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Right, I have no idea how this review is going to come out, since this show is basically like getting a lobotomy. If I were to take an IQ test now, it would come back negative. So if what follows here makes no sense, now you know why.

Azumanga Daioh is one of the animes of all time. It is definitely of of the animes ever. Of all the animes to come out, this is certainly one of them. There seems to be some kind of consensus that this is some groundbreaking masterpiece and some zenith of storytelling, but I honestly can't see that and mainly ... because the story is so nonsensical on many levels. I mean, when you're so absurd that you make Asobi Asobase and Daily Lives of Highschool Boys make sense, then you're really on something. It's all over the place, it's chaotic and my brain has been fried ever since. It takes me all my mental fortitude to just form complete sentences at this point. Characters say the most random things, stuff just happens out of nowhere and after every ridiculous scenario, there are these long long pauses, as if the show itself has to buffer a bit to process what the hell just happened. The connection from scene to scene is often just a hair's breadth away from just being disjointed sketches. If this anime was a 4chan board, it would be the hidden board /trash/.But through all that, I still found it pretty funny and I definitely wasn't bored. So, it's good, but not that good.

There are some things I genuinely dislike though. The animation is really cheap, even for the era when this came out. A lot of times characters barely move, if at all. And even when they animate something semi competently, they'll be sure to use it many times over to make it worth their while. I mean, the two specials are actually better animated than the main show. If that weren't enough, the story basically loops on itself three times - three school years where the same events happen in the same order. They happen differently, but it's still the same plot threads repeated again. And not to mention, the characters basically don't change in three years, so it's not like it's some grand character arc either. Beyond that, there's some characters that are just grating (I don't even mean Tomer, her tendency to give into intrusive thoughts was always hilarious). One of them is whatever-her-name-is, the one who's sole character trait is being aggressively lesbian and crushing on Sakaki Norastuneimu. She's one beat and the joke gets old quickly. Seeing her suffer was the only redemption. The other is Kimura. I mean, I know Japan has their thing for perverted jokes that is very hit or miss, but Kimura has to be one of the worst cases. Who the fuck thought putting a literal pedophile in a show about underage girls would be funny. The scenes with him are always stilted and annoying. And no, having a kid and picking up litter on occasion doesn't excuse being a literal kiddie diddler. Don't make me rev up the woodchipper! Oh, and to top it off, I don't know what kind of cognitohazard the opening theme is, but the lyrics make what remains of my brain ooze out of my ear canals and it instantly makes me want to cosplay as a chandelier. Ending theme was alright though.

Now, I bitch a lot, but I'm trying to be honest here. Plus, as you can see, I still recommend this one. It's completely moronic on many levels, but I was laughing my ass off basically all the way through. Now, I don't know if I'm laughing for the reasons the creators expect me too, I don't know if I'm laughing with the show or at it, but the point stays that I was entertained. At the end of the day, falling ass backwards into something fun is far far better than being painfully uninteresting like most slice of life tends to be (to me at least, I'm sure the bread slicing arc was fire, SOL-bros). It was the brainrot of its time and we have to praise it for still feeling fresh and unpredictable even today. The way it's constructed gives it a kind of timelessness that makes it endearing no matter how old it is. Plus it kind of captures the microcosm of the dawn of the new millennium in a charming kind of way. I don't know about you, but I think that if you go into the series not expecting some awesome poignant story but instead just to giggle like a moron at stupid shit, it works awesome. It's great show to watch drunk. Or high as a kite. Not that I would know anything about that.

In conclusion, Azumanga Daioh exists. Should you watch this still? Yeah, sure. It's funny, an incomprehensible mix of predictable and unpredictable, it's random and nothing really compares to it. Some of the characters are pretty endearing and the stellar voice acting does a lot of the heavy lifting to compensate for the cheap animation. Storywise, I think I know what Azuma was going for here? It seems like it was meant to capture those cherished childhood moments of just goofing off with friends, entering adulthood and that dreadful moment when you graduate and not only have to cope with taking on the responsibilities of life but fear that you may never see your old friends again. But you still can of course if you put in the effort to stay in touch. But I feel this kind of message is a bit lost due to how random and nonsensical everything else is. Plus, the fact that it repeats itself three times for the three years only goes to prove another more definitive truth - how repetitive, tedious and stupid school life was. The Japanese and everyone else really need to grasp the simple fact that school was not what a lot of overly nostalgic people crack it up to be and for all intents and purposes, it's just the drawn out, overly complicated and mandatory tutorial to life, which only begins after you get out. Honestly, if you believe you peaked while you were at school, you've failed and life and need to pick yourself up ASAP and make something of yourself! If a tard like Oskar can make it work, you definitely can too!

