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First manga review time, yay! Like a lot of people I jumped straight into this after watching the first season of the anime. Naturally I enjoyed the first arc, otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to read nearly 200 chapters of this in a few weeks. With that said, did the story live up to the hype after the escape from Grace Field? No, not really, and I'll go in detail further on in this review.



You probably know the gist of the story by now if you're coming into the manga at this point. Group of orphans discover they are being ... cultivated for consumption by "demons" yada yada. The problem we run into as the story progresses however, is that the main characters, Emma especially, are far too idealistic in a setting that would require way more drastic action to be taken in order for the group of children to escape this hellish land. The childrens whole plans hinge on the idea of more than a handful of demons to be accepting of the thought of no longer feeding on them since they have a substitute for them to maintain their forms. The latter arcs are absolute by the numbers shonen tropes and bring nothing ambitious to the table along with being clearly rushed with the conclusion. Lastly to mention, none of the villains other than Isabelle were fully realized, they were bad just for plot convenience. The only real good addition characters wise since the first arc if you ask me was Yugo.


The art maintains quality throughout, while being nothing amazing, it still serves its purpose.

There was a modicum of enjoyment to be had after the first arc of this series, but there was a definite drop in quality and it's a shame since there was promise (heh) in it.


I'd only recommend completing this if you're a hardcore Weekly Shonen Jump or horror manga fan,

This isn't your typical isekai series, friends. Long before the darker modern hits a la Re:Zero, we had a series like Now and Then, Here and There, which for the most part has flown under the radar of the scope of "popular isekai". While understandably it was nearly 13 years before SAO and even so 3 years before most of my generations first exposure of the "genre" with .hack//Sign, this series had still managed to hold a reputation amongst its cult following. Minor spoilers ahead:



Story: The vast portion of Now and Then, Here and There takes place on a dystopian version version of Earth with ... a major lack of a vital substance to keep all life sustaining, in water. Without such a key thing in human survival one tyranical ruler in King Hamdo goes out of his way to pillage villages, making his army to either kill or enslave its inhabitants so nobody can oppose his monopolization of water. This whole process has come to a head with him obsessing over capturing and using to his own whim of Lala-Ru and her prowess of water. Our Mc, Shu, being as stubborn as he is puts himself through hell to make sure the aforementioned King Hamdo cannot exploit and mistreats her. This leads to his inevitable search and rescue of Lala-Ru and their eventual desertion to a remote cave town far off into the desert.


Art: The art in this series is pretty par, not gonna lie. Nothing really sticks at as being good, however dealing with how barren the setting is, there really isn't too much you can do to make it look aesthetically pleasing or glamorous. The character designs are typical of what you'd see at the time and there's no real problems with the animation.


Sound: Overall I do enjoy the music of the series and it does have some highly credible staff who worked on it. Kazuya Tanaka, of Mushishi fame did the sound directing and Toshio Masuda, of also Mushishi and Naruto fame composed the OP. The mix of synth and folk music added into the depressing nature of the world and it definitely helped the immersion. From what I watched of the dub a while back, I didn't really care for and the only real standout in the sub for me was King Hamdo.


Characters: For the the characters we have our MC, Shu, who in the most part would be your typical shonen MC. He's stubborn to a fault, he endures hell to protect his friends and imposes his sense of justice on the crazy bastards like Hamdo and tries to convince the the child soldiers that what they were practical brainwashed into doing, was in fact not worth doing. Lala-Ru through the entire story mostly still remains a mystery. We never really got to find out how she ended up in Shu's time and the biggest tidbit of information we ever received was her immense power of water via her gem. Nabuca was probably the most interesting character to me. He constantly struggled with what was right and wrong after Shu saved him early on in the series. He was far from perfect, he had to end up committing horrible acts and struggled deeply with them up until the end. Despite being the dring force of the horrible events of the show, King Hamdo felt pretty flat. He felt purely evil just to be evil. There was no grand reason behind his motives, the dude was just nuts.



For the most part I enjoyed Now and Then, Here and There. Was it perfect by any means? No, however it's nice to find new series withing isekai that doesn't fall for the typical self insert OP'd power fantasy like most of it does now. If you're looking for a more mature take on isekai,this is definitely a front runner in the category.



