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Sep 28, 2021
It has been a long tradition since anime fights are about 2 mindless guys brutally punching each other while shouting their move names out loud as if anyone even cares and eventually stops until one is deemed unable to move. What if there was an exception? What if fights only reached the climax after someone had both of their arms chopped off, eyeballs plucked out and heart pierced out? Blessed with heavenly-made animations from MAPPA, Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi adapts the story of the peaceful generation of mythical battle deities capable of growing infinitely strong, Idatens, facing the revival of the demons. The production team
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of Heion is a match made in heaven. With the original story coming from Amahara, the original creator of Ishuzoku Reviewers (the most "cultured" anime last year that is surprisingly decent) and original character design from Cool-kyou Shinja, the mastermind behind Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. This show eventually became what the public claims to be "the hidden gem of Summer 2021, the blandest season in a long time".
Fixed colour palettes? We don't do that here, the colour changes as the atmosphere changes. You might get reminded about JoJo, which is entirely normal. The art style, as expected of another Cool-kyou Shinja work, is overly simple yet manages to remain fascinating. "Never judge the book by its cover." The complexity of the art style does not define the quality and overall enjoyment of anything, anime or not. The fight animations are fluid, smooth, well-done, and perfectly demonstrates the intensity of the fight between heaven and earth, Idatens and Demons. Blood spills are everywhere, and maybe a lost limb, it superbly captures the fighting spirit that everyone longs to witness in an anime. The fight scenes are probably the first thing that comes to my mind when you ask me about what's the main appeal of Heion. Not saying that Heion is only good for its fight scenes.
You might think that the character personalities are bland, but they're totally not... that much.
- Hayato, the Eren Yeager of the show. Strives for power over everything else. He's not the type of character who gets overpowered simply by believing in the "power of friendship", he believes in the power of power itself, constantly training under Rin in order to achieve the strongest "power" can become.
- Ysley, the type of nerd who instead spends his time figuring out the smartest and most brilliant way to cheat in an exam. He's the big boss behind all the plans. Planning everything, performing "surgery" on demons to inspect and gain more knowledge about them and even managing to convince enemies into joining forces with him.
- Rin, the only surviving Idaten from 800 years ago, rumoured to be the strongest Idaten out there. Nothing much to talk about her except that she's basically the center of the story. She's the trainer of all Idatens and everything relates to her. Even Obama himsel- I mean Oonbami has some sort of relation to her that might be spoilers if further elaborated.
If you look closely the characters are actually not that bad.
Openings. Some skip them. Some don't. But in Heion, NO ONE on Earth skips them unless they're in a rush. The OP is an absolute banger. It's a combination of a catchy song and animation that perfectly matches the beats and bass of the music. Providing one of the best OP experiences ever presented in the entire anime history.
The quality of sound effects are not realistic, low-quality, and drags me back to the 80s when television and the animation industry weren't as fully-fledged as the present. However as the show progresses, I realized that IT WORKS. Take as an example when a studio hired a chef to film a cooking show on making pancakes, but the production team messed up and provided the ingredients for a pasta. The chef still managed to make pancakes better than before knowing that it was the wrong ingredients. I know this might not make sense but it's the most direct way of explaining how well the seemingly out of place sound effects work in this. It fits the atmosphere, the plot, the simplistic art style, to the point that you will feel weird if you imagined Heion with realistic or any other genres of sound effects.
So the conclusion, is Heion worth our time to watch? Yeah, probably. Possibly the only con of the anime is that there are a few bits of deus ex machinas. If you're looking for some otherworldly fight scenes and a simple yet dark and thrilling story then I highly recommend you to give this a shot. It's fully up to you whether you decide to mark this show as a boon or a bane.
Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi gets an 8/10 from me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 19, 2021
"The first impression does not always matter.”
Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru. is the ultimate proof to this statement. Coated with smart marketing techniques and a high quality first episode, Tanmoshi eventually became one of the most anticipated show of the season. Aside from being heavily hyped on, it was also the most disappointing show this season. If you are looking for some sort of detective case-solving anime. I highly recommend for you to give this a pass. This is nothing like your average detective show... in a bad way.
