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As Miyazaki gets older his movies seem to become more and more about self-reflection. In The Wind Rises he processed the guilt he associates with his selfish desire to create movies and now with The Boy and the Heron (or as I prefer to call it, How do you Live) he goes even deeper to the root of this desire.

The movie starts uncharacteristically grounded and bleak for a Miyazaki movie, and I'm not just talking about the overall tone but about the design as well. It looks like it wasn't directed by Miyazaki but by one of the other Ghibli directors due to how bland ... it is, but this turns out to be deliberate as the movie makes a great deal about the contrast between the real world and its dreamworld.
As the story progresses the protagonist dives into the typical Alice in Wonderland like dreamworld Miyazaki is known for and the presentation becomes a lot more colorful and interesting as to be expected of a Miyazaki picture.

As typical for a Ghibli movie, there is little to no directing gimmicks or experiments. Miyazaki in particular doesn't seem to care much for flashy presentation and prefers to let the content carry the interest of the audience. This makes the introduction of this movie rather boring to watch as there isn't much of Miyazaki's magic to be found and the directing is so basic that it comes across like a walking simulator.
This problem is fixed when the dreamworld part starts, but given the symbolic nature of this movie it will seem very random and scattered unless you're already familiar with Miyazaki as a director.

The movie is a way for Miyazaki to look back at his own life, and as such it is filled with his own experiences and symbolism that represents his struggles in life. The relationship between the protagonist and his mother is a direct reference to Miyazaki's life and I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the events taking place in the real world were also inspired if not directly taken from it.
The dreamworld seems random at first but is an allegory for Miyazaki's own escape from reality into a fictional dreamworld. Fans are often confused when they find out that Miyazaki is this grumpy old man full of cynicism who thinks the world is bleak and terrible, yet he creates these beautiful and whimsical movies. The Boy and the Heron focuses on this paradoxical side of Miyazaki's art creation and his own awareness of it, and nothing exemplifies this better than the heron that was chosen for the english title. A beautiful and majestic creature that hides an ugly and pathetic old man underneath, the relationship between the boy and the heron is ambivalent. They start out as enemies where the heron tempts the boy into chasing what has been long lost, but over the course of the movie they become allies and the heron is essential for the protagonist in overcoming his grief. One could say the heron is a symbol for Miyazaki's own creative yet twisted mind, but that might just be my personal interpretation.
The rest of the movie's dreamworld is also symbolic for all facets of Miyazaki's creative life. The dreamworld is beautiful, but also a fight for survival. It is built on a shaky foundation of the boy's great grandfather that could collapse at any moment. The boy is hunted by a kingdom of scavenging birds and the journey is about the pursuit of something that was lost. All of this is interesting but only if you know the context. If you just look at it at face value then it will just seem weird and nonsensical. This is what differentiates this movie from most of his other films, which, despite their weird elements, still contain a coherency that can be enjoyed by everyone independently of their knowledge of Miyazaki. And this is what makes this movie so difficult.

As you probably noticed from reading this review, I mentioned the name of the director a whole lot and this is simply because it's impossible to separate this movie and Miyazaki. If you want to fully appreciate this movie you have to have an interest in understanding its director, and this is simply not the case for most people. Most people just want to have a good time enjoying a movie whose meaning is universally understood and not context-dependent, and as such, while this movie is not any worse than all his other movies, it's not as easily recommendable, and especially not recommendable as your first Miyazaki movie.

Cute girls + isekai-esque fantasy setting. Heck, Frieren could take place in the same world as Mushoku Tensei, that's how similar they look.
As with all anime fantasies these days the main inhabitants of such worlds are same-faced lolis whose only distinguishing features are the body parts they are sexualized by, ie Fern has her big breasts, Übel has her armpits and Frieren has her... feet? I was baffled when I found out how much fans get off the feet animation of Frieren, but maybe this explains why the anime spent so much resources on animating them with such detail. The first thing you learn in ... animation is to focus on the great picture, so you usually simplify things like hands or feet to be able to work faster and more efficiently on the things people care about. But apparently times have changed and now everybody cares about what the little toe is doing.

