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Dandadan is easily one of the best anime of the year. It’s surprising because most big seasonal anime like this rarely live up to the hype. That’s not to say that the most hyped up anime are usually bad because I don’t believe that either, but I almost always feel let down by them. Hype truly is an evil beast that can prevent me from loving an anime the way I would like to. But somehow, Dandadan survived that struggle.Through a combination of passionate staff that care about the source material and are super talented, and adapting a truly badass source material, Dandadan rose above ... the crowd and delivered an anime that has the potential to be a masterpiece.

The premise sounds like clickbait of a really bad YouTube video. I say that, but then again it got me interested in it. An evil witch steals the balls of the MC, Ken Takakura, also known as Okarun, which are massive golden spheres for some reason, not long after he makes friends with a girl named Momo Ayase. Okarun adamantly believes in ghosts and Momo firmly believes in aliens, and this differences causes them to form a close friendship, and eventually romantic feelings.

And that’s all there is to it; after that, it’s one of the most genuinely fun rides I’ve seen in anime in awhile. Like seriously, the entertainment is nonstop. Both of the two main characters are instantly likeable and brimming with vibrant personality. I love the contrast between Okarun and Momo. On the surface it looks like they would have no similarities at all, but this series does the My Dress-Up Darling thing of having that be a facade. In reality they’re very similar, they both believe in something that lots of other people would call crazy, namely aliens and ghosts respectively, and they’re super passionate about it. However, they also have enough differences that genuine, heartfelt, hilarious conflict can also spark between them.

That’s where most of the humor comes from. It’s either them arguing about the thing they believe in being real while the other being ridiculous, or Okarun involuntarily going into his demonic form and Momo having to quickly revert him back, or Momo teasing Okarun about loosing his balls and Okaurn verbally pummeling her for it. And that’s another thing, Okarun may be timid, but he’s not a doormat. He proves early on that he’s easily able to match Momo’s tendency for smart ass remarks and defend himself.

There’s no doubt that their relationship is the heart of the story. From the funny moments to the to the drama. While Momo and Okarun does have a lot of funny banter, they also have more heartfelt, thoughtful moments as well, such as early in the series when Momo chastising Okarun for being too timid, and for constantly apologizing and putting himself beneath others, claiming that this is why he has no friends. It’s these diverse, complex traits that not only make them fun characters on their own, but makes their friendship so damn endearing. And makes me want them to become a couple as well, although like in most cases I haven’t read the manga so I don’t know if it’s happened yet or not, or if that’s even the trajectory, it is kind of hard to tell from just what the anime has given us so far.

Momo is a fascinating character, and there is one more, arguably more complex reason why. In recent years there’s been a trend in trying to improve the female characters in anime and manga, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Some of the most famous ones recently have been Marin Kitagawa in My Dress-Up Darling, Maomao in The Apothecary Diaries, Frieren in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and almost all of the women in Jujutsu Kaisen. Not to say that there’s never been strong ladies in anime before this, I mean Rumiko Takahashi was well known for this going all the way back to Urusei Yatsura in the 1970s, and while I don’t think most of her works hold up, I still respect her for her importance to the manga industry.

But besides her, there’s been anime like Black Lagoon, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood have casts littered with amazing women, so anime fans haven’t exactly been starved for female characters, but I will acknowledge that it has been more common in the past few years. And I feel like Momo Ayase from Dandadan fits into this category as well. She has the standard stuff Otaku expect from an anime waifu--she’s very attractive, funny, and interesting--but she’s also incredibly useful and is able to match the male MC in his role in the story and his wild personality and antics.

She doesn’t require the male MC to be a strong character, but she is stronger with him, and he is stronger with her. I do hope they become a couple, but even if they don’t and their relationship remains purely platonic there’s a level of strength and catharsis with their friendship, but again Momo’s character doesn’t require that friendship to be strong. And neither does Okarun’s, for that matter. I’ve been thinking about making a video talking about some of my favorite women in anime, and I’ll have to at least consider discussing Momo if I do, because she’s actually great.

Oh, there’s other characters in this anime too, right? Yeah, I guess I got so caught up in talking about Momo and Okarun, especially Momo, and I haven’t gotten to talk about them yet. Well, the other characters are good as well, but we don’t get enough of them for me to call them truly great. The only one that comes close is Seiko Ayase, Momo’s grandmother, who has had quite a bit of screen time and I do like her a lot. She’s funny whenever she’s on screen, and her relationship with Momo is fascinating but so far we haven’t gotten that much of it. But in and of herself I do enjoy her because he’s entertaining, and for…other reasons.

All of the characters are good in their own way. I’d say only Momo and Okarun are great so far, but every single one of them that we spend a significant amount of time with have merit. I say a significant amount of time because there’s characters like Momo’s Gyaru friends that we get like one or two very brief scenes with so it’s difficult to form any kind of opinion on them either positive or negative.

But the most amazing thing about this anime is that there’s almost no downtime when nothing is happening and I’m bored. Even in many of my all time favorite anime, that’s almost never the case, it’s actually exceptional. But despie saying that, I still can’t say that Dandadan is an all time favorite anime, namely because I’m only 8 episodes in at the time of this writing, and haven’t read the manga. So it’s not an all time favorite anime “yet” would be a better way to put it. But I do think it contains all the ingredients to reach those extraordinary heights for me. A wonderful cast of characters with depth and intrigue but are still fun and entertaining, with fascinating and enjoyable relationships with each other and interactions, and…let’s say above average quality of comedy, a genre that can be very hit or miss for me in anime.

