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Aug 15, 2021
TL;DR: While not perfect I think Ao Ashi provides enough individuality mixed with good execution of your standard sports manga tropes to be a must read for anyone who is a fan of the genre while also serves as a great, easy-to-follow introduction for anyone looking to get into it.
As a fan of the genre, two of my biggest issues with sports manga is generally how formulaic they are as well as how hard to follow the action tends to be.
This manga does an exceptional job at handling both of these issues.
Drawing motion is seemingly one of the
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harder things to do, but something everyone drawing action has to do. Where sports manga tend to deviate though is in the numbers. You won't find detailed eleven on eleven fighting in Dragonball or One Piece, however for every manga about a team sport this is a common occurrence. Naturally drawing a "fight" between 20 people as opposed to two people is a lot harder, so one of my main gripes tends to be that the whole scale picture gets sort of fuzzy when things are moving fast.
Ao Ashi uses almost exclusively an eagle eye's perspective for all of the large motion scenes, along with some of the cast usually explaining the tactics and maneuvers during the scene makes for an extremely accessible and easy to follow disposition. You won't get lost in the build up of blurry scenes, so when the climax finally hits you won't feel lost in how you got there.
Similarly Ao Ashi takes, what-you-would-not-expect-to-be-very-unique-decision-but-sadly-is, a different approach to the setting namely NOT having the setting be in high school.
This does such an immense difference for the suspense and pacing of the story. No more, are the times of set tournament brackets where it's win or go home and your Spin The Wheel options are: Win by demolition, Win as the underdog, Lose in heart breaking fashion or Lose due to injury.
While it is an incredibly sad fact that so many great premises are ruined by the chains of the high school genre, that does not take away from how fresh Ao Ashi felt in regards to the setting.
While the matches themselves are still obviously formulaic, thankfully the over arcing plot is not (at least not compared to most recent sports manga). Needless to say, the outcome of the games is still set to a fifty/fifty of win/loss but where the difference appears is in the consequences of said fifty/fifty. Because the result of a specific game won't affect whether the story continues or not (i.e. getting knocked out of nationals of whatever sport your high school story is set in) the suspense rises since it's not as obvious which games our main cast will win.
Characters are generally just solid, most of them follow your standard tropes for sports manga with a few exceptions. Mainly a few of the side characters show ideas we tend to not find in these types of stories. Notably, characters who find out that hard work isn't always enough and just-because-he's-a-dick-doesn't-mean-he-will-lose. I realize I come off rather negative here, but overall I considered characters to be a strong point. The trope-y ones are done well enough that they're enjoyable despite their one dimension-ness and the more unique characters actually have some solid depth to them, with relatable flaws or otherwise realistic shades.
My main gripes with Ao Ashi have come towards the latter chapters (as of writing this, chapters 230~260) where the pacing has fallen off a cliff with dragged out matches where characters take turn pulling out new superpowers to trump one another for plot conveniences sake. Something that sadly has become a staple of the genre, but I'm hopeful the author will bring us back to his earlier style of pacing where this wasn't as prevalent.
Nonetheless, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading Ao Ashi on a weekly basis and despite it's current slump I intent to keep reading it with hopes that it will return to it's style of the first brilliant 200 chapters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 12, 2020
Kono Oto Tomare!
SPOILER WARNING: Most of the characters personalities/stories are mentioned
First of all I’d like to say that this is by no means a bad anime and that is not what I intent to portray with my score. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed Kono Oto Tomare!. That said I would wholeheartedly disagree with anyone saying this is a masterpiece of originality. In fact I’d argue the literally only original thing here is that they are playing Koto’s instead of *Insert whatever other instrument/sport here*. From this point forward I’m going to be regarding sports anime and music anime the same, and while this might ruffle
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some feathers I believe it’ll help to show my points about the unoriginality. Considering that most music animes are set in high-school clubs with the same goals of making it to nationals just like most sports anime are I don’t think it’s that bold of a claim to consider the two genres for this purpose the same.
