sticking to his usual talents of drawing hot women (hot everyone) and intense fights, though we're not lacking in the latter (the women's new designs are pretty much all a downgrade aside from Orihime, but assuming you watched the first run of Bleach, it's nothing new here).
So, yeah, despite that brand new coat of paint and a new and improved story, Bleach is still Bleach. The character interactions have come a long way since the Soul Society Arc (almost bearable now) and sometimes the comedy is almost funny. I'll be looking forward to the continuation of the Thousand Year Blood War (this name will never not be too edgy), since some of the coolest characters have and wil get some much needed development.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 13, 2023
The fact this show was ever popular is probably the saddest thing I'll mention in this review, and that's entirely because of the lack of material. If I could only say "this shit is boring" and call it a day, I would but turns out, MAL review mods believe the review system has some sort of legitimacy, so here we go.
Anohana is a show about overly cutesy, barely grown up looking Menma, who you learn rather early fucking died, and Jinta, the main character needs to fulfill a wish nobody will ever know about. As a premise, it stands amongst the laziest I have ever
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seen, and I didn't need to look at the original mangaka's bibliography to know that they're a complete beginner at storytelling. But who knows? Maybe I'm just cynical, 2011 was a different era, and a lazy premise can still make something enjoyable if executed properly.
How? This premise begs a slow burn, so no flashy drawing can improve on such a dull concept. And speaking of slow burn, there's no way you have enough content out of something this dull to last 11 episodes, so expect the middle section of the anime to be filled to the brim with nothing.
Are the characters lovable perhaps? Menma is a child in the body of a teen (or basically just a taller version of her child self) and as such is extremely annoying. Jinta has the all so relatable problem of being useless at the age of 15. The female cast's struggles are all about love (Oh boy! Early anime writing of female characters! I'm not a feminist and I find this annoying.), the Vegeta to Jinta's Goku is... unhinged? Overreacting? Eh... he was alright I guess. And Krillin had a grand total of 15 minutes (slightly exaggerated, it's probably even less) dedicated to his struggles, and yet he's standing a great chance at being the best written character in the show.
Then what does this show have? Honestly nothing, watch it if you have time to waste, or if you're easy to impress. Anohana is like, baby's first cryporn so if you've never experienced a negative feeling in your life, feel free to watch this and tell everyone about how Anohana is secretly a masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 16, 2023
Asking me, or anyone for that matter, to rate Evangelion is criminal. If you were to ask me, this anime can go anywhere from a 4 to a 10, the story is generic, the characters are boring and even the mystery behind the evas is not that good, but behind a mediocre piece of storytelling is a pretty interesting general retrospective on humanity, as the pile of data we are relative to the universe and as the sum of the bonds we ahve with other people. It doesn't make sense? Fair, it is pretty difficult to make it make sense without throwing a generic "go
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watch the damn anime".
Now, onto the breakdown. Evangelion can pretty easily be broken into 3 parts. First, and longest, taking a solid half of the anime. This part is the narrative one, I don't need to remake the synopsis but words need to be added to this pointless piece of data so here goes. Evangelion follows a boy named Shinji in the weakest excuse for alternate history where everything's fucked and humanity is doing its best to unfuck it. What is fucked? Well, something about massive creatures wreeaking havoc for no well defined reasons. Except they stopped, but now they continued. Why, you may ask? I dunno. Well, lucky them, Shinji just happened to be one of the roughly dozen of people capable of stopping the Angels. Why are they named Angels you may ask? I dunno. Basically, Shinji, and some other people have to stop them by driving giant robots that can stop them, courtesy of a secret branch of the UN. This part of the story is a travesty, in no universe is the UN good at anything.
And then the second half starts, and the giant robots battling being beyond human comprehension sidesteps and instead we are thrown into a mix of political and character drama. This shit was boring, because this part is kind of the part where they build characters, but also the part where the struggles start, all you're watching is a bunch of people you couldn't care less about vomit their life stories to each other and hoping that maybe you will shed a tear somewhere along the line. Needless to say, this failed, but maybe you're into drama so forced it makes Bollywood oscar worthy. As for the politics? Well, I understood something was going on, but I didn't get what and when I wanted to figure out the factions' next move, which is all the fun in such stories, all of a sudden, some bullshit is thrown and I'm left just losing interest because there's no way you can predict some of the spoiler worthy stuff I would talk about if I didn't make the review to convince people to watch this anime.