Pros: A unique spin on isekai
Immersive soundtrack
Crushing atmosphere

Cons: some flat characters
art is somewhat mediocre


For recommendations try: Bokurano, another dark story of human nature surrounding kids and Re:Zero, cheerful MC ending up in a twisted world they were not prepared for


Thank you again to everyone who reads my reviews, hopefully, you'll enjoy your experience with this series.

Somali was too darn sweet and comfy for its own good. There's something that draws me into these stories of "things that typically don't have emotions develop feelings for a human being". Without further ado, here's my review (yay first of 2020!) of Somali and the Forest Spirit.


The story of this particular series is absolutely nothing revolutionary, but it doesn't need to be. The whole thing is pertaining to the adventure and growth of the two main leads: Somali and Golem. Along the way we get to see these two grow together and watch Golem develop a soft spot for a small, abandoned girl that ... he named, Somali. Along the way, we are treated to lush, vibrant towns full of ogres, witches, rabbits, you name them. Throughout these towns we get a brief view of their lives while Golem is trying to find information on human beings in search for a way to find Somali's parents. These setting are quaint and very effective for building up a lore. The only problem with it, is with it only being a 12 episode series we didn't get much info on how these towns were started and how they were effected by the constant conflicts with the humans the creatures practically wiped out.


The art is quite possibly the biggest standout of Somali. The backgrounds look spectacular and the characters seem to be moving around high quality paintings. The colors are very bright and bring a breath of life to the world. It seethes fantasy aesthetic to a T. The main cast all looks distinguishable, the creatures all looks unique and the towns look like they came right out of your comfy country fantasy. The animation of isn't the most amazing thing in the world, but the overall art more than makes up for it since after all, this series is mostly focused around narrative, not action.


Overall, Somali and the Forest Spirit was a enjoyable show to watch and was very helpful in relieving some stress due to its absolute c o m f y n e s s.


Pros: very heartwarming premise, amazing backgrounds

Cons: could use more fleshing out with its world building

For recommendations go for: Made in Abyss and The Ancient Magus Bride


Thank you again to everyone who reads my reviews, despite this one being on the bit shorter side (to be fair I feel like this is one of the more needed to be experienced than talk about series due to its nature but w/e). Hopefully this review helped you guys out.

Freedom ain't worth shit if it's handed to you. Coming into Carole & Tuesday I was definitely stoked. Studio Bones, Shinichiro Watanabe at the helm and a music anime to boot. From finding one's own place in the world, to the lives of the oppressed and privileged, and to accomplishing your dreams. Let's delve deeper into Watanabe's latest effort.



Story-

We start off our story by seeing Tuesday take her luggage and guitar then running away from home. She sets off to the city, which might as well be a whole foreign planet to her. She blissfully explores it, meanwhile getting her luggage stolen, until she ... manages to stumble upon Carole playing on a bridge. The two hit it off almost immediately and end up living together, ultimately forming a music group together. Through the experiences and journeys they take their bond grows through their music and through themselves. The overall tone is enlightening, a tad goofy and even somber at times.
The writing made it clear from the get go that the message was about acceptance and freedom for all walks of life and I can truly appreciate the sentiment since music isn't made to discriminate but to bring people together through acceptance. It's a very divisive issue on here that some have said to be "SJW pandering" or other nonsense like that, but it's a very real issue for the music industry and human beings deal with it every day of our lives.


Art- All the characters look distinguishable, fashionable and every last one of them have their own unique flair. This is signature Watanabe, he bleeds style directing at his core. The locations look beautiful and well crafted and the animation looks crisp and well defined, hell the CGI is pretty good too. Bones hits the mark once again.


Sound-


Now being a series based around music, this is a vital aspect. We get representations of all different kinds of genres here: pop, rap, electronic, r&b, you name it on a major genre level and its here. While a lot of it wasn't my cup of tea, it works well with the show and represents all the different types of people that are out there and their love for said music. My only major gripe with the music is how a lot of the singing voices don't feel like they fit well with the characters, especially with the two main characters. The voice acting as a whole is done well and I enjoyed the dub for it, yes I know, sue me I watched it dubbed.




