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Key the Metal Idol is an underappreciated, cerebral and interesting anime which evokes feelings of Lain despite its coming out several years earlier. I would absolutely recommend it to fans of that and other 90s sci-fi anime like it. However, as much as I like this show, it's unfortunately held back by a premature cancellation which resulted in a final episode that essentially boils down to a feature-length info dump of what the final few episodes were meant to be. Because it exists in this half-formed and unpolished state, I give it a mixed review. However, to those who are willing to try it despite ... these issues, there are some unexpected developments later in the story that make this series, if not masterful, at least highly interesting.

Chobits has the same characteristic quirks of every CLAMP story I've seen, as well as the same strengths and weaknesses. The characters are this show's strong point, and the plot (especially the ending) is a bit of a disappointment. The end result is a show that's overall just okay. There are aspects of it that I love, but the exposition-heavy section in the latter half gets to be a drag. In the end, I would consider its high points to be enough to justify recommending it to most, especially those who have enjoyed CLAMP stories or android-focused stories in the past.

The first 5 episodes of this show are great. After that, it takes a sharp downturn with the incredibly uninteresting coliseum two-parter and never fully recovers. Don't get me wrong: the later episodes do start to get interesting again, but they never reach the highs of the first 5. I would absolutely recommend watching the first 5 episodes even if you don't end up continuing with the rest. If you're going to skip anything, skip the coliseum.

While this show is a mixed bag, I enjoyed it more than the later remake mainly for the reason of that show's asinine episode selection, which was decided by ... vote and is not only completely disjointed with no temporal or thematic through line, but also contains ANOTHER adaptation of the stupid coliseum story. The 2003 adaptation feels much more like a journey with various encounters along the way, as opposed to a random selection of popular chapters.

Love Live: Sunshine is an okay series but a disappointing follow-up, and its main issue is that it's much too derivative of the original series. While watching, I couldn't help but think about all the things that could have been done to make this a much more interesting sequel.

There are many good things about this series, of course. Visually, it looks much better than the original. I also enjoyed the character moments very much, my favorite being those focused on Ruby and Dia. During the first season I was worried that the characters might be too gimmicky and shallow, but most of them developed pretty ... nicely in the second season. I even ended up having some empathy for Yoshiko, who started off as my least favorite.

The main problem with Sunshine, as stated before, is that it follows the formula set by the first series too closely, which results in a story that's much weaker than the original series. I would have enjoyed Sunshine much more if it focused more on the struggle of being recognized after the success of μ's instead of retreading the same ground for most of the series. Sunshine ends up feeling like a story with a beginning and end but not much of a middle, which deflates a lot of the impact at the end of the series. Once I got to the end, I wasn't really emotionally invested as much as I was wondering, "Is this really it?". It felt as if I had skipped over the entire process of getting there.

I'm also disappointed because this sets a precedent for future installments in this franchise. I would like to see Love Live become a more varied and interesting franchise, but Sunshine shows me that the show's creators are very hesitant to deviate from the formula set by the first series.

tl;dr: If you liked Love Live for the story, you won't like Sunshine very much. If you liked it for the character spotlight episodes, the music, or some other reason, you'll probably enjoy it.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Diebuster was a disappointment.

I enjoyed Gunbuster very much. It's one of my favorite anime ever. Going into Diebuster, I wasn't sure what to expect, but right from the beginning, something seemed off. I wanted to enjoy this series, but it just didn't appeal to me at all. This series has practically nothing to do with Gunbuster. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this series' story goes directly against the themes of Gunbuster. The only connections to Gunbuster for a majority of the series are just shallow references to the original.

"Hey, remember in episode 2 of Gunbuster when ... there was a gratuitous bath scene? Well here's a gratuitous bath scene in episode 2!"

"Hey, remember when Noriko said 'Onee-sama' in Gunbuster? Well Nono does that too!"

I wouldn't even be that bothered by this if not for the fact that this show is so disconnected from the original series that it doesn't even feel like it takes place in the same universe. It feels like these gratuitous references were just attempts to remind people that "yes, this is a sequel". Diebuster just feels like some random unrelated show that had Gunbuster references plastered onto it.

Consider this. Gunbuster is a show about a normal girl who saves the world and everyone she loves through hard work, perseverance, bravery, and sacrifice. Diebuster is a show about a robot who was built to save the world and is able to do so because she was built to do so. Doesn't that completely go against what the original series is all about? The reason Nono is able to save the day in the end isn't because of hard work and determination, it's because she just happens to be a buster machine. But then again, the story is so hard to follow that maybe I'm just completely misunderstanding everything.

The animation and visuals in this show are extremely good, mirroring the original series' impressive polish and surpassing it, but the story that these visuals are applied to is just not good, and as a sequel, it's even worse. Gunbuster was exciting and emotional, but I didn't care about any of the characters in Diebuster, except maybe Lal'c. Nono is annoying and none of the other characters really get enough screen time for me to know or care about them. The only things about this show that I can commend are the animation and visual style, which might even be good enough to justify watching the series just to look at them if you're into animation and visual art, but if you're looking for a good story or a good sequel to Gunbuster, this isn't it.

OneRoom serves a very specific purpose and it does it well enough. Is it a good anime? No. Is it directly contributing to the downfall of society? Probably. But did I enjoy it? Yes, very much. If you're an extremely lonely otaku loser, this series is for you. I mean that in the most literal sense.

The art and animation is not special in any way. Not terrible, not really that good either. It serves its purpose. The characters exist to be your virtual waifus and they're perfectly generic enough for that purpose. The writing is on-par with waifu ASMR videos since this is basically the ... evolution of that. Watch this series if you're extremely lonely and want attention from an anime girl. Don't watch it if you expect any sort of interesting narrative or artistry.

Compared to the original series, Love Live Sunshine felt very rushed and unfocused. The original had a conflict established in the very first episode and gave us much more time to get to know the characters, but while I was watching Sunshine I never really cared about the cast or felt like I knew them.

During the original Love Live I was entertained throughout, but Love Live Sunshine just didn't appeal to me as much. A lot of the characters in Sunshine feel very gimmicky compared to the original series, especially Yohane. To be fair, there were a few characters in the original series that I ... didn't grow to like until the second season, but even in the first season there were a lot of fun scenes that let me get to know and like the cast. Nico alone was entertaining enough to make the whole series worth it. There aren't really any characters that appeal to me as much in Sunshine.

I mean, Mari can be pretty entertaining, but she barely even shows up for half the show and most of the time she's just filling the role of this show's Nozomi equivalent. Her fun moments are very sparse and short. Wooby and Zuramaru are qt, but not enough to keep me invested in the show. Sunshine was just tiring to sit through, because I didn't get enough time to get to know the characters before they became idols, there weren't enough fun character moments to keep me entertained, and there wasn't enough interesting conflict to keep me interested in their rise as idols.

Aqours' rise in popularity overall feels too sudden. It just doesn't feel as significant as in the original series. By the time Aqours has entered the preliminaries, we've only seen them actually perform in the "real world" of the show twice, and in their first performance they were able to fill a whole gym, unlike μ's, who barely got anyone to come at all. Even though within the show we're told that things have gotten much more competitive since μ's competed, the fact that we don't really see the struggle as much makes Aqours' rise in popularity seem much easier and less significant as an audience member.

One thing I will say is very good about Sunshine is the art. Everything in this show is very pretty looking, with the exception of a few of the 3D dance shots, which were a bit jarring in the original as well. However, good visuals can't make up for lack of interest in the characters and conflict of a show, so I can't say that I enjoyed Sunshine overall.