And then, something builds up in the 5 last episodes. The story's gone, the only thing remaining of the characters is their appearance and the fact they existed in the rest of the anime, the worldbuilding may as well have never existed and the visuals turn into something you'd find in a 19th century french arthouse movie, in layman's term, avant garde. At this point, the anime is talking to you, the viewer, sending a message that some of you may not identify with, but that I sure did, and that the majority of the anime community I know would relate at least somewhat to. I'm honestly still trying to digest that part so I'm not fully sure how, or even if I could explain it to you, but what I can say is that it brought an interesting perspective on things that plagued me as a human, especially the last episode, which on its own, would probably be a 10/10.
What I'm trying to say in one sentence, is that Evangelion, as a story is mediocre, but Evangelion, as a piece of media, has qualities we may as well never see in any othere such pieces. It's not the best show ever by a long shot, but if there's anything that I would consider a must watch, for anyone ever, Evangelion would be it. I'm not looking forward to End of Eva, the supposed sequel to this anime, because I just know this will be a poor attempt at ending the narrative aspect, but this isn't what this anime was made for, and to me, Evangelion already has the perfect ending.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 6, 2023
This is the best Kaguya sama has been since its gimmick fell off.
The First kiss that ever ends is a movie dealing with the aftermath of... that scene in Ultra Romantic primarily. While it starts like the other Kaguya sama instalments, it starts to stand out early into its duration, by being forced to do what other romance anime has shied away from for far too long: dealing with the main characters being a couple.
The first kiss that never ends deals with what goes right after the falling in love bit, where you have to figure out that behind the love of your life and
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the person you want to spend your life with is a human being, full of things one may not want to see, and how being a lasting couple is about handling that harsh truth.
Throughout the duration of the movie, mainly centered on the Kaguya/Miyuki couple, the two protagonists are slowly broken down into their most basic traits, not to satisfy a quick haha funi joke (which, let's be real, Kaguya sama is like a 3/10 comedy), but to answer the question asked at the beginning of the movie. How would you define the relationship between them? What is a couple? What's the difference between a really good friendship and a proper romance? Why is romance such a good anime genre?
This is one of the rare adaptation of Kaguya sama that I actually enjoyed, rather than just watching it for the sake of it, like I did since season 1.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 4, 2022
Overall rating: 7, furhter review below
How can a singular movie carry the job an entire trilogy is supposed to do (i.e: tell a damn story)? If your answer was spending 20 minutes on an exposition dump because you finally figured out your story has no heads or tails, then you would be right, but please, never create a work of fiction.
This is Kizumonogatari III: Can we get more of Hanekawa's tits? Pretty please? (this is the real title, don't let the Japanese government lie to you) On this movie, we have Araragi go through a whole depression episode before he finally figured out he wasn't
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supposed to act like a protagonist and could just let everyone else advance the story for him (which is pretty based if done on purpose), Oshino being a plot device, Hanekawa being a "plot" device and Kiss Shot being the only character in this god forsaken anime.
Also, fucking hell do we finally get to understand the events that led to Bakemonogatari, and this time I can't even be mad, because this is unironically a great plot thread, making a massive mistake that you will have to spend a bajillion episodes fixing. Maybe I would have actually appreciated the show if I knew that ahead of time.
Also sometimes being on copium just works. Can't wait for the next season which will OBVIOUSLY be a step above the rest.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 3, 2022
Overall rating: 6, further review below
So, you're telling me it's easier to give your panties to the guy you love than it is to straight up confess? I honestly don't know if it's me or the author who needs to hang out with more women, and my criminal record is too clean to make the experience myself. So, welcome to Kizumonogatari II: A better vampire story than Twilight (kind of) where Araragi becomes the worst attempt I've ever seen at gaining a fangirl's attention, the story takes a few steps forward (don't worry, it'll get there one day I'm sure of it), Kiss shot
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is still somewhat underwhelming as a character and Oshino is based af.
As for the story progression, well Araragi beats bad guy number 1, 2 and 3 in a relatively short period of time, I still don't understand what's the purpose of Hanekawa aside from spilling her guts (hehe geddit) on her feelings and some more. So, I guess I need to adress the elephant in the room: Why is it higher rated than the first movie? Honestly I just liked the action, not enough to redeem the whole thing, but it was some dumb fun, despite the antagonists not having all that much substance to themselves, but I'd like to believe the third movie is where the big reveals will start to hit (copium).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 3, 2022
Overall rating: 5, further review below
Where do I even start dissecting this? The problem isn't that there is too much to say, it's that there isn't enough. For the hour that this movie lasted, there's maybe about 10 minutes of worthwhile content, all scattered in the second half. So, the first Kizumonogatari, as all prequels do, give a good deal of insight on one of 778's most famous works.
