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Jan 14, 2022
To Your Eternity is an emotionally stirring series that begins with the most somber, heart-wrenching, and altogether evocative episode of anime I've seen in all my life. I was convinced beyond any shred of doubt that this would be the most majestic anime of the past decade, and my elation spiked further and further into a fevered pitch as this incomprehensibly masterful introductory episode faded away into Hikaru Utada's caressing vocals.
From hereon, the alien protagonist, Fushi, a mysterious immortal being, begins to experience human and animal lives along with the many hardships they face in an astonishingly cruel world. From his humble start as a
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literal rock, a blank slate, or tabula rasa if you will, he begins to be molded by the world around him and the people he interacts with. Both the protagonist's and the story's developments then proceed upon three distinct arcs, with a loosely woven central plot mechanism tying them together. Disappointingly, this plot mechanism fails to ever really turn into anything more than some dribble about a vague faceless evil and a similarly vague faceless combatant to this evil, whose motivations, background, ideology, and purpose remain entirely unexplored.
Nevertheless, the general premise of an immortal being who came of nothing and knows nothing, experiencing the world and the human condition through unsullied eyes continues to captivate well beyond the introduction. In each of these three aforementioned arcs that follow the introductory episode, Fushi grows by forming new bonds with the people he encounters, who tend to be misfortunate young people with noble hearts trapped by some manner of depraved circumstance in a menacing world.
In the introductory episode we learn that To Your Eternity aims to be a tale that tugs at your heartstrings and pleads for heartache. In the first arc, the Yanamei arc, we learn that To Your Eternity aims to tell these emotionally poignant stories in the broader context of a depraved world that does everything in it's power to rob the hopes and dreams from all of the hopers and dreamers who inhabit its torturous abode. This general hopelessness is only resisted by the noble hearts and dreams of the various victims of circumstance whom Fushi comes to encounter along his journey. In the second arc, we learn that this haunting world isn't entirely depraved, and instead the story shifts to a happening of extreme misfortunate, almost poetically so. This happens to be the Gugu arc.
Gugu is an orphan boy who's a peasant farmer abandoned by his beloved brother. Alone in the world and devoid of any material possessions or familial bonds, Gugu has nothing to his name but a noble heart and a relentless inner strength. If this general misfortune wasn't enough, To Your Eternity then throws at Gugu the most overwhelmingly misfortunate series of events one could ever reasonably conceive. At this point, I was genuinely angry at the mangaka for furnishing such a ridiculously sad story and subjecting readers/viewers to the most base and visceral bounds of human misery, at which I had to continually question to myself as to how it was even humanly possible for Gugu not to have killed himself a thousand times over.
If "emotionally manipulative" is a valid criticism of storytelling, which I can't quite endorse in my own thinking, as emotional resonance is surely the most sacred goal of any storyteller, then To Your Eternity has to be the capstone of emotionally manipulative storytelling. The actuality is that this story was very overtly written to make you feel as sad as possible, as often as often as possible, and I think it was successful in this core endeavor. As to whether that's a cynical approach to storytelling, I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think it would be unfair to all of the stories through all the ages and those who passionately toiled away to tell them to ignore the fundamental subversive nature of this particular story. In effect, To Your Eternity was not chiefly written to tell a story, it was chiefly written to make you feel sad.
That being said, through its first two arcs, To Your Eternity still happens to be a lovely story that consistently succeeds in tugging at your heartstrings with wonderful characterizations and its recurring juxtaposition of nobility within an oppressively harrowing existence. This ultimately makes for a generally wonderful anime, despite everything I've said in the preceding paragraph, which I'd like to restate very clearly as not being a criticism but a mere observation that I would be remiss not to make note of. Further, Gugu's noble heart and relentless inner strength, against all odds, persists and finally triumphs over all of the acute misfortunes that have plagued his accursed existence. Gugu's triumph is glorious, cathartic, and most importantly, it's a profoundly heartwarming moment in an otherwise bleak anime that tries quite hard to stay away from any semblance of uplifting sentiment.
In the third arc, the Prison Island arc, To Your Eternity attempts to blend together the depravity of the Yanamei arc and the flurry of misfortunes present in the Gugu arc. However, this blend ends up being more of a crude mash, and the story fails to evoke the sentimentality of either. The characters are introduced more haphazardly and with less background, and in greater number. A villain from earlier in the show also makes their return, but the shock value of their evildoings is less interesting than in the first go-around. It's all a bit rough around the edges and doesn't quite carry the same cutting emotional tenor.
Through each of these arcs, Fushi continues his growth as an individual and gradually becomes something of a genuine human being rather than a "vessel", as the anime labels him, or whatever shallow construct of lost existences he was created to store. Fushi's mental state is not as impervious as Gugu's, nor does he have the lofty dreams of the Yanamei girls, and as time passes Fushi starts to become painfully aware of these facts. However, ultimately it is not Fushi's development nor the broader plot that propels To Your Eternity, but rather the smaller stories it tells in their midst; the story of a helpless lonesome boy abandoned in the tundra when he only wanted to see the world; the stories of the indigenous Yanamei who're exploited and culled in perpetuity by an oppressor they barely know and painfully fail to even conceptualize as an enemy; the stories of Gugu and the people who knocked him down and those who picked him back up, including a few who did a bit of both, as well as his childhood crush standing over purple flowers in a quaint field, embodying all his dreams but also a stark reminder of his humble station in life and also his darkest misfortune. These are the stories that enchant, haunt, and evoke. It's the wrapping paper that packages these enchantingly cursed little tales that's frayed in places and falters a bit in its duty.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 7, 2018
Darling in the Franxx is by far the most polarizing anime I have ever experienced.
