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FLCL is the most divisive anime I can think of - look at the myriad of 1-2 and 8-10 reviews. This isn't just a classic divide between veterans and newcomers, either. Many veterans of the medium worship the show for its fantastic symbolism and handling of complex themes, whereas many other veterans deplore the show for its nonsensical story and its crude humor, many even believing that any deeper meaning for the show is purely fabricated and is only attained by grasping at straws.

On my first watch in high school, I fell more into the latter camp. Although I thought it was entertaining and funny ... at times, I could not follow the plot in the slightest, and could not understand how someone could possibly extrapolate meaning from such chaos and incoherentness. Still, something about the show still allured me, whether it be the show's fantastic aesthetics, boasting some of the genuinely best audiovisuals in the medium, or its meta-cult-status as a supposed piece of art that has withstood the test of time. I took it upon myself to rewatch the show nearly 6 years later, and my opinion has honestly vastly changed.

I'm not going to give an analysis of the deeper meanings and symbolism of the show (as one could easily do that with a simple google search), nor am I going to sit here to lecture anyone that there are grand, deeper meanings in the work. Indeed I did, like many others, interpret the show to be a lovely and original metaphor for adolescence and what it means to be an adult, but I also believe that "it's just stupid shit that doesn't mean anything" is not an entirely invalid interpretation either. I think that the viewer’s interpretation ultimately overrules whatever the creator’s intent is and for so many viewers to "not get the point" would be really if anything a failure of the work itself. Still, I believe that since so many people came to the same conclusion for the work's meanings/symbolism, it's clear that there is definitely substance for thought and it isn't simply just "grasping at straws". If that were the case, people would have vastly different conclusions about the show's themes and meanings, but it seems like most people who have a positive opinion of the show generally have very similar interpretations when it comes to the show's themes and symbols.

FLCL is a gorgeous, upbeat show that I would recommend any anime fan to watch, but only with a very open mind. It is no doubt a weird one, and it may make your head scratch, but you'll never know if you'll love it until you really give it a chance. Don't listen to anyone rant about its brilliance, or how it's "completely meaningless" - come to your own conclusions and see for yourself.

Goblin Slayer is kinda entertaining. It's not entertaining because it has a compelling plot, or any deep themes, or any multi-faceted characters (dear god no). Characters have such stupendously little depth that most of them don't even have proper names. That is not a joke. The four important main characters outside of the protagonist are referred to as "Elf", "Dwarf", "Guild Girl", and "Lizardman". Check the wiki if you don't believe me.

The setting is.. questionable. The premise is a generic RPG fantasy world except goblins are much more vile and dangerous. They wreak havoc every day by pillaging villages and raping women. Beginner adventurers attempt ... to kill the goblins, but many (most?) of them perish in their attempts due to their inexperience and get raped and plundered and murdered. But there are apparently worse problems in the world (never shown) and goblins are too weak to be thought of as a "real threat" (even though they very clearly are not weak, as high-level adventurers are shown to have trouble with goblin hordes in later chapters), so quests to slay goblins grant very little reward. This remains the case even with important quests that involve the protection of enefenseless villages from goblin attacks. Because of the disproportionately small pay, no one actually competent bothers to help out, and as a result normal citizens, beginner adventurers, and entire villages get destroyed by goblins practically on a daily basis. But apparently it's no big deal, so goblin extermination quests still have low rewards. Nothing makes sense, but whatever, fuck it.

Insert our badass protagonist, the fabled Goblin Slayer, whom bards sing of (literally) and people fear. He is a genocidal maniac who wants to exterminate all goblins from existence. He flat-out refuses to accept any quest unrelated to murdering goblins - he lives for it and knows everything about the goblin hunt, from how they eat to how they move. He has plenty of experience destroying goblin nests and doesn't flinch in killing even the youngest. He reasons that baby goblins that are spared by adventurers become truly strong when they grow up. So he kills them too.

That's it. This dude kills hoards of goblins because of his "tragic past" involving them (a past he suddenly elaborated about without ever being asked early on in the manga.. talk about subtlety). And women love him. Nearly every female character he meets lusts for him. How could women not love him? He's the best goblin slayer around.

How about the other characters? Well, as I had mentioned earlier, most of them don't even have proper names. Pretty much all of the women only exist to fall in love with the protagonist to make him look cool. I don't really remember any characters aside from the nameless generic dwarf dude and the lizard whose sole personality trait is eating cheese.

So why is it entertaining? Well... it's honestly pretty fun, despite it all. The goblin slaying is often done in creative ways, and the protagonist comes up with half-way interesting plans in destroying the things. It's also enjoyable in just how brutal he is at times. At some point, I genuinely wondered why the author was so fixated on vilifying and destroying goblins. Did a goblin murder his family? Did he read a doujin with them and his favorite female character? Does he just not like the way they look?

