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Jan 22, 2017
I wanted to like this manga. I really tried to like it, persisting in the hopes it would improve. Maybe you'll have better luck with it but I just couldn't get myself to care about any of the characters. I was promised "charming" and amusing, I personally wasn't getting either.
The issue I have with the story is that it strains believable far beyond anything I can cope with. Not in the sense that it's physically unbelievable, though from a quick skim of the last few chapters it seems it did end up that way, I mean the characters and their behaviour
...
is unbelievable.
Actually, let me summarise the premise as it appears to me:
Business dynasty heir experiencing extreme pressure and expectations discovers a colony of homeless lunatics and criminals and decides the most rational way to repay a life debt is to join them and pretend to be insane as well, somehow overlooking the multiplicity of issues and better ideas.
Spoiler: Seems like 410 chapters later he's still living under the bridge and things are even less sane.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 16, 2016
Story: 6 / Character: 6 / Enjoyment: 8
Overall: 6
It's not terrible, even if it really should be. I can't take any of it seriously. You're probably not supposed to though.
This is an anime based on a TCG and it shows in the story. Much of the faults in the story and characters seem to track back to that, they have to work with the source material even if it's not suitable.
If you can overlook the fact that the show regularly makes no sense, it's actually worth watching.
You know, I don't think it's ever explained how the Progress without wings are able to
...
fly. Nya kinda makes sense, but Saya has no excuse at all.
There are definitely some good bits...
- Amane-chan... she's almost a good enough reason to watch this by herself. Moe factor 10 engaged! Comedy value off the scale.
- Alma ... a vampire who doesn't like drinking blood because she feels it's too intimate. It doesn't get old, really doesn't. Sex jokes for days.
- If you like yuri you'll be in heaven. I don't think there's a single male character on screen for longer an a couple of seconds and that gives us lots of girls to be cute. As you might expect, more than half of them turn out to have a strong attraction for one of the others. Weirdly, most of the character progression seems to involve increasing the yuri vibe.
- The Green World sisters. Starting episode 4, you get at least one comedy inserts from them each episode. It has nothing to do with the plot but they're absolutely hilarious. The two C-class helpers are also funny but they don't get as much screen time. The obviousness of some of the jokes doesn't diminish the comedy value at all.
- The "5 worlds" plot point is helpful in providing some varied environments. It's handy to have an excuse to vary things up like that without it feeling contrived.
- Being so hard to take seriously also means you don't have to think too hard... this is a good binge watch you don't have to worry about.
- The art style regularly drops to a less serious style that actually seems to help.
Basic summary goes something like this...
For never adequately explained reasons, the world is under attack by faceless enemy robots who are using unexplained plot powers to destroy the known worlds for no readily apparent reason.
The first big battle turns out to be a trap that should have been a painfully obvious, that everyone falls for anyway. Our main protagonists survive the disaster that knocks out every other useful Progress largely on account of how terrible they are at doing their one main job.
It's now left largely to our dysfunctional hero team to save the worlds from inevitable doom. Along the way we get a healthy dose of exposition and character flaw fixing. We also discover that defeating the enemy involves vaporising their clothes for some reason.
It's heavily implied through out the series that the enemy attacks are mostly just to entertain the enemy ... if they'd done just the first and last attacks they'd have been bored but victorious. Yeah, go figure.
By the end they're considerably less dysfunctional and it's time for the show down, at which point a bunch of "oh come on, seriously?" moments occur and someone uses a Sega Dreamcast to save the world (I'm not kidding).
The curtain comes down and we've still got a lot of unanswered questions, and we still don't quite understand what the bad guys are getting out of it, but it looks like all the good guys are safe.
Art: 6
It definitely has it's moments but I can't rate it highly. Most of the time it's actually a 7.5 regularly jumping to 8, I'm docking it heavily because this really should be subtitled "The conveniently placed cloud and light bloom show!"
Let me explain, see how it's rated for "Mild nudity"? Yeah, that's total nonsense.