My first thought after finishing Darling, and watching it every Saturday morning for the past few months, is that if someone thoroughly dislikes an anime, with the sort of vicious contempt that DitF has sewn, they should drop it, immediately. It's bewildering and depressing that there is no section of the anime community where this show can be discussed without overwhelming vitriol and hatred. The masochism of the anime community during DitF's airing was off-putting and leads me to devalue the already questionable intellectual capacity of whatever group of people will
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solely watch 24 episodes of a television series for the purpose of smashing their keyboards in frustration every week. I also question the employment status of whatever subhuman can waste 12 hours of their life watching something they knowingly despise. But alas, Franxx has penetrated your sad and lonely soul to the point you will never forget the story you giddily anticipated bashing every week, like an aristocratic schoolgirl waiting for a pony on her birthday, while there isn't a single soul alive who still remembers even a half-detail from the beloved Violet Evergreenhouse (?), 3 months after the fact.
Franxx, to me, as this clearly isn't a series that any mere human can judge with any semblance of objectivity, is a mostly enjoyable sci-fi romance anime that disappointingly devolves, substantially, in it's second half. What starts out as a slowly unfolding mystery that leaves the viewer in the dark for large stretches, in typical Trigger fashion, explodes into a massive mecha-filled, action-romance, amid teenage love triangles, existential questions, and uniquely feminine looking robots fighting over cool music. As it peaks so gloriously in episode 15, you really start to believe this is going to take a Gurren Lagann turn for greatness, yet suddenly, everything stops. The show reverts back to teenage love drama shrouded in quiet periods of overt depression, but in even more timid fashion that it did on occasion in the buildup. Then, with a few episodes left, after the pacing has slowed to a crawl, the story explodes again into the gigantic, space-faring, logic-defying grandiose that Trigger/Gainax has trademarked like no other (and yes, at this point the show is no longer Trigger, but CloverWorks/A1), but after wasting half a cour on a pregnancy test drama, there simply isn't time to properly expound upon the sudden change in premise, and we are tragically left with a nonsensical barrage of weird shit, telepathy, deep space travel, existential crises, out of body experiences, and ridiculous (but still cool) explosions. Then all culminates with an extremely bittersweet ending that I'm not quite sure satisfies me, and definitely doesn't when taken in the context of how magnificent this show was trending at episode 15.
The characters are a mixed bag, with most people seeming to hate everyone, bar Zero Two. I however, enjoyed most of the side characters, namely Mitsuru and Kokoro, and looked forward to their growth every week as they learned more and more of their seemingly tragic fate and mysterious circumstances. For me, Ichigo was the worst character in the show, and this has less to do with her role as Zero Two's antagonist in the shows first-half quintessential love triangle, and more to do with her being a terrible leader in a life-or-death action show with people constantly depending on her to provide just some slight display of leadership skills which she so painfully lacks, in every which way. It must also be noted, Hiro is also an underwhelming main character, who constantly reverts back to depression and timidness every time he seems to be showing growth. What's worse, it's the same depression and timidness, which is less interesting then, say, Shinji Ikari spiraling down into a never-ending black hole of depression and timidness that eventually cedes to a state of mania and disillusion that captivates the viewer in a more darkly antithetical manner.
The sound and animation are quite stellar and high budget, though the soundtrack itself doesn't quite match up with Trigger/Gainax's other popular series. All in all, these add to what should be an enjoyable action-drama about accursed loves and accursed fates, despite most assuredly under-delivering in it's latter stages; yet I implore you, if you aren't enjoying the show, especially during a superior first half, just drop it! Write an angry post about it and give it a 2/10 on MAL, no ones forcing you to watch it. Or rather finish it and then right your singular angry post, instead of a weekly soiling of everyone's enjoyment to watch and follow along with such a rarely popular series. I didn't like Violet Evergreenhouse or BNHA, but I'm not posting weekly about how terrible I think these shows are out of some perverted sense of spite or attention-lust!
Adieu-
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 28, 2018
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is one of the more acclaimed series in the Gundam franchise. Yet, confusingly enough, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is also a poorly written cacophony of endlessly repeating plot mechanics and contradictory characters that does a severe injustice to it's predecessors quality and general nuance in depicting very serious themes.
The series starts and ends with its first contradiction, Kamille Bidan. An angsty newtype teenager hailed as the second coming of Amuro Ray, Kamille begins his journey by assaulting soldiers, hijacking a gundam, destroying buildings, and getting his loved ones killed as he joins Char and his compatriots in their rebellion against violence
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and tyranny. Kamille then embarks upon a cyclical quest of meeting random girls, falling in love with them after 2 minutes of dialogue, getting betrayed and then inadvertently causing mass civilian casualties because of his inability to pull the trigger. There are at least 10 instances in which a prisoner casually escapes the Argama, the main characters' ship, in a stolen mobile suit and then proceeds to attack the very ship it just launched from. This happens, over and over again, because of Kamille and the rest of the crews' overly trusting nature. In a war drama full of heavy handed dialogue about the brutality and evil of warfare, our characters' appear confoundingly incapable of accepting that not everyone is a good person.