So, uuuhhhh, yeah, it's ok I guess. Lobotomy/10

What an absolute joy this anime was! I love it when series present a simple premise and just execute it to the best of their abilities and this is a perfect example of that. It tells you exactly what it is from the title - cute girls and awesome tanks. You know exactly what you want it to be and that's exactly what it is.

This anime really has that 80s action movie charm of having a simple and straightforward story that is nonetheless engaging all throughout. Really, it's not anything you haven't seen before, but it doesn't need to be. The story is easy to ... follow and the characters are all super charismatic and loveable. With the bare minimum of backstory on them (you get more than that of course), you're already invested in them and rooting for their success by episode 2. There's conflict, tension and excitement and there are many satisfying character arcs that get resolved by the end. There's some surprisingly interesting worldbuilding too, like with all the tankery tournaments and the fact that the schools are all on massive floating cities built on top of aircraft carriers. How do you even come up with this shit? I love it! The pacing is also great and the anime doesn't overstay its welcome. I wouldn't have minded if it went on longer, but hey, that's what the sequels are for. This season I feel was the perfect length and it told its story perfectly within the standard 12 episodes. The fact that this is an original tale and not an adaptation definitely helped too.

The tanks first of all are of course represented flawlessly and are all legitimate historically accurate models. This cute and fun story is so well crafted, it can actually trick the average person into accidentally learning a thing or two about all these tanks and what it was really like to operate them. I am both proud and ashamed that thanks to the ungodly amount of hours I have in World of Tanks, I recognized most of them. Hell, I've even owned most of them at some point. The tanktakus out there will definitely be satisfied and will blissfully dream of real women that understand this stuff to the same levels as the girls in here.

The star of the show by far is the action though. Honestly, I didn't expect this anime to be as action packed as it is, but damn am I happy from what we got. While some watchers may flinch at the mention of CGI in anime, especially from the time when this came out, here the use is perfectly implemented. The battles are fast paced, tactical and thoroughly exciting. The use of realistic military strategy mixed with just the healthy dose of anime absurdity. It's an absolute spectacle of explosions and steel crashing against steel that is just the type of controlled chaos you expect on the battlefield. The way the girls operate their vehicles also gives it this mecha anime style feel of military strategy juxtaposed with shonen power of friendship malarkey. The way the CGI is handled also gives it an almost Initial D style edge of the fast vehicular mayhem. It's positively glorious. I never dreamed I would see tank battles this good in an anime but I am just overjoyed I did.

On a purely technical level, the anime is perfectly executed too. Great, vibrant visuals that contrast the colourful high school life with the gritty military vibe fantastically. The animation is smooth and expressive, the music is great with all the energetic war marches (although I would've have minded some eurobeat during some fight scenes) and the voice acting is superb. They really did their best. I can't think of a single thing that could be done different to make this better.

Overall, Girls & Panzer is exactly what it needed to be. It's action packed and those scenes are done to a superb level. The story is simple, but always engaging and all of this makes for a very easy and entertaining watch. You'll never be bored and the show will keep you hooked from beginning to end, without taxing your mind with unnecessary bullshit. This isn't some deep philosophical quandary about war or society and it doesn't need to be. It's cute girls in tanks fighting for honour, valour and pride. The creators knew what you wanted and they delivered on every front. Their main goal was to entertain and to that end they passed with flying colours. The only downside I can mention is that this might make me want to install World of Tanks again.

Right, this'll be a bit of a weird one, but I'll do my best to put into words how I feel about this show. In short though, it was a really fun anime that got better and better as it went on. Nonetheless, it has some issues. Here we go.

