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A gritty mecha, drama that shows just how xenophobic the masses can be, where they have sectioned off a portion of the population and refer to them by a numeric value. Where have I heard this before?

My review is going to solely be based on the first volume, as that is all I have read.

The author handles the story very well with great world building, the first chapter alone is spent explaining the history of the country where the main characters reside and the differences in social class between the citizens of the republic and those who are referred to as 86.

The pacing is hit ... and miss, it keeps a very high pace which is great at times because the volume covers so much but it often relies on tell don't show, it felt very lazy at times were important events were told through dialogue. Speaking of dialogue it's not great, maybe because the author forced the average age of the cast to be 16 to pander to the audience, the dialogue is extremely jarring compared to the seriousness of the story and when anyone but the main characters spoke I was eagerly awaiting for it to stop. There are two main characters who equally fleshed out but the rest of the cast are abysmal, apart from Raider, if you have a name in this series you are deemed somewhat important, but most of the cast is still limited to one character trait. Characters die off screen and I don't know if it was because the author was trying to cram this all into one volume or because he wanted to stress how easy it was to die on the battlefield but it felt cheap and none of the characters seemed to care say apart from one odd line.

The first volume, if you remove the very last chapter, is a complete story and I think it is a problem of light novels that every story needs to be tediously long. The final chapter, and the rest of the ending, is extremely contrived for the sake of prolonging the series.



What was immediately captivating about 86 was the highly detailed sketches of the mechs, these pages are spread out and when a new type of mech is introduced it is normally accompanied by one of these pages. You can really get a sense of how menacing these hunks of metal are. They also give descriptions on different types of weapons which had me looking back to these pages during fight scenes to see what the weapon being used was. I wish I could say the character art was equally as good but it wasn't, it was basic and lacked a lot of weight in combat scenes.

Whilst 86 does have a lot of good aspects it is ultimately weighed down by a one dimensional cast and a rushed 2nd half, it did show signs of great things I would be interested in reading more from the author and more from the series but I will need to temper my expectations.

Check it out if you have no other good novels to read.

So another season of SAO is airing and the whole community is up in arms once again, especially people who hated the other seasons as they are salivating at the thought of tearing into some low hanging fruit.

This season starts with a pretty good hook, a 50-ish minute episode to start things off that has consistent pacing and good world building? Well it's the old tale of A-1 pictures start off the show well and then come tumbling down, but I don't think it has yet. Kirito is back in a new world and we're not being hit over the head with this is some ... new MMO and it's revolutionary spiel quite yet. In fact I think it's great no reference to the outside world is made or the rest of the cast. Kirito treats it as though this world is one he's lived in since birth and there is some fairly forced exposition dumping by Kirito's friends. We learn that the characters live in a small village, there is another part of the world called the dark territory a place filled with monsters and that their whole world is governed by something called the Taboo Index which lists laws all of them highly punishable. So Kirito and his friends go on an adventure and it ends terribly for them. (I don't want to detail out all the events).

So once out of this we're treated to a scene of GGO, with the whole cast back. This is obviously to set up some later side story as they are not very subtle with anything in the show. For once it seems like the girls in the show are not limited to exclaiming how great Kirito-kun is every 2 seconds and have some dialogue reminiscent of actual people and not cardboard cutouts.

Later on the intro of the show is finally addressed, some new VR technology is being created and of course Kirito is right in the centre of it. He is working part-time testing the new technology, which apparently uses the human soul to create a dream like affect in the game, the weird part is he has no recollection of what happens in the game. If any of that is sounds like the most lobotomised pseudo science there is, well you're not wrong. I had flashbacks of Bunny Girl Senpai and when they start talking about God and science in Donnie Darko, but in that at least some of the characters address the retardation. The biggest problem is not the fact souls are brought up in the discussion and their location on the body, it's that after a 5 minute conversation everyone is experts on the topic.

So later on it's mentioned that one half of the death gun duo hasn't been apprehended yet. This is the spark that causes the inciting incident which I want to leave vague.

The vast majority of the show takes place within this other world, which is the best part of the show, as soon as they deviate the show comes to a grinding halt. This season is all about the grandeur adventure Kirito and the other main lead Eugeo set off on. This adventure is one of romance as Eugeo desperately wants to find his friend, a girl named Alice who once went against the taboo index and was sentenced to death, this is a good path for the show as I feel like the strongest parts of the series Aincrad and Mother's Rosario both centred on relationships between characters. The show gets this part right as the scale of the show feels very large. As the virtual world moves many times faster than the real world the infamous time skips rear their head. Up to 2 years passes between episodes and it doesn't affect the show in my eyes, the LN already has too much content for the season as apparently it doubles other season's, so stream-lining it whilst keeping the viewer in the know abput important information is key. I found that they revealed information unbeknown to the viewer pretty well during dialogue. I'm sometimes irritated by the fact we see the impact of something before we see the introduction of that thing.