Anyway, the anime is not bad, it's very well-made with great production values. It's just very uneventful. Characters are just walking around without much aim and nearly every episode has Frieren reminiscence about the past and how things were so cool back then... why couldn't we see those adventures instead? They sound a hell of a lot more eventful than what's going on in the present.
The characters seem to be aware of how boring this show is and lack any sort of facial expressiveness. Emotions like surprise or fear are never seen, at best Fern will pout or Frieren will smirk. There is an arc where supposedly emotionless demons are introduced and they showed more emotions than the humans, what's up with that? So even the few moments of tension in this otherwise slice of life type fantasy adventure are underplayed by how little the characters seem to care.

This also hurts the characters themselves due to how their personal journeys are undercut by them not really caring. Fern has a little mage exam arc going on but it's not like she does it because she cares, she just does it because why not. With Stark it's even worse, we see him train from time to time but it's more as a way to get rid of him to focus on Fern and Frieren. Stark mainly seems to exist to be shipped with Fern, without her he has barely anything going on that justifies his main character status.
There is a priest who joins for a while who has the most personality of them all and even shows emotions from time to time, but then he leaves and we go back to pouting + smirking.

Fans say it's okay that the show is uneventful and lacks tension because of the theme, but that seems like a copout given how banal the theme really is. It's about cherishing your time with your friends as long as you have them and bla, aka the safest and most generic theme everyone can agree with and where nobody runs the risk of being challenged or let alone offended by it. It's not even as good as it could've been because the main character is virtually immortal. If she was on her dying bed and looked back regretting her life decisions it would be dramatic, but as it is she will just redo her mistake by spending more time with a new group of people.

Lets be honest here, it's not the story or the theme that's the main appeal, it's more so that Frieren is an anime equivalent of ASMR. The pretty colors, the detailed movements, the subtle noises and all that stuff that tickles the senses are the reason why people enjoy this show. It's a show where you can perfectly shut your brain off while watching and have your senses do all the work for you. Which is not the worst I suppose, but kinda weird seeing an ASMR anime at the top of MAL. Like is this really all it takes?

The new Rurouni Kenshin anime is the attempt to adapt the manga more faithfully by being completely accurate to the events in the manga. While that may sound like the most important thing an adaptation can do, it ultimately misses the point in my eyes.
The plot of Rurouni Kenshin is… simple, especially in the beginning. It’s mostly episodic stuff with one-note villains doing one-note bad stuff and the protagonist saving the day at the end in a deus ex machina like fashion. What made the Rurouni Kenshin manga work despite its shallow plot is the expressive main characters, the comedy and the fights, and in ... that regard the new version fails at being a faithful adaptation, at least so far.

The main characters shown so far are Kenshin, Kaoru and Yahiko, and while their characterization is accurate on paper, their expressiveness has been hugely diminished compared to the source material and also the old anime. The manga is generally very exaggerated with its expressions and the old anime being a 90s product naturally had many of the absurd facial expressions that era is known for. The new anime on the other hand goes for a more natural approach that rarely gets off-model, thus reducing the expressiveness of the characters considerably.
Kenshin in particular suffered the most here as his silliness is almost entirely gone. In the manga and old anime he was constantly falling victim to all kinds of slapstick humor resulting in some of the silliest distorted faces you can think of, but this is completely gone in the new version. His silly expressiveness and gentle warmth was replaced with a Gary Stu-ish personality that makes me think of Kirito from Sword Art Online. Kenshin is now just “mr. coolguy#257” whose appeal is that he saves the day in the last minute and has everyone comment on how awesome he is. His iconic “ORO!?” has also been reduced entirely to its iconography alone with the actual point being lost. It’s not there for comedy purposes anymore, but because he said it a lot in the manga and therefore it must be included.
Even the action scenes with him are rather underwhelming thus far as they mainly consist of Kenshin doing a very fast slash and that’s it. It worked far better in the manga due to the more static nature of the medium and the old anime also did a good job at capturing the impact panels through the use of freeze frames. The new version is more concerned about capturing the speed of the slash but since the fighting is so minimalistic it loses all its impact and comes across as rushed. That said the action is where I see the most potential with this new adaptation, especially when it reaches the later arcs.