There’s one more thing I wanna talk about though, and that’s the visuals. Now I’m no animation expert, but the animation in Dandadan seems very experimental and unique. I don’t really have the words to describe inventive animation in an analytical way so You'll probably just have to try it yourself to see what I'm talking about, but I'll try my best. The inventive animation, art, and color design mostly shows up during the action sequences, where the staff really went out of their way to make us salivate at what we were looking at. They truly went above and beyond, it’s an orgasm for the eyes at times.

This is an okay anime from the early 2000s. It's one of those anime with cute girls that's mostly a comedy but gets somewhat dark towards the end. This was actually a trend in the 2000s, there were a lot of anime that did that, although even as far as anime with those endings are concerned this anime isn't insanely dark at the end just more so than it was prior to the final 2-3 episodes, which isn't really saying much. The plot revolves around Doris Ruridou, a young princess who had just entered Teito Academy. She is also a Panzer, ... a person with special abilities and fights with a weapon called a "tool". Shortly after entering, her older sister shows up to teach her how to fight as a Panzer against other Panzers who challenge her. And that's basically all there is too it. It is what it says on the tin. What you see is what you get. And it was fine, but nothing special in my opinion. I do have to say, while I don't normally comment on this, the ending theme song is an absolute bop. Yes, the ending, not the opening. Also each episode in this anime is less than 10 minutes long, so even though it's 24 episodes long, it won't take you that long to get through it.

This anime is incredibly average. It was clearly made to try and capitalize on the popularity of Haikyuu. A little late I might add, s this anime came out in 2021. Haikyuu wasn't fully adapted by that time, but it was close. And if you haven't seen Haikyuu then just watch that, it's so much better than this. This anime isn't terrible, but it's in no way a good alternative to Haikyuu. First of all, it's only one season, 12 episodes. But beyond that, the characters just aren't as interesting, and the volleyball scenes aren't nearly as intense ... or well animated. Aside from the premise, this series does have some other similarities to Haikyuu. Not only did the uniforms kind of remind me of Haikyuu, but this anime has its own version of Kageyama. Although in this anime it gets even more extreme, as he was a such a jerk to his old team to the extent that one of the members attempted to unalive himself. And I kind of wish we got to see more of that guy, cause that sounds interesting. Other than that, his character arc doesn't have the same catharsis and enjoyment that Kageyama's did.
This is a really short review, but there's nothing to say about this anime other than that. It's just nothing special. If you've already seen Haikyuu and you absolutely NEED more volleyball anime fix, then it's fine I guess, but personally I'd rather just re-watch Haikyuu.

Am I really gonna try and write a review of the former king of MyAnimelist? Isn't that like trying to review the Godfather in 2024? Of course everyone reading this has at least heard of it, even if you're one of the probably .0000000000000001 percent of people who hasn't seen it (number is not based on any studies conducted or data collected by writer or anyone else). It's so popular that it's one of the few anime that transcended the Otaku fandom and even people who don't watch it have seen it. And most people like it. Of course, like I said ... in my Frieren review, no anime no matter how much mass appeal it has crammed into it and how well it executes each of it's various ideas, will appeal to everyone. At the time of this writing there are 39 negative reviews and 63 mixed reviews on MyAnimeList alone. Of course that's against a jarring 917 positive reviews, but that just goes to show you how it's impossible to please everyone, and that's actually comforting knowledge as a creative myself, as it greatly reduces pressure when I'm creating. There is mass appeal, but there is no such thing as universal appeal.

As for me, my opinions on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are much more cliche. I think it's one of the best anime ever made. A true masterpiece if there ever was one. A masterclass in character, plot, worldbuilding, animation, art, and music. Brotherhood is so perfect it's almost disappointing. Not perfect in the literal sense, as I don't believe perfection exists, but perfect in the emotional sense. Brotherhood took me on an emotional rollercoaster that I haven't often experienced in all my years of watching anime. There is not a single scene that was boring, in 64 episodes, which is actually a miracle. Most anime can't manage a feat like that in 12 episodes, especially nowadays.

The world is the most instantly memorable thing about this anime in my opinion. Rather than being set in Japan in any random time period, just roll the dice, (usually modern or Sengoku, let's be real), Fuillmetal Alchemist has an aesthetic that's reminiscent of early to mid 20th century Europe, which makes it tremendously stand out in a sea of anime that prefer to play it safe and present a world that their core audience, Japanese people, would be more immediately familiar with. To be clear it doesn't take place in Europe, or in our world at all, it's an alternate fantasy world that just resembles Europe a hundred years ago. And this includes just about everything, from the environment, to the clothes the characters wear, to a lot of the terminology used in the story; for example, King Bradly, the leader of the military, is called the Fuhrer, which is the German word for "leader" and is what Adolf Hitler, the infamous Nazi leader, was called from the 1930s to the 1940s. On top of that there were many war crimes and genocides that the Amestres Military took part in, much like the Nazis, although I don't know if any of them were directly inspired by any of the Nazis specific atrocities, or if it was just the concept that Hiromu Arakawa took as inspiration.