See, these girls have two main modes, "World saving" and "Hanging around naked". They spend most of their time doing one or the other, and since there's only so much time you can spend fighting they tend to spend most of their time naked.
To avoid a more serious nudity rating they use a lot of conveniently placed obstructions but failing that, there's clouds and light beams that obscure their fun bits along with a pretty large chunk of the rest of the shot. Urg.
I rather hope they release an uncensored version, just because getting rid of the light beams would make the whole thing easier to watch :( This is a case where nudity isn't a good thing.
Sound: 3
Some of the voice acting sounds annoyingly similar, but no, this shows gets a low mark for one simple reason: Why does Stella sound like a petrol engine when she's flying around using some kind of jet engine? That single atrocious choice of sound effect gets the series a 3.
I also have a gripe about the annoying line in the OP (Love is MY RAIL) where she's had to stuff so much in to a single line that it sounds like they slowed down the song just to fit it in, but otherwise the OP and ED fit the show reasonably well. They're not overly flashy but get the job done, which is what you want if you don't want to distract too much from the show. I'm going to over look how it sounds like she sings "Love is my lane".
The heavy use of 10-codes is gets old, but eh, what can you do in a military setting.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 7, 2016
If you're looking for a show with a deep and complex plot, this isn't it.
If you're looking for a show that takes it self seriously, it's definitely not this.
That comedy tag is quite justified, this is quite the parody show with just enough story and character development to make it more than a series of jokes. On paper this show's recipe could easily have gone horrible wrong, but as it is they pretty much nailed it.
Oh, and this show is definitely in the "blatant sexual references" territory.
This should be spoiler free, though the character descriptions for Megumin and Darkness should be skipped if you
...
want to get the full facepalm value out of their introductions.
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Story: 7
Character: 10
First up, our "hero" Kazuma is a text book Dangerously Genre Savvy character. Which is actually allowed since he has a plausible in universe reason for having that knowledge. A standard shut-in trope, he turns out to actually be the most useful character in most situations simply by being normal and thus capable of maintaining rational thought for more than 5 seconds. He's kind of pathetic at times, but you have to feel sorry for him.
If you like a smart ass with dry wit, you'll like Kazuma.
Next we have Aqua. I had a hard time putting my finger on exactly which trope she best fits but I'll go with Beware the Silly Ones. Deities are supposed to be powerful, wise and all knowing, so go figure that Kazuma gets landed with one that's thick as two short planks and backfires almost as often as she lands an attack. Obviously she also tends to forget to inform the party of her abilities until after everyone else has freaked out that said ability is necessary.
As an offensive mage we have Megumin, a character I can only imagine was created from taking the description "Black Mage Glass Cannon" and running with it. She is the physical embodiment of "Go Big or Go Home", a character that solves every problem by turning in to a crater. She's cute, in a constantly face palming kind of way. She also seems to be sexually attracted to explosions.
And, to round out the party we have poor Darkness. You might think she looks like some kind of Paladin, but you'd be wrong. See she would have taken the book on how to be a Paladin and thrown it out the window, except she'd likely miss the window. A literal meat shield most of the time, and entirely aware of it. To offset the potential for her being pathetic she's also cute and mostly sane and reasonable. Mostly. She's stubborn and reckless. She's also a perverted masochist... this might be handy for a meat shield if she didn't get so turned on by being beaten up.
Surrounding them is a cast of RPG tropes who some how don't come off as being two dimensional, opposing them are some bad guys that seem hilarious when they're not demonstrating genuine lethal capacity.
So, the story isn't outstanding, but it's not terrible either. Really the complaint is more that it's so short, rather than that what there is of it is bad. I figure this will improve when season 2 gets released. The characters sell the show though.
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Art: 8
Sound: 8
No real complaints on either count, just a few slightly off bits.
The art is solid even if it isn't classic masterpiece levels of eye candy, the effects look nice and there's not much in the way of blatantly reused footage that I noted. They probably reused some environmental backgrounds, given the number of scenes that happened in the same core places, but I don't think you'll notice them unless you're specifically looking for them. I'd give it a 9, but I think they had a little too much fun with some of the scantily clad characters.