Tanmoshi follows the misadventures of a detective, Siesta, and the assistant she randomly picked on an airplane, Kimizuka
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Kimihiko. Oh wait did I say "detective"? Sorry, I actually meant a crazy tsundere cyborg witch with no detective skills claiming to be a detective. As long as you are using a proper dictionary, the definition of the word "detective" probably goes along the lines of "a person, especially a police officer, whose occupation is to investigate and solve crimes" or something similar. However, Siesta is nothing like that! Instead of finding clues and impressing viewers by revealing surprising facts of the case, this "detective" simply solves ALL of the cases with ONE reason and that is:
"A good detective solves the case before they even happen."
Seriously, even non-living objects realize that this fact isn't true in the slightest way. Siesta is more of a fortune teller than a detective. Believe it or not, bad writing is already present in the first episode, the episode that everyone praised to be a masterpiece, which I admit, including myself. We were blindfolded by the high-quality animation and the wholesome romance between Siesta and Kimizuka. The anime is capable of producing good plot twists, and is also equally capable of completely ruining it. Blood that prevents consumer from attacking the target, a heart that somehow functions as a human brain capable of taking over the new host, etc. Siesta holds all of those otherworldly abilities to aid her in "solving" the cases like a piece of cake.
Remember how I said Tanmoshi has some top-notch animation and sound qualities? It's only true for the first episode. Sound effects in some scenes don't make sense that even the characters living in the anime world literally complains about it. The smoothness of action scenes beside from the first episode is comparable even to a PowerPoint presentation. People who came here for a good story already left, and now shall the people who came for animations.
Tanmoshi was a life-changing experience. It taught us to be more aware of smart marketing skills and to not keep our hopes too high for anything. We might get utterly disappointed when the worst comes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 26, 2021
In the vast sea of isekais about defeating demon lords and getting trapped in a game world emerges Slime 300, an isekai that's all about living a peaceful life... and slaying slimes. Slimes are what's known to be the most common and well, less rewarding monsters to kill in RPG games. However, this anime takes the entire weak concept of slimes to the spotlight and makes the MC slaughter them for 300 years only to achieve the max level. Think that's a good idea? Well, we'll see.
[TL;DR]
Characters: 7/10
Art and Animation: 5/10
Music and Sounds: 5/10
Story: 6/10
Enjoyment: 10/10
Overall: 6.6 (7)
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[Characters 7/10]
Let's start with what builds the entire story, the characters. Although the characters are nothing special and are basically what you will expect in an isekai anime such as elves, slimes, witches and dragons, they somehow managed to be interesting enough and sure contributed a lot to the comedy aspects of the anime. They know who they are, they have their own backstory, and all have a unique personality. The only downside about the characters is their lack of character development. I have only seen development in 1 or 2 characters but they are too minor and happens in the exact same episode the character was introduced in, which makes people overlook it easily.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
There's also a "curse" for the characters in Slime 300. If you see a new character get introduced, you should be expecting it to have some sort of cute girl form. From fearsome dragons to bouncy slimes, if it becomes somewhat relevant to the main plot of the story, it has a 101% chance to transform into a cute girl for no reason. I personally don't find this annoying but I do find it weird.
SPOILER END.
[Art and Animation 5/10]
The art in Slime 300 is surely not the best and not the worst either, it's kind of in the middle. Sometimes the art can very well be a piece of art, but sometimes it can also be a piece of trash. The animators tend to not shade the characters in dark areas a lot which creates an effect of weirdness when half of the screen is properly shaded while the other half of it is just coloured in a single colour. There are also times when the character heights are messed up. For example in episode 9, Shalsha appeared only a few centimeters shorter than Halkara for some time when she's meant to be a lot shorter than that. They are also known to occasionally reuse animations. "Wait, what's wrong with reusing animations? It's a smart way to cut down the budget!" Well, I do think so as well, but the fact that they forget to remove the mouth animation of the characters in some reused animations when they're not talking is just a bit more than simply reusing animations to cut down the budget. Other than those, the art in Slime 300 is not really that bad, and the cutesy art style fits the anime. The background images and visual effects look amazingly appealing and I won't be embarrassed to put them on as my wallpaper. They've shown potential to create smooth camera movements without the use of CGI such as in episode 6 when Rosalie is marvelling the night sky. Although the art can certainly be bad at times with maybe a few episodes as exceptions, it wouldn't effect the watching experience much if you just bear with it.
