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Sep 4, 2024
Tonally uneven to the point of feeling manic. Story and characterization feel rushed and confusing. Beautiful art work, a finely executed score & quality voice acting, but that’s all.
Story focuses on two MCs: Noe and Vanitas. Very early on Vanitas is shown sexually assaulting a woman, and later emotionally manipulating her, only for his victim to fall in love with him. Lazily lifting all the worst cliches from vampire romance antiheroes. Meanwhile, Noe’s backstory is crammed into half-an-episode, and paints him as a compassionate and naive blank slate; a male version of the born-sexy-yesterday trope.
Not much of consequence ever really happens story-wise.
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There’s a blood disease afflicting vampires which Vanitas can cure, and various actors get in the way, but motivations are never clearly established for any side. It never feels like there are any stakes (no pun intended). Other than several steamy vampire-make-out-scenes, there’s nothing even bordering on evocative. That is however one other thing that this show gets right: capturing the super steamy, naughty passions vampires embody: temptation, seduction, etc. That said, lacking a coherent story or compelling characters, The Case Study of Vanitas was an overrated disappointment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 2, 2024
Disappointed in this missed potential.
This show ended up slightly above average overall. It started out strong with an interesting take on the classic isekai setup, decent artistic style, a sympathetic (if unoriginal) MC, and a supporting cast with the makings for compelling relationships. Unfortunately this is all abandoned early on, only to be replaced with a bland, formulaic and repetitive series of fighting generic monsters, getting said monsters butchered (in the literal meat processing sense) and cooking said monsters. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The cooking scenes were educational, and along with consistently decent voice acting, score and artwork, pulls the show up above the ranks of
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completely average. However the feeling of a terribly missed opportunity leaves one feeling mostly unsatisfied. Interesting side-characters are never explored or developed. In spite of the MC amassing vast wealth and power in an extremely short period (causing MC to stress out), none of this has any impact on the story or MC’s day-to-day beyond providing new ingredients for the next mealtime.
As far as fantasy, isekai, slice-of-life it’s fine. Not good, not bad, a little above average in technical execution, but nothing to write home about, and a lot of missed opportunity.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 15, 2023
Overall 6/10: only solidly good for a couple episodes.
Plot 6/10
ep 1-9: Overall unremarkable to almost becoming plodding, with occasional interesting developments, but overall average to the point of cliché, swinging from being stylistically reliable to woefully predictable.
Ep 10-11: the story to finally get moving and conveys an evocative narrative. Worth the wait, but definitely have to work for it.
Ep 12: unsatisfying ending which lacked much if any feel for a finale, giving neither closure nor cliffhanger, it sort of just sputters out.
(Apparently se 2 is supposed to be out next year. Saw a flash of really good storytelling there for a couple
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episodes. Hopefully it continues to improves as a series)
Characters 6/10: Raeliana is well-written, if underdeveloped and slightly two-dimensional, as the Lead. However the supporting cast are paper-thin clichés across the board. Very clearly lifting from shows like My Next Life as a Villainess, this cast lacks any of that show’s humor, and fails to convey a depth to its characters—drama between them—to make up for it. We do begin to see some character improvements by ep 10.
Musical Score 9/10: the music is striking and sets wonderful mood throughout.
Animation 6/10: the artwork is fine. Slightly above average. The characters are drawn beautifully, although there is little attention paid to movement, and the few points in the story involving action either take place off-screen, or are shown in abbreviated form (ie quick flashes).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 10, 2023
Overall 4/10: I never once felt emotionally moved by se1 of this series. It has an interesting and original setting. Animation is for the most part above average to excellent, and the musical score is incredible. Unfortunately these are insufficient to make up for the repeated and disturbing child sexual abuse and pedophilia perpetrated by MC, the lack of inspiring characters or story, and overall boring blandness of the plot beyond the first four episodes.
MC 1/10: Unsympathetic pedophile sexual predator disguised in a child’s body. He develops very little mentally, emotionally, or in maturity, and who in spite of his extraordinary circumstances has almost no
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arc from beginning to end of se1.
Animation 7/10: Above average overall, with many sequences exceptionally beautiful, It has its ups and downs like most anime, and occasionally drops to being entirely average. Really amazing fight scenes. It’s a shame they’re so few and far between.
Musical Score 9/10: top notch across the board
Story 4/10: meh, started strong but loses direction and focus. Literal Deus ex Machina in ep 8. Se.1 ends up falling into the same problem M. Knight Shyamalan’s films do: adult characters treating the child-MC the same way they would any other adult. Even though the audience knows the MC has the mind of an adult, the other characters don’t. No matter how mature he acts for his age, he’s between five and ten years old through most of the events in se1, and there’s no established reason why the other characters wouldn’t be treating him accordingly. Instead we have the MC reminding the adults around him he’s only ten, which boils down to the creators lampshading the issue as cover for lazy storytelling. The first few ep are exciting and portray the characters and their family interactions realistically. Once MC leaves home the episodes become plodding and boring, with only an end cap of emotionality in the season finale, but even that felt blunted.
Supporting Characters 3/10: begin strong and fully developed, but by ep 6 it becomes obvious corners are being cut, and the cast throughout the second arc are boring and 2-dimensional. Way too much time is spent showing Eris as spoiled and violent, the latter of which is then used to play off the MC’s repeated sexual assaults against her. These middle episodes between MC leaving home and getting transported to Demon Continent—apart from being pedo fan service—are almost completely filler, with very little character development or plot line advancement beyond the initial rescue sequence between MC & Eris. We get a glimpse of the political hierarchy of the region and MC’s extended family, but these are passing touches at best, with most of this arc being focused on sexualizing children and lampshading pedophilia by playing MC sexually assaulting a minor for laughs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 30, 2022
“Nothing but countless casualties, ruined lives, and unanswered questions.”
Overall: 2/10 - Grossly Overrated, Miserable Slog.
Animation: 8/10 - The best thing Attack on Titan has to offer is the animation style and quality. In spite of the characters all being drawn with heavy black outlines regardless of light-source, which takes getting used to, the overall animation quality is stunning, particularly during the action sequences, which are visually thrilling. Characters are drawn memorably and evocatively from start to finish.
Plot: 1/10 - Overly simplistic and poorly paced. Very little actual story, and the one that’s there comes across as simultaneously predictable and cliched, or so under-explored
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and convoluted that despite incredible action scenes it becomes a boring slog waiting for anything of real consequence to happen. From beginning to end Attack on Titan lazily attempts to force emotion through an endless cavalcade of tragedy, worsened by needlessly hyper-graphic slaughter. By the end all those lives lost have been severely cheapened and meaningless. There is no clear overall theme or message conveyed, nor nuanced storytelling to create a deep or evocative connection to the story. Characters regurgitate broad platitudes dressed up to sound thematic, but are so disconnected from anything tangible they consistently fall flat. By the conclusion almost nothing is revealed about the forces or motivations driving the antagonists, in spite of 8 hours to deliver even the barest of hints.
Characters: 2/10 - Paper-thin tropes with next to no development. Mikasa and Eren are given a decent backstory to their bond, however as the episodes progress we see zero growth or change between them in any substantive way, and Misaka—the more interesting of the two—by the end devolves to the point where most of her lines are no more than saying “Eren” over and over. Like our two MCs, several of the supporting cast have the potential to be interesting, but similarly due to lack of development and killing them off left and right, they remain shallow, bland, and boring.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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