The music, sound effects and even the voice acting are all very underwhelming. I’ve seen Kenshin’s voice actor being praised for being a man now instead of a woman like in the old anime but I don’t see how that says anything about the performance. The old voice actress was super expressive and delivered the warm, silly and badass personality traits of Kenshin perfectly, while the new one just sounds monotonous and bored out of his mind no matter the situation. At the end of the day I only care about performance, not about whether the person behind the mic has the same genitals as the character they are voicing.

As I already pointed out, the story of Rurouni Kenshin is nothing spectacular, especially in its first few volumes. It’s not until the Kyoto arc that the story becomes any interesting and even then it’s just your typical fighting shounen stuff. Rurouni Kenshin doesn’t separate itself from other series of its kind through its plot but through its characters, and so far the anime does a subpar job at capturing the appeal of those characters. So in my eyes it’s a faithful adaptation only on a surface level. Yeah, it’s more accurate than the previous adaptation in some aspects; the first episode takes place at night instead of the day, just like in the manga. The first one-note bad guy had a one-note bad guy brother, just like in the manga. There’s actual blood, just like in the manga… these things are all more accurate in the new version, but do they really matter that much? When it comes to the expressiveness of the characters, the comedy and the fight scenes, this new version fails to capture what made the manga enjoyable.

Basically the anti-version of Rent-a-Girlfriend. I wouldn't even be surprised if its creation was directly influenced by RaG as the first volume is a giant middlefinger to its premise. Instead of feeding into the fantasy of a rental girlfriend and a customer developing feelings for one another, it chooses a much more cynical yet realistic approach. There are no feelings, it's just a job. And instead of glorifying it or downplaying it as any other job, it is treated as what it is: You pay money so someone pretends to be your friend, your partner or your sex fetish.

The strongest aspect of this manga are ... the characters, mainly the women. There are a lot of female characters in this manga and they all get their own story arc that spans over multiple volumes. While the concept of renting people is the premise of all its story arcs, the manga is not repetitive about it and manages to explore this concept from multiple angles such as sugar daddies, plastic surgery, host clubs and prostitution. The responsibility in each character's hardships is reasonably distributed between the systematic exploitation by the industry and the character's personal flaws that leads to their eventual downfall.
The female characters are all written in a believable way with nuances to their personalities and mentalities, making them interesting to follow. The male characters tend to be less interesting and mainly function as plot-devices, but they are not poorly written, merely functional.
One thing that is unsure as of yet is the existence of a protagonist for the whole manga. While the lead of the first story arc could be seen as the manga's protagonist, her role in most of the following story arcs is heavily reduced to give one of the other women the spotlight, giving the manga an episodic feeling. If this is good or not is up to reader preference, but I personally enjoyed the shift in main characters.

The art of the manga is not spectacular but works well enough for what it's trying to express. The female characters look pretty but not overly sexy or moe. They have a certain dignity to them even when they sell their bodies, making them look like people rather than fetishes for the male gaze. While the story features sex as a running theme there are no actual sex scenes, it's only ever implied, so it avoids drifting into obscene territory.
There is a greater variety in different faces compared to most manga, although the pretty faces all still look the same. That might be fitting though as one of the points is a standardization of beauty, so it's not too bad in this case. The backgrounds are minimalistic or obviously traced from photographs, so functional at best. The visual storytelling such as paneling, use of contrast and scene composition are average at best, making this a manga that is more carried by its story and characters than its presentation.