Let's just get some of the obvious stuff out of the way. The animation for this series was just not there. All the characters looked plain and uninspired, the posing and movement was stiff and lifeless, lots of reused scenes and no visual flare to speak of. A lot of times, characters lacked expression too, which ... is very important in a thriller. Seriously, it feels like for the most part, they did the absolute bare minimum to get the point across. So expect a lot of by the numbers shot-reverse shot dialogue sections, lots of still frames and minimal movement outside of action scenes. The studio can be damn thankful that the story is more than good enough to make this worthwhile and that the music and especially the voice acting did A LOT of heavy lifting to make this come together. Trust me, were this a lesser story, this anime would've been relegated to a dustbin right away.

Right, let's get into the good stuff though. The Fable is another awesome entry in the growing genre of "former Yakuza/hitman tries to live a normal life, but his past keeps catching up to him" alongside other series like Gokushufudou or Sakamoto Days. It's also great how, despite sounding very similar on paper, all of them have a very different approach to their story and are very distinct from one another and any other series out there. The Fable is absolutely brilliant in the way that it manages to balance comedy, action and tension. There's lots of jokes and many scenes got a good laugh out of me. Despite this, it also weaves a fantastic yakuza crime thriller in there too and both aspects only serve to enhance each other. It's a very delicate task to try and make your audience laugh, while also consistently keeping them on their toes at all times but dammit, it works! The fight scenes are also handled very uniquely, without prolonged exchanges of blows but instead were these physical games of chess, focused on very cerebral decision making between highly intelligent characters. Without gratuitous inner monologues, we get battles of wit punctuated by lighting fast John Wick-style showdowns. In a battle of professional assassins, the outcome can be decided in the blink of an eye, so every moment counts.

This brings us to another of the core strengths - the characters. It's often a slippery slope and quite hit or miss when anime try to have highly intelligent characters. However here, this is done wonderfully. Characters who are meant to be clever actually feel that way and the decisions they make are logical and creative. The outsmarting going on is very engaging and adds to the great sense of anticipation during every direct conflict. The way Fable also uses his genius in his field to handle every situation while keeping his promise not to kill anyone is thoroughly fascinating. Beyond conflict though, the characters are also all very charismatic, engaging and interesting. All of them have depth and a mixture of realistic, believable flaws, all sprinkled with just the right amount of exaggerated absurdity to make them slot right in with the overall comedic tone of the story. They absolutely steal the show and this makes this overall very dialogue heavy series never drag or feel dull and as I said earlier, the fantastic voice acting carries a lot of the weight in order to make the whole experience come together well. I mean, both Kenjiro Tsuda and Takehito Koyasu showed up, so we've checked all the boxes of making a proper yakuza thriller.

Overall, I enjoyed what I saw from this anime, but there were definitely glaring flaws. The story is excellent and unique and the characters are easily the greatest thing about it, but I can't lie, the really cheap visuals detracts greatly from the experience. The stiff and janky animation makes the emotional scenes less impactful than they should be and the dull, generic, bright colour palette used detracts from the cool neo-noir atmosphere that I feel befits this kind of story. Were this tale less exciting than it was, this anime would've been given no more than a 5 on here and it would've been swiftly forgotten about.

My final verdict is that this is still an enjoyable experience overall and still worth a watch, but I'll definitely be deferring to the superior manga for the full story. If and when this gets greenlit for a second season, I would very much rather a different more passionate studio be given the job.

TLDR: Божката пука/10

Sabage-bu was already a pleasant surprise that delivered well on both comedy and action, so if you enjoyed that (which you should), this is just more of the same.

Despite the short length, each episode is still different and they manage to crank an impressive amount of jokes and content into such a short runtime. All without anything feeling rushed and every gag is given enough time to be properly set up and to deliver its punchline well. They even manage to figure out some pretty unique and original jokes that I've never seen done before, so props for the creativity. When you indulge in ... a medium for a long time, it becomes very rare for it to manage to surprise you, but this one did! And to think that this is literally just throwaway bonus material to pad DVDs.

