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Fire Force is an enigma. I've legitimately never seen anything that tried as hard as it did, yet still feels like it's not trying hard enough at the same time.

Fire Force is a pretty standard battle shounen which, to be completely fair, had very interesting ideas. The plot is pretty simple: Shinra lives a world where spontaneous human combustion is a widespread issue, and joins a fire brigade to protect others from these fiery monsters that are created as a result, as well as his own motivations of possibly finding the truth of combustion and what happened on the day his mother and brother died ... in a fire as a child. It doesn't go very deep, and it works. Right?

As an action oriented manga, Fire Force brings interesting abilities to bring to the table - 2nd Generations have the ability to manipulate or control existing flames, and 3rd Generations can produce their own. It creates interesting applications of fire that create pretty unique fights... well, half the time at least. The thing is with Fire Force is that after a certain point, the fights and abilities only get so unique and interesting. Eventually the novelty wears off and it's just a bunch of flames, sometimes resulting in two guys chucking fireballs back and forth at each other creating situations like "my fire is just hotter than yours". There's also one particular character who serves no real purpose besides ruining fights. She is literally just there because Okubo wanted to draw tits in his manga, and she ruins the pacing of every fight she's involved in with her in-universe "ability" of having her clothes come off and people running into her tits in unfavorable situations. Hilarious. But when the fights are done well, it's pretty damn good, both in the action and visual department.

The visuals as a whole, unfortunately, are a bit of a mixed aspect on this series. Atsushi Okubo has a very distinct style, and when the art is brought to its maximum, it looks fantastic. However, that level of consistency is non-existent in this manga in every aspect, it seems. Many times the artstyle clashes with the tone, resulting in characters missing certain serious moments and just looking goofy. What was also quite noticeable at times was just the severe lack of detail in panels. This isn't to say I'm expecting artistic masterpieces every page; Fire Force just has a tendency to just have characters speak with only their expressionless face in frame and having minimal to no shading or backgrounds. This results in some very awkward panelling where there's nothing interesting visually going on whatsoever and frames that mainly consist of dialogue bubbles and half of some character's face.

I don't mind long monologues or conversations between characters. Hell, dialogue heavy series can be found in some of my favorites. Many people will often bring up the tried and true formula, "show, don't tell", and while this is great, there's a difference between that and having zero dialogue. Show don't tell is not about talking less; it's about subtlety in delivery of messages to the reader as opposed to just spoon-feeding them all the details, and this can be done correctly in series with plenty of dialogue. Fire Force is not one of these series.

Fire Force does not have terrible, irredeemable ideas in its writing. In fact, the plot is pretty interesting as a concept, especially in the final act. The problem with Fire Force's writing lies in its lack of subtlety - many times it seems Okubo couldn't think of a way to integrate the messages and themes he wanted to portray organically into the narrative, so he just had a character outright say what he wants the reader to get. This isn't even mentioning that the important characters themselves aren't very interesting to begin with - to be quite honest I don't even remember what some of these guys' one defining character trait is. The best parts of Fire Force lie in the simple aspects - the themes of hope vs despair, Shinra relying on others to keep level headed at times, the underlying mystery of what Adolla and human combustion is; these are all compelling ideas to me. But it tries to do more than it can handle and ends up shooting itself in the foot.

Reading Fire Force is basically reading what can be summed up as a massive identity crisis. Whether it be the artstyle or its simplistic manga elements, it comes off as a series that's just a simple battle shounen. Yet, it continues to try to sell itself as something greater and can't exactly execute these aspects well. Ideas and messages don't feel properly integrated with the story, they feel like a last minute addition trying to mask Fire Force's simplicity as if it's desperately trying to be viewed as something greater, from the author doubling down on the fanservice character being some deep societal criticism to just straight up slapping PNGs of the real world in frames where properly drawn panels should be. None of this comes off as clever, it's painfully unsubtle at best and downright moronic at its worst. I would probably feel less insulted watching the fucking Teletubbies; they don't offer much in terms of content, but at least Dipsy and Tinky Winky wouldn't show me a picture of the real world on their screens and pretend to be intellectuals. Out of the way, Evangelion! Stand aside, Bakemonogatari! The real pretentious work is here to dethrone all of those popularly debated as weird for the sake of being weird. There genuinely is nothing else I can see from this manga besides the author grasping at anything he could get to make his manga seem as smart and deep as possible. The writing just isn't there to back it up, whether it be the inconsistent plot or the uninteresting characters.

If I could give my general experience with Fire Force, the beginning was mostly an alright shounen with some boring parts, the middle was mostly boring with some alright shounen parts, and the last part just came off as stupid but fun when it wasn't trying to be smart. I'd say the final act, while not without it's stupid moments, was throughly enjoyable to read despite that. The "twist" reveal in that final act as it's slowly being unveiled is very unsubtle, but it just... kinda works? I'm not sure if most people would find it funny or genuinely cool. I personally think it's both.