So let’s begin with going over the story shall we? We have the high-school setting, which obviously has become a staple in all genres of anime these days. We have the club-without-enough-members-therefore-possibly-leading-to-the-disbandment-of-the-club plot point, another classic within the high-school setting, but more specifically in sports anime. We have the obvious overall plot of making it to nationals, “let’s be the best whatever woooo” kind of thing. And we successively find out about each members sad backstory and why they act like they do, blah blah blah, they fix it and now they are besties. We have the injury-trope, another classic in all our sports favorites.
Again, at this point I’d like to reiterate that I don’t dislike this anime. While my tone might be rather condescending it’s more so that these tropes are present in most, if not all high-school sports animes, and not that I dislike them in and of themselves.
With that said, let’s check out the characters. First we’ve got our main character, your typical low selfesteem, pushover 4-eyes loser. But wait, he actually has convictions, and speaks up (sometimes I guess)!!! Then we got our other main boy, mr. misunderstood delinquent who’s actually a nice guy and his whole scandalous past was just a misunderstand. We got the lonely prodigy who just wants friends, we got the mysterious teacher with a hidden past who turns out to be some big brain genius boy, the side characters who can see past our bad boys mean side and see the good within him, the sexy big sister… do I need to go on?
The art and music are both fine. For the art nothing really stands out neither in a positive nor negative way. The OST had some pretty clarinet tunes I thought but besides that it’s rather unmemorable a part from the kotos obviously. I can’t say I knew much about the instrument prior to this but it produces a very pretty sound and the performances during the show were some of my highlights for sure.
That all being said, while this show makes use of probably every trope in the book, it does so pretty well. It certainly isn’t anything new or groundbreaking but it does what it does very well, and if you’re a fan of these music/sports animes set in high-school then here is another one of sufficient quality that you can spend some time on.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 12, 2020
Having only 11 chapters translated so far it seems to be a stretch to say that one could give a proper review of the story. However the basic of it is as follows: a 17 year old Japanese kid on Iceland can talk to cars and does detective stuff.
While that might not seem like the most interesting or mature premise it has led to a wonderful first 11 chapters. The mystery aspect of this manga is very well written and compliments the incredible artwork very well. The author choosing Iceland as the manga’s setting is also a perfect match for her art. The breath
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taking scenery of Iceland with its deserted volcanic plains and misty mountains is no doubt a part of why the mystery feeling settles in so nicely and works perfectly with the authors realistic art-work, something that gives off a Seinen tone very well. The environment is not the only thing well drawn though, as we have a handful of beautiful characters, both male and female.
The only character we’ve somewhat gotten to know is our main character, Kei, but so far all the others one introduced have been set up with their own mysteries surrounding them in a way that makes you want to find out more. Something that goes for Kei as well.
If you’re looking for a very atmospheric mystery/adventure I believe this manga will serve you very well. It is not too hectic and appears to be more of a slow burn, so if that’s you’re cup of tea then I believe this is perfect to read sitting by an open fire, drinking a cup of tea.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 28, 2019
[Spoiler Warning]
So I was told that my Made in Abyss review was too long and too negative. So instead I decided to go watch a show rated in the top 20’s(!!!) No way this one is as bad as Made in Abyss, right?
I was wrong. It’s worse. Don’t watch this show. It’s fucking terrible. I could write a manifesto about everything wrong with this show, BUT since I promised to make it shorter, I decided to only write about one scene, as I feel it exemplifies everything wrong this show perfectly.
But first; music ok, opening good, characters bad, writing bad, animation whatever. I have
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seen a few anime’s in my days. None have made me literally wish for my time back as much as Code Geass did. If you’re a real edgy boi who does not give one shit about writing this show might be ok for you.
Similarly, if you are looking for something to laugh at because of how stupid and dumb it is you might also find some enjoyment in this show. Otherwise, I would stay the fuck away. Anyway, that’s it for the spoiler free parts of this review.
SPOILERS
So the episode I want to talk about is episode 22 “Bloodstained Euphie”. Up until this point the show has portrayed itself as a smart political anime, all while taking itself very seriously. Everything so far has been working towards setting up this huge conflict between ideologies as to how one would go about freeing Japan. Euphie, who is Ledouche’s sister or whatever is the holy good character of the show. She is real nice and wants good for everyone. So she has set up this zone where Japan would be remade or some shit, whatever sounds swell. Ledouche’s entire reason for working with the black knights so far seems to be his goal of destroying Britannia as revenge for his sister going blind. So from what we know, he has no sincere intentions what so ever to make it better for the Japanese people. YET, when he goes to meet Euphie at her grand opening of new Japan he agrees to stop the fighting and work with her to save the world. This is after talking for like three minutes and her just shouting at him over and over how she wants to do good blah blah blah. AND THIS IS NOT EVEN WHAT IS WRONG THIS SCENE! After Ledouche SUPRISINGLY agrees, seemingly giving up on his revenge plans he decides to prank Euphie.