The tone of the story is extremely grim and depressing, making it the total opposite of a feel-good manga. The concept of the manga is exposited in the very first story arc by the protagonist when she talks about a grim movie they saw in cinema: The appeal is not nice feelings or happy endings, but the showcase of the absurdity of real life. So if you're looking for a very cynical take on human relationships and romance, how it has been made into a business that exploits people's desire for human connections and sells it like a drug, then this is the manga for you.

Heavenly Delusion is a dystopian sci-fi thriller whose main draw is its heavy usage of the mystery box, a device where information is deliberately withheld to bait the audience into watching more. It's often overused by stories that either don't have enough interesting stuff going on to keep the audience's attention, or ones that need to compensate for how thematically shallow they are by faking complexity through unnecessarily obtuse storytelling. With Heavenly Delusion it's a bit of both. It's not a super boring show, there are a some cool sci-fi concepts and the characters aren't half-bad. The show isn't completely empty of substance either, although ... the main conflict is superficial as it comes down to bad people doing bad things to poor children. It's decent, but doesn't stand out in any area, and the mystery box is utilized in an attempt to hide its mediocrity a little bit.

A lot of the sci-fi stuff in the show comes across as nothing more than flavor. There is nothing to the fact that the main character has his brain put into his sister's body, just like there is nothing to the special abilities some of the characters possess or the weird monsters that roam the cities. These things only seem to exist because they make the world more mysterious, to add a tragic backstory for the sake of it, to make characters memorable through their abilities rather than their characterization, or to make it easier to write pervy scenes.
There are also certain scenes whose only point is to serve as foreshadowing for the mystery. Like there is an episode in which a girl with glasses is introduced who can cause disturbing illusions when staring into another person's eyes directly. This scene served no pupose besides giving hints to a mystery, and to give a creepy scene for the sake of a creepy scene.

While most things in the show are gimmicks and flavour, at the very least it's nicely done gimmicks and flavour. The show has a nice atmosphere in regards to hiding a darker truth behind the mysteries, which is in large part thanks to the directing. The sound design is above average for modern anime standards, knowing when to cut off the music, when to use subdued tracks, when to use more obvious tracks. The creepy scenes in particular benefit a lot from this.
The visual presentation is also nice. While it's still a little too bright and saturated with its colors, it's not nearly as terrible as with most anime these days, and the show does a good job at getting the intended mood across without overdoing it. Despite the writing giving plenty of opportunities to turn this into an edgefest, the show manages to avoid this for the most part through competent directing.
The show's presentation is mostly consistent with the one exception being episode 10 which is easily the strangest episode. Apparently that episode's animation director was from Studio Trigger, so there is a pretty huge break in style compared to the other episodes, making it one of the most strangely memorable episodes in the show in regards to presentation.

Despite ending on a cliffhanger and leaving many questions unanswered, the show still manages to answer one big question and move one step forward in terms of character development, making it not too disappointing. So the way it ends is pretty fitting considering the show's nature I described earlier. The anime is decent for what it is, even interesting at times, but lacks a certain depth that it tries to compensate through mystery boxes. A nice time-waster but will be forgotten fast.

The second pokemon movie came out when the franchise had reached its all-time high in terms of media presence. Everyone knew what it was, your mom, your teacher, your boss, everyone. While the first movie was already a worldwide success, it's with the second one that the staff seemed to become aware of the fact that the franchise is a big deal even outside of Japan. As a result, unlike the eccentric and culturally-rooted Mewtwo Strikes Back, Revelation Lugia is more culturally independent and safe. Instead of a dark story about a Atom-Godzilla-Tetsuo hybrid letting out its existential wrath over humanity, we got a more ... conventional action-oriented movie in the spirit of a hollywood blockbuster.

