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Jan 30, 2025
My Broken Mariko is certainly a different experience from most manga works. Apart from being a one shot (which already changes the whole narrative structure), it takes a distinct point of view on suicide and the grief of those who stay. Approaching heavy themes like sexual abuse, domestic violence, self harm and specially emotional attachment, the manga, in only 5 chapters, develops perfectly the relationship between Mariko and Shiino. Shiino is in grief and she goes trough all it's stages. But the best part of the story is when she starts questioning her whole relationship with Mariko: how many good memories she has from her
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passed friend? All she can remember are the traumatic moments they shared and the heavy phrases from Mariko like "if you find a boyfriend or anyone who you love more than me, I'll kill myself".
My Broken Mariko explores Shiino's feelings trough her grief: numbness, anger, denial. It's a once in a lifetime experience, certainly the kind of artwork that you can't go trough more than once. It shatters the heart of the reader in every single page, with paralells of past and present all the time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 24, 2024
To this point, Initial D has showed why it is a cult show. The plot as a whole, but also the street racing battles, the character development, multiple antagonists along the way and a bit (but well balanced) teenage drama, are all characteristics that make Inital D so good. But this movie have disappointed me in so many ways and it´s confusing as hell.
The main issue with the movie is that it hasn´t a true focus. At first I thought the movie would be centered in Takumi´s rematch against Kyouchi (since it´s what the synopsis of the movie says). Instead, the rematch happens in
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the first 30 minutes and well, the battle lasts measly 4 minutes. The 2nd season left us with a hype for this battle, since it was Takumi´s first loss and he needed this rematch to finally understand himself and the new engine in his car. But it´s delievered a boring and short fight, where Takumi wins and move on to his next challenge. In the whole movie, Takumi has 3 or 4 different battles, against different rivals, leaving us with no focus. All the battles featured happen so quickly, like they aren´t that important for his development, but those are crucial for him. What´s the movie about? His rematch against Kyouchi? His complicated relation with Mogi? His reluctance to accept´s Ryouske propposal to join him in a new racing team? Or is it about his last days of high school and plans for the future? Because I don´t really know. The movie rushes the story, giving us too much information that could fit a whole season of 20 episodes in just nearly 2 hours.
Another crucial point that ruined it is Takumi´s encounter with Kai Kogashiwa. The movie introduces Kai, the son of Ken Kogashiwa. Who´s Ken? He used to be Bunta´s fiercest rival. So we have the children of 2 street racing legends ready to clash against each other. That was supposed to be a legendary momment. Some flashbacks or a bit of backstory to tell the public about Ken and Bunta rivarly would be really good to understand why it is a very important moment for Takumi. But instead, the movie also rushes this part. There´s not character development of Ken and Kai. Kai just randomly challenges Takumi for a battle, they race and the scenes lasts 12 minutes (the longest race in the movie). After that, Kai just disappears. Such an important moment, that is completed wasted, in order to keep the story going.
So the main issue with Inital D Third Stage is that they condensed too much content and information into a movie and that resulted into an awful storytelling. They should´ve made Third Stage as a full season, with around 24 episodes, to develop the story and it´s conflicts slowly, so all the content in the movie would had fit well into the story. It would flow better.
Still, one point of the movie save it. Mogi´s and Takumi´s relationship. The way she works hard to redeem herself and become a better person, to get his trust again, is a beautiful and well developed point of the movie. She added drama to the story and proved to be a useful character, unlike in season 1, where Mogi was usuless to the story. The ending between them both is satisfying and leaves a good message.
Taking all of those things in consideration, my feelings to recommend or not this movie are mixed. For someone who wants to get the full point of the story, the movie is essential. It´s not something skipable, since it´s an important part of the story. Still, your experience with it might not be good. It´s a bad chapter of the story, but necessary to understand it and keep going onto the next seasons.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 5, 2023
[SPOILERS WARNING]
How can I describe this show? Well, this is one of the biggest pieces of crap I've ever watched. Don't waste your time with it. There's no development, an overpowered character, full of scenes that could make this show a hentai, awful fighting scenes... every single second watching this was excruciating and painful. The problems with Hagure no Yuusha are infinite.