But the best part is the characters. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is one of the most truly character driven anime I've ever seen. The world is fantastic, as is every other aspect, but it truly wouldn't work if the characters weren't good, which they were. Every character is fantastic. Not all of them are likeable, but the ones that are unlikeable are intentionally unlikeable. But most of the characters are likeable in some way. If I were to do a top 10 characters in Fullmetal Alchemist it would be insanely difficult. A top 20 wouldn't be easy. There is no character in Brotherhood that I would deem to be bad. Winry Rockbell was one of my earliest waifus in anime; if you don't count girls like Misty from Pokemon and Tea from Yu-Gi-Oh, which I watched when I was SUPER young, then she probably was the very first, with the only ones able to possibly compete being Kagome Higurashi and Songo from InuYasha. Winry's design is insanely hot, without the series having to be overt and in your face about it, with massive tits and being half naked, (or entirely naked), all the time like you'd typically get in a modern anime. The attractiveness of Winry is very subtle at first glance, but it sticks with you in your subconscious. And don't worry, that's not all that's great about her. She's one of the most likeable and interesting characters in the series, and my personal favorite. Her relationship with her childhood friends, Edward and Alphonse Elric, was extremely wholesome and heartwarming. And her romantic relationship with Ed manages to be one of my favorite romances in all of anime, even though it's not massively focused on, I maen this isn't a romance anime after all.

The best part of Winry is that she's not the standard female character in anime, especially from the time, that, if not being useless, would exist primarily for comic relief, and maybe to be the romantic interest of the male MC. She does obviously serve those purposes as well, but she stands tall as a great character along with the Elric brothers. She's very useful as she develops the automail for Edward and the mechanical body for Alphonse. But she also has her own journey and character arc when she hunts down the character Scar, who was responsible for killing her parents, and get revenge. This is a vector for her to move past her grief and heal properly, and it's one of the most memorable character arcs in the entire series. But it's not just Winry, Fullmetal Alchemist was known for having a lot of amazing female characters. There was Winry Rockbell, Izumi Curtis, (the mentor of Ed and Al), Riza Hawkeye, (who's the love interest of Roy Mustang), Maria Ross, and Sheska, Rose Thomas, and the Homunculus Lust, who were all in the original anime as well, and then Oliver Armstrong, Alex Louis Armstrong's sister, and Mei Chang, among others, who were added to the pile in the Brotherhood adaptation. They're all fantastic. Oliver's badassery should go without saying, and Izumi is possibly my favorite mentor character in all of anime, she's definitely high up on that list at the very least.

I haven't even talked about Ed and Al yet. They're among my favorite protagonists in anime history. They have extremely likeable personalities, and flaws that the series masterfully plays off of not only for comedy, (especially the one where Ed doesn't like to be called short, which is the most common recurring gag in the series), but also a vector to give us excellent character arcs. The two are fundamentally different at the end of the series compared to where they started, especially in regards to Ed himself. Not not just because he grew way taller, to the point where he had to look down on Winry instead of Winry looking down on him. They're some of the best shonen protagonists I've ever seen. Their individual characters are great, their chemistry as brothers is fantastic, their chemistry with Winry is good, and their chemistry with every other character they meet as well. They're complex and very sympathetic.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood also has some of the best action scenes in all of battle shonen anime. They're not nearly as large scale or overblown as a lot of its contemporaries, but they're some of the most tense for sure. Probably the most tense moment in the entire series is towards the end of the series when Father attempts to use the entirety of Amestres as a transmutation circle and sacrificing every person in the entire nation. There's a pretty long scene where we go all around Amstress and see all the characters we've grown to know and love throughout the series keeling over, and it's really jarring but nevertheless extremely effective. The animation is also outstanding, and is good enough that it improves basically everything in the anime, from the comedy, to the action, to the emotional moments, everything.

I do have problems with this anime, but it's less actual flaws and more a few things that i preferred in the original. For example, I actually preferred the origin of the Homunculi in the original anime, how they were the product of failed human transmutations. Especially with Izumi, who had a miscarriage and tried to bring her baby back to life via alchemy, but not only did it not work, but she also lost her womb as a punishment, and her child was brought back but as the 2003 anime's version of Wrath. It's not only an emotional gut punch, but it also made it make more sense why Izumi was so against the Elric brothers using alchemy to bring their mother back to life, because she knows the consequences of that first hand. Not all of the homunculi worked as well as Wrath and Izumi, but nevertheless I do still love the concept, as it gives yet another consequence of trying to revive the dead using alchemy. I'm also not the biggest an of Father as a villain, (who's the creator of the Homuncuil in Brotherhood), I just didn't think he was that interesting, although he's still a better final villain than Dante, who's even less interesting. Plus, Father at least has a super kick ass final fight with Edward.

I don't know what else I can say about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It's a masterpiece. Even with the few issues I did have with it, I still felt like I had to give it the highest possible rating. I've always been a defender of the 2003 anime, which most people want to forget was ever made after Brotherhood came out, but while I do still love the 2003 anime, I do agree with the consensus that Brotherhood is better, for the most part. It's become one of the most iconic anime ever made for good reason, and while it's not my favorite anime of all time, I think it deserves to be the number 1 anime on MyAnimeList way more than Frieren.

This anime was very fun. It's basically "cute girls do war" 7 years before Girls Last Tour. And it does have a lot of similarities with that anime. It's about a group of cute anime girls who are soldiers and fight in a war. However, Girls Last Tour took place in the aftermath, or perhaps the latter end of that war, where as Sound of the Sky takes place during the war and we actually see them in active combat and even get some PTSD flashbacks from one of them, a girl who's entire squad was taken out in the past. ... Also if i recall correctly I believe the war in Girls Last Tour was basically a post-apocalyptic war that wiped out a large portion of humanity, but the stakes don't seem that high in Sound of the Sky.

All the girls are super cute and likeable, and their interactions and antics were a lot of fun. At first it seemed like it was gonna follow the tradition of most moe blob anime where it has this interesting concept to add cute girls into but have little or even nothing to do with that concept, it's just a vector to show use cute girls doing cute things and trick us into watching it because of the unique premise, (no shade, I love these shows), but like I said before we do have some scenes with one of the girls, namely Filicia Heideman, having PTSD flashbacks of her time with her old squad, who were all wiped out before her eyes. She's older and more experienced than the other girls.