The second movie takes place during the Orange Archipelago journeys in the TV series and as such the location is much more naturalistic compared to the first film. Despite this, the movie still manages to bring back some of the weirdly futuristic technology in the form of the main antagonist's flying aircraft castle thingy. While the first movie was almost entirely carried by Mewtwo, the second movie's main villain is just an excuse to get a conflict going. The actual replacement for Mewtwo is Lugia, who's supposed to be the star of the film, but ends up being a big disappointment by comparison as its role is highly limited. Instead of being a pivotal player to the resolution of the conflict, its main purpose is to carry Satoshi around as the plot decided he's very important for collecting the dragon ba-- I mean, the three sphery thingies that bring balance to the world or whatever. Lugia is barely even a character, especially when compared to the ambitious characterization that Mewtwo received, and as such there is not much to it besides the fact that it was a nice teaser for the upcoming second generation of pokemon games at the time (RIP Ho-oh).

Speaking of games, this movie's story could be from a videogame as there is barely any logic to how the conflict is ultimately resolved, unless of course you're familiar with videogame logic. Just like Link can gain access to the master sword after collecting three mcguffins and playing a song on his ocarina, so do the birds stop their fighting after Satoshi collects three mcguffins and Furuura plays a song on her flute (that looks like an ocarina; go figure). This wouldn't be too bad if it resulted in a fun adventure-type story but it doesn't. Satoshi finds two of the mcguffins by coincidence and then only has to collect one last one, for which he surfs along the ocean for like half an hour dodging bird attacks nonstop. So really, there is no point to collecting three spheres other than trying to stay as true to the videogame convention as possible.

This is overall the biggest issue with the movie: It's just one long-ass bird fight. There is very little variety to the action. Sure, Team Rocket does help at one point, but they are not changing the direction of the plot in any way. Satoshi is still surfing on the ocean dodging what is essentially beam attacks. The first movie wasn't known for its exciting action sequences either but at least there was variation, a point and a sense of progression to every action scene. We got Mewtwo's battles for Giovanni, the opening battle with Satoshi, the battle of three starters and then the final showdown. What can I say about the second movie's fights? There is bird vs bird and bird vs bird and two birds teaming up against a bird and all birds teaming up against Lugia... it all just merges together into one long-ass bird fght.
The dramatically lowest point of the story, where everything seems lost, is when the villain suddenly intervenes and tries to catch Lugia and both Satoshi and Lugia lose consciousness. This is supposed to mirror the dramatically lowest point of the first film, where Satoshi gets hit by Mewtwo's and Mew's attacks, but it's just pathetic by comparison.

If there is one aspect this movie does better than the first then it's in getting across a sense of world-shattering stakes due to the effects on the environment and the people and creatures being shown, yet when it comes to the micro-interactions between the key players in the story it's all superficial. What is the relationship between the main antagonist and the main characters? There is simply nothing, just one scene where they tell him to at least use pokeballs. What is the relationship between Lugia and the other birds? They just hate each other because, and Lugia acts like a mediator because. So as a result, all the tense moments fall flat because there is nothing that connects the two opposing factions. How come the first movie had such an ambituous concept for the villain's motifs yet the second movie barely cares about the reason and resolution behind the conflict? I think this comes down to what I said in the beginning. This is a pokemon movie for a worldwide audience. Similar to how certain japanese videogames get dumped down for the western release because they would be too difficult for us western scrubs, so seemed to be the attitude when approaching the design of this movie. Anything as ambitious as the conflict of the first movie would’ve been too much to appeal to a worldwide audience, and as a result, it became a mindless movie for a mindless audience.

If you are a diehard pokemon fan and wanna see a braindead pokemon action-flick then this one does the job far better than the other braindead action flicks in the franchise's movie series. Otherwise there is very little content in it compared to some of the other films and you might get bored as a result.

It's hard to imagine these days but the pokemon franchise wasn't always the commercialized juggernaut it is today. While the first pokemon movie came out during a time when the franchise was about to reach the peak of its media presence, its origins are still rooted in what started out as a cheap indie project by some guy who enjoyed collecting bugs.
As such, the first pokemon movie kept some of the uncharacteristically dark and eccentric concepts of the first pokemon games. When you look at the original Red/Blue, the game contained a subtle naturalistic theme about the relationship between humans and the environment and Mewtwo ... was the pinnacle of this theme. The movie catches up on this and creates a whole origin story around Mewtwo and turning it into one of the most iconic characters of the franchise.