Characters-

Firstly we have Carole, raised as an orphan in a refugee camp she ran away and moved to the city. While there she begins her aspiration of creating music and lives mostly day to day and carefree. She never got to find out much about her parents until around half way into the series and lived presumably like her own life was typical. Next up we have Tuesday, a ditsy girl brought up in a rich household devoid of any affection from her family. She decides one day to run away to pursue her love of music and ends up building a strong bond with the aforementioned Carole. Next is Gus, a washed up former musician who takes over the manager role to help support the girls onto a successful path. This is to make amends with how his own career played out and to make sure these young kids don't end up how he did, in a similar way as Danpei does with Yabuki Joe. T round up the main cast is Roddy and Angela. Roddy was Carole and Tuesday's first true fan, helping them through them gain ground through social media and other outlets to garner adoration for them. Angela plays the quintessential rival C&T for a majority of the series, while battling through her own ways of capturing individualism from her initial career and mother.




Enjoyment-


It was pretty damn good. It feels nice to be able to sit and binge a show for the first time in a while. Some issues that don't really hamper the product, but it was still a good series with a great message to it.


Recommendations: Beck and Kids on the Slope



Again as always, thanks for reading my reviews. Hope it helped you guys out.

Another season has come and gone and so along with it the continuation of a trashy harem series. At this rate, if you've watched the first season or other harem in general, you knew what you were getting with this. Time for my review of the second season of We Never Learn.


Story-

Our story of course, is the continuation of a harem series that debuted in the Spring season of this year. It's your typical harem, characters get set up in awkward predicaments, misunderstandings happen, humor ensues. While it serves its purpose, its by far nothing new or exhilarating. Face it, we watch this genre ... for one thing: to turn our brains off and cheer for our favorite ship.


Art-

As a whole the art won't blow you away. The girls look cute and adorable, Nariyuki still looks your run of the mill MC, not much to cover here. Again, if you watched the first season, nothing has changed worth noting.



Characters-

With the genre we're dealing with, this is the pivotal aspect when deciding how much you're actually going to endorse into this series. Thankfully, with We Never Learn I feel like all the girls at least bring something positive to the table, especially Fumino. Her arc involving her dad was easily the most entertaining aspect of this second season.




Enjoyment-


Overall, eh. Season wasn't all that good, but it wasn't frustratingly irritating for a second season like Nisekoi was. This genre will always fall more into the guilty pleasure for people despite most of them having glaring issues. I guess we never learn.


Recommendations: Quintessential Quintuplets and Ore suki



(Future note for my later reviews: I'm probably just going to end up skipping the sound grading because they usually tend to say the same thing on all of them, so i'll only comment on it if it made an impact on me)




Thanks again for reading my reviews, I know this one isn't the greatest but I still appreciate any feedback you guys give me and as always I hope my opinions help.

Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) was a hell of a ride the first season, pun intended for the upcoming movie. I first became interested in the series once I learned that Ufotable was animating it, about a month or so before the first episodes premiere. Watched the first episode and was thoroughly impressed with the music and the way the CGI was handled. Went on to show my best friend it then the madman bought all the available volumes that were out. As someone who's caught up with the manga themselves, the anime has for the most part blown the source material out of the ... water. Enough with the babbling though, here's my review for the potential anime of the year.


Story: Yes, yes we've seen it reiterated to ad nauseam, the story is nothing revolutionary and somewhat cliched. Your tried and true revenge story with a tinge of returning a loved one back to normal. The story is a-la Dororo and Fullmetal Alchemist combined to make a love child of the two. While cliches might turn some viewers off, I will always maintain the ideology that cliche is not inherently bad, it's how the author presents these familiar ideas and molds them into their own is where a series finds its true merit. The story is absolutely serviceable and sets out what it wants to achieve.


Art/Animation: The character design primarily is definitely one of Gotouge's strong suits. Each character with an important role to play is clearly distinguishable from one another and they all seem to have a subtle aura to them that I can't quite decide on how to describe. The backgrounds come to life with the studios touch and makes the experience that much more easier to immerse yourself. The animation is what truly gives Demon Slayer's OMPH where it starts showing where the ones who are bringing the series to life know exactly how to handle the material. For example: when Tanjiro is fighting the demon with the drum, it's really muddied and scattered in the manga which effects the legibility of how the fight is playing out. Within the anime however, we get to see crystal clear with the clever use of the CG for the rotating room, which in turn made the battle easier to digest. The fight with Rui in the manga itself really wasn't anything special, but with cleverly used techniques the animators made it a scene that not only made the anime as hyped as it is today, but made it a completely unforgettable moment that made use as a viewer feel a plethora of emotion.