The second main character is one of anime's most iconic and recognizable men, Char Aznable, the red comet of Zeon. However, in Zeta, Char is once again living under an alias as Lieutenant Quattro Bajeena of the AEUG. Disappointingly, this is a much less intriguing version the character from 0079. Char has in a way devolved into a shell of his former self, but in turn becomes a much more morally righteous and cautious leader. He begins to trust others as he fights with the AEUG, but only to a finite extent. Char's character is much too complex to explore in depth in a single series review, so I will avoid that sort of analysis and just leave it this: Char is very conflicted in Zeta and has no idea what he really wants, but as usual, Char keeps his conflicts internal and never shares these with other characters. This ultimately amounts to a very boring character who reacts very predictably in every situation so as not to give away his emotions or desires.
The rest of the cast varies in quality. Fa acts irrationally and comes off as, largely, just annoying and nonsensical for large sections of the anime, but does become more tolerable by the end. Emma is a good and decent character but takes a backseat in the second half as the series suffers from character overload. Bright is Bright. His presence in this show as a static, carbon copy of his MSG0079 character is damning evidence of the utter lack of creativity in Zeta. Amuro is also a shell of himself at the onset, but then progressively begins to capture his old prowess before the plot irrationally starts ignoring him. In general, the recycling of older characters, with the exception of Char who is very clearly a main character and a centerpiece of the story, does largely nothing but take away from the original characters' opportunities to meaningfully assert themselves in the story. Beltorchika is painstakingly annoying and her shotgun romance with Amuro is inorganically forced and poorly written. Reccoa is dumb, she isn't a bad character in herself, but she is profoundly dumb and makes poor decisions. The core story could have been significantly better without her. The same applies to Katz, but to a lesser extent. The cyber newtypes are also all dumb and poorly written. They depict no legitimately human personalities but Kamille is fooled by them nonetheless. Generally speaking, my critiques of these characters being "dumb" and/or repeatedly making dumb or bad decisions isn't inherently a criticism of their characters, as we all know flawless characters are quite boring and make for boring stories, but there is a very marked lack of intelligence across the entire cast and it is evident in every silly choice they make. I do not think a complete vacuum of rational thought is fully appropriate for a story this serious and laden, albeit poorly, with grave themes and ideas. Scirocco and Bask are very generic evildoers, but they are mostly sufficient villains for Zeta's rinse and repeat story-line. Haman Karn is the most interesting villain, but her appearances are too little and too late to significantly impact the story as a whole. Jerid is probably the best character in the show, but is awkwardly underutilized in the latter stages; another casualty of the overwrought character overload. Jerid, for better or worse, actually changes as the series goes on, whilst the rest of the cast stubbornly continue to run around their own shortcomings rather than face them head on.
The plot itself shows potential at various stages along the way, but can never really escape from the overbearing weight of the characters' endless cat and mouse reactions and self-contradictions. It tries to be complex and mature but mostly fails at this as the politics and ethics are very black and white, unlike in the original. At one point, there are 6 different warring armies -- Char's AEUG, Karaba, the Titans, Scirocco's rogue Titan faction, a dissenting Federation, and Haman Karn's Axis. This seemed very unnecessary in a simple good vs evil story, which is all Zeta really ends up being, despite Char and Kamilles' occasional vague remarks about morality and existentialism. And to be clear, when I'm saying Zeta is simply a good vs evil story, I mean so in the pure Gundam sense of """good""" vs evil, with every possible quote unquote, as the "good" side is always clouded and morally deficient. Zeta does not differ from this core Gundam meta in any meaningful regard, for better or worse.
Perhaps my biggest issue with Zeta is thematic execution. Too often, the characters' are caught up in a killing dilemma, where they must choose between killing someone they know personally, or letting this person they know escape and possibly commit harm or even outright atrocities. This happens to virtually every character, regardless of side, and manifests in almost every single episode. This is the crux of the rinse and repeat storytelling I've complained about, but more distressing than the repetitiveness and lack of creativity, is the execution of this plot mechanic itself as it relates to the moral gravity every Gundam series attempts to hone in on. The characters' seem incapable of processing this recurring dilemma in a forward thinking way, as they instead view it as killing someone they know personally, or letting this person they know escape, without thought of the larger consequences. This decision making ignores the masses of common people so critical to Gundam's core theme, the human cost of war. Chemical gas attacks on civilian colonies are framed as less tragic than named character deaths in Zeta. There is a recurring disregard for the well-being of the masses who suffer in the wake of the characters' immaturity and lack of fortitude. At one point, near the end of the series, a ship captain abandons his mission to protect the woman he loves, who is losing in a mobile suit battle. The ship is destroyed as he attempts to shield her mobile suit from harm. Simultaneously, another named character dies in a nearby mobile suit battle. The woman in the mobile suit cries for the deaths of the ship captain and her allied mobile suit pilot. When the rest of the characters' learn of this, they also collectively sob for these two named deaths. There are two problems here. 1 -- The ship captain sacrificed his ship and all its' crew, a very large number of people, to save one woman because of his emotions. This is wrong. 2 -- The rest of the characters' only mourned the tragic deaths of these two named characters, and made no mention of the crew as a whole. This is also wrong, and sadly, this is not an isolated example. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam consistently prioritizes redundant character drama over its message.
Zeta also lags its predecessor in terms of action execution. In 0079, battles were won tactically. Amuro had to make split second decisions on how to block, dodge, and then shoot down his enemy. In Zeta, the battles are simply power versus power, with no meaningful tactics or subterfuge. Kamille also fails to show any progression as a fighter. I don't know if this was intentional or an inadvertent effect of Zeta's usage of battles as backdrops for "can I pull the trigger?" scenarios more than actual depictions of wartime combat. For its time, the animation is clearly impressive and it makes the battles look quite decent, but it doesn't mask the sheer lack of substance.