Mewtwo is a fascinating character as it's a combination of two other highly iconic japanese characters, Atom (Astro Boy) and Godzilla. It combines the origin story and themes concering identity of Tetsuwan Atom with the destructive irresponsibility with which humans treat nature and technology of Godzilla. The movie faces the challenge of somehow integrating these concepts into the world of the pokemon anime with its warped logic centered around children travelling the world and battling each other using animals.

The movie can be divided into four story junks: Mewtwo's backstory, travelling to Mewtwo's castle, Mewtwo's tournament and then the climax. The backstory takes up the first 20 minutes of the movie and while there's a lot of seemingly inconsequential exposition, it contains enough interesting imagery and emotional weight that it's by far the best part of the movie.
After that, Satoshi and gang are introduced and the movie gets a lot less interesting. Satoshi is just very bland as he's your typical braindead shounen lead trying to solve world hunger through friendship speeches and running head-on into situations that would kill any other person who isn't gifted by the powers of plot-armor. To compensate for how boring the protagonist is, the movie has a habit of showing Satoshi almost getting himself killed as that seems to be the only way to make scenes with him worthwhile. This gets very redundant.
Mewtwo also gets less interesting with the start of the second act as he's just showing off the whole time but not really doing anything concrete other than bullying a bunch of children and taking away their toys. It never reaches levels of Akira where the whole government has to get involved to stop Tetsuo from destroying Japan. So while the story pretends to have high stakes it never comes off as that. The middle-part of the movie feels less like the apocalyptic showdown it's supposed to be and more like Mewtwo padding for time until Mew appears while Satoshi continuously bumps his head into a wall.

Lastly, the climax is a mixed bag as it's once again Satoshi getting himself nearly killed but being miraculously saved by the powers of deus ex machina. The saving grace here is the presentation which manages to contain enough creative ideas and symbolic imagery that I'm willing to widen my suspension of disbelief. Satoshi turning into a rock and then being revived by the crying pokemon around him is easily one of the most iconic moments in the whole anime canon and it's beloved exactly because it's so ridiculous.
What I cannot and frankly don't want to excuse though is the amnesia ending. It's basically the opposite of the crying scene, Mewtwo just says he will delete everyone's memories and that's it. It's painfully obvious that it's just done for convenience so the anime continuity doesn't have to deal with the events of the movie, and as such it comes off as rushed and half-assed.

Either way, this movie is absolutely legendary and I recommend it for every pokemon fan if only for historical relevance.

Broke and horny protagonist comically comes in contact with a beautiful woman, take #1024. Since it's oldschool it's presented in a funny-enough way to not make it completely cringe, and since it's an OVA from the late 80s / early 90s it has fantastic animation. It's basically a fun little romance comedy, mostly episodic but turns more coherent and dramatic in the last couple of episodes.

There are other characters as well, mostly girls, and they also more or less fall in love with the protagonist. Despite this it never becomes a competing harem, the main love interest stays clear from beginning to end and the ... others are fine with that.

The OVA is obviously skipping most of the manga's content but despite this it does a decent job at making the relationship develop mostly seamless. Only the sister of the protagonist so quickly accepting all these women suddenly appearing can come of as odd but it's covered up by it being an absurd comedy in the first place, so it's not a big deal.

The last episodes are very dramatic and show a shift in tone in the animation. There is also a backstory reveal that serves as the big crux that eternally bonds the two main characters by destiny or some shit. I personally found this rather weak and forced. I'm a bigger fan of the protagonist caring because of the experiences they had together on screen, not because they knew each other in the previous life or whatever. It also takes away a bit from the way the met in the beginning which seemed like a funny coincidence, now it was all destiny that they would meet.
Still worth a watch and I might give the manga a try.

