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Jul 4, 2023
Each character is a surface-level cardboard cutout of an archetype, and none receive any meaningful development. Gabimaru the so-called hollow’s greatest feat as a shinobi is convincing fans that he is a deep and complex character by cramming down his love for his wife down the audience’s throat. He is a broken record of a character that knows two sayings, “I love my wife” and “I am hollow” (coping). Besides this master of illusions, the rest of the cast is blatantly one-sided in terms of characterization and development, no character really worth mentioning has emerged from the entire show. With how bad the main cast
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is, its pretty surprising that the show managed to churn out even worse antagonists; they are terribly uninteresting in everything they do, they aren’t charismatic, they aren’t compelling, they aren’t complex, and the greatest offense is that all of them have terrible designs.
The story is similarly uninteresting, from its bland plot to its lazily crafted mystery, not one bit of it is good. The premise is fairly simple and not too complex, and already unoriginal as it and the characters are loosely based on pre-existing historical and mythological figures and narratives. It doesn’t try to say anything new with these concepts unlike other series that incorporate these aspects better. In Hell’s Paradise, these aspects are simply just there, and not expanded on in any meaningful way. This is also done with the incorporation of Asian schools of thoughts like Daoism, as well as other concepts like reincarnation, these aspects are also not fleshed out or expanded on in any meaningful way, yet their presence gives off the illusion of depth. Their presence instead of adding anything of import to the series really just detracts from it, because it all comes off as pretentious and shallow.
The production value of the show is mediocre, not much to critique but I don’t think that there is terribly much to praise, either. The art style is pleasant, the animation is decent, but those positives are slightly detracted from because of the directing. A lot of potential in action scenes are squandered by misplaced flashbacks and exposition, or just cutting the action sequence entirely. While being passable in this regard, it sadly cannot boast the title of “carried by animation” like demon slayer, which actually somewhat makes up for its lackluster story with good visuals.
To make matters worse, Hell’s Paradise also falls into the typical shounen pitfall of sexism. Each female character in the cast is almost constantly being sexualized, seduced, or saved by a male character. Despite its blatant sexism, the series attempts to include a character arc of Sagiri breaking gender norms. The reason I say attempt is because nothing really resulted from it. The sexist character literally had to die to admit he may have been wrong about women not being able to fight, and after that scene, nothing changed. Sagiri went back to being the same character she was before, the lasting impact of it wasn’t that great, and it didn’t have any impact on other characters or their perceptions, so it feels pointless and ham-fisted.
The lazy writing, bad characters, pretentious nature, and sexism of Hell’s Paradise are all perfectly packaged together with its exceedingly overhyped protagonist, Gabimaru the Shallow, to create the ultimate 2/10 anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 18, 2023
Kimidtsu no Yaiba somehow manages to keep lowering its quality every season. The overall quality of the production has dropped drastically since season 2 with this most recent installment, and the writing quality of the narrative and characters has gotten worse too. The latter being quite surprising as two of the most insufferable characters in the show, possibly the entire medium (Inosuke and Zenitsu), have been essentially written out of the show during this arc. Good riddance, though, those characters are an eyesore and them being absent is the only thing saving this installment from a 1/10
I’m sure it doesn’t take a filmographer to notice
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the decline in the quality of the CGI, in direction, and in the animation. The CGI fish and the wooden dragons are a big step back for the series; by CGI standards they are relatively good, but they heavily clash with the art style of the show, which makes it janky and disconcerting. This season’s fights are also a downgrade from the previous, no scene came even close to Tengen’s fight with the upper-moon, and that season boasted many scenes encroaching on that level, we didn’t get that here, which is very disappointing as that animation is the only redeeming feature of the series. It still isn’t terrible, there are a few cool moments here and there, but it is a far cry from what we have had previously, and a far cry from what a series such as this needs to be enjoyable. Doubly disappointing since we were promised next level animation.
The narrative of this season is simply atrocious, the premise is terribly uninteresting, and the repetitive nature of Demon Slayer’s arcs is just getting grating. Every arc in the series is where any major change unfolds in the world of Demon Slayer, every major event happens to occur wherever Tanjiro is by sheer coincidence, and for one reason or another, there is a hashira with him. It is repetitive, lazy writing, and it feels like the entire world revolves around Tanjiro, as nothing happens or progresses in areas where he isn’t, and characters that aren’t near Tanjiro do not progress either. This is something that most other shounen anime do better. It’s also notable how devoid of substance this arc really is, all that happened is some demons died and Tanjiro found a cool sword. How did so little happen in an entire arc?