It goes something like:
“Hey Euphie, I can actually control people with my mind.”
“Haha, no way…”
“Yeah, really!! If I were to tell u to kill all Japanese people you totally would lol xdddd”
And to no ones surprise, the mind controlling powers CONVENIENTLY malfunctions and Ledouche accidentally makes Euphie kill all Japanese people. This conflict is what the entire rest of the season is based on, and why the gigantic climatic ending happens in the first place. This fucking random convenient malfunction of the geass, which happens ONE TIME and happens the ONE TIME everything would have been “fixed”.
And this is exactly what’s wrong with this show. The writing is utter garbage, and it is not like this is an isolated incident. The ENTIRE plot is built on random fucking coincidences like this one, and their whole purpose appears to be trying to make sense of the previous bullshit the writers pulled. The show takes itself so fucking seriously, yet cannot solve or progress anything with writing, there is no logical progression of the events that occur, it is just random fucking bullshit one after another for the whole fucking show.
A big plot point is how smart Ledouche is supposed to be. But even that they couldn’t actually SHOW but had to write out. The opening scene is Ledouche playing chess with some rich guy and Ledouche is in the real bind. Oh no, how is he gonna win this chess game in this incredible deficit?
Oh, you thought I’d answer? Haha no that’s not how we do things in this show. Instead the following scene is Ledouche and his friends walking out of the rich guys house with Ledouche’s friend telling him “wow I can’t believe you won that!!!”.
Anyway this show sucks, don’t watch it
1/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Nov 19, 2019
This is by no means a perfect Manwha.
It is however my favorite one by a long shot, and has been for the past five or so years. If you're looking for a shounen with great world building and a multilayered plot I definitely think this is a read for you. However, if you want a deep well thought out story that will make you contemplate life this might not be your thing.
I will mostly be pointing out flaws and things that annoyed me while reading so the score I gave might come off as conflicting in regards to the review itself, but I
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really do enjoy reading this on a weekly basis despite all its flaws and I think a majority of people would too which is why I'm scoring it a 10/10.
So my favorite aspect of this Manwha and the reason I do enjoy it so much is the world building. SIU has managed to create a world that has so much going on it truly feels alive. There is so much information and little details about it (both in the manwha itself and a lot of information you can gather outside of it) that it really does feel like we could follow any other characters in the world and it'd still be a very engaging story. The world does revolve around our main cast the same way it usually does in a lot of shounen work, however if the main cast were to be taken out of the story it still feels like the world would keep spinning and there would still be stories to be told.
As far as the story itself goes it is too complex to briefly explain. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand there are a lot of intricacies in the story, and when you notice them it certainly feels like every little thing lead to this conclusion for a reason. However, it also makes the story hard to follow sometimes.
It tends to jump all over the place and the pacing is very inconsistent. Certain arcs feel like they drag on for way too long when the conclusion is already obvious, while other arcs (or perhaps certain fights, more specifically) go by in a blur and it feels like you missed out when there are a lot of loose ends left by the end of it.
Despite all this, the story has certainly been engaging and up to a certain point it felt like there was always something at stake. This Manwha however has the typical power-creep problem a lot of shounen has. This leads us into the magic system.
So the magic system in Tower of God is set up with different roles being presented. Every role has something they specify in which is their strength, and to be able to climb the tower efficiently you'd need a full team of all the different roles to complete and compensate for each other's flaws. This system clearly had a lot of thought put into it and a lot of the early chapters put in a great deal of information explaining it all. Unfortunately this is all thrown out the window after a certain point and it is once more about who can shoot the bigger explosions at each other. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it feels wasteful when so much time was put into a very interesting magic system.