In the end, Zeta is a silly, self-important action-drama that fails to properly convey Gundam's core themes and ultimately insults the originals intelligence. The action is mindless, the characters don't make sense, and the writing is lazy and directionally confused. TLDR: Zeta is unnecessarily edgy garbage.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 20, 2017
Please Save My Earth is a manga about the complexity of human relationships and the seemingly insurmountable burden of sin. A group of high school students, and one younger boy, suddenly begin to experience strange dreams alluding to their past lives as alien scientists stationed on a secret moon base. This sounds like an audacious and almost absurd premise, and it really is audacious, but never once did it strike me as such after I started reading in earnest, which is a testament to the organic storytelling. Over time, these dreamlike memories unravel more and more of an epic tragedy, while also threatening to scrape
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away at the characters' current selves. At first glance, the character introductions may seem a bit overwhelming, and likewise, the story is admittedly hard to follow, but once you wrap your head around the gist of it all, everything starts to flow together seamlessly to the point you that you can't peel your eyes away. As you delve further and further into Saki Hiwatari's rabbit hole of peculiar storytelling devices and such accompanying various interlocking and intertwining twists and turns that would seem capable of confusing even the most astute of readers, the story's essence all at once begins to take a tangible shape, and what was at first bewildering suddenly becomes both unexpectedly congruent and consequential.
In accordance, the science fiction world-building is put forth at a tepid but proper pace, and as with the other plot elements, couldn't be more deceptively appropriate to the grander story at hand. With time, you gradually learn the mechanics and intricacies of a complex alien society. However, the fulcrum of PSME's story is a much more isolated and intimate event, which has a profound impact on each of the scientists' lives, and in turn comes to torment the students' who inherited their memories. It's perhaps a bit difficult to describe because nothing else I've read or seen is quite like it in terms of inordinate narrative structure and layering.
The cast is rich with depth and nuances that drive the series forward. Rin, Alice, and Jinpachi, in particular, along with their past lives, undergo extreme character development as they struggle to come to terms with their mysterious pasts and the overbearing sense of guilt inhabiting their inherited psyches. The flashbacks are layered in PSME, as the story frequently shifts between the characters' current selves, their lives on the moon base, and their upbringings in a distant alien society before becoming scientists destined to study the Earth from its lunar accompaniment. All of these experiences contribute to a perfect storm of complex human interactions that test the boundaries of morality and self-identity. The retroactive approach to unveiling the aforementioned "critical event", and the emotional and societal conditions that precursed it, depict a hauntingly visceral coalescence of love, loathing and regret.
The most integral motif of PSME, or rather, the motif most present and to blame for in this "critical event", is of the encumbrance of loneliness. One of the scientists, Shion, is a war orphan who shuns others out of spite for their innocence. Another, Mokuren, is something of an angelic deity blessed with a supernatural power as well as natural beauty and brilliance. Her immense value to society forces her to lead an isolated childhood, where she struggles to form meaningful interpersonal relationships in a world where she is viewed as a perfect object more than she is a human girl. To Shion, Mokuren embodies everything he hates in the world, and to Mokuren, his coldness towards her is precious proof that she is but a regular woman and not the doll others' perceive her to be. And thus, with this mutual shared loneliness, along with precarious environmental circumstances, the two's fates become intertwined forever. Along with the rest of the cast, these are extremely flawed characters with realistic complexes and coping mechanisms, but that's part of what makes PSME so inherently human. Hiwatari's core characters constantly struggle between magnanimity and transgression under the duress of a moral crucible, and in her narrative artistry, the reader bears witness to both decay and rebirth in a cathartic defiance of the oppressive and incorrigible gravity of the story at large.
It should be noted that the art is a bit dated, and sometimes lacking in the same level of detail present in most modern manga, but it's overwhelmingly artsy and effective at conveying the visuals necessary to complement the entrancing narrative. PSME is an unrelenting emotional roller-coaster lovingly adorned with intricate detail and profound psychological examination of the human sense of self and belonging. It's almost so utterly and inescapably grounded in psychological realism that the sci-fi exterior morphs into something more like a pretense rather than a premise in itself. Upon the most graceful possible descent from this pretense unfurls a majestic and indefatigably heart-wrenching tale of love and loss. It's in this deconstruction and constant blurring of traditional genre lines, tropes and narrative sequencing that PSME's brilliance manifests most strikingly. Hiwatari's highly calculated ensemble of thematic and narrative chaos is spellbinding. Under this anarchic context of a dauntingly large-scale epic of alien civilizations and the fate of the Earth, PSME simultaneously solicits both cutting emotional resonance and deeply philosophical propositions, yet through it all, never loses sight of what it means to be human, and perhaps more intrinsically, and in the authoress's own words, what makes our world so maddeningly beloved.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jul 7, 2017
Tsuki ga Kirei is a boring adolescent romance that masquerades as something more than it is. It's avoidance of standard romance tropes is not an act that by default renders a romance any better, or even realistic or compelling, if it's still utterly lacking in anything substantive whatsoever.