1- THE STORY:
Decades ago, teenagers from high school started being teleported for other worlds. Worlds of fantasy, with dragons and medieval kingdoms. The teenagers got powers after getting into these worlds and had the mission to defeat demon lords and save
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their new worlds. After concluding their missions, the heroes would be able to go back to our world.
The problems starts here: this is not explained trough the show. It's like a random info that we get in the first episode and after that, it's not mentioned again. Didn't anyone care enough to at least investigate this weird phenomenon? Like, scientists, governments and etc? These kids would probably spend the rest of their lives trapped into some lab with scientists making tests in them to discover their secret. But instead, in the anime story, those teenagers are put into a school called "Babel", built specially to receive the new heroes in our world again and keep control of their power (since once they come back they still have their powers of their previous world, like magic). So basically they receive autonomy to attend a school normally and train their powers even more. Haven't anyone thought that these students could use their powers to overthrown the government? Instead, Japan is going to make them even stronger by training their powers. In the world of Hagure no Yuusha, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Japan are the biggest dumbasses of the history. And this could end up not being a problem at all, IF THE FUCKING ANIME EXPLAINED WHY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT BUILT BABEL. But instead, it just throw the background in our faces at the first episode, with no further explanation until the end of it.
2 - THE CHARACTERS:
There are plenty of animes with overpowered mc. Specially in the isekai genre. And rarely doing that end up in a good anime. It's a very risky decision, because you basically sacrifice the whole development of the main character, which is essential for any story, wheter it's a book or a hollywood series or an anime. And although some few directors can make masterpieces with overpowered mc, this one failed completely. It's boring from the beginning to the end and the only person that can defeat Akatsuki, the president of the student council, barely shows up. He never accept to fight against Akatsuki, always remains in the shadows to observe him, instead fighting him. He tries to be the badass antagonist who is careful and do misterious acts, but instead he just acts like a fucking clown and never do anything useful for the plot. You could think that he's preparing his actions for the future, so he's trying manipulate the situations to create a perfect scenario where he can defeats Akatsuki and that would happen in season 2. But this anime was released in 2012 and now, 11 years later, there's no chance that we will have a second season.
Also the main character is a pervert. Defeats anyone easily. Always messes with others. He's just superficial. And what about the other characters? The 3 other members of the Student Council are usuless and their own contribution to the story is being humiliated by the mc every time. Miu is just a scared girl, that flushes every time and act tsundere, although she is just a dead weight to Akatsuki (who always pose as the hero for doing the bare minimum and cliche by protecting Miu). Literally, her job in the show is being saved by the mc again and again and again. She's the daugther of a demon king, so she should be at least stronger than any monster, but she can't even defeat a Cockatrice (which is some sort of mix between a dragon and an eagle). Izumi and Kuzuha are usuless. Also 2 other people for the mc save all the time. Kaidou is another character that don't aggregate for anything in this story. It seems that he's involved with a organisation that want to fight against COCOON (for what I understood). But the anime didn't explain anything about it. They just throwed 2 random scenes of Kaidou talking to someone in the phone, with a mysterious voice, talking about the desire to drag Akatsuki into their organisation and fight COCOON, but both scenes were too fast and lasted 15 seconds each, so it's confusing because after that there's no further explanation. COCOON, btw, is the organisation that rules Babel and represents the interests of the heroes who came back to Earth. They basically rule the world since they have more power than any government and can even stop wars with their powers if they want. In the first episodes, the leaders of COCOON mention Akatsuki as potentially the "True Hero". What the hell being the "true hero" means? They don't explain what is the "true hero" nor the prophecies they mention about him. Literally, no explanation.
Also, during the show, Akatsuki mentions he had a brother that apparently died. But in the last episode, it seems that his brother is alive and is part of COCOON. Again, no further explanations on this, it's just a 20 seconds scene.
And to end this topic: who's Michael Arkwood? He's presented as the leader of COCOON and the only scene he show up, Akatsuki look at him with an angry face, something he rarely does trough the show (showing negative emotions in general). What does Akatsuki has against Arkwood and COCOON? The show ignores this completely.