[Music and Sounds 5/10]
Probably the only thing I dislike about this anime is the mass reuse of soundtracks. They have this isekai-themed soundtrack that they use a lot in scenes where the characters hang out together or do something dumb, which I don't actually mind because who has the money to produce so many soundtracks for the same purpose anyways? BUT what I care about is that they literally used this funny soundtrack for inappropriate scenes such as action scenes that felt intense. Think that's actually acceptable since they don't stay long and aren't that important? Well, what if I tell you they also used that exact soundtrack for touching moments (at least they could've been), which completely ruined the atmosphere? There are still parts where the studio did a great job in this category though, such as that literally almost all of the sound effects are dubbed by the legend, Yuuki Aoi. Instead of hearing sparkling sound effects, you hear Yuuki saying "kira kira~". I personally found this approach very fun and unique since not many anime I know does this and it matches the comedic atmosphere of this anime. Slime 300 also has beautiful OP, ED and insert songs (TINY SPOILER: *cough* Episode 10 was a treat. *cough*) and they became the only songs on my Spring 2021 anisong playlist. I've been listening to them for 300 minutes and emptied out my phone battery. :)
[Story 6/10]
The story starts off with Aizawa Azusa suddenly dying for overwork, which is a serious problem in the society right now. The story then proceeds to let us feel severe déjà vu by using the common isekai plot of meeting an entity that reincarnates the MC with some sort of OP ability, in this case being the ability to become immortal. Alright, OP ability acquired, what's next? Forming an army to save the world? Nope. Azusa decides to just live like any other normal person and killing an average of 25 slimes every day as a source of income. 25 x 365 x 300 x (2 + 2) = Lv 99. She maxed out her level after 300 years and here's where the real story starts. The story in Slime 300 is pretty simple and straight forward, it is what it is and doesn't have any hidden meanings behind it. This can be both a good thing and bad thing depending on what kind of entertainment you are looking for. A new problem arises almost every episode, and the story is all about Azusa and the "family" solving them and putting the problems into a close. Besides getting reincarnated into a game world by a goddess with some OP ability, the rest of the story is quite original and interesting enough to keep me watching without urging to watch something else. However the sequence of most episodes are very predictable (much like a lot of other animes I guess):
A new problem arises -> Azusa summons Beelzebub into the bathtub? -> Tracks down the troublemaker -> Troublemaker transforms into a girl -> Troublemaker apologizes -> Troublemaker either disappears for a few episodes before reappearing or joins the family -> Yay, ED plays!
Yes, that's exactly how the original "family" of 4 expanded into huge numbers. If you look at the episode list, you might realize that the first few episode names all start with "Along came the blah blah blah", "A blah blah blah appeared!", etc. and I think you know why now.
[Enjoyment 10/10]
"What? Why a perfect score?" Well, it's because this anime brought me the most laughs this season and made me feel better and recover during sad times in the 3 months of it airing. Don't get me wrong, even though I gave this anime an overall score of 7 and pointed out a lot of its downsides, it was the only anime this season that made me feel hyped for the next episode every week. Even during rewatching a few episodes to confirm my statements in this review, it still made me laugh a lot in the process, although I have already seen it all and know what is going to happen next. It might not have good character writing, it might not have good art, it might not have a good plot, but it does a great job in keeping the viewers entertained and relaxed.
[Overall 7/10]
Admit it, no one watches this to get excited or to feel severe emotions (maybe except 1 episode *cough*). We only watch it to relax and get a few laughs. If you're looking for a soothing slice of life comedy, I would recommend to at least give the first few episodes a try as Slime 300 does a great job in that case. Despite having a lot of downfalls, it is still a great series to spend your free time with. If this anime does get a Season 2, I sincerely hope that it will receive better treatment in production.
[Conclusion]
Animes are all filled with gore and violence recently, and Slime 300 is for you to take a break from them.
Thanks for reading my first non-preliminary review and I hope this review was helpful to you. Happy anime watching!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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