This, and some present day battlefield sequences, (albeit to a lesser extent) do a decent job of illustrating the horrors of war, even if not on the same level as an anime that are more directly about war or the affects of war like Violet Evergarden, Grave of the Fireflies, Eighty Six, the original Mobile Suit Gundam, or hell, even Attack on Titan, (yes, really). All of this ads to the worldbuilding and the emotional hold this anime can have over you. At the end of the day the anime is no masterpiece, it is just a cute girls do cute things show at its core, but these additions helps it rise above its contemporaries, even if ever so slightly.

I especially love the soundtrack, which is good cause that's an important part of it all. There's decently frequent scenes with a couple of the characters playing a Bugle, and the soundtrack that plays over the series gives a sense of melancholy and loneliness, but also strangely hope, which helps compliment the themes of the anime.

SPOILERS BELOW!

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Man, what a disappointment. Why do so many anime have such great first halves and then destroy themselves in the final few episodes? In this case like the final 6 or 7 episodes I think. The majority of the series was quite enjoyable. Nothing special per say, and I definitely think it would have been more influential and more loved if it was released 10-20 years ago, but I had a good time with it for sure. But the Isekai portion of the show, (yes, really), ruined any good will that I had for it, which was more good will than I expected that I would have going in, honestly. Takuya Arima is a young student whose father, a historian who has conducted various researches, disappeared recently. During a summer vacation Takuya receives a peculiar package from his missing father, along with a letter containing information about the existence of various parallel worlds. At first Takuya doesn't take it seriously, but soon he realizes that he possesses a device that allows him to travel to alternate dimensions. For the majority of the series these "alternate dimensions" are just parallel versions of his own world, it's not until the fourth quarter that he goes to an overtly fantasy world. In general this is a mystery anime with Takuya and his friends, Mio Shimazu, a girl obsessed with supernatural stuff, Masakatsu Yuuki, a close friend of Takuya who has a crush on Mio, their teacher Eriko Takeda, who knows a lot more about these parallel worlds than she lets on at first, and a little ways into the series Kanna Hatano, a girl who is also more connected with these mysteries than she lets on at first.

I don't normally like mystery anime unless the characters are interesting and fun enough to keep me watching, the mystery itself is never enough. And this anime gets that. All of the main characters are super entertaining. The mystery itself isn't half bad either, and it did make me ask questions, but it still wouldn't have worked if the characters didn't hold my interest. I especially loved Takuya, the MC, he's extremely funny. And so is Masakatsu. And Eriko, for that matter. Seriously, they're all just so much fun to watch, those three in particular. Unfortunately however the series really goes off the rails, like I said before, in the fourth quarter, where Takuya travels to this overtly fantasy esque parallel world, even though he's never done that before, and seemingly spends many years there, where he gets married and has a kid. This part of the story was just super confusing for me. Unresolved confusion is one of the biggest things that more often than not will turn me off to an anime, even if I was really enjoying it before that, and this anime quickly falls victim to that. So, I have a question...Is Takuya supposed to be his own grandfather? Futurama style? Cause early in the series it's hinted that Takuya's mother was from a different world, and then when Takuya goes to the fantasy world he meets a woman with blond hair that looks like his mother and has a daughter with her. So at that point it seemed like maybe he was becoming his own father, which was ridiculous enough. But then I thought maybe that daughter would go on to become his mother, since she also looked identical to his mother, which would mean the series actually pulled a Futurama but tried to take it serious rather than making a joke out of it.

It's also totally possible that neither is true and I misunderstood everything in the last part of the series, but that's what I said before, it's confusing. I also don't know why he went to an actual fantasy world and how it ties in with the story, considering that all of the other times he went to parallel worlds they were different versions of his own world. This might be another example of a game's story poorly translating to anime, but I can't see how this would be not confusing in any medium, so maybe it's just a bad adaptation in general, and the source material had details that would have alleviated my confusion. It's sad when an anime is doing so good for so long and then falls off not that long before the actual end. But that was my personal experience with this anime. Even the last quarter still had the benefit of fun characters, albeit the new characters were considerably less fun but Takuya was still the same, but it just jumped the shark way too much.

Dallos is a 4 episode OVA series from 1983-1985 that's notable for being the first ever anime OVA (original video animation), a format that would become immensely popular, especially throughout the 1990s, but has seemingly become almost extinct in the modern era with the rise of ONAs (original net animation). The pedigree of being the first anime OVA is the main reason I wanted to watch this anime, but beyond that it's nothing too special. I don't think it's bad either, though. It was a fun watch, it's extremely short, it has drama, action, moral ambiguity, and some good sci-fi ideas. ... I think that if it got a full TV anime series it could have been much greater. But as it stands it was somewhat enjoyable, but it's still hard to recommend for any other reason than watching the first anime OVA, and I probably won't remember it for very long. Oh, and Mamoru Oshii was responsible for this OVA, who later became known for Patlabor and the original Ghost in the Shell Movie, so that's something I guess.

If there was an anime that perfectly embodied the definition of a "hidden gem" it would be Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master. I never heard anyone talk about this anime before I watched it, ever. It's unfortunate because it's truly a flawed but nevertheless great anime that everybody needs to watch. Before watching it I heard, (by reading reviews on anime websites like MyAnimeList, since nobody anywhere else was talking about it), that it was like The Apothecary Diaries but with a male MC, and that description isn't inaccurate, although it is different enough that it's definitely ... not a ripoff. It's a political court drama which incredibly likeable and interesting characters, with a male MC, which is why it was compared to The Apothecary Diaries. However, it does have clear distinctions, other than the gender of the MC. For one, Yatagarasu gets way more dramatic than The Apothecary Diaries. In a good way. I was deeply invested in the political machinations, the themes, and the characters arcs and relationships and where it was all going to go. It's not often that I'm this invested in an anime's plot these days, not to mention how the characters interact with said plot.