In all, I give Goblin Slayer a 6/10, which is pretty damn generous given the many negative aspects of it. A more objective and fair rating would be a 2/10 or something, but I don't really care. Sure, it may not be very intellectually stimulating, but it's far more enjoyable than other "turn your brain off to enjoy" manga like most battle shonen because the author of Goblin Slayer realizes the only entertaining aspect of these things is the ridiculous fighting scenes. It's actually genuinely inspiring how little the author gives a shit when it comes to world-building, character development, thought-provoking themes, or anything that would normally be prevalent in such a tragic, character-driven story. It doesn't feign a stupid facade of depth. There's no protagonist I want to strangle, there's no stupid "friendship is power" monologues and no real coherent plot whatsoever. It's a manga about a badass and his genocide against goblins and I like it


edit: This review only captures the first 30 or so chapters, I do not keep up with the series anymore

ReLIFE certainly had an interesting setting, but it fails to take advantage of it. The manga is terribly paced, the plot makes no sense half the time, and its attempts at creating drama feel contrived and unrealistic.

Now, most of its flaws wouldn't be so bad if ReLIFE was a gag manga created solely to be laughed at, but it takes itself extremely seriously. There are often chapters dedicated to Kaizaki monologuing about his mundane issues with a sad expression the entire time, but realizing absolutely nothing new by the end of the chapter. Just because the manga takes a serious tone, doesn't make it ... deep or profound in any way if it doesn't actually resolve anything.

Speaking of chapters dedicated to nothing, one of the first arcs is dedicated to Kairu, in which she basically yells and cries about her really unoriginal insecurities. This isn't so bad on its own, but its repeated again and again, until its ingrained in your mind that Kairu is a completely unstable teenager. It takes around 70 chapters for her issues to resolve and finally fuck off, which is really indicative of how badly paced it is. Onanie Master Kurosawa was only 30 chapters long, and yet it managed to resolve its central conflict (a much more interesting conflict, too) and clearly develop its main character. You can make the argument that Kairu resolving her issues is meant to be a catalyst for the other characters development, which I agree with to some extent. That's definitely what the manga is going for, but it just takes way too long for the development to actually occur, and the manga could resolve Kairu's issues in significantly fewer chapters.

And now, 200 chapters in, even the most loyal fans of ReLIFE admit the manga is currently extremely repetitive and badly paced. In the past 50 chapters, I don't think anything has actually happened. Every chapter follows the same exact formula: Kaizaki plays around with his 17 year old friends, enjoying high school; Kaizaki is then inadvertently reminded that he will lose his memories; Kaizaki becomes depressed and wishes he met Hishiro in a different setting. Take a shot everytime the manga presents this conflict but makes no attempt at actually resolving it. You will die. I wish I was exaggerating.

At least the first 50 or so chapters were kinda entertaining, and sometimes even funny. I can't say that for the later chapters. The author is clearly stalling because he has no idea how to resolve any of the major conflicts that he wrote in the first place. Even if he does eventually resolve them in a well-written way, it cannot make up for the terrible pacing leading up to the resolution.

Edit: The manga is finished. The conflicts were barely resolved, and in a really uninteresting way. It feels as if the author abandoned the rules about the experiment he set himself in order to create a happy ending..

As for the characters, they're all pretty boring/uninteresting, and some of them even annoying. Hishiro is probably the best character, as she actually goes through a decent amount of development, but she's really not that special. She can be pretty much summed up as a cute girl with Aspergers.

Finally, the plot barely makes sense in regards to the actual experiment. I completely understand the purpose of the ReLIFE experiment. The point is clearly to help the test subject grow as a person by putting them back in adolescence- among the biggest periods of growth for anyone. I get that. The experiment still doesn't make sense and is absurd beyond belief. The experiment ensures that any record of the test subject is erased from everyone's memory. What about written records, actual events caused by the subject, and pictures? Theoretically (if Ryou allowed him to), Arata could completely fuck up peoples lives and no one would even remember who did it after the experiment ends. I wouldn't be surprised if Kairu had a diary and wrote about Arata. How would her diary be affected? In addition, why is this experiment even allowed to happen? The test subject has his rent paid, is given an ample allowance, and is even given a job after the experiment ends. It's been made clear that the amount of government funding and time necessary for such an experiment for a single individual heavily outweighs the potential labor force/production possibilities made by that individual. There's pretty much no benefit to the experiment in the government's eyes. These are just two examples from the top of my head- there's clearly way more things wrong with the ReLIFE experiment excluding the obvious scientific impossibilities.

Of course, ReLIFE isn't striving to be realistic in that aspect, and I understand that. But the manga takes itself so seriously that it becomes a problem for me. Again and again, I'm expected to suspend my disbelief to make the setting make sense (recently, they introduced a new absurd concept relating to the drugs side effects) when they should have established these parameters at the beginning of the manga. As I mentioned, this would be fine if this were a gag manga, but it clearly isn't. How can I take the manga seriously when nothing makes sense?