Another big issue with the narrative of this season is how it was conveyed. For each of the “hype” fights, our heroes were getting thrashed, the momentum of the fight was interrupted with a ten-minute flash-back, the hashira gets buffed, and then they win. This last-minute characterization, like the rest of the writing was terribly lazy. It feels as if the author forgot to add anything beyond a quirky personality to his characters until it was their big moment. This was most terribly executed in Muichirou’s fight. He really got drowned for 3 episodes, impaled with a bunch of poisoned needles, and then managed to easily obliterate an upper-moon just because he had a shitty backstory play for the viewer? How contrived; the author knew nothing except that Muichirou needed to win, had no idea how to make it happen reasonably, and just willed it into existence. His powerup was also nonsensical, an asspull akin to that of Super Saiyan in Dragonball. This isn’t too different with Mitsuri, we received an information dump in the middle of the fight that came out of nowhere and this new information enabled her to win, she got the same shitty powerup, and the same forced victory. It’s a little more forgivable than Muichirou’s though as it wasn’t a free win like a power fantasy anime after all the nonsense, and because that victory still required the effort of the rest of the cast.
Now we have arrived at the biggest flaw of the franchise, the characters. All of the characters are surface level or shallow, mostly with one-note personalities. All but two characters in the entire season possess any charisma whatsoever, these characters being Haganezuka and Muichirou’s dead brother. The interactions between characters are widely uninteresting, and just contain boring, generic dialogue, pathetic attempts at comedy, or weak insults and idle threats. I would rejoice if someone could point out a line of dialogue with any real depth to it, because I didn’t seem to notice any, maybe it just isn’t there. Before dissecting the more noteworthy characters, I’ll just start with this, every side character besides the aforementioned two are absolutely garbage for one reason or another. Either insufferable like Zenitsu, or boring like Nezuko; pick your poison ig.
To begin with the least notable of the notable characters, Nezuko is still the biggest nothingburger in the medium, she doesn’t talk, and she does the same few things every time she is on-screen, don’t really understand how anyone can like her, she’s no more than an animal or a prop at this point. Zenitsu and Inosuke are hardly in this season but they’re still notably dogshit, moving on.
Muichirou… where to begin with this trainwreck. His entire arc can be summed up in two words, ‘contrived’ and ‘generic’. He began as an apathetic goon who made calculated emotionless decisions, and just did his job, he was a bit of an asshole, but it is what it is, and to be honest, that was him at his best. When he told Tanjiro his voice was annoying, I stood with him. A few words from the guy with an annoying voice that he did not care about in the slightest shook Muichirou to his core, and he recalled his tragic backstory. His backstory was just a pity party, and all it succeeded in doing was creating and killing off a character more compelling than himself, not to mention his backstory followed the same formula as nearly every other character in the series. His arc kind of played out like a Dhar Mann video, “you shouldn’t misjudge the asshole because he may have his own circumstances and secretly be a stellar dude”. His entire personality completely flips around after hearing those words from Tanjiro, and that sudden progression was poorly written and way too sudden, and also out of character for the guy, considering he is supposed to be apathetic and not care about what hooligans like Tanjiro have to say.
Genya Shinazugawa is a fresh contender for worst character in the series, with his horrible writing and terrible attitude. He has the same copy-paste backstory that the rest of the characters in the series share, an unlikable personality that even a mother couldn’t love, and more contrivances and conveniences than pretty much every other character. He is literally a non-character before the season starts, the most painfully irrelevant dude on the block, and he of all people possesses the legendary 12-gauge, as well as an unheard-of ability that frankly carries him. Yes, I know his ability was foreshadowed in season, but that doesn’t really make it good considering it belongs to a previously irrelevant and currently intolerable pillock.