I loved the MC Yukiya. This is another area where the series diverges from The Apothecary Diaries. Even though I'm pretty sure he's around the same age as Maomao, he's considerably more naive and innocent than her when they're both dropped into their own respective political plots, but not necessarily in a negative way. One of the points of the story is how we see him mature and become more wise when it comes to the scheming that's going on around him in the court. There's also no comedic gags with him like there is with Maomao, but that's also not necessarily a bad thing. Yatagarasu does have humor in it, but it's a different kind of humor. A lot of the humor in this series is more subtle, and I would say I do prefer the style of humor in The Apothecary Diaries, but this humor is still good and still works.

But all the characters are great, though. Most of them are broken people, which causes them to be very ambitious, , and it's super engaging to watch as their plans either succeeds or fails. All of the main characters are flawed but also likeable, and most of the antagonists are still sympathetic even when committing unforgivable, deplorable acts, such as Koume's mother attempting to kill he rand blaming her life's situation on her after she literally abandoned her. In that same scene we do learn information about her life situation, and it obviously doesn't reduce how much of a monster she is, but it does still make her effectively sympathetic and helps to paint her as another victim of this unforgiving world and political court.

I still can't believe how underrated this anime is. In this day and age an anime that "falls under the radar" is extremely rare, with how much more popular anime is becoming it seems like almost every show is being talked about to some extent. However, this anime is actual proof that this isn't always the case and sometimes great anime can still be underrated. Please watch it. It was so good. It's no masterpiece, but it's great. My biggest issue is with the ending, which has an obvious cliffhanger with no announcement for a second season so far.

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!
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Psssst. Hey. Don't tell anyone. I don't like this anime. *dodges arrow* Yeah, I expected that response. It's no surprise, as Frieren is still the most popular anime in the world. At the time of this writing it's still number 1 anime on MyAnimeList, which some would say doesn't mean anything, but for the super high and super low scores it absolutely does. MyAnimeList rates anime based on the average of everyone who's scored the show, which is really the only fair way to score something as eternally subjective as media criticism. But when something is below 6, or above 8, you know that it truly is hated or popular respectively, by the majority of people. It's when an anime is rated between 7 and 8 that you really can't gauge its general online popularity. But this anime is not only popular, over a 9 which is insane, it's also the most popular anime on the website. It's even higher than Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which is mindboggling to me, not just because I adamantly disagree with it, but because Brotherhood has stood atop its throne for so long, but it's November and it still hasn't retaken it from the usurper.

That's the most interesting part to me. Without that it'd just be another popular anime i don't like. But it has obtained a level of popularity that is almost unattainable by 99.99 percent of anime. When it comes to anime like this, I become obsessed with why they're as popular as they are. You could say that it consumes my very soul. There are times when I drop anime I don't like, and there are other times when I go on a spree of completing every anime no matter how much I don't like it, but with an anime like this I would almost always finish it even if I'm currently on a no dropping spree. I should also mention that this is an anime that I was avoiding for awhile, intentionally watching every other major anime from last year before I watch it because I had an extremely bad impression from it due to the discourse surrounding it in several online anime communities. It's a bad habit of mine I fully admit, and it's happened several other times recently, with anime that I ended up loving; a good example of that is The Dangers In My Heart, which I expected to be similar to Please Don't Toy With Me Miss Nagatoro, Teasing Master Takagi-san, or Uzaki-chan Just Wants To Hang Out, which are anime I've confirmed that I don't like, but turned out to be nothing like them.

Before I get into what I don't like though, there was a lot of stuff that I did, so I want to discuss them first. The fights are super exciting, and the animation is incredible, especially in the fight scenes, but even when there isn't a fight scene the visuals are just stunning. There are so many screen shots of this anime would be wallpaper worthy, like an above average amount of them. I also loved the character designs as well. All of them are unique and work, and the girls are effectively cute, even the evil ones. Especially Frieren and Fern. Also the soundtrack was absolutely amazing. I loved the opening and ending too. So much that I watched them in their entirety...not every single time admittingly, this isn't Hunter X Hunter's Departure, but more than once, which is more than I usually do.

But now to the story. This anime has a unique premise, rather than following the hero's party as they defeat the Demon King and his army, instead it takes place after that, and follows not the hero, but the elf mage in the party, Frieren. I loved Frieren's character. When it comes to the characters she was one of the few saving graces for me, and the only one that I truly loved. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to save the series for me, but it's still worth talking about. I was invested in her character, the idea that, as an elf, she and the rest of her kind lives way longer lives than humans. I looked online and some people have said 10-15,000 years, but I don't recall it being stated in the anime, and I haven't read the manga or light novels. But either way, that means she always has to deal with the people around her that she cares about dying before she does. The first few episodes shows that clearly, as after the hero's party broke up she went her separate ways from them, and each one of them eventually passed away. First the hero Himmel, whom I don't think she saw since the party broke up but she attended his funeral, then the priest who lived a longer life but was still human at the end of the day.