Sorry, the parallels were just so obvious I had to make the joke. But every masterpiece has its cheap copy, and the Yupiel doujin is no exception. With Shaft doing as it does with this anime and
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making the oujou-sama's laugh into something you can watch, Kizumonogatari first movie doesn't offer much to look at. Hanekawa and Araragi feel like wholly different characters, probably free of whatever trauma happened in this very trilogy and this Kiss shot girl did the biggest mistake of her life by not being voiced by Sakura Tange, making the movie lose 3 points just like that (no slight on her VA though, she did a good job, but I can't let that thought out of my head).
That's basically how I feel about the whole thing, movie format doesn't help at all. This anime just feels like someone used the freshest ingredients from different countries with very differing flavors and mixed it all to make something that has very distinctly the flavor of bread, but not the bread that just came out of the oven, more the one that you froze to use the day after kind of bread.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 27, 2022
Overall rating: 6, further review below
Turns out... I may have overbloated my expectations of the Monogatari Series...
Can you blame me? When the biggest detractors of the show on MAL call it fetish bait for pedophiles and a glorified harem anime, the only thing I could think was: "This shit's right up my alley!" Well, you can now look at me and laugh. But in all fairness, the anime does have a bit of promise, if only by its structure. By that I mean the barely used in anime, incipit in media res, or basically, shit happened before, and we'll talk about it later. That
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leaves a small layer of mystery that might be the only reason I even remotely care about this show after watching its first season.
Now for what the anime is actually about. Well there's this dude named public class Araragi(); who goes around heping his public string friends; who are haunted by public class Entitites(); who don't really have an explanation as fo rwhy other than they are somewhat related to random, mostly Japanese monster tales. The rest is left to the watcher's imagination until they watch the rest of the series
Its characters, now not to be mistaken, every single character is different and overall pretty well written. But there's a massive problem, and Araragi and Senjougahara are the biggest culprits, when it comes to general intreractions, the characters feel more more like self learning AIs (thus the bad programming joke, don't blame me, it's been years since I last touched code) with a very well written backstory than actual characters. And even when they try to fix the issue by adding comedy, it just doesn't work when your main brand of comedy is garbage meta humour and jokes relying on Japanese folk culture. And unlike Gintama, I can't find any fansub to explain me most of the jokes so I have no idea if it would be funny with context, although probably not. And if only that was the only big problem.
Character issue not helped by the faxct Araragi sounds like a damn narrator.
Also, what the hell Shaft? A production couldn't be more pompous unless I watched a lobster flavored champagne in a fancy glass spinning in a random pattern and somehow called it art. The panels, which I thought would be endearing turned out to be annoying, and after a point, I just ignored them all. I don't know if the source material was required to be adapted this way, but if that was the case, I'd rather be blind than having to watch an anime like that. It turned a perfectly serviceable anime into a flawed production. And if that's Shaft's biggest flex, they might be condemned to mediocrity. A shame, character desingns were plenty good, made me want to put my dick everywhere near the cat.
Yup, not holding my breath for the rest, but still a watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 18, 2022
Overall rating: 5, further review below
"Getting too much is almost as bad as not getting any." If you don't know where this quote is from, it's because I read it from a doujin, but it might just hold true for this cour of Haikyuu:To the top. That is because, who decided to have the whole cour dedicated to a single match? And so let me introduce the undesired younger sibling of the Shiratori Zawa match.
Well, Shiratori Zawa was more the undesired sibling, since the match itself wasn't as good, but the build up was much better. Like, a match that lasted 14 episodes (note
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that the average length of a volleyball match, according to Google goes from 60 to 90 minutes. This match was easily double the length), surely, the opponent was some fated rival or some other shonen bullshit right? Nope, just a team where one of the dude did slice fo life stuff with one of the main dudes back in the slice of life bit of the first cour. Hardly anything worth talking about.
And don't even try to sell me on the "but they were potential champions" or "but that's a legendary duo against the Karasuno legendary duo" rhetoric cause it's just lame. As for the match itself, there were some actions where I gasped, especially that last point which was just orgasmic, but I can't stress how obnoxiously long this match was, and for every dope action during the match, there was one annoying flashback. For the love of Shimizu, stop with the flashbacks. We get it, everyone is going through some struggle, now stop.
Not to forget that Karasuno's next match is against Nekoma, and I don't need a manga or future sight to know that despite the fact this match easily has the best build up in this anime, it won't be as intense or as good as this one was, and that annoys me even further. But the good side is, I'm finally done with the anime, I can finally watch something better. Monogatari, here I come
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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