Sound: The music is fitting of Demon Slayer to a T. From the folk tracks to fit with the historical and rural vibes, to the ending track of episode 19 and not to forget a great OP and ED too. As a music lover, I will always feel a good ost is better to experience than to read up about, go listen to some of the tracks in your free time the composer did a damn good job with the soundtrack. The VA's all fit their roles well and bring the characters to life for a memorable cast. Tanjiro has a very balanced and well thought choice for an actor, Zenitsu's VA portrays his character perfectly (find him annoying all you want), Inosuke has his brash and boneheaded personality shine through and Shinobu has a very calming yet haunting voice.




Characters: The main group is the main focus here and was pretty polarizing for the greater part of the community. Tanjiro has a great sense of justice. He's not overly serious and edgy which too many MC's love falling into with a story about revenge. He cares deeply about his family and friends, he has empathy towards the demons despite the tragedies they have caused, he's understanding of their positions but realizes the crimes they've committed are not to be forgiven easily. He's a very human character with his own faults, but is someone who can be looked up to. There's not too much to describe Nezuko up to this point as except cute and S M O L. She's the lone survivor of Tanjiro's family that was massacred while he was away in town and plays the role for Tanjiro's motivation to not only help her but others afflicted by the wrath of demons. Zenitsu is....something. He can be rather irritating and nerve grating with his behavior, despite him clearly being played up to being comedy relief. He has his moments, but I can get behind why most don't like him. He's essentially a far removed character from tragedy thrown into massive shenaningans which most normal people wouldn't be able to handle either. Inosuke is a very "what you see is what you get" type. He's stuck in his ways, stubborn to a fault and crude as one can be. His dimwitted nature makes him lovable if you ask me.




Enjoyment: Demon Slayer has not only been a treat to read, but an even bigger delight to watch every Saturday and I'm sad to see it be done for the time being. TRAIN HYPE BAYBE. I'm glad to see the hype its garnered since before the premiere to now. The holdovers from non-seasonal watchers and dub watchers eat your heart out on this anime, Ufotable 100% delivered. Keep those memes coming everybody.




Overall: The overall experience will not be one I'll forget anytime soon and I'm patiently waiting for that upcoming movie. If you're a shonen fan, watch this as soon as you can if you haven't. For further recommendations I recommend: Dororo and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.


Thank you again for everybody who takes their time to read my reviews, any support is much appreciated. I hope this review was helpful in any way.

Started for the premise, stayed for Senku. I've been hearing about this series for around a year now and was initially just going to watch the anime until I saw the series at a bookstore and said "why not" and picked up the first two volumes and boy was it worth it. So here we are around the beginning of the village arc after today's episode. This review will be more along the lines of nudging skeptical viewers to delve deeper into the actual quality part of the series. Without further delay, here's my review of Dr Stone so far.



Story: One day a mysterious ray ... of light enshrouds the Earth and petrifies all humans and Swallows. After the brief scenes of Senku, Taiju and Yuzurih'as daily lives we are first introduced fully to Taiju after he awakens from his cryogenic/petrification comatose sleep. After Taiju wanders around his new surroundings he stumbles upon Yuzuriha's body, confused on what to do next he treks around the area until he is spotted by his childhood friend Senku, who has already awoken from his petrified state. After Senku briefs the aforementioned Taiju on the situation we are treated to some of the various things Senku is knowledgeable towards to aid in their survival and slow restoration of the human race. From here onto the end of this prologue arc we are introduced to the artisan Yuzuriha, Taiju's crush, and the brash idealistic Tsukasa, who's ideal restoration of the human race is to eliminate all the "bad" humans so history won't repeat itself. The story and setting are absolutely unique and a breath of fresh air to not only shonen typical anime but the medium as a whole. This prologue arc honestly tends to drag and as a manga reader I can only assure once it gets to the upcoming village arc we'll get to the part of Dr Stone that becomes truly entertaining and a treat to sit through and watch the reintroducing of inventions unfold.