The antagonists of this arc are god-awful, plain and simple. They aren’t menacing at all, they have cookie-cutter personalities, zero depth, awful designs, boring powers, and all the whimsy of a looney toons character. There isn’t a single good thing about them except for the fact that they are “strong”, but that is by no means a good argument for why a character is good. In fact, if one makes that argument, it would be pretty apparent that they have no media analysis skills to speak of. These two antagonists are indefensibly bad and the only thing they’re antagonizing is the quality of the show.
Mitsuri isn’t terrible like the rest mentioned before her, I don’t think she is any better than average, but she is definitely better than most demon slayer characters. Her personality is mostly a blatant attempt at waifu-bait, there isn’t much depth to her, and the fact that for some reason she is just a superhuman and also got the same poor writing in her fight as Muichirou did are all factors that hold her back a little bit, but that is balanced out by her backstory. This was the first unique backstory in the entire franchise, insane. She had a different reason for being a demon slayer than living a nice quiet life with a loving family before they all got slaughtered by a demon, and her backstory had nuance to it in the form of social commentary. Still poorly placed like Muichirou’s but a step in the right direction for sure.
Lastly, we have Tanjiro, the mediocre yet inoffensive protagonist. Like Mitsuri, Tanjiro isn’t utter garbage like the rest of the cast. He has a lot of issues such as falling into the unfunny comedy and poor interactions with other characters, but he can have decent interactions and moments too. I can’t think of anything too standout about the guy in terms of writing, he is just there, a little boring, but also a little admirable. Tanjiro and Mitsuri not being horrendous like the rest of the cast is the main saving grace of this season, besides the two blundering oafs being out of the show.
In summary, this season of Demon Slayer is riddled with issues, with very few redeeming qualities to speak of, and if you haven’t gotten to it yet, I’d advise against it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 25, 2023
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten sadly did not spoil me rotten; this anime ended up being incredibly dull and pathetic. The story is contrived from start to finish and packaged with bland, cardboard characters, poorly written dialogue that feels like someone tried to rip off young adult works from Wattpad, and a generic, mediocre narrative. In this regard, it is much like Demon Slayer. However, unfortunately, it does not have talented staff to turn it from nothing into something. Instead, it got one of the worst studios a light novel adaptation can get—project No.9, the bloodsucker of the light novel adaptations in the
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2020s. At this point, one can start to think that they have a special unit in the studio to find light novels with the corniest dialogues in the country.
The premise of this animated calamity is—a dude is kind to a cute girl once, and she conveniently lives next to him, so she cleans his room and begins to cook for him. This is the most unrealistic, escapist fantasy plot development imaginable. The author didn't even bother to make the male protagonist look like he tried to do something to make a change in his mundane life. He continues his daily routine, and one day when he comes back from school, he sees the most popular girl in his school in a dire situation and decides to help her out of pity, which is an act that contradicts the rest of his character, or what was supposed to be his character. This writing is absolutely abyssal.
The dual protagonists of the story, Mahiru and Amane, are exceptional characters if exceptional was synonymous with dry and uninteresting. Not to mention, the development of these characters is nonsensical—and like their pathetic dialogue—likely written by ChatGPT. These two characters (if such a term even applies to these walking pieces of white bread) interact in ways that most newly formed couples wouldn’t. Close friends do not act like this with each other, which makes it painfully apparent that the author does not know how people interact and how the romance develops. These interactions are also terribly forced and awkward. It’s painful to watch, really. Their interactions made me want to go and touch grass, so I can finally remember real people are not this gross while interacting with each other. Also, the reveal about Mahiru's parents feels like the author didn't plan it from the start and just wanted to give Mahiru a sad backstory out of the blue. Because there is no way someone who lived the life of Mahiru becomes a teenager without any awful personality traits. The author needs to bring her maid into the story and make that woman the kindest and most caring person in the world. Otherwise, her character arc will be an unnecessarily over-the-top drama.
This show is also a disaster when it comes to production values. I don't know if it's because half of project No.9's staff is working on finding the next boring light novel to adapt, but this show's visual quality feels like three college students decided to make fan animations for fun over the weekend. Character designs, animations, and backgrounds are terrible, as expected from project No.9. Amane's apartment feels like it was made on Sims by a first-time computer user. It's unimaginative and dull, just like the main characters.