The main couple have a serious lack of chemistry that plagues the show from front to back. Their reservations and quaint interactions are cutely refreshing and much more in line with the actuality of young love than your typical anime portrayal. That said, I still don't understand why they liked each other in the first place or
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why that feeling only grew over time. They were awkward, but it wasn't just a cute display of awkwardness, as they legitimately had nothing substantive to talk about, ever. It felt almost ironically shallow. Nothing particularly exciting happened either, which is both astounding and damning in this show's bewilderingly positive reception. I personally don't watch television or film to be bored out of my mind while in some desperate search for trope-avoidance tactics. There are surely more valuable things to do in this world than conduct pointless meta-analysis on how a boring anime is actually good because it isn't generic. Uniqueness and quality are not mutually exclusive metrics.
Tsuki's side characters are also extremely undeveloped and not impactful in the slightest. The show employed an interesting technique of having brief side character stories shown after the ED of each episode, but these were far too scattered and simplistic to provide any insight into the actual characters. 'Twas nothing more than some quick laughs arising out of character interactions from characters' faces you sadly may not even recognize or ever see again. Back to the main show, the two romantic foils, who had actual relevant screen-time, disappointingly ended up amounting to nothing more than stale obstacles. There was also no discernible difference between the two's roles in the series. Furthermore, there really wasn't a discernible difference between the two main characters themselves other than gender. The pseudo-plot is that these are two very goal oriented kids, longing to fulfill their dreams but gratefully burdened by unexpected love. The actual plot is that these are two regular kids who aren't particularly interesting to watch nor display no distinct, marked instances of actual romantic relationship.
The art style is a blatant ripoff of Kimi no na Wa. Which is good, in the sense that Kimi no na Wa has a great art style, but somewhat shameless nonetheless. The fonts, the lighting techniques, the environments,.. everything screamed budget Shinkai. I sure hope he gets royalties from this show for inadvertently providing the entire visual framework. There was also a very prevalent usage of CGI for background characters in Tsuki ga Kirei, which was wholly unnecessary and distracting. The CGI was awful and not befitting of modern animation standards. There was also no real need to have crowds of background characters populating every scene. The environments were perfectly fine on their own. The music was decent but nothing notable and the voice acting was very poor. I haven't heard so many audible groans, breaths, and bodily noises since I last watched Dragon Ball Z. Why write actual script when you can pencil in dumb, nonsensical noises?
Watch Kimi ni Todoke or Ao Haru Ride if you want to see shy young people fall in love organically, albeit dramatically and with a theatrical flavor, as is the nature of entertainment media. Those shows are compelling, in part, because high school is an interesting romantic setting. Middle school is not. Please do remind me of a middle school romance you witnessed that wasn't (in retrospect) hilariously shallow and forced. Tsuki ga Kirei is the most forced romance I've ever watched, personally, and that's not enjoyable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 25, 2017
A believing heart is your magic – with Little Witch Academia, Trigger furnishes something so enchantingly brilliant in its simplicity and heartfelt resonance, executes every detail with the utmost bliss, and ultimatley drowns the viewer in a recurring feeling of wonder; unto the conclusion that a believing heart can amount to nothing more and nothing less than that certain thing we all hope for but can't quite materialize.
I realized I was in for a treat as the first episode ended and I was already wholeheartedly immersed in the characters and lore, which is a fleetingly rare way to feel one episode into such an admittedly
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accessible and light-hearted series. I realized this anime was something special during the final scene of the third episode, as Akko looked on as a Shooting Star took flight, or so to speak. In the briefest of moments, Little Witch Academia gracefully painted the most beautiful picture of the essence of everything magic is, all the hopes and dreams it embodies, and all the unduly weight, whether ethical or relating to personal growth, it can hold in such a fantastical world. It achieved this without even a hint of dialogue, but that’s not to say Little Witch is something pretentiously rooted in an aversion to exposition, it just knows when a visual narrative is better suited than a verbal one, and vice versa. I realized this anime was most assuredly going to be my favorite series to air in years during the twelveth episode, when Akko was shown a vision of Chariot's youth; full of relatable blunders and missteps, but also joy in the purest form. Akko saw herself resonating in the the tumults of her idol, and through this she understood the cost of her dream, but more than that, she began to question her dream. Was it even her dream at all, or just the willfull embrace of another's dream that she sought to grasp onto with all her might? I realized Little Witch Academia was something bordering on truly great during the sixteenth episode, as Akko trudged through a snowy night on her lonesome in a desperate bid to save her friends, but never without her relentlessly believing heart beckoning her on and on. Reckless, unabashedly silly and floundering as she is, Akko never abandons her heart. She questions herself, becomes enveloped by doubt in her own innate ability on a regular basis, and struggles with her self-identify alongside the overcast shadow of Shiny Chariot and her opulent brilliance. But what is adversity to the human spirit? (Cue the plethora of Gurren Lagann parallels).
The cast is full but never overly packed; Akko’s compatriots all undergo their own trials and tribulations in a magical youth. Lotte blossoms into a confident aspiring witch from a timid and insecure young girl, whilst dealing with her own passions and dreams. Amanda grows from a delinquent to a warmer and more joyful person as Akko helps her battle against the price of perception. Andrew sheds the predeterminations of his upbringing to the tune of his own destiny. Diana, in particular, experiences a journey of personal growth rivaling Akko, literally and figuratively, as she grapples with the desire to fulfill everyone else’s immaculate expectations for her future, against her own aspirations. But behind her façade of flawlessness, Diana also struggles with pettiness and jealousy, which cleverly mirrors the main antagonist’s own conflicted youth, yet she seeks to avoids a similar folly through the kindness of others and her own stoically altruistic tendencies.