I believe the dwarf that was in the hero's party is still alive, but the point is that everyone she loves eventually leaves her because of her insane lifespan, and it's implied that she's had to deal with this a countless amount of times already. It seems like a consensus is that she's at least 1,000 years old at the start of the series, and if that's the case there's no telling how much tragedy like this she's been through already. Although I think it's also implied that this one might have been the hardest for her since she spent ten years with this party, and because she may have had romantic feelings for Himmel the Hero as well. Because of all of this, she tends to distance herself from others and never took on an apprentice, likely because she doesn't want to feel that kind of sadness again, a sadness which she has kept repressed for so long, so much that she didn't even cry at Himmel's funeral, which caused a lot of the other attendees to think that she's just coldhearted and has no emotions whatsoever, when in reality, since elves live so long, she has a difficult time understanding the concept of death, at least in the way humans understand it. Elves do die, but it takes so long that I have to imagine the humans and elves conceptualize it in different ways, and we're seeing that through the lens of Frieren.

Even though she never wanted to take on an apprentice, she eventually does, a girl named Fern, who basically becomes like a daughter figure for her in addition to an apprentice, after the priest that was a member of the hero's party requests her to while he's still alive. There's other fun stuff about Frieren as well, the fact that she's super lazy and always sleeps in, which i definitely relate to, and basically Fern constantly has to dote on her as if Fern was the master instead of Frieren, which is really funny and adorable for both of them. She also seems to have either a mischievous side or a perverted side, I'm not entirely sure, but she purchased a potion that's supposed to dissolve clothing, so that could only lead to one of those two things, mischievousness or or a well hidden perverted side, (or a combination of both, I suppose). She's a deeply complex and tragic character, but also she can be a lot of fun, too, which makes her incredibly endearing and memorable.

So I just spent awhile praising the hell out of Frieren. Wasn't this going to be a negative review? Well, I was also extremely confused as well, for like the first half of this anime. It was good. Not incredible, I did think that it was very overrated, but I did like it. If it kept up like this, this would be yet another case where I'd have to lament that I avoided an anime based on online discourse and ended up liking it overall once I actually watched it. But you might be picking up on this now, but unfortunately it didn't remain that good for me. Some things did. All the technical stuff, like animation, art, character designs, (including the designs of many of the new characters that were revealed later), and soundtrack were still great, and I continued to love Frieren's character all the way to the end. There were also some things that did urk me early on, such as in episode 12 when Stark learns of the potion that Frieren has he excitedly wonders what it does, which causes Fern to venomously call him a pervert and trash, which I thought was uncalled for because he was never told what the potion did, (it's the one that dissolves clothing). That was frustrating, but I was willing to look past it because it was only one incident, and I could forgive if it was just a one off and didn't become a trend. I also found it weird that at first when the priest asks Frieren to train Fern she declines, claiming that she doesn't want to take a child to the battlefield, but at the end of the episode he asks her again and agrees, even though he gives her no other reasons why she should, and she offers no other conditions, they still travel together for many years, so that didn't make any sense to me. Maybe they cut part of that conversation out from its original manga version, but I don't know.

Now let's get into the negatives. Let's talk about Fern. I liked her introduction, and I mostly liked her throughout the first half of the show, except for that moment that I mentioned above. She was a war orphan that the priest of the hero's party took in and raised as his own, and then Frieren took her on as her apprentice. She doesn't show much emotion most of the time, and it's implied that it was because of her past as an orphan and not having any familial connections of her own. And after she becomes close with Frieren, and later Stark, she does start to open up more. Seriously, I thought I was gonna end up loving Fern just as much as Frieren, or if not then relatively close to it. I thought my own stupid brain had duped me again, as Fern was the biggest reason why I was hesitant to watch this anime in the first place. Minus the thing I previously mentioned that rubbed me the wrong way, she did come off as quite likeable, just a bit rough around the edges. In episode 13 she even apologized to Stark for the issue that I mentioned above, and the apology did seem very genuine. But unfortunately it didn't last, as she doesn't' really change how she treats Stark after that, and it's really aggravating. And it's not your standard Tsundere behavior as well where it's maybe once in awhile, or maybe she has a good reason to act that way like with Kagome Higarashi from InuYasha, it's just annoying and sullied my feelings on the show.

One other positive that I want to point out is I do think this anime slightly improved an issue I have with a lot of anime romances in the modern era, where I just don't believe that the characters are in love. While it's not perfect, I do at least believe the connection that Fern and Stark have, although calling it "love" is a bit of a stretch. I mean by episode 15 there's the ballroom dancing scene that I knew was coming before I watched which is supposed to be like the ultimate proof to the audience that they're in love, even if the characters themselves can't admit to it yet, but it just wasn't believable for me. Especially on Stark's end. At least Fern showed some visible interest beforehand. She gave him a heartfelt apology for treating him the way she did earlier, she clearly enjoys his company, although I would have liked a bit more before the series goes head first into trying to convince me of this, but i didn't even get that much with Stark. Sorry, but I just didn't see it. I also wasn't a fan of that dancing scene because it made Stark come off as kind of a tool, and I otherwise liked him, but maybe that's just me. lol But the series really wants to convince me, when it didn't do the leg work to reach that point, in my personal opinion.

So all we have at the end there is two people as dysfunctional as Bonny and Clyde, and the anime wants to convince me that they're in love. Okay, maybe they're not THAT bad, but you get the point. I also want to make it clear that I've never been in a relationship before, so maybe my criticism on anime romance from a "realistic" perspective doesn't mean much, (and yes, that's a word I heard thrown around a lot when the anime was airing), but what I do know is what I like and don't like in anime romance. I know shows that have done it well. Toradora, which still has my favorite anime couple, Lovely Complex, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, (at least regarding the main couple), and Horimiya, just to name a few. And yes, I know that those are full on romance anime rather than epic fantasy anime with romance elements, but I still judge those romance elements with the same criteria that I would in a general romance anime.