Oshi no Ko is what happens when a self-indulgent writer and a mediocre artist team up: An exposition-heavy mess with flat character designs and overall pretty unimaginative visual storytelling. Combine that with a superficial studio and you get an anime that looks good on the surface but has no soul. Kinda ironic given the subject matter of the story.

The story follows the apologetic simp trend that is so popular these days. You get a dozen cute girls that all look the same but with different clothes and wigs, you got your edgy protagonist, you get the pretentious "self-awareness" that the show tries to show off ... but as soon as you take a closer look you realize it's doing the same thing it tries to criticize. Unlike a good idol deconstruction like Perfect Blue, Oshi no Ko is still pandering to the otaku.

The dialogue contains big speeches about lies, how acting is a lie, how audiences want to be lied to... the same stuff you can also see in Rent-a-Girlfriend, Kaguya-sama, Spy x Family, Chainsaw Man and so on. We live in the parasocial relationship era and human connections are used to squeeze money out of you more than ever before. Instead of properly criticizing this the shows are being apologetic because otherwise they would alienate their target audience by showing them the mirror. "This one idol actually cares!" Yeah sure, just like this one rental girlfriend cares.

The show also has a reincarnation premise even though it adds nothing to the show outside of giving it some initial fetish vibes. That premise is thankfully abandoned very quickly in favor of a pseudo crime thriller plot about the now edgelord protagonist trying to avenge his mom-waifu. All of that is done in the most dry way imaginable. I had to pause and do something else multiple times while watching the 90-minute long prologue episode because it was just so boring and the two episodes that came after weren't any better. Just a lot of dry scenes of characters expositing stuff to the audience. I wouldn't mind the story being bad if it was at least entertaining but this isn't the case here, so not sure if I'm going to continue this one.

The first season of the CSM anime is done, and it's pretty uneventful thus far due to the slow pacing and depressing tone.
The adaptation decided to be a bit of a slow burn and take its time to establish the protagonist and general atmosphere. It's a strange decision considering that the manga is fairly fast-paced by comparison and has a high emphasis on campy action. Instead of focusing on the fun parts, the anime decided to go for a more serious tone similar to a social drama and spend a lot of time on showing Denji walking through the streets or lying in bed while ... looking sad and so on. It picks up a bit of speed in the second half but still feels uncannily slow compared to the manga.

This also shows in the focus of the animation. The action scenes are fine except for the overuse of (bad) CGI on the main character, making fight scenes with him a bit of an eyesore. The choreography of the battles is also mediocre at best for modern shounen standards. The slice of life parts on the other hand, where characters just talk to one another or walk through the streets or do their morning routine *cough* or groom minors *cough*, are animated with absurd detail to the point I'm wondering why this effort wasn't spent on making the action scenes look good instead.
The comedy is similarily strange as it's played very straight to the point it's almost unnoticable that certain scenes are supposed to be comedic, like when Denji kicks Aki in the balls or when Makima fed Denji some noodles. I didn't expect it to go full chibi-style, but it seems to not even try to present the comedic scenes as funny.

The coloring of CSM can also be described as bland. They go for a very realistic style, and by realistic I mean lots of gray.
So generally, this is one of those adaptations that tries to make everything realistic and depressing in tone and appearance, and honestly I'm not sure if I like that. But this will highly depend on what you like about the source material and how you interpret it. I interpreted the manga as a campy schlock gorefest with a schizophrenic style that has the main goal in being unpredictable, fast-paced and fun, but it seems like the director of the anime saw it more as a slow-paced drama that takes itself very seriously.

So if I had to describe this adaptation thus far in one sentence, then I would say it's a schlocky shounen story that tries to be a Scorcese drama. The characters aren't really deep or interesting enough to support that type of presentation, the comedy consists of toilet humor and barfing and most of the future run-time will be filled up with mindless action. I can respect the ambition to make it more than a fun gorefest but I don't think the direction it's going is utilizing the strengths of its source material.