This has however had a great impact on the art, which has been improving chapter by chapter. Comparing some of the early chapters to the recent ones are night and day and all the big blasts and explosions compliment the great art very well. The character drawings are definitely not anything to scuff at either so overall the art is good.
Speaking about the characters, there are a lot of them. I mean a LOT of them. And again, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. It adds to the world building that there is so much going on at any one point. But because a lot of them do not get a lot of exposure it makes them feel unmemorable. Another issue with it is that due to the length of the Manwha and that the arcs aren't laid out in a traditional sense you often tend to forget characters that later return. What I mean by this is unlike other works where the story might move from one place to another leaving characters behind and finding new ones as they move along Tower of God is set up so everyone is working towards the same goal. All the characters move forward albeit at their own pace but towards a common goal so characters tend to reappear perhaps years later in real time. If five or ten characters suddenly reappear two years later and they never got that much exposure in the first place it feels very understandable the reader would not be able to remember them. At least not remember their personal plot lines which often times would just pick up and continue as if you read about the in the previous chapter. The main cast however feels very well developed. They get enough time put into them that you are able to understand their personal motivations/reasons for moving forward and so on. None of them are super special or anything, but cool and memorable enough to make for a good cast of characters.
Overall I think Tower of God suffers from a lot of problems that most webtoons tend to suffer from. Why this is the case I think is really hard to answer, but it is by far the most polish work out there. The story will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time and if nothing else it is a beautiful battle Manwha that I think will be worth your time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 16, 2019
Only the first paragraph is spoiler-free.
I won't say this is the most overrated show on this site as I am convinced that is Legend of the Galactic Hero, however as I have not seen it, I don't feel confident in making that statement about this show. You will have people tell you how well written it is, how dark and scary and tear-jerking it is, but once you've seen it you will finally realize that the only reason this show is rated as high as it is, is because there are naked twelve year old’s in it. The loli's have finally made their triumphant
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return, and my god if it wasn't a shit show. That is as much as I will say without spoilers, as the rest of this review will be filled with them. I would not recommend this show to my worst enemy, unless that person is Riko.
Let's start off with some of the good parts, shall we? First of all, the environmental art is spectacular, in fact, I might even go as far as to say it is the best I've seen in an animated TV-show. Perhaps a big reason why the environment sticks out so much is because it is very well contrasted to the simplistic, minimalistic art of the characters. It works well together, although it does make one wonder why they would spend such a huge budget on art and then go with some of the simplest character designs. The contrast is like I said great, but I can't help but picture this show with the same level of art quality for everything that is shown in the environments. As far as the animation itself goes, it is perfectly fine by today’s standards. It is no Fate/Zero but it gets the job done for sure.
The music feels the same way the animation does, it's whatever. There were some memorable songs, namely Hanezeve Caradhina and The First Layer. The rest of the OST fits the theme and feel of the show well, but does not protrude itself in an otherwise, above average OST collection. That’s it for the good parts. Let us move on to the naked children, shall we?
I've heard people make the argument that the fact that there are naked 12 y/o's is not an issue and actually one of the shows strong suits. The fact that they don’t mind being naked and later on are embarrassed about their bodies being shown to each other is the show portrays their innocence and makes them feel young. This might be the biggest bullshit point I've ever heard. Are you seriously telling me that the ONLY WAY to portray innocence is in the form of naked children? Fuck off. The fact that people even dare defend this shows what kind of fans a stunt like this pull. It is not like this is a one-time thing either. They start out naked at the orphanage, where the universal punishment for being bad is to string them up naked on a fucking flagpole. A few episodes later the old man finds the robot and the first thing he has to check is whether this robot has a dick or not. And apparently the only medicine to help Riko has to be taken in the form of a dildo up the ass. Come the fuck on.
My personal interpretation is that these scenes of nudity are an awful attempt at humor, something which is enforced later on in the show as well. But even assuming that the nudity itself is not an issue the placings of these scenes are fucking terrible. Every time you feel like there is finally a serious moment, every time there is about to be some character development – enter the fucking comedy scenes and everything is forgotten. Wow you just experienced something really traumatic and is about to have an internal meltdown? Comedy scene and all is well. Wow someone just told you they want you to kill them and you don’t know what to do? Comedy scene. There are also random romance scenes thrown in there that contribute the same kind of things the comedy scenes do. I suppose one could argue they are another facet of the whole “they are young teenagers exploring their bodies and growing up!11!!1!1!” idea, but they feel incredibly forced and unnecessary.