3 - IS THIS A HENTAI OR A TV SHOW?:
The anime is marked as ecchi. Alright. I don't have any problems with ecchi itself. Breasts and butts flying everywhere, that's the kind of thing you expect. But this anime take this in a bizarre way and make the weirdest ecchi scenes I've ever seen. Miu breasts are always growing, her clothes never fits in and her body is always exposed. And the way she feels uncomfortable with this is a real problem, because she doesn't wants to expose her body but she's forced to by the situations, always leaving her embarassed. This is not ok. Also, there's a scene where Akatsuki is sleepwalking and he almost rape Miu. How the hell someone who's sleeping tries to rape someone? Who was the genius that thought: "oh this would be a great fan service scene"? The amount of nudity in this anime is really exaggerated. This is not the kind of ecchi with suggestive content and a good balance of fan service. This is all about Akatsuki abusing all girls he meets. He squizes the breats of Miu without her consent multiple times (AND SOMEHOW SHE ALWAYS ACCEPTS THOSE SITUATIONS), steals the underwear of any girl that challenge him, in one scene he left the VP of the Student Council completely naked on purpose, in front of other people. And in the last episode, when he's recovering from a huge fight, Miu takes her clothes off and his clothes as well, they're both naked and she uses her body to warm Akatsuki's body. And when this idiot wakes up, he squizes her butt and her breasts all over again, leaving Miu in an akward situation.
In the same episode, in one of the last scenes, Miu is going to tell Izumi and Kuzuha the truth, that she's not human, but the daughter of the demon king from another world. But she gets nervous while trying to tell them, so to relieve her stress and help her talk, Akatsuki squizes her breasts AGAIN and SOMEHOW this make Miu get calm. How the hell squizing the breasts of a woman without her consent will make her more confident of herself? How does that even works?
It's so absurd and these are things I can't accept.
CONCLUSION:
The anime is completely superficial, throws random (but important) information for the plot randomly in 15 to 30 seconds scenes and then don't make any further explanation about these essential things for the story, the characters are completely useless, the antagonists never make a real move and the main character defeats anyone easily. The ecchi scenes can't be considered ecchi, they're disgusting hentai scenes, that normalize sexual abuse and harassment. There's no development for the plot at all. Everything in this anime is completely awful. I don't recommend this show in any circumstances. It's the worst anime I've ever watched.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Apr 6, 2023
THIS IS NOT A ROMANTIC COMEDY
When I first added this anime in my list, months ago, I thought it was some sort of romantic comedy. Something in the style of prison school. The protagonist would a pervert and then a girl who knows it would get him in trouble, giving us decent laughs. Well... THAT'S NOT THE REALITY. Aku no Hana is a THRILLER, surely. It has drama. And it has all the characteristics from a psychological horror. And this something that makes the anime really good. Nakamura isn't a funny girl, she's sadistic and crazy and all she wants is to put Kasuga
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in trouble. But not because it's funny. It's because she loves and feel pleasured when she sees him desperate or crying. In one of the scenes, feeling pressured by her mind games, Kasuga has a mental breakdown and starts crying. All Nakamura says is "I love when you do this face". I guess you can understand how sick their relation is. The anime makes you tense, since the beggining. You feel the fear, the despair, the agony of Kasuga.
ANIMATION AND THE MAIN REASON WHY THIS ANIME GETS HATE
Aku no Hana is the kind of anime that people can consider either awful or a masterpiece. There's no mid term between them. And I'm on the team of the masterpiece. First of all, let me say something. The main reason why people hate on this anime is because of it's animation. People are used to the traditional anime animation, so when there's an anime that uses some different kind of animation style, they don't like it. And I understand it, it's completely normal. I felt really umcofortable with the animation in the first episode, but after that I got used to it and started liking it. It's necessary to understand that the animation style isn't something random. It's not like the producers thought randomly "oh let's make some different". There's a reason behind it and once you understand it, you start appreciating this style animation. The anime focus on the characters body language instead of their faces. That's why we barely see the characters faces most of the time, but we can see their bodies moving more fluidly and realistically than in animes that uses the traditional animation style. It's not essencial to understand the characters faces, but their body language is what matters, you can feel the emotions by the way their body moves and this is something I loved.
But if you don't have án open mind, to watch a different style of animation and really enjoy it, you shouldn't watch this anime.
- This is my first review and also I'm not a native english speaker, so please forgive my grammar mistakes or if my text isn't good at all. I'm learning to write reviews. But I hope this help you guys some way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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