I can always respect when creators put in the proper effort even into bonus material that many people won't care about. You should definitely care about these!

I can summarize these specials as follows:

6x10 minutes of pure, perfected, refined, unadulterated, premium quality shitposting that will have you looking for your sides somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy.

So just reload your mag and watch these too! There's no point in missing out on more goodness!

Sabage-bu is another hidden gem in the realms of comedy anime. Thankfully, it seems I've gotten quite good at running into these or influencing people to recommend these to me. If you love anime about a colourful main cast going into all kinds of shenanigans and antics with covering a wide spectrum (several kinds of spectrums) of how nonsensical it can be. If you want a good laugh, this is a definitely must watch. Also, do you like GUNS? Only LOSERS don't like GUNS! And this anime delivers surprisingly well on that front.

To get the gun thing out of the way, as somewhat of a ... gun enthusiast (although I can't actually have any, because fucking gooberment) that was one of my favourite aspects of this anime. All the guns looked exactly how they should and they were operated correctly too. The studio didn't even cheap out by making them CGI. There was definitely a very knowledgeable gun enthusiast involved with the making of this, because you really need to know your shit to get things this right. Even more serious action focused series flop more in this regard (I'm looking at you Fable, that pistol of your is still not a Nighthawk, it's an M1911, get it right, ya 'tismo!).

Being that it has all these pew pews in it, another pleasant surprise is how action packed Sabage-bu is. While the comedy is still the main focus, there's plenty of fights, shootouts and scuffles and all of them were executed superbly. I've seen shonen anime that look much worse in this regard. So if you wanna enjoy some amazing action while also laughing like an idiot, this is the series for you!

Beyond that, the series was just really well done all the way through. The jokes landed consistently and it easily nails everything from pop culture references, to surrealist jokes, to slapstick nonsense and more. It also loves fourth wall breaks as well as poking fun at common anime tropes, both of which are also done really well and never overstay their welcome. The animation is clean and fluid, the visuals are nice and vibrant, voice acting is superb and reflects each character perfectly and the sound effects are really comical and add to the slapstick. The artstyle isn't anything to write home about and the opening isn't bad, but it's really generic and forgettable. Really just "one of the anime themes of all time". But these are really minor things and they are still done well, so I don't consider them true downsides.

TL:DR If the premise of "Girls with guns engage in slapstick action" isn't a selling point enough, know that in these 12 episodes, you get awesome humour and amazing action with plenty of cute girls to fawn over and gratuitous fan service to, ummmm, clean your gun barrel and empty your mag to. So just lock and load and give it a watch already!

Truly, the most deer series. It's so deer, I couldn't help but rice to a deerer plane of existence. It's a deer philosophical exploration into the mental and emotional state of deerkind in the climate of the modern world. How does a man cope with the crushing unceremonious existence within the confines of the vapid emotionless civilized world when one only years to till rice paddies. We were deer to be free and we yearn for the rice paddies. The cycle of seasons dictates how we deer. And no other story has ever captured the strife and the tribulations of modern deer quite like this ... literary masterpiece.

You see the humour is but a deer veil to conceal the allegorical explorations into the deerest crevices of the mind, into the deerths of philosophy and mental condition. It's a thrice strong commentary on the education system and how it fails to cultivate the curiosity and capabilities of youth and only enshrines them as slaves to a corporate machine, a cog in the rice cooker of society, ready to deep fry anyone who steps out of line. It also shows how the feeble sheeple fail to notice the most glaring of absurdities, even if it smacks them right across the mouth. People are so entrenched in the grind of society and detached from deer nature that even the world ending before their eyes fails to register in their stir fried brains. There is always hope doe.

To live is to deer. To deer is to live. We moosed rice above all this and become enlightened and seek deerer meaning. We moosed not stagnate and be left graindead to rot in the trashpile of society. Like taking care of your deer so your deer club doesn't get closed and you're forced to pay back your crackers, we must till the rice fields of life until it bears fruit and we can be rich in the eyes of the great shogun above. And the story that lies before you is the most pure distilled form of the philosophical quandary that nobody else has been able to tackle until now. If you like most lacked this fundamental understanding until now, this is the enlightenment you seek. Our Deer God beckons and we must antler.