Art: The art of Dr Stone is in simple terms fantastic. TMS did a great job of bringing Boichi's art to life. The characters look crisp and unique. They have a boldness to them while maintaining a slick charm. The only nitpicking I really have towards the characters is that you don't get the same breathtaking upgrade in quality of the art as it does it the source since it doesn't translate well into animation as it does there. The scenery of the Stone World looks vibrant and vivid too, bringing the casts surroundings to life along with them.



Sound: It's nothing spectacular, the music fits the overall mood and gives you a sense of adventure, basically does its job. The VA casting is up to par as well with a few notable Seiyuu, my favorite being Tsukasa's VA (I miss my boy Bucciaratti already).



Characters: I'mma be real with you guys, the characters upcoming are a heap better than Taiju and Yuzuriha (ecstatic to see my man Chrome soon and the adorable Suika). Firstly, we have the snide, smug, seemingly arrogant Senku. The brilliance about Senku is that he's clearly above and beyond most human beings in intelligence, but not the point of being a Mary Sue. He forgets things like any other human would and has his odd quirks. The true entertaining factor of this series mostly revolves around the ways he's able to adapt to bring inventions back into the society with basically zero technology to due so, so we see his crafty ways of getting out of hairy situations, i.e the pulley he made in the recent episode to save Kohaku. Next we have the head-strong, diligent, stamina machine Taiju. Taiju is a very simplistic character, he likes his friends, he has a massive crush on Yuzuriha and he's an endless supply of muscle to help out Senku on his journey to rebuild society to its former glory. He's rather one-dimensional and doesn't serve much early on outside of grunt work and comic relief. Just like Taiju, Yuzuriha thus far is nothing special. All that's really been given to us is that she's good with crafting and that she cares for Taiju and Senku, again pretty bland. Last of the early cast we have the main antagonist, Tsukasa. Tsukasa's ideal world is to eliminate the weak and evil to create a perfect world. He's essentially a Tarzan Light Yagami. He's idealic and will use brute force to take down those oppose his perfect world. Not only is he incredibly strong, as shown early on he can take down feral animals by himself, he is also incredibly intelligent being able to keep up with Senku when he's plotting to escape Tsukasa. Overall, the prologue cast is hit or miss. Without Senku and Tsukasa, most would've dropped this incredibly early on and it's somewhat hard to blame them.




Enoyment: Dr Stone early on isn't the greatest, but it significantly approves once the first major arc starts. Senku is still great to see in all of his radish haired glory and I can't wait to see him go deeper into his invention madness soon, along with the village pals. I'd quite honestly recommend binging this season once its over apposed to weekly as you will be able to see Senku's inventions unfold at a faster pace.


Pros-
Great MC and antagonist
Amazing art style
Fantastic premise


Cons-
Some of the content doesn't translate well from the source
Half the main cast early on are rather flat



Once again, thank you for reading my reviews and I hope you guys give this show more of a chance if you were on the skeptical side within the first handful of episodes.

Rev your engines and blare the eurobeat, it's time for an Initial D review by yours truly (minor spoilers might be ahead):


Story-

The story of Initial D as a whole is definitely nothing revolutionary, character who is naturally skilled at drifting finds his desire to win races over the course of the 26 episode span. The technical speak will shine with car enthusiasts, while not being overbearing on newcomers of the interest. Overall, it's a straightforward premise that meets out what it set out to do.


Art-

...
This part of the series this early on is 100% its weak point. The animation itself is also pretty muddied and dark in a way that doesn't benefit the look of the anime. Shuuichi Shigeno's character design isn't very pristine or distinguishable at times, where as multiple male characters tend to look rather similar, from their build to even their hairstyles. Takumi, Ryosuke and Kenji look like the same character template at first glance. The priority here absolutely were the cars and boy he did a good job on making them look slick. Now for the big ol' elephant with stage 1 and 2. That CGI, man. Booooooy, it has not aged well. I'll at least give it credit for not being a choppy 10 frames or less nightmare like shit we seem to get now. I get they were running on a limited budget and this season is over 20 years old now, but it did take getting used to.