Some of the fights are well animated and executed making actual tension in the scenes, others are pretty horrible. As a couple of the fights include scenes that are dick size contests with swords. Kirito catches on too early that imagination is the key to winning fights, that if you believe you can you will win. It was irritating when this was found out, because you know what this show missed? Power scaling now all the fights are about imagination alone, but some fights do deviate later telling us the equipment used is of course going to change the course of fights.

I liked the fact Kirito's harem isn't constantly increasing through the series, though it's hinted at, instead the Eugeo is given the star role in many situations, allowing us to kind of humanise Kirito who many of us thought was just the typical self insert harem protagonist. The characters in general are well done, however it acts a little bit like a soap opera as in characters who we've watched for a while act out of character at times, which can be painfully jarring. The main villains are probably the worst of the cast being one dimensional and fully evil, but I managed to put it behind and take the show as easy watching and could sit behind my screen screaming at the characters to kill the bad guys, admittedly cringey but enjoyable nonetheless.

I feel as though sounds and art are aboth pretty standard A-1 picture level, but with the addition of some out of place weapon sound effects, nothing to break your enjoyment though.

This show is not going to be for the anime elitists who begrudging went through the last two seasons, as I feel like you're limited to a mindset that nothing good can come from this series, how are you supposed to feel anything during a fight scene for example if you hated Kirito, are you going to root for the villain or just be disinterested?

As the amount of episodes is still ambiguous my feelings are subject to change. Right now I'm looking forward to the rest of the show. I'd give a Rating somewhere between a 6 and a 7.

This is not a show about games, its a facade. The show is actually a frustratingly bad romance anime that relies heavily on misunderstandings.

The premise of the show is basic, it sets up the main relationship very quickly and has a sub-plot about video games, that is hardly relevant, but I believe has been put into the show just to pander to the otaku demographic.

I don't understand any of the characters in this show, not because they are complex, but because they are so poorly written and their objectives and ambitions in the show are contrived and feel as though they are just ideas ... that have been copied and pasted onto these blank canvas characters.

Seeming romance is the show's main focus, you would think this would be the best part, you'd be wrong to think that. The characters are so bad that I couldn't seem to care about any of their relationships. The characters all seem to be mentally handicapped as they all brake down and misunderstand the actions of other characters and the show has a roundabout way of just avoiding them actually talking about these misunderstandings.

Keita fails as a main character, he contradicts himself so often, most likely because of the poor writing, I feel as though there's a new main character each episode.

Most likely no one looks towards a romance anime, looking for good animation, on this front Gamers! is passable. Art and animation are both standard, I felt like I was hearing the same couple of tracks each episode, which made me feel as though the music in the show was a bit bland.

This manga feels like a lobotomised version of Mirai Nikki, which is bad enough already. Most of the reviews, so far, for this manga have been extremely positive, this review serves to open the discussion of this manga.

The premise is actually quite good, a death game with a twist that what's keeping you alive are the followers on your social media account who die if you die. Only certain people are forced to play the death game, but people in the real world can still follow the players' social media accounts. The games the players are forced to play vary, with death being the seemingly ... only punishment for failing. The games are very poorly done and never provoke any tension, most of the games involve people being so idiotic and retaining their pride even if it causes their death.

(Spoiler)The story is broken up into two parts, they follow twin brothers, the main character changes between parts to the other twin. One of these stories is 10 chapters long, the other is incomplete at 60 chapters. I believe they didn't plan to carry the manga on for so long and the second part is just being expanded in order to obtain more revenue.

You will likely feel confused whilst reading Real Account, not because the story is hard to grasp, but because so much information is withheld from the reader. This technique is not uncommon and can be used to good effect, however here it is used so much that illogical twists seemingly come from nowhere, the reader doesn't have the required information about the characters or the story to deduct the upcoming twists themselves.

The first major twist of the story is utterly asinine and I feel encapsulates the whole manga. The main character is not who he says he is, he is in fact the twin brother of the person who he pretended to be, his brother died(not really). My problem is that identical twins don't have identical DNA as it mutates based on lifestyle and we see that the other brother was more outgoing and athletic, whilst the main character was a lot less active. This would likely change their skin colour slightly, one is more exposed to sunlight, their builds are going to be different one is going to have more of an athletic build with more muscle. The manga showed the brothers switching places often, leading each other's lives and actually had the main character scrutinising over the fact people realise he is not acting like usual, however no one puts two and two together, because of plot convenience and it is never mentioned again, he went back to his old lifestyle with a new name. I believe this is so flawed because no one even his sister who is extremely close to him could distinguish him.

After backstory is given to key characters their previous actions and reactions seem completely out of character, it also renders any promise of the characters developing impossible, as we weren't seeing the actual character the whole time. When giving backstory to the characters nothing is hinted at and it isn't given to the reader at a smooth pace, the manga has an expository dump and gives the reader a lot of information in a short space of time, which is jarring.

The manga has bog-standard, at best, art and you will not see any screenshot worthy pages.

I believe Real Account to be a chore to read, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, even if you're a massive fan of the death game genre.