Little Witch Academia, simply put, has it all. Action, adventure, humour, tragedy. A captivating soundtrack befitting of the series's dynamic tone. Fantastical world building transpiring in the midst of a surprisingly relatable coming of age story. Hopes, the shadows they cast. Sorrow, and the malice it begets. Friendship, family, a penultimate story that delves into the potentially questionable integration of technology into our lives, and even a dash of romance. These various elements and directions all synthesize into a breathtaking typhoon of a final episode in which Trigger accomplishes everything that should have been acheived in the Kill La Kill finale, but wasn't, and unequivocally more, because while less ambitious in scope, Little Witch wondrously surpasses Kill La Kill in depth, and it does so on a much more profound level.
Little Witch attains a tremendous dichotomy between innocence and sin, and it does so without ever compromising its cheerful composition. This is something not seen often in the medium, or any television medium for that matter, as so many series tend to spiral down a path of ever-directionless developments in an attempt to double down on the seriousness they wish to hone in on. Fun characters and happy endings are so typically cast aside in favor of gratuitous darkness; and fun series are so typically averse to achieving realism in spite of their fantasy, almost too intimated at the daunting prospect of creating something timelessly relatable and enjoyable to even make an effort. Trigger shoot for the stars with Little Witch Academia, as they always do (to mixed results), and at last they reach their luminous destination after the wildest of rides.
Every motif and achievement in Little Witch can be translated to the real world upon equating what magic represents, to what the human spirit is and can be. Romanticized as it may be, the human spirit is infinite and life is geniunely whatever you make it. Little Witch articulates this through the hopes and dreams of its characters and how they relate to the convictions within their hearts. A person's actions can bely their hopes and dreams, but that is not to say hopes and dreams are so sedentary that they won't spring up when you least expect them to.
Yet, when all is said and done, Little Witch Academia doesn’t achieve artistic excellence via all of the above. It does so much more ephemerally, it does so simply and with solace, it does so with marvel and intrigue, it does so with everything it is and everything it does and everything it can be. Little Witch Academia is mesmerizing because it transforms magic into a believing heart.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 18, 2017
I felt compelled to write this review because the first four episodes of Outlaw Star were too brilliant to ignore. The animation is incredible, even when viewed today and compared against modern animation techniques. It's simply movie quality, and that's just based off of technical merit. The art style and environmental mystique is possibly the most mesmerizing I've seen in a science fiction anime. The introductory plot and characterizations present in the first four episodes are similarly brilliant. I was completely captivated by Gene Starwind's naive bravado and his supporting casts' various conflicting personalities and motivations. The plot choice at the end of episode 4
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was utterly evocative. It seemed a most spectacular and emotionally riveting endnote to a slamdunk start. I was surely in for an incredible ride. Surely.
-Introduction arc (first 4 episodes): 9.5/10-
Alas, things go downhill very fast in Outlaw Star. The characters continually fail to show any meaningful development in the wake of the series' unwelcome transition to a mostly episodic anime, seemingly devoid of any underlying objective. There are later stray episodes that almost recapture the sublime quality of the the anime's onset, but they fail to catalyze any subsequent consistent stretches of quality.
The storyteller appears to have had nothing substantive left to say after the first arc, and the plot stagnates into nothingness for a very long period thereafter. Gene and friends take on various jobs and none are particularly interesting. The penultimate ending storyline is clustered, over-the-top, illogical, and wholly unsatisfying; a final dissapointing ode to the beguiling narrative of Outlaw Star.
Worse yet, the characters go from intriguing to bewilderingly irrelevant and derivative. The female lead is a very underwhelming take on the "What is human/what is AI?" question. She frankly does not feel realistic as a human girl or an AI, and ends up amounting to nothing more than a recurring damsel for Gene. It's quite discomforting that she never takes exception to Gene's playboy antics when she is clearly in love with him. That dynamic is very conveniently ignored. Aisha is an ejoyable comic relief character, and Jim is moderately interesting in his own right, simply for a single episode later in the series where he undergoes more development than the entire rest of the cast combined. Suzuka was easily the most painful character to watch. She undergoes no development, is never even fleshed out properly in the first place, and is barely used at all, in summary. Last but not least, Gene Starwind - the hero of Outlaw Star. Gene sadly never really changes throughout the duration. He has his flaws and he has his charms, and 26 episodes later... he still these same flaws and charms. Interpret that as you will.
The animation quality decreases significantly as well (the budget allocation was clearly quite front-loaded), but this is less bothersome because the art style never stops being both original and stellar. Its mixture of neo noir, almost Bladerunner-esque urban scifi settings, and vibrant, high contrast colorizations, create a picture perfect scifi landscape that one can only dream of experiencing..
To conclude this review, Outlaw star is insurmountably dissapointing. A breathtaking start leads nowhere. Everyone devolves. The worldbuilding takes a backseat to mundane monotonous questing. Intrigue begets bordeom.
-Outlaw Star, in its entirety: 6/10-
On the merit of its first 4 episodes alone, I ultimately enjoyed watching this anime. Every fan of the medium should experience the introductory arc. Beyond that, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone sit down and watch it to completion. Do so at your own risk.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 1, 2016
EXPLOSIONS. guns. EXPLOSIONS. tropes. EXPLOSIONS. unexplored characters and themes. EXPLOSIONS. Welcome to Michael Bay, the anime.