What's that? Oh, the anime? What's it about? Uuuuuhhhh... I dunno. Fuckin' deer or some shit. It's pretty good doe. If I had to describe it in two words it would be....uuuhhhh....

Antler Lobotomy

Yeah, that works. Anyway, if you fail to comprehend what I have written, then you're obviously grainwashed by Big Cracker and don't have the clarity and enlightenment to see the deer picture. Either that or my last remaining living braincells have committed suicide.

NO! If you don't like it, then you lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend this ambitious cinematic masterpiece. This anime isn't stupid, you're stupid! But don't worry, if you watch it for yourself, your mind will transform and ascent to a higher plane, where you will achieve undeerstanding. Or maybe you'll lose whatever IQ you have left and join me and the rest of the deer club in the special ed district. Come on over, we have deer crackers and crayons for everyone to nom on and we always have a good time!

So yeah, watch this or something. Deer/10

Man, when I saw that this is being made, I grew a third penis (the second one I got from watching Baki). Two of the biggest in the BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT sphere coming together for a grand showdown?!? Sign my ass up right away!

However, the final result is....well.....kind of meh to be honest. This crossover has to go down as one of the biggest wasted opportunities in all of anime. Such an awesome turn of events that these two IPs that are so similar would be under the same umbrella, allowing this to exist. The final product however was thoroughly underwhelming.

In terms ... of quality, it was pretty good. The animation was really solid and the fights looked and sounded awesome. One thing about that though - the music. Or lack thereof rather. Why was this anime so quiet? Outside of fights and a few other scenes, there was zero music and barely any sound effects, giving the whole thing a weird feel.

The story was razor thin, but when the muscle to brain ratio is what it is, what did you expect. Nonetheless, the premise worked great, overlapping elements were used really well and seeing the two old farts organizing both tournaments turning out to be best friends was welcome and hilarious. The setup was all it needed to be and what was left was the action.

The problem arises that barely any of the potential was used. We got only three fights and since this was just an hour long for all three plus buildup and transitions, none of the fights got enough time to breathe and show what they got. A ton of potential crossover showdowns never happened and the ones we did were rushed. Just as it starts to get interesting, the fight ends, because time is running out. It really sucks to be honest.

Here is just a small list of fights that I personally wanted to see:
Orochi Doppo vs Kuroki Gensai (martial arts old farts)
Yujiro vs Agito (final boss dudes, also the fact that they share the same VA will make this very funny)
Oliva vs Muteba Gizenga (for legal reasons I am not allowed to make this joke)
Hanayama vs Lihito (the gripper boyfriends of the MCs)
Retsu vs Sekibayashi (the true MCs of both worlds)
Kureha vs Hanafusa (and zat is how I lost mein medical license)
Sikorski vs Gaolang (Kenjiro Tsuda finally gets the honour of meeting Kenjiro Tsuda)
Alai Jr vs Rei (clash of the simps, battle for the last crump of coochie)
Kozue vs Karla Kure (idk, I just want walking woman moment Kozue to eat shit from a girl that's actually worth it)

There, just a small taste of what was possible. For the record, the three matches they chose were awesome too, I really liked them, that's why I dislike how short they had to be.

There's also one other problem and that's that,in all cases the writers had to sweat a lot to make it seem possible for ANYBODY from the Kengan-verse to have even a lick of a chance against even mediocre fighters from the Baki-verse. Let's be real here, both sides have awesome martial arts, but while Kengan characters have muscles, Baki characters' muscles have muscles. The sheer unbridled bullshittery of Baki is on such an unfathomable level of absurdity compared to Kengan that it's not even close. Like, imagine Yujiro fighting Agito, both are massive and strong and can learn other people's moves on the fly. They fight and fight and fight, adapting, evolving, copying each other's moves, pulling everything they have out of their arsenal. And then at one point Yujiro will be like "you know what, you're boring, I'm sick of fighting you with just the moves I use on women", then he'll hyperextend his wiener to ten meters in length in less than a split second, piercing Agito's skull through the eye socket and dropping him dead. Then the Baki narrator will reveal that Yujiro spent seven years jelqing on top of Mt. Everest while facing north and breathing in deep and this is why he's able to do this. And you could too if you did the same!