Don't read this if you're looking for a super deep and serious manga. Fire Force lacks the consistency to pull that part off. If you have nothing better to do though and don't mind reading all of the 300 chapters? Honestly, knock yourself out. At its best moments I'd probably give it a confident 7 or even an 8, but unfortunately the majority of it just doesn't hold up to that same standard. As long as you're willing to sit through somewhere around 100 chapters of what I consider to be pretty boring/mediocre, it's a pretty simple story that has a good payoff ending in my opinion, and despite what the manga would have you thinking, there's absolutely nothing wrong with simple done well.

Edited on 03/09/2022 to fix some grammar issues I noticed as well as fix some details. I should probably stop writing these drafts so late at night.

I'll get straight to the point: I don't like this movie. It's somewhat nice to look at and listen to at best, and downright painful to watch at worst.

Here's a spoiler warning as it's a bit hard for me to explain myself without pointing out specific examples.

Belle is a movie that follows Suzu and her experiences with the world of "U", a virtual environment where everyone can be the best versions of themselves, bringing out their true, hidden potential from within. As the name may somewhat suggest, another major part of the plot is its parallelism with another popular work, Beauty and the Beast.

To give ... credit where credit is due, the concept is not bad. Virtual worlds can be done very well and there is a lot that can be explored with this premise. Part of this is fully realized with the presentation of Belle - the virtual segments are animated in 3D in contrast to most of the real life scenes being in 2D. While the movie isn't anything super stunning all things considered, never would I say it looks bad. Good visuals aside, what really brings out the best in Belle is the sound. All the songs are genuinely quite good, and the best parts of the movie, in my opinion, are the performances of these songs.

Unfortunately, that's about where most the positives end for Belle.

Now, I'm not saying every movie or any anime in general needs to have a super deep story that tackles some real-world issue and makes you analyze every part of the plot. The story doesn't have to be some world-shattering, revolutionary masterpiece. That being said, I at least expect some sort of coherence. The best way I can describe Belle's progression and pacing is that things just happen. There's often no flow or connection between events, just a jumble of things that occur. Why is there suddenly a fight scene out of nowhere? Why did we cut to a scene of Suzu fending off against gossip of a crush?

This especially begins to affect the plot starting in the second half of the movie, where many plot points also just seem to pop up inexplicitly, and bring up more questions than it ever should've. What makes this even worse is that because of the sheer amount of subplots adding on, each one of the subplots are “resolved” in a way that feels very lackluster. The worst one of these, in my opinion, is when one of the subplots chose to take on abusive family members. Not only did this feel like a last minute plot point, it was portrayed in a way that made it end as abruptly as it began. Ironically enough, the movie even had one of the characters point out in the dialogue that the conflict wasn't something that could be easily solved, but no, the abuser backs down after a very, very intimidating stare, and we'll just accept that the issue is solved after some people find out about it despite the victim clearly expressing that people knew about it before. Cool.

Speaking of dialogue, some of the writing is downright laughable at times.

“I love you, Belle.”
“Thanks.”

Who wrote this? Have they even talked to another human being in the past decade? And no, it’s not me cherry picking a line out of context to make it seem bad. If anything, it makes LESS sense with context.

This so-so writing partially contributes to the fact that none of the prominent characters are really that likeable to me. In a world that’s functionally realistic besides the wacky virtual world which is essentially an MMORPG social media, most of the characters’ actions rarely makes them feel believable, and instead just makes them come off as silly and sometimes straight up annoying.

There's a lot of things that straight up don't make any sense from a worldbuilding perspective either. Why is the moderation so lax in U that people can literally doxx others with no repercussions? Why does a random user have the ability to carry out the role of a moderator despite not being one? How extensive even is U that a random user can have AI that bends to their will, as well as hide a castle in this virtual world they don’t own? How are people going into U at will anytime and anywhere despite U very evidently taking control of the user's senses from the second it begins?

I understand "rule of cool", and going for style and impact over logic; I can absolutely accept going for cooler stuff rather than the most logical conclusions for the sake of drama and action. Belle, however, just makes random scenes that don’t leave me in awe, but instead comes off as pure stupidity that leaves me in confusion. I’m also not expecting every writer who works on a science fiction film to have a complex understanding of AI and the virtual world, and to give an in-depth explanation on everything. However, when much of Belle’s narrative relies on these very obvious oversights that keep adding up, it makes it incredibly hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

Belle is a new take of Beauty and the Beast that tries to implement a poorly thought out virtual world in its setting, as well as tackle more plot points than it could feasibly do so. Save yourself the time and just listen to the soundtrack.

7/10. That's a pretty solid score. If I'm rating something a 7, then I at least consider it to be "good".

So why is it hard for me to recommend this manga to most people?

TL;DR - I think this manga is good, but I don't recommend this series to someone who is new to the series, as I think it's the worst way to experience it. Please watch the anime and light novel instead if you haven't.

Edit: Fair warning, I'm going to be comparing the other versions of Monogatari a few times

Bakemonogatari is a manga based off of the Monogatari light novel series, taking the name ... of the first part. It's a rather popular series known for its characterization and witty dialogue with frequent use of wordplay and references in its writing. This can be seen in the name itself, a combination of bakemono(monster) and monogatari(story) to create the completed "bakemonogatari".