*explosions suddenly erupt in the background of this review*
Under the Dog is an aesthetically beautiful circlejerk of explosions and underdeveloped yet overtly heavy handed themes. Plainly put, this is a bad anime.
Story - 1/10. There is no cohesive story here. There is little to no narrative explanation to the premise, something that works very well in certain anime, but not in a 30 minute amalgam of explosions and blood. Without spoiling too much, Under the Dog tries to show you a heavy, dark story in the background of its
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fast paced, action-centric approach. However, nothing is explored beyond face value, and from what I saw, Under the Dog is more about angsty, killing U.S. Army soldiers fantasies, than any deeper thematic purpose(s).
Art - 9.5/10. The visuals are fantasic. Character design is very subjective, but I'm a fan of the approach they took. The cinematography is the strongest individual aspect of Under the Dog, with a plethora of fast moving angular shots there to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. The explosions, albeit mind numbingly gratuitious, were wonderful to look at.
Sound - 8/10. The OST was very nice, possibly even under-utilized in certain sequences. It was very dramatic, sadly the story and characters prevent it from striking the viewer the way it was intended to. The voice acting was decent but not memorable. It certainly wasn't helped by the script. I appreciated the fact that they used native english speakers for the english roles, and this might be a bit nit-picky considering this is ultimately a Japanese anime, but they sounded more like random guys at the office than actors.
*brrrrrrrrr ksekjsetjkskjktttt (explosive noises)*
*more randoms explosions are detected*
Character - 1/10. The entire cast was completely underdeveloped and wholly unexplored, barring the female lead, and that was only in incoheret bits and pieces. It was very hard to take them seriously or build any semblance of emotional attachment. The male lead, an unsuspecting, run of the mill high school boy, is suddenly thrust into this world of hyper-violence and fictional destruction, but Under the Dog completely ignores what would be a great chance for character exploration via a shock setting change. I'm not expecting Shinji Ikari or Lelouch here, but some sort of characterization was there for the taking. Not once does he stop and ask the main character, "Why is the U.S. Military trying to destroy our high school, why is a cute high school girl like yourself capable of deadly assassination techniques, or why is there a giant monster in the hallway?" He's just there for the sake of being there, and sadly, so is everyone else.
Enjoyment - 4/10. While Under the Dog is exceedingly dumb, and misfires at any serious attempt to make an anime that feels significant in any way, it does succeed at being a moderately thrilling watch, solely thanks to its excellent visual presentation. Its just enjoyable enough to not feel regret about watching it.
*reader shockingly explodes!*
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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May 15, 2016
This anime is literal dogshit. It’s heavily flawed on every level and the ambitious premise doesn't make up for the horrible characters and misguided recurring themes in this anime.
Story (1/10):
Itazura na Kiss is a story about how a unintelligent girl with no redeeming qualities other than being kind, relentlessly pursues her crush, who is a scumbag, and then proceeds with a long term emotionally (and physically to some extent) abusive relationship that is for some reason framed in a positive light. Sounds awful, right? I see a lot of praise for this anime comes from the premise, which is ambitious in the sense that
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it covers a long period of time and touches on romance past the usual "mutually confess and get together" phase where most romance anime end. What left a bad taste in my mouth is how Itazura na Kiss's narrative tries to portray a destructive and outright disgusting romance as something acceptable and even worth striving for. The very fact that this anime even exists is a moral stain on the industry.
Beyond this hollow and sickening take on what initially seemed an interesting premise, this anime still utilizes every shoujo troupe in the book but fails to execute them in a way that meaningfully adds to the characters, story, or underlying themes (which are.. problematic, to say the least). One example would be when they transitioned from high school to college, yet every character ended up at the same university in equivalent classes and situations. Even the one character who didn't make it into college conveniently found employment as a cafeteria worker at the school. Every "major" development was underwhelming and screamed lazy writing.
Art (3/10):
I wasn't a fan of the art style heading into this anime, I find it wildly inconsistent and lacking any artistic direction, which is why I put off watching this for so long despite the intriguing premise. The male lead is the ugliest character in the show which I'm pretty sure is opposite of the intended effect. His mouth was way too close to his nose which just highlighted his stupid gigantic chin, but I guess that’s personal preference. The MC was pretty cute and the backgrounds were run of the mill.
Sound (7/10):
I actually enjoyed the voice acting in this anime. The roles should have been easy considering how one-note all the characters are, so I can't heap too much praise here, but overall I thought they did well. The music was decent.
Character (0/10):
Awful, awful, awful, abysmal, trash, embarrassing, awful, and plain bad. The main two are the worst of the bunch, which should never be the case, and all the side characters were static and underwent absurdly predictable, cliché developmental character arcs, that were for the most part, just convenient cop-outs to force feed happy endings for everyone.
Our MC is dumb, talentless, and unwaveringly in love with a guy who continually treats her like garbage and belittles her. At one point in the show she decides to become a nurse for the sole purpose of being able to better support her doctor husband. Eventually a side character points this out critically, but the show failed to delve into the critique as the MC never directly responds to the issue nor has any internal monologue regarding it. I found their dynamic, and the show as a whole, to be incredibly misogynistic, which is very discomforting considering this a shoujo.
The show never decides to really point out the self-destructive nature of her character and instead casts it aside in favor of framing her as a “spunky” good hearted girl and somehow expects the viewer to find solace in her simplicity. The worst example of this was when she discovers a side character in distress and then proceeds to completely panic and cry on the phone as the male lead tells her what to do, step by step, including how to call an ambulance. Bear in mind this happens in the latter half of the series which exemplifies her complete lack of development as a competent human being.