Right, in conclusion, you might come out of this review thinking I actually hate this, but that's not true. It was still fun and enjoyable and the action we got was top notch. It's just an hour long, so if you enjoy the type of manly action that both of these series bring to the ring, then there really is no reason not to check it out. I'm just disappointed that we didn't do so much more with the insane potential that there is in such a massive crossover. I hope this one-off thing becomes just a proof of concept and that the creators go back and make a longer form series with more fights, more interpersonal crossovers and more time given to each showdown so that it has enough breathing room to indulge its full potential.

BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT - 2 MAN 2 SHIT is back with the second meatiest tournament arc in all of anime after the one it copied its homework from. With lots of muscles, martial arts, drama, muscles, plot twists, hot women, hotter men, wrestling, muscles, blind cyborg black dudes, muscles, political strife, intense back stories and of course muscles, Kengan Ashura is here to once again deliver on what it does best and deliver on its grand climax!

If you watched Kengan season 1 and liked it, this is really more of the same but even better! The matches are even better this time round, ... though there are some minor duds there too. Overall though, these are the strongest matches yet and the characters are now filtered down to the actually important ones, so there is much higher stakes and tension too. Compared to it's pappy Baki, Kengan has significantly less random bullshit and is easier to follow. It's also a more straightforward martial arts celebration, so if that's your think, this is a must watch.

The animation remains top notch too and manages to capture this unbridled masculine intensity in all of its glory. While some dumb puritans out there may wince at the mention of CGI in anime, but here it's very much a stylistic choice and one that works towards the benefit of making all the attacks fluid, impactful and clearly readable and allows the fighters to wallop each other over and over and over and over again without each swing tanking the show's budget. The soundtrack hits just as hard too. I am just confused by two things - why did the opening change genres every 10 seconds? I love death metal polka latino ska J-rock as much as the next guy, but it's an odd choice. The ending song hits hard too, but why did they have to get Dr. Doofenshmirtz to perform it? Baffling.

For this second half, I wanna say this is definitely the peak of Kengan Ashura thus far. It contains easily the best fights thus far and is also where the story really picks up. A lot of lore is revealed and context is given to the bigger picture here. Regardless of that, all the final fights are given enough time to happen and the intensity in the ring never drops. This half of the season felt very dense with things to cover, yet it never felt rushed and all of it was paced wonderfully. It all lead to a lot of surprises and a very satisfying conclusion. Hope they don't make it all weird in Kengan Omega with some random malarkey or something (Hanafusa!).

Overall, a rock solid anime full of manly fights that are sure to keep the blood pumping. Like classic martial arts films, Kengan Ashura has a simple premise executed marvelously. You know what you're here for and you'll get it in spades!

BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT - 2 MAN 2 SHIT is back with the second meatiest tournament arc in all of anime after the one it copied its homework from. With lots of muscles, martial arts, drama, muscles, plot twists, hot women, hotter men, wrestling, muscles, blind cyborg black dudes, muscles, political strife, intense back stories and of course muscles, Kengan Ashura is here to once again deliver on what it does best and deliver on its grand climax!

If you watched Kengan season 1 and liked it, this is really more of the same but even better! The matches are even better this time round, ... though there are some minor duds there too. Overall though, these are the strongest matches yet and the characters are now filtered down to the actually important ones, so there is much higher stakes and tension too. Compared to it's pappy Baki, Kengan has significantly less random bullshit and is easier to follow. It's also a more straightforward martial arts celebration, so if that's your think, this is a must watch.

The animation remains top notch too and manages to capture this unbridled masculine intensity in all of its glory. While some dumb puritans out there may wince at the mention of CGI in anime, but here it's very much a stylistic choice and one that works towards the benefit of making all the attacks fluid, impactful and clearly readable and allows the fighters to wallop each other over and over and over and over again without each swing tanking the show's budget. The soundtrack hits just as hard too.