Sound is similarly solid. The themes are nice, though they don't quite seem to have gotten stuck in my head the way some have. Nothing terrible is jumping out at me about the voice acting or the effects. The only thing that bugged me was that it could be difficult to tell if you were hearing Kazuma speaking or thinking, some more distinction would have been nice.
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Enjoyment: 10
Overall: 9
It's a parody comedy with adult themes. If it's the sort of thing you like you'll find it hilarious, if it misses the spot you'll probably find it a bit meh and drop it. Give it 3 episodes, that should be enough to figure out if you want to watch the rest.
9/10, would "feed" useless party members to a giant toad, again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Aug 13, 2016
I can understand why this show gets the hate it does, but I think some of it is undeserved.
Story wise there is a strange collision of mythos that actually works some how. A few bits to highlight:
- Hestia is an odd interpretation, though some of it fits. Classically she is the Goddess of hearth, home and family, so here feelings towards Bell kind of fit, but she's also classically under a vow of chastity. She's also one of the oldest in the Greek pantheon, so really she should get more respect from the other deities. She is a somewhat non-confrontational Goddess, lacks
...
the kind of domain specific skills that the others have, and is generally less well known, all of which fits her character in DanMachi.
- Hephaestus... I'm not going to say much on her other than that there is precedent in relevant mythology for Gods to switch sex for fun.
- Freya, being a Norse Goddess, is tricky. I don't think she's classically as mean as she's being portrayed here, but she is a patron for love, sex, war and death, so it's not a huge leap.
- The tower. Comment was made about it not featuring much, which is wrong. That is the tower of Bable, Old Testament biblical mythos. Apparently in this world the consequences of building a tower to the heavens was different. It's visited often as the dungeon appears to be under it. The dungeon goes down (not up like in SAO) and is likely an allusion to the Labyrinth of Daedalus.
- The general portray of the deities as fickle troublemakers is pretty consistent with their original stories.
As an establishing season it's not terrible, but it would have been nice to have had more information about Bell's first skill.
The art is touch less complex than some anime, but it's still pretty good and consistent.
Sound I have to heavily mark down just for how many times a slightly whiny "Bell-kun!" "Kamisama!" is heard. Could make a drinking game out of just that. Otherwise it's not bad, the opening and closing songs are pleasant (though they don't grab me quite as much as some others have) and the BGM stays in the background properly.
Characters... That's where it gets tricky. The harem aspect is painfully over the top, particularly since he makes it clear he's only interested in Aiz. Having so many of the female characters inexplicably throw themselves at him actually gets in the way of the story... Although I suppose that is somewhat realistic.
The lack of solid male characters is also disappointing, they're mostly shown as weaker fighters than their female peers and/or as chauvinist jerks. The few exceptions are kept in the background. This will hopefully be balanced out as the story progresses.
Many characters are suffering from trope overload, though they do at least seem to have some personality beyond that. I'm willing to write that off as a necessity of establishing their identity and purpose in the plot even though it could have been done better.
Having Hestia be a loli-big-boobs is definitely a fan service choice, somewhat redeemed by the fact she knows she's well endowed and makes light of it. It's also justified for her to have those boobs, considering her position of Goddess of family.
Bell demonstrates depressing amounts of naivety on many occasions, particularly regarding his skill slots. This may frustrate you.
That pattern continues through the series, a lot of apparently pandering choices and tropes that start to get deconstructed or explained but aren't fully satisfied before the end of the season. This is a show that could well get better as it goes on, assuming it doesn't crash and burn first.
So essentially, Season 2 will be the make or break season for the anime. Hopefully it gets that second season.
Overall I enjoyed the show... It's just silly enough that you can ignore the flaws and enjoy it as a comedy, assuming harem isn't a deal breaker for you. Just try not to look too hard for some deeper meaning or moral tale, I'm not sure there is one yet.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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