To tell you the truth, I didn't hate Fern nearly as much as I thought I would. But she just annoyed me to much for me to like her. And when she's not annoying me, just stands there emotionless without us learning any more about her past or her personality that was teased early on, which could have actually helped me with her character depending on what it was and how it was handled. Going in I expected to despise her on the same level as Miko Ino from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, and for the same reasons. While my dislike of her is for the same reasons, the level that I dislike her is admittingly considerably less. It also helps that while I do like Stark to an extent, I think he's okay, I don't like him nearly as much as I liked Yu Ishigami from Kaguya-sama, who's basically my my personal spiritual avatar in anime form, so the way he was treated by his love interest made me way more mad than with Stark, (combined with the fact that Fern's actions aren't nearly as mad as Ino's like I originally thought they would be).

When it comes to the other characters, the priest who was in the hero's party was okay, not bad but not too memorable, the dwarf was pretty good especially in episode 16, which was the final episode he appeared in before his death. Extremely sad too, as he seemed to get some kind of Alzheimer's disease and didn't even remember that the Demon King was defeated a long time ago by the time the end came for him. Sein was also okay, but again not too interesting or memorable. And I don't see why the fanbase was so obsessed with Himmel. I didn't hate him, but he wasn't that great. I also wasn't a big fan of Ubel, but I'm not at all surprised that the fandom fell in love with her, she's just not my thing, really. But aside from all of that I hated Kanne and Lawine. Going in I expected that Fern would be my least favorite part, but it was actually them. From the moment they were introduced, they were insanely annoying. There were some fine or humorous or wholesome scenes with them, but they were few and far between. 90 percent of the time it was just their bickering that majorly got on my nerves and annoyed me.

And that about does it. Since I'm coming at a very popular anime, I hope I was able to explain to you my reasoning for not feeling as positively about it as others, and i also hope that you're able to see why I'm so mixed about this show. There is a lot of great stuff in it, there's no doubt about that. The first half of the show was fantastic if still kind of overrated in my opinion, but the second half just had so many things I didn't like that they overshadowed the things I did like. The things I enjoyed were still t here, but even that stuff was harder to enjoy to the fullest extent with nonsense constantly thrown in my face. One positive that I can clearly pinpoint of having finally watched this anime to completion, other than it no longer weighing on my mind as to whether or not I was judging it too harshly without actually watching it, (I didn't, in my opinion), is that I was clearly able to see why it's so popular. It's actually kind of obvious when you watch it. It's mass appeal. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean the former King of MyAnimeList, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, is one of my favorite anime of all time, and it thrives on the art of mass appeal. It has something for just about everyone. You want action? It has it. You want incredible animation? It has it. You want cool, unique character designs? It has it. You want an awesome soundtrack? It has it. You want comedy? It has it. You want romance? It has it. It's not a main focus, but it dose have it, and it's handled pretty well, I think. You want awesome, not useless women? It has it. You want a large cast of diverse, interesting, complex characters? It has it. No anime has ever dwelled in the realm of trying to appeal to everyone and actually succeeding, rather than meeting with the inevitable fate of being for no one, which happens quite a bit when a story tries to appeal to so many different tastes at once. They way Brotherhood perfectly blends all these different elements is a testament to Hiromu Arakawa's incredible writing abilities.

And clearly most of the people who watched the anime believe that Frieren did the same thing, I just don't agree. I'm also not delusional enough to think I'm the only one who doesn't like this anime, so don't worry. It's not hard at all to find other negative reviews of this anime, many of which are more negative than mine. Just on MyAnimeList alone, at the time of this writing, aside from my own review, there's currently 69 negative reviews and 96 mixed reviews, not including my own which I'm still writing. Granted that's horribly unbalanced with 596 positive reviews, but it just goes to show that no anime, no matter how popular, will appeal to every individual viewer, even if it mostly succeeds with appealing to every type of viewer. Even Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has negative and mixed reviews, 36 and 63 respectively, currently. But that's a wonderful thing, too; the fact that media criticism is entirely subjective, and the fact that not every piece of art will appeal to every person, even if it lies within their general taste, is one of things that makes consuming media so much fun, at least for me.

But despite all of that, it still kind of surprises me that Frieren is still higher than Brotherhood on MAL's rankings. Not that it surpassed it in general. Because here's the thing, its' not remotely uncommon for anime to briefly surpass Brotherhood in the rankings. It happens all the time. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Season 3 did the same thing when it aired a couple years ago. But it fell below relatively quickly. And that always happens; when the hype is at its peak the anime remains at the top, but a few weeks into the airing, maybe a month or two at the very most, it drops down, usually considerably, although Kaguya-sama is admittingly still higher than I would expect a straight up romance anime to be. But anyways, Frieren was different, as it's November right now, and it's still in number 1. Not only that, but it's rated 9.32 at the moment, which is considerably higher than Brotherhood, if you consider how rare it is for an anime to get that high of a rating in the first place. I only bring this up not because it makes me mad, but because I find it interesting.

And that's the key word here; intrigue. I'm glad I watched Frieren because it's interesting. The worst thing that any piece of art can be is boring. I'll take bad, frustrating, or disappointing way before boring. At least bad can be interesting to talk about. And I don't even necessarily think that this anime is bad. In fact as I'm writing this I'm still torn if I want to give it a 4 or a 6. I can't give it a 5 because that rating is reserved for dull, boring, and generic anime, and this is anything but. That's where my mixed feelings come in because everything I like about it is telling me to give it a 6, and everything i don't like is telling me to give it a 4. It's not often that I'm this confused, this torn about my own feelings on a show. I know everything I do and don't like, but there's so many elements piled up on both sides that the actual rating is hard, which it almost never is for me.