Sound-


Best anime soundtrack ever. This kind of enhancement the music gave the series is incredibly rare. The only other series that pops to my head that performed on this kind of level is Cowboy Bebop with its symbiotic relationship to Bebop itself. Competing with Yoko Kanno is no small feat and I applaud whoever decided that eurobeat would fit Initial D, because my god, it did.

I only got one word necessary to describe the songs used in this show: Hype




Characters-

Mainly focusing on Takumi, and Takumi's friends, I highly enjoyed most of them and their development. Stage 1 is easily the most narrative driven for Takumi's friends and Stage 4 is where we get to see more of that. Takumi is an air head who really doesn't care for much of anything until he discovers his burning desire to win. Over the course of Stage 1 and 2 we get to see him take the steps into becoming a serious driver while overcoming several obstacles along his way wether it be, well known highly skilled drivers or drivers who'd do basically anything to win. Itsuki is a self-proclaimed member of Iketani's squad and more or less serves as the side-kick, best friend "racer" to Takumi. He comes off as a goober or a dolt a lot of the times, however it's usually in the interest for the best for his friends. Iketani is the coworker of Takumi and Itsuki, whom brings in a lot of the technical jargen to help his juniors understand their cars more. He's somewhat brash and thick headed over Takumi's abilities, but he plays a driving force into Takumi's first steps into a better racer. The Takahashi brothers are great as well, but get most of their development in Stage 4 and beyond. Keisuke is more or less Takumi's rival who's always trying to better himself throughout series, meanwhile Ryosuke the older brother is a cool-headed student of the game type. Always taking hours on end to study the courses and racers under his wing to improve them.



Bonus:

Voice acting-

Both the sub and dub VA were great, I prefer versions of characters in each. Both of Ryosuke's VA's are standouts. Takehito Koyasu and J. Michael Tatum are superb at their jobs.






Pros:
Likeable story and characters
Races are entertaining as hell
Soundtrack is the damn GOAT

Cons:
Animation and CG are clearly dated at this point



Thanks again for taking the time for reading my reviews again everybody. Hope you gained some interest into one of my favorite series.

Ueno-san wa Bukiyou was a show that piqued my interest whilst browsing through the seasonals before they began to air. It seemed like it'd be a decently funny slice of life comedy that I might get a few cheap laughs out of. What did we get? A short, unfunny waste of time. I figured since I have yet to a review a show of shorter episode time length, I'll give this a shot. Without further adieu, here's my review on aforementioned show.



To start off we'll begin with the story, there isn't much here due to the nature of Ueno-san but I'll elaborate so you guys ... can get the gist of it. The basic premise is more or less a group of middle school students in a Science club create new experiments . Ueno subjects the other two, Tanaka mainly, to her concoctions in some sort of elaborate ruse to get Tanaka to partake in lewd actions of affection towards Ueno. Meanwhile, Yamashita is mostly a bystander of the others shenanigans. This repeats for the entirety of the 12 episodes, with each episode split up into two separate experiments. It's fairly simple and non-convoluted if that's up your alley, but with it being impeccably formulaic, watching one episode is basically seeing all of them.



Next up is the characters, with there being three main characters. Ueno is uh, a rather perverse character. As I mentioned before, she has a crush on the male MC Tanaka. Her experiments ranged from trying to make Tanaka consuming her urine to him eating her panties (alright Japan). Anytime her crush is finally about to go through with her experiments she chickens out and REEEEEE's in typical tsundere loli fashion. Tanaka himself is either the biggest airhead savant ever created or just so fed up with Ueno's shit that he acts like he's completely unaware of her intentions. I honestly can't pick between the two and I probably don't wanna know. It's not so much of a dynamic of his personality, it's more so of a driving force in the shows "plot". Not really much of you can describe about him other than that it got old quick. Yamashita is long-line character in the deadpan trope. These characters are always hit or miss for me, and it's on the latter end of that spectrum this time around. She gives me hints of Yuki from Haruhi and Mai from Nichijou. More or less there to play along with Ueno's shenanigans, she as well doesn't contribute much of anything.




Lastly, I'll group the art and sound/ost together: Honestly, there isn't much to complain about here, it's incredibly run of the mill in both categories. Nothing really stands out in a good or bad way; it's just there.