For this first half of episodes, I just wanna say I am definitely docking some score because of Ohma sleeping through almost the whole thing. Like, I criticized Baki for lolligagging in his first season and spending most of it doing PP training, but at least he did something. My man Ohma was less active than Monkey D. Dragon for this one! Thank fuck he woke up near the end there.

Overall, a rock solid anime full of manly fights that are sure to keep the blood pumping. Like classic martial arts films, Kengan Ashura has a simple premise executed marvelously. You know what you're here for and you'll get it in spades!

Gachiakuta is one of the best manga serializing right now and you should start reading it immediately! I am not saying this lightly. Yes, this manga about trash is one of the biggest gems coming out these day! This series is truly something special and I will now spend the next lengthy segment gushing about how good it is. TL:DR this is one of the most creative, original, engaging and just outright FUN battle shonen ever!

Right, where do I even start? I guess the art seems like the most natural place. When you start Gachiakuta, merely a few pages in you will immediately notice something ... - the art is AWESOME! This is one of the best middle grounds of detail and stylization I've ever seen! The characters are all cartoony in many aspects with their big eyes and exaggerated expressions. The movement and paneling is super expressive and energetic too. And yet, everything is finished to an outstanding level of quality. Backgrounds are immaculate, filled to the brim with tremendous detail and with a terrific sense of overwhelming scale. The clothes and objects (this is important) are all fantastically rendered and you can almost feel their textures. The art is super sketch-like at times, with these really scratchy lines with visible pen strokes, and yet the detailing is flawless. Every page is overflowing with quality and some panels are near Berserk levels of artistic craftsmanship. And this is a WEEKLY manga??? How in God's name do you draw something like this weekly, that is actually insane!1!

But don't even get me started on the action! After all, this is a battle shonen and you need good fights. But Gachiakuta doesn't have good fights. It has AMAZING fights. The flow and movement is super expressive and almost JoJo levels of absurdly exaggerated. Lots of action lines, tons of speed, incredible posing, wacky perspectives, glorious choreography and yet near perfect visual clarity. So fluid, it feels like it actually moves on the page! I mean, one of the girls fights by spinning on her arms and head like a breakdancer and swinging a giant pair of scissors with her legs and it works perfectly. That's the best way I can describe it. The rest is just too raw and complex to put into words. You gotta see it for yourself! Urana Kei is a master and the living proof that stylization and fidelity are not mutually exclusive!

All of this without going into how Urana-sensei draws the faces and bodies! Her understanding of anatomy is flawless. Despite the wild cartoony look of some characters, you can see their perfectly sculpted musculature and underlying bones. She really loves "boney" details, like visible pelvic bones, clavicles on the arms, knuckle bones, ribs, spines and more. And the faces are just as fascinating. They are also super exaggerated in their expressions but teeming with tiny details. The eyes have visible tear ducts, the eyelashes have actual volume and shape to them and the irises are concaved within the eyeballs. For that last one, I don't think I've seen any other artist do this, not even the big greats we all love. This just shows an amazing level of skill that she has under her belt!

This brings me to the next and probably biggest strength - the character designs. These are some of the best I've ever seen in a manga! The way Urana-sensei draws hair is one unique aspect. Each person's hair isn't composed of individual strands, but instead these geometric clumps that stick out in all directions, as if everyone's scalp naturally produces hair gel constantly. The styles vary wildly in lengthy, shape, style, colour, accessories and more and help give each character a recognizable silhouette. Next, there's the clothes. One thing Gachiakuta just nails is how down right COOL the design language is. You have this dystopian world and in it, the characters manage to look ragged, trashy and disheveled, as you would expect with such a setting, and yet there's this immaculate sense of fashion! Part early 2000s nu metal wacky badassery, part Harajuku-style outlandishness, part cybergoth accessories, it's truly outstanding. Just look at the volume covers. Normally, I'm not a fan of the "character on a blank background" type of volume cover, but when your character designs are THIS GOOD, they truly stand on their own.