The male lead is initially a “cool” jerk, which is typical in shoujo, but usually the male lead ends up progressively improving as a person as the MC warms his cold heart, so to speak, or they were always “good” and just not great at outwardly expressing it. This male lead in Itazura na Kiss is a jerk, and a truly horrible one at that, who doesn’t become a redeeming character until the last 2 or 3 episodes. On numerous occasions he shows some compassion but then consistently reverts back to his usual disgusting self. There’s also usually a reason, such as a tragic experience or difficult childhood, for the male leads initial behavior, but here the male lead has lived a carefree life in a traditional atomic household with his loving and wealthy parents. He has an amazing support system and the show never alluded to anything negative in his past to attempt to explain his flaws.
To sum it up, she is incompetent and he is lacking in basic humanity. I’m not exactly sure how these are supposed to be likeable characters.
Enjoyment (1/10):
I did not enjoy watching this anime whatsoever. In fact, I watched the last 5 episodes at double the speed, as in I literally sped up the video 2x, in order to avoid wasting any more of my life on this irreprehensible trash heap of an anime. The misogynistic central relationship was frankly appalling, as was the lack of character development. I will say that the ending (episode 24; 25 is a light hearted epilogue) was heartwarming and enjoyable. At this point they are in their late 20s and the MC finally shows some fortitude that isn’t directly derived from her unsubstantiated romantic feelings, and the male lead finally shows respectable character traits without ever reverting. The problem with Itazura na Kiss is that it takes 23 episodes, or approximately 10 years within the timeline of the show, for these characters to achieve this minimally acceptable level of competence and humanity.
If you want to watch a terrible rom-com anime with unlikeable characters and misogynistic themes, look no further, Itazura na Kiss is the anime for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Apr 13, 2016
One of the more garbage anime I have ever watched. Unbelievable that the top 2 rated reviews are 10's. I wanted to stab myself with a writhing swordfish and vomit blood everytime the estrogen for brains MC showed his lack of testicular fortitude.
I'll start with the story. The story is awful. I didn't play the PS3 game so I'm not going to judge this through any biased lense, nor am I going to necesarilly blame the animators if they were just sticking with the source material, but trash is trash no matter how much you sugar coat it with Alicia's subtle yet blazing hot zettai
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ryuoiki. The premise is basically just a highly fictionalized version of WW2 where darcsens = jews. Most of the plot developments are highly predictable cliche scenarios, ie: corrupt superiors and war time violence. Nothing is wrong with this, troupes and genericism are fine in my book if the execution is good, sadly the execution in Valkyria Chronicles is essentially analogous to dying horribly of starvation and disease in a concentration camp which ironically enough is literally a partial description of this anime's shambles of a plot. Without spoiling, the WW2 parallels get thrown out the window a little over halfway through and this somehow devolves into a more cliched ridiculous pisstake than it already was.
The art is okay. I say that because the art style itself is very good in my opinion. Alicia and Selvaria are so cute my pocket rocket does a shaft neck tilt every time one of them gets a second of screentime. The character designs as a whole are a strong point in this anime, but thats pretty much all I can say thats good about the art. The animation quality is decent, but very poor during the action scenes. I actually spit out my drink at one sequence during a later episode that looked straight out of MS Paint. The backgrounds were boring but okay for the most part. Also there was this stupid shading pattern that looked like random streaks they used which served no purpose whatsover except to make it look like they actually did something unique and admirable in the animation style. really pissed me off and made me lightly cut my wrist a few times. Overall the art is pretty bad and makes u want to gougue your eyes out like everything else in this anime.
The sound was largely trash and by trash I mean decent material. Both OP's were okay & both ED's were okay. Nothing standout but at least it didn't make me want to jump off a cliff like the recycle bin storytelling. It had a generic video game/action flick soundtrack during the actual epsiodes, so basically just trash.
The characters were the equivalent of ur neighbor's kid taking a voracious dump on your porch and I mean that in the most detestable way possible. The only reason its not a 1 is because the invading antagonists were actually pretty interesting characters up until the end where they all devolved into cliche riddled wank-stains. Our MC here, Welkin, is probably the worst MC of all time in any medium. He's a total softy and continually fails to do anything heroic or respectable beyond the most intrinsic required level of MC heroism. He acts like the corrupt military's lapdog and does everything in his power to cower out of the romance plotline. bruh literally tried to get friendzoned. he also gets finessed at every turn & this trash heap of an anime tries to frame it admirably ike being a babyback bitch is actually a redeemable quality. Ignoring the MC (which is impossibru because hes the MC lol), the characters are mostly stale one-note token characters. These issues become exponentially more prevalent when whatever edgefest overlord wrote this story reveals his fetish for "permanent consequences" for some of the more interesting characters in the show, which I won't elaborate any more on to avoid spoilers. basically the characters made me want to kill myself in a number of ways. Also the facial expressions were absurdly predictable, moreso than in any other anime I've seen. So yeah characters are truly awful in this anime - 0/10.
Enjoyment? Whats that? Never heard of it, or maybe im suffering temporary trash-induced amnesia because enjoyment seems like a foreign concept at the moment. i dont know how else to word it, but this anime is trash. if you want to watch an anime that makes u want to carve out your own heart with a steak knife than Valkyria Chronicles is the anime for you.
Overall this anime is complete trash i give it a -4/10 but MAL forces you to use absolute values so 4/10 aka it sucks!
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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