Pro's-

Short run time, so even if it's not your cup of tea you can finish it in a couple of hours at most

Falls along of absurdist comedy, which I typically enjoy unfortunately not in this case


Con's-

Jokes are incredibly off-putting

Characters are quite bad

Formulaic nature ruins the longevity of the show


Recommendations: Takagi-san; a more light-hearted sweeter version of this show without the lewd jokes.

Asobi Asobase; A group of middle school girls doing shenanigans in their club-has more mature styled comedy like Ueno-san.



Thanks again, for reading my reviews everyone. I hope this have given you some insight if you want to indulge into this show or not.

This one will be a doozy to say the least. Boogiepop (2019) is the second adaptation of the series and from what I've researched, is more akin to the original source material, whereas Boogiepop Phantom was a sequel to the light novel. Once again produced by studio Madhouse (one of my personal favorite studios) we are re-introduced to the non-sequential story of Boogiepop and the strange occurrences surrounding the "entity". Boogiepop from what I've come to understand was the first hit light novel series and one of the first to receive an animated series. So, with a grain of salt, we should be able to ... appreciate to an extent what Boogiepop has done for the anime community. Gotta take the good and bad that came from it.


We haven't progressed too far into the story as it being we're only four episodes into the series, but I'll at least try to give my interpretation of what's happened thus far. More or less Boogiepop has come off as a gray area of multiple possibilities: a split personality, an entity, or "The Angel of Death". It's completely shrouded in ambiguity what Boogiepop's real nature is at this point. From what I can tell from what we've been given thus far is that it's supposedly a protector of the greater good for humanity. As I've personally not read the source material myself it could be up for change, but I guess we as an audience will see what happens. The first arc of Boogiepop mainly revolves around Echoes, another entity that came from space and its rabid clone Manticore, whom feeds on unsuspecting female students of an academy. As we see from the different perspectives in each episode, we witness how these two foreign creatures effect, mostly in a ghastly way, the lives of the students and mystery behind the disappearances.


The art itself is pretty good and fits the overall aesthetic the series was trying to achieve and shouldn't be too much of a problem for most viewers. The character designs are for the most part distinguishable from each other. My main problem as a whole for this adaptation deals more so with the animation than anything. It's seemingly all over all the place, which is downright odd for a studio as renowned as Madhouse is. The frame rate in the first three episodes seems all over the place especially in action sequences and sadly this damn near ruins almost any atmosphere and immersion for me when it's this noticeable. This is a complete contrast to Boogiepop Phantom where its production is where it nails atmosphere in spades. I can see a plethora of people being put off by the way it was utilized in the original show, but that's what I adored about that show and it created an atmosphere in production that hasn't come close to being replicated except for maybe Serial Experiments Lain, but that's a complete different story. The production and usage of filters in Boogiepop Phantom damn near felt like watching a Team Silent made anime series and my god do I love me some early Silent Hill.


The OST/sound is what absolutely makes up for the poor animation of the early arc. The composer absolutely hit it out of the park with the music selection. From the various usages of ambient, dark ambient and a hint of dream pop. This will go down as OST of the season, maybe of the year for me. Absolutely fantastic music and this is where the /true/ atmosphere of Boogiepop (2019) comes into play.



Describing the characters for Boogiepop is something I personally can't do much of, because quite frankly due its nature and the pacing/structure of the show, there's not much I can say about them. I've more or less went into detail about Boogiepop already and its clearly, outside of Kirima Nagi, the most re-occuring character so far. Kirima herself is still shrouded in too much ambiguity to fully analyze her, all I can deduce is that she's basically the daughter of the author of those murder/psychological books that keep popping up and that she's protecting students of the academy. This is the biggest problem of doing a preliminary review, I just don't have enough information yet to fully comment on the characters in an episodic series of this nature.



Pros-
Mildly intriguing mystery
Good art/characters design
Amazing OST and OP


Cons-
Harder to follow for casual anime watchers (I watched the first arc like three times before writing this review myself)
Animation issues


For recommendations definitely go check out the original series, it may look dated now but it's still definitely an interesting watch, Baccano, and Durarara. Hell, go watch Pulp Fiction too if you like story structure like Boogiepop. Hope you guys find this review helpful and insightful.