Right, after gushing about the visuals for so long, let's talk about the story now too! Because, believe it or not, Gachiakuta isn't just art porn and a visual spectacle, it's just as good at storytelling too! The universe is a very unique one. You have a big pretentious city ripe with its own conflicts floating in the sky. Below it is a barren wasteland of endless trash, the entire planet being one colossal junkyard or landfill essentially. But even among this waste, dilapidated cities arise with ruined buildings and rotting remains, the structures still standing upgraded with whatever trash fell from the heavens and painted over with vibrant graffiti. In this world, you can die at any time from a kitchen appliance falling on your head from the sky and venturing out into the wastes without a gasmask means you will choke to death in mere minutes. It's unforgiving but so damn engaging! It's full of mysteries and questions that can only be answered by exploring the wasteland! And it's inhabited by all of these amazing characters, each being some morally grey beautiful mess of a person that is just trying to find their way in this harsh landscape. I won't go into details on the characters, because I don't want to spoil the experience of meeting them on your own. Know just that all of them are fantastically written and thoroughly engaging and that Rudo is a fantastic main character that I am 200% behind! To illustrate the quality of writing, here's a spoiler free version of one story arc - a character is introduced and starts doing horrible things to our main cast, you grow to absolutely despise her and rejoice when she is defeated, but then her gutwrenching backstory is revealed and it completely recontextualizes her actions and without realizing it, you now understand her and your opinion has flipped 180 degrees, just for the author to then use her suffering to make you resent another different character later on! What do you think of that, huh? And that's just one tiny sliver of what there is to find in the fascinating world of Gachiakuta.

There is one last big component that needs to be mentioned and that makes this manga stand head and shoulders above the rest - the power system! This is one of the most masterfully designed systems I've ever seen! Without going into details, the gist is that there is life energy within any object that is used a lot, called Anima. There are power users in this world called Givers. They can draw out the latent life force within their beloved objects, called Vital Instruments or Jinki, and turn them into weapons by shapeshifting them in various ways. They use them to fight so called trash beasts, giant Dark Souls-esque monstrosities composed of living garbage! The rest, you'll need to learn yourself. What makes this system absolutely amazing however is firstly that it is both devilishly simple to understand and yet has basically infinite potential for what can be done with it. We've already been shown an absolutely astonishing variety of abilities and there is only more potential to explore. The only limit is Urana-sensei's imagination. I also love that this manga doesn't fall into a common shonen pitfall where there is this awesome system and yet the main character has very boring and uninspired powers. Quite the contrary, Rudo is given the most versatile and interesting power, which allows every fight he's in to be different and engaging! You never know what he might pull out! And speaking of fights, they are some of the best I've read, not just because of the aforementioned qualities of the art, but because the unique abilities leverage absolutely beautiful chaos that you can never predict. Not to mention that this power system also takes inspiration from Shinto beliefs in objects having souls and it ties perfectly into the core themes of the story - consumerism, materialism and how people treat their possessions. I mean, to tie all of this up so well is a landmark of quality and I can't wait to see where this goes!

Ok, I think I went on long enough. Sorry that it got so long, but there is just so much to praise about this series! What I can say as a conclusion is that everything in Gachiakuta is so COOL! The designs, the world, the powers, the characters, the artwork! It reminds me of those early 2000s nu metal style cartoon drawings, but mixed with graffiti and excellent manga structure! I never thought a series like this can actually exist! On a personal level, it really connects with me on many ways. I love a good junkyard aesthetic and the obvious early 2000s influences definitely speak to my soul. Also, I'm a person with a strong tendency to get very emotionally attached to material things, so the core subject of the story really hits home for me. In short though, do yourself a favour and get into this manga right now! You will not regret joining the ride early. We're 107 chapters in as of now and everything just keeps getting better and better. The fact that till now, we're still mostly getting more questions than answers shows me that Urana Kei is here for the long haul and will strive to build a big expansive world and I'd wager we have at least 200-300 more chapters ahead of us! There is more than enough there for this to grow naturally and expand into grander spheres.

Normally, I am hesitant to write reviews for ongoing series, especially this early in their lifecycle. Will the quality remain consistent all throughout? Will the story grow in good ways? Will the author stick the landing with the conclusion? Only time will tell. But what I can tell you now is that I've seen more than enough to vouch for this manga's quality. So do yourself a favour and read it now! TURDFACE!