The manga does have a cool gimmick of fully being in color, but it trades off having actual detailed art/faces for the color aspect.

I don't think you should read this unless you have some kind of hard-on for typical angsty teenage drama. If you want a high school drama with actual conflict resolutions and character development, I would recommend Onanie Master Kurosawa. If you're looking for a funny romance comedy, I would recommend Tsurezure Children, Kaguya-sama, or Komi-san wa Comyushou desu.

After finishing Anohana, I could only think of one thing -

"So what's the point?"

There are many positive things to say about Anohana. Its opening is well designed, featuring the characters in their past and present forms as well as hinting at their emotional problems. The theme ("Aoi Shiori") is not only a great song by itself but also well-fitting with the show's melancholic tone. Its ending is similarly well made, and it is sung by some of the voice actors of the cast.

The animation/art is amazing. It is fluid and never drops in quality.

The show also does a pretty good at demonstrating character ... interaction (for the most part). It's meant to be awkward and unpleasant, given the long period of time the characters went without talking to each other after the death of Menma. And, I do think the characters feel realistic (with some exceptions). They are all deeply flawed and selfish people, which is OK. In fact, it is very refreshing to see this in anime.

The issue is they don't ever develop from their mistakes, or really, develop at all. In fact, it's very debatable whether or not most of them see what they did wrong in the first place. The show doesn't go into them actually becoming better human beings. They end up basically the same as they started, barely able to accept that Menma is indeed dead. There's no catharsis, no growth. The only thing you get at the end of the series is screaming and crying for the sake of it. So what the hell was the entire point of the confessions, the crying, Menma coming back as a ghost- everything? Was the entire point of the show "Haha these people are really bad human beings"?

And this is only made worse with the copious amount of melodrama.

I'll be the first one to say people overuse the term "melodrama". Under stress, or when angered, humans will act in very irrational ways. This is natural. But Jesus Christ, the characters can just put a damn blanket on Menma and 9/10 of the drama could be solved. Jinta genuinely can't figure out a way to prove the ghost's existence. Please, Jinta, make her hold something. Anything. The object will appear to be floating. She's pretty much an invisible person. Hell, just put some paint on her and none of the characters will ever have a difficult time figuring out where the hell she is. It is insane how severely lacking the characters' mental faculties are, and it's genuinely distracting. This wouldn't be that bad by itself, except for the fact that many plot points revolve around Jinta being unable to prove the ghost's existence. The characters argue vehemently about whether or not she exists, even accusing Jinta of being a liar rather than assume he's hallucinating. This goes on for almost half the show and it is extremely stupid. Eventually, the show devolves into the characters crying hysterically together and yelling about nothing for most of the screen time. It's almost as if the show is holding audience cue cards, where the show tells you you're supposed to feel emotion when the characters bawl their eyes out.

In addition, some of the characters' emotional hurdles are very unbelievable. Although I did say the characters are realistic, I say that with a grain of salt. Yukiatsu, for one, is god damn insane for little reason. He dresses up as Menma and obsesses over her, hopelessly in love with what is a walking loli moeblob. It was a childhood crush- they were 5 years old when Menma died, it's been literally over a decade. There's just no way he could still have that amount of feelings for her. It's hard to take his character seriously, which is detrimental to a drama like Anohana. His character is there just to add more drama, and he never contributes anything.

Speaking of not being able to take things seriously, it was difficult for me to empathize with the characters, mostly because the "tragic" event of Menma's death is pretty much just alluded to. It takes very little screen time actually developing this extremely important event. The show's structure is so strange. I genuinely wonder why this show didn't start with their childhood, featuring their reactions to Menma's death, with the rest of the series as a time skip showing with their hatred for one another, their eventual acknowledgment, and finally their realization/redemption. It would make a lot more sense, and the events would have more of an impact on the viewer.

Overall, Anohana is a melodrama that has way too many things wrong with it for me to give it a positive score. Certainly, I am in the minority when I say this, as at the time of writing the show has an 8.52 on MAL, but for reasons mentioned in the review, I don't recommend Anohana to anyone. If you are looking for a coming-of-age story, I suggest you to watch Ping Pong the Animation or Nagi no Asukara, and for manga, read Onanie Master Kurosawa or if you love action, Vinland Saga.

Story: 3 (dreadful presentation of the story events, combined with the massive plothole of being unable to prove menmas existence makes it the lowest category, good concept for a coming-of-age tale though)
Art: 8 (what you would expect from A-1 Pictures)
Sound: 9 (exceptional op/ed, bgs were fine too, unique char designs)
Character: 3 (tons of potential for these characters, but 0 development and little reason to empathize with them)
Enjoyment: 4 (the excessive crying and yelling in the second half was quite annoying, but the first few episodes were pretty entertaining)
Overall: 3 (I believe art and sound are not enough to save this show)

Please leave a comment letting me know if you have a criticism of my review. Feedback would be great.