When it comes to the writing itself, it's a rather solid manga in my opinion. The story, very basically, revolves around Koyomi Araragi, a high school student who encounters numerous supernatural phenomena called "oddities" and helps out various girls struggling with their own oddity issues. The supernatural phenomena are generally connected to some part of the characters' psychology in some way, and solving these incidents require many vastly different methods. I thoroughly enjoyed Bakemonogatari's dialogue and wit, and personally found it very entertaining. Characterization is also a fantastic point for this series, with each arc introducing a new unique member of the cast that the main character can compliment pretty well in all their interactions. However, the story is by no means even close to being finished (judging by source material), and there are still plenty of developments left to go over in this manga. With that in mind, the story is really interesting and good for one that's only in its beginning stage. The presentation is pretty good as well, and while I prefer both the anime and LN designs of the characters, I can't deny that this manga still manages to look great.

That being said, I can't in good faith recommend this manga for a two major reasons. First of all, I don't expect this series, whether it be anime, manga, or light novel, to appeal to everyone. This series is 90% about the dialogue, and I'm barely exaggerating with that figure. If you don't enjoy long winded conversations seemingly about nothing and plenty of banter, this series is definitely not for you. If you have a strong distaste for fanservice, you should probably keep away as well - while it's not the absolute worst, if you REALLY hate fanservice you will not find yourself enjoying a good amount of frames. The nonlinear storytelling may also be kind of off-putting; one arc tells the events preceding the events that happened in the previous 4 arcs.

Suppose you make it past all the hurdles that this series has across all mediums. Now you've reached the second obstacle - you're choosing an inferior way to experience this series. Whether it be anime or light novel, both have at least finished Final Season, which concludes Araragi's overarching story and ends at a good place. This manga, on the other hand, is still in its introductory phases and won't be out of it for a while. This is also disregarding the most important aspect - Bakemonogatari is NOT a faithful adaptation of the series. There's many creative liberties being taken here, such as, notably, completely rewriting Araragi's character to be more in line of a "cool" shounen protagonist (personally I think he works way better the way he did originally). With this in mind, there's no way I'd even consider recommending what I, as a huge Monogatari fan, consider the worst way to experience this series hands down to a newcomer.

When it comes down to it, I like Bakemonogatari. However, that's only through the lens of someone already a Monogatari fan. For me, the only appeal is seeing an alternate retelling of the story I already enjoy, which many other fans don't even enjoy for its botched adaptation compared to the anime and light novel that we thoroughly liked. I only recommend this to people who liked the Light Novel or Anime, and just want to experience a different version.

I've always been a huge Jojo fan, and the light novels were always something that I had been intrigued by, but never something I had felt super inclined to check out. However, when I heard that NISIOISIN, the author of the Monogatari series, wrote Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Over Heaven, I just had to give it a shot. My bias is right there, as both a fan of Jojo and a fan of the author's works, but still I tried to go in with as open of a mind as possible.

Over Heaven is a non-canon representation of DIO's Diary in the main series. It aims to ... give insight on DIO's inner thoughts and perspective, something we rarely see much of in the main series. This as a work is a neat concept, but it would only really appeal to people who've read up to Part 6 in Jojo - the question is, does it work well enough to warrant fans reading it?

One of my biggest complaints with this light novel is that at times, it really doesn't feel believable at what it's trying to accomplish. The timing of certain entries was just awkward at times, and the light novel especially struggles to make itself seem believable as DIO's Diary in the later chapters. One major cause of this is the fact that the bulk of Over Heaven is DIO telling us his perspective through Part 3 while also reminiscing on Part 1. While I do think it makes sense for DIO to be writing about his past, it does make for some rough jumps back and forth between times, not to mention most of this would be something the reader already knows - the story is just Parts 1, 3, and leading into 6 of the main story. Because of this, it feels like a giant recap episode sometimes, and him pretty much just describing what went on exactly how it did in the series made for the most boring parts of this book. That being said, I'd still say I enjoyed most of it. DIO's different levels of obsession, his surprisingly introspective thoughts, and his erratic nature made for an overall engaging experience for me.

Characterization was also a major concern of mine going in - would DIO feel consistent with the actual series? In this case, I'd honestly say yeah, it does. DIO getting this complexity doesn't feel out of place. There are those few questionable moments bordering into fanfiction territory if you look into it far enough, but for the most part, I think that most of this book fits well with the main story. The novel is at its best when DIO is delved into deeper - it's at its worse when he decides not to add anything of worth commentary wise and just retells his past in a way that doesn't really differ much from his rivals' perspectives.

Overall, I'd say I liked this LN quite a bit. It has its bumps and hiccups along the way, and it definitely isn't perfectly paced or a masterpiece, but I'd say if you're interested in giving DIO more depth or something that can pass off as DIO's Diary, it's worth checking out. I'm not sure if it'd be the best piece of side content there is to offer, considering a lot of it is just a recap of parts you've already seen, but as long as you don't hype up your expectations and go in ready for what it is, you'll probably be fine.

6/10, would recommend if you want DIO's (sometimes barebones) perspective on the story you already know. Steer clear if you hate recaps or want an entirely new story.