In conclusion, this anime is just a waste of time with its lackluster production, attempt at a generic narrative, and laughably terribly-written main characters. I really wish I didn't watch this one and touched grass instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 27, 2022
It is undeniable that Chainsaw Man has gained a significant amount of popularity in recent years, with many hailing it as a masterpiece of the shounen genre. However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that this praise is largely undeserved, and that Chainsaw Man is, in fact, an incredibly mediocre and over-hyped series.
One of the primary reasons for this hype is the high production value of the series, which is often cited as a standout aspect of the show. While it is true that the animation and visuals of Chainsaw Man are impressive, with high-quality action sequences and background design, these elements do not
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completely make up for the numerous awkward-looking scenes and the heavy reliance on CGI. It seems that much of the show's notoriously high budget was poured into the explosive and visually impressive endings as well as hiring twelve different popular artists to make them, rather than the overall quality of the show itself.
Furthermore, the story and characters of Chainsaw Man are completely bland and generic, lacking any depth or originality. Most characters fall into very common tropes that have been beaten to death, like Aki, who is the shounen genre’s twentieth Sasuke copy. The plot follows the typical shounen formula of a goofy, a semi-charismatic protagonist fighting against increasingly powerful enemies (with poor and incomprehensible power scaling). But the twist for csm is that this mc’s most stand-out feature is being horny instead of being hungry. With shallow and surface-level character development, the characters themselves are one-dimensional and fail to leave a lasting impression, with most of the side characters simply serving as vehicles for the plot and "huge twists" when side character A & B die an inconsequential death to show how strong the antagonist is.
To further expand on the lackluster character writing, let's break down a few specific characters. First, Makima, the most beloved character in csm. She is commonly touted as a remarkable and incredibly well-written villain, but in reality, the biggest twist she brings to the table is her gender. If an antagonist was exactly like her, and manipulated Denji in a way that wasn't sexual, then the character would just be incredibly average, and nobody would care about them. Makima isn’t the only character carried on the back of horny anime fans, but Kobeni is too. To be frank, she’s just incredibly unlikable. She only cries and screams and proceeds to make the wrong decision at almost every opportunity. She did only one thing right in this entire season, but she was crying while doing it, and did a half-assed job of it too. For the rest of the main cast, Power and Denji are fine, they serve a decent job as comic relief type characters, but they still aren’t that stand-out in that regard either. I will not elaborate further on Aki being a Sasuke clone, that is the plain and simple truth.
With all the criticism out of the way, none of that is to say that Chainsaw Man is a horrible show, it is just remarkably average. The high-production value and the one-note characters are enough to derive enjoyment from when watching this anime, at least to the point of not being bored, but this series is nowhere near the masterpiece it is claimed to be. It’s as bland as demon slayer but has a little more gore and more mature aspects but they aren’t handled maturely they’re just used in gross excess that detracts all meaning. But the series possessing those aspects is enough for fans to convince themselves that csm is a profound, deep, and mature work.
In conclusion, while Chainsaw Man may have impressive production values and action sequences, it is ultimately a mediocre and over-hyped series that fails to deliver in terms of storytelling and character development. Its relatively good fight-scenes and twelve unique endings cannot make up for its shallow and generic narrative, making it just an average to slightly enjoyable watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 9, 2022
Story: 7/10 – Generally, I dislike it when fans of a series say things along the lines of “oh it was written by this particular author, it doesn’t need to make sense.” I hate it. However. I really do think it works for this batch of Stone Ocean. Why? I do not know, don’t ask that question. There were less stand fights this part, but each of them was more enjoyable than the rest of the fights in Stone Ocean by far and really brought out the best in each member of the main cast. The stands themselves were a lot more fun than in
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previous parts, especially underworld. With that said, there was a lot of bullshit (but hey it’s Araki so who cares), and bullshit aside there was a lot of stuff that just made zero sense, like why the main crew decided to bring Versus along with them. Usually, the main cast would just pummel the enemy until they couldn’t move and then leave. Not this time, they took him along with them and even let him drive the car, which led to a main character death, which feels like the only reason that Araki forced in that out of character bit. There were a few other bits that didn’t make much sense, but hey who cares, funny floating space shuttle.