Something else I found interesting with the discourse surrounding this show is the idea that it's ushering in a new era of anime, and moving away from the Isekai craze, and towards general, non Isekai fantasy anime having a larger presence in anime again, a trend I've seen a lot of people state also observing that there seems to be less Isekai originals, (meaning non sequels), coming out lately, which seemed to correspond directly to when Frieren began airing. While I definitely think it's possible, I think we'll need to wait a few years so we can look back in hindsight, it's definitely too early to tell right now. And if it does I definitely don't think it will be alone, as Delicious In Dungeon started airing right after, and aired alongside Frieren for awhile, (which is much better in my opinion) so if this is true then I think it will deserve part of the credit. And this could all just be a coincidence too, we're just too close to the time when Frieren aired. You can never really tell when something is a trend in the moment, you always need hindsight to know for certain.

Man, this is by far the longest review I've ever written, but that just goes to show how much I had to say about this show, even if my thoughts were phenomenally more negative than most other people's. Before I conclude, I am curious how many people reading this who did love the show actually think it's better than Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. But anyways, I'm done, I'm tired, I've been sitting here for way too long.

SPOILER WARNING!
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Almost everyone has thought of what they would do if they could redo certain things in their lives. And that feeling only gets stronger for some of us as we get older. Regrets are a toxic, yet nevertheless very human emotion, that can destroy us from the inside, and the sad part is there's very little we can do about them, since we can't change the past. But what if we could? Well, the MC of this anime, Kyouya Hashiba, gets the chance. When he was in collage he worked in a game company, however they ended up going under and he never got to become the developer of visual novels as a career like he wanted to. One day he suddenly goes back in time, into his old college body. It's never fully explained how this occurs. Later on we meet a short, pink haired girl, who seemed to have something to do with it, but there's really no explanation, per se. But regardless, now he's in college again, and he's determined to not make the same mistakes he did before and live what he deems to be a "better life." However, that won't exactly be very easy, as this unscheduled adventure of his results in him learning more about himself and his flaws that forced him to end up in the predicament he toiled in regret over as a grown man.

The premise of this anime is cool. It's nothing super unique, in anime alone I can think of at least one other anime that's similar to it, Orange, (I haven't seen it though, I'm going on premise alone with that), but it's a fun idea as a vehicle for exploring interesting characters, and like I said above, it's a very relatable concept as well. Many people would jump at the opportunity of being able to undo their past mistakes. With that being said, my feelings on the actual execution of the premise are very...mixed. There are a lot of great things in it. There are times when the anime knows exactly what emotional beats to hit and how to hit them, and when it does it can be downright heartbreaking. The best example of this is in episode 11. After spending the majority of the series in the past, he suddenly comes to a new present for himself, where he's a professional game developer, and is also married to Aki Shino, one of his fellow game developers in the past, and has has a daughter with her. However, he learns that Aki, and the others, Eiko Kawasegawa, Nanako Kogure, and Tsuryayuki Rokuonji ended up giving up their dream, (although he learned that TSuryayuki was gonna quit before he came back to the present). Blaming himself he decides to go back once more, acknowledging that his amazing life will be undone by this decision. And it's really sad knowing that not only will his dream be undone, but so will his marriage, and his adorable daughter will no longer exist. Although since he gets to keep his memories whenever he goes back, perhaps he'll confess to Aki to try and make his life end up that way again, since he did seem to truly love her during the short time we saw them spend as a married couple, (even though he said earlier in the series that he didn't see her that way).

That's only the number 1 example of this anime hitting the right emotional beats at the right time in the right way to tug on your heartstrings, but there's several more throughout the series. It's not often when an anime basically forces me to think of my own life and my own past, and this one definitely accomplished that. So it sounds like it's incredible, what issues did I have with it? Well, three. First I'll start with this one because it's minor. I wasn't a big fan of the sub plot with Nanako. More specifically I think it's just overexposure to this kind of plot in anime rather than the plot itself being inherently bad. The whole idea is that she's a skilled singer but doesn't want to pursue that professionally because of a lack of confidence. Unless it's handled really well I tend to not be a fan of plots like that, as it sort of implies that the only reason someone wouldn't want to pursue their talents professionally is because they lack confidence, and that it's a waste of talent if they don't, (in fact, those last eight words were literally stated verbatim in the series). A lack of confidence can sometimes be the reason for that, I'm not saying that's entirely unrealistic, but sometimes it can just because they don't want to add a business side to their passion. Anime that acknowledged this would add more variety to this plot line. The only anime I've seen that does this is Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad with Maho Minami. I'm also aware that this might be a Japanese mindset that I just don't understand, and that's perfectly fine, but I can still criticize it if I don't like it.

But thankfully that wasn't enough to ruin this anime for me. There are two other problems I had with the series. One, the series didn't have much conclusion. Like I wanted more from it, but it kinda seems like a prologue rather than a full anime's story to be honest. And my final issue, and the worst of all, there is a MAJOR cliffhanger at the end of the series, and there's been no season 2 since this anime came out in 2021! Nothing even announced. That pissed me off more than anything. In fact the cliffhanger was twofold. It ends not right after he goes back in time again, but not long after, and still without resolving much, but also he suddenly reunites with Tsurayuki again in literally the final seconds of the anime.

What else is there to say about this anime? It's a classic example of an anime that was good, but could have and by all rights should have been much greater. I'm glad I watched it, but it's held back from being as amazing as I was hoping it would be. And my God it needs a season 2!