This show lands in such a weird spot between taking itself too seriously and at the same time trying to be self-aware and implementing comedy as a form of lightheartedness. The issue is that the writing is so fucking horrid that the comedy takes away all the impact from whatever previously what shown. It feels like saying “sorry” but then following it up with “but”, it immediately invalidates everything you said prior.
This is not the only examples you can find of bad writing though. A couple of things that annoyed me were how they spent a solid five minutes explaining that the robots arm could only reach 40 meters. For this to then be completely ignored for the rest of the show in favor of it becoming a tool for plot armor. The range of his arm is only relevant when it is convenient for the plot. Like in episode 5 they mention how it won’t reach Riko as she is being taken away, but then a few minutes later it suddenly does reach while the distance itself had not decreased whatsoever.
There is also the issue with the robot’s super move, the boom beam axe which much like his extending arms are purely used as a plot tool. He’ll avoid using it for the whole episode because reasons getting them into trouble for 20 minutes only to end up using it at the end anyway because much like everyone fucking knew it was the only way for them out of their dilemma. This isn’t the only logical fallacy either. Riko ponders the idea that the mark that shows up when the robot puts his helmet on might be something important, something we as viewers are lead to believe as well. But instead of just taking the helmet off and putting it back on again to show the mark again, she just leaves it be and goes “ wow I wonder wtf that mark was…” like all she had to do was put his helmet on again if she wanted to see it again????????
Speaking of Riko, this brings us to the worst part about the whole show. The characters. There are three major characters in this show to speak about. Riko and the robot being the main two, and then later on the rabbit chick comes in as well. I don’t really hate the robot, sure he’s uninspired and boring but he’s whatever. He functions as the safety blanket for now, he has his hidden overpowered powers with the notion that his past is still unknown and could potentially be an enemy. Riko is the most character I have ever seen, and I cannot fathom how anyone can feel even the slightest hint of empathy towards her. She constantly has this upbeat, nothing can go wrong, kind of attitude no matter how many horrid things happen to her. And every time you feel like she is about to change, something terrible just happened, she starts spiraling, oh boy, shit’s about to go down. Lol, sike, enjoy some naked kids btw. She has 0-character development throughout the whole fucking show, which is surprising considering nothing else happens either. They go down to the next floor, but it just feels so formulaic. They go down, something happens, they run around on the floor for a bit, the robot uses his busted move and they move on. They could have skipped the first 10 episodes and only had the last three and I swear I would not even have noticed. Speaking of the last three episodes, this is where the dumbest character is introduced, the bunny girl. She lives alone in her little hut taking care of her friend because insert sad backstory. That’s whatever, seems cool I guess. Then they bust out the cliffhanger on the second to last episode, where she goes “kill my slime friend”. Apparently, her only purpose in life has been to keep her friend alive, so she wants to take both herself and her friend out of this misery by getting them both killed. This is where things spice up, she seems like a cool character finally. But then the robot makes her promise him that she won’t kill herself afterwards and she gives the fakest fucking smile I’ve ever seen and says that she promises him. Instantly you’re led to believe, oh god she’s going to do it, she’s going to kill herself and maybe finally Riko will have some development off the sad death. NOPE, guess it wasn’t a fake smile and she would rather go on traveling with these random ass kids she has hung out with for four days for no other fucking reason than it being convenient for the plot seeing as the next floor is apparently impossible for them to traverse without her. Everything written so far has led up to her killing herself, but nope, we need her for the plot so lol don’t mind the last episodes I guess her trauma is over now! :D
Some other minor things were how a lot of plot points were left open like the stupid star compass that was so important for 3 episodes, then disappeared but kept reappearing in the opening hinting that it was in fact important and worthy of remembering. Although considering how it is getting another season, I guess that’s whatever. I also thought the cliffhanger ending was super cliché, but again, compared to its other flaws it doesn’t really affect the big picture.
I was really close to putting this shit at a 1/10 for affect but I felt like I had triggered enough of you with the rest of this review.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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