Animation: 6/10 – I heard a lot of negative things about the production of this part before I got to watching it, and to be honest… those people were right. There were a lot of issues with the adaptation of scenes in this anime, at times it felt like they were just trying to animate the manga panels themselves and not adapt them to a different form of media. However, that didn’t too frequently detract from my enjoyment of it. There was also a good bit of scenes that I just thought looked amazing or at least, awesome. The art style is still the same it isn't offensive to look at, at least, so I’d say the visuals are just passable.
Sound: 8/10 – It’s JoJo’s there isn’t much to say. Solid osts and funny sound effects when punching. What more can you want.
Characters: 7/10 – As I mentioned in the story bit, I think the main cast in this batch was utilized a lot better than in the previous two. The characters used their abilities well in a way that was enjoyable, and it showcased their growth in a meaningful way. They all felt a lot more competent and mature than before, and I never got bored of or disliked any of the main characters. That said, the random stand users weren’t fun either, except for Rikiel, who had the lamest stand but the best character. I also thought that Pucchi as a villain was enjoyable. He always looked down on others and he was always confident that he would achieve his goal. Yet, the moment he was on the ground he groveled and begged for mercy despite showing none. This isn’t an uncommon thing to see, but I feel like it worked well for Pucchi because of how drastic a change that was from his normal position of power and as the main antagonist, it was just entertaining. Emporio also balls out hard, which was pretty hype.
Enjoyment: 7.5/10: Solid JoJo part overall. In my opinion it was better than part 1 and 5 easily, and the average person will probably enjoy it more than part 3 (not me though, that’s my favorite part). If you can make it through the two previous batches which are a lot more mediocre, then this is worth the payoff. I will say it’s overrated though, so don’t go into it expecting an absolute masterclass. It isn’t the pinnacle of anime as many reviews will portray it as, but it’s still enjoyable and worth watching if you’re interested.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 25, 2022
this review is SPOILER FREE
Story - 2
The narrative of Bleach is, in summary, a failure. The pacing of this show is god awful; and I even skipped the filler. The arcs were very generic and predictable, nothing noteworthy really. Now what is noteworthy, is how terrible the powerscaling in the show is. No show that I have seen has worse powerscaling than Bleach does. Without spoiling, mc beats a character in one arc, then he gets a big shounen power up, loses to someone in the next arc, and then the person that he beat in the previous arc shitstomps the person he lost to
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(without a big shounen power-up, mind you), this is not a one-time occurrence, it's frequent and happened not with just that one character but with multiple. People that lost to other people besides Ichigo also had similar things happen with them.
Art/animation - 3
I know the show is older, and maybe I've been spoiled on more modern animation but it really is below average. Especially for a battle shounen. Older shounens, like the other 2 in the big three and dragon ball perhaps managed to deliver more appealing fight scenes than Bleach, i cannot say that I enjoyed watching a single one of them. As for the art itself, some of it was cool; but a lot of the character designs like for captains and arrancar were just copy and paste. Some characters had good designs and others had terrible designs. I would go further into that but that's spoiler territory right there
Sound - 7
the openings are all pretty good, and there were a few bangers, same can be said about the OST. The OST had a few standout songs like Treachery, but it still wasn't anything crazy. The sound effects themselves were about average or maybe a little above, they weren't standout.
Characters - 6
i found myself really enjoying a lot of the characters, but that's the key word; enjoying. I do not think a majority of the characters were well written, especially the main cast. All of the particularly charismatic characters were side characters or Chad (but he didn't do much and he wasn't particularly well written either). Back to why I claim that the characters were not well written; development was not handled with care and a lot of it felt rushed, and characters acted in ways that seemed really weird or forced. A score of 6 is simultaneously very generous for Bleach's characters but also a little bit of a letdown because some characters were genuinely cool and charismatic fellas that would've shined in a series with a better narrative.
enjoyment - 2
I never understood what people meant by "that show put me to sleep" as I've never almost fallen asleep to a movie or show unless I was severely sleep deprived. However, watching this show i know what those people meant. That said, there were points where I found myself enjoying the show, and some of the characters, especially Urahara and Gin. But all of that aside, during my viewing of Bleach, I have never wanted to drop a show more, it was an absolute slog to get through; the only thing that kept me going was my desire to see the Thousand Year Blood War arc which looks amazing based on the production value. I also wouldn't particularly mind one episode of high-budget Bleach a week.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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