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Oct 6, 2021
By far the number one best thing about reading Demon Slayer is the art style. Not too weird or "un-anime-like", yet so incredibly unique. I doubt that there's any other manga that looks quite like this. A manga set in pre-war Japan has the risk of looking boring: everyone wears the same old clothes, the world around them looks like stock backgrounds. Luckily the author avoids this problem by filling everything with wonderful details. The demons are very reminiscent of ancient Japanese art. The various patterns or "textures" are a great testament to how much manga can achieve with just black and white: the various
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breathing styles look great, the patterns on each character's clothes are unique and distinct, my favorite being Shinobu's butterfly texture. If nothing else, read the series for the art, it looks fantastic 90% of the time.
By far the number one worst thing about reading Demon Slayer is how short it is. I was extremely disappointed when realized that I was already at the final arc, because it felt like there was so much more that should've happen before diving straight into the endgame. In the final arc lot of the characters that were focused on, in my opinion, were introduced a little too late, and meanwhile the characters that we had spent more with time on felt a little sidelined. Your mileage may vary with this, certainly there is some set up with them before hand.
This sort of brisk pace is like a fatal flaw that permeates through everything. Almost everything feels like it needed more time to think things through. Using breathing to channel the power of the sun to defeat regenerating man-eating monsters is lifted straight out of JoJo. But even in JoJo this was very vaguely defined, and in this manga this somehow makes even less sense. Demons use their blood to do pretty much anything and everything? Ok sure. It's almost admirable how minimalist it is. It's less acceptable when it comes to emotional scenes. When the hero makes a comeback, or does something skillful to get out of a tricky situation, the reader should go "ohhh!" or "no way!" But in dramatic moments the author often relies on introducing some new random power, so instead I was going "oh, sure."
Every time Tanjiro defeats a demon we get a quick flashback to the demon's previous life showing how they were really just a good person before they starting eating people for 1000 years. I suppose keeping it to the end saves the middle of a fight from being a cheesy shouting match ("there's some good in you!" "no there isn't!") but at least it would give the fight an emotional arc. They're very good sob stories, but
whether demons have any moral agency is a question that's not given any development, so they're weakened.
Overall, a pleasant read if you want a nice and easy shonen manga action series, but it's a little lacking in depth. I don't want to be too harsh on it, because it is a fun read. Just don't think too much about it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 14, 2020
Being the #4 most popular manga on MAL and the #1 in Japan itself, it's hard to really summarize what One Piece is in a single sentence. But if I had to, I would simply say that it absolutely deserves its spot. I can think of no other kind of story that should be the number one in all of Japan. It is a national epic. If you are a westerner, count yourself fortunate to be removed from the constant merchandise (akin to how ubiquitous Star Wars merchandise is in the West) You can just enjoy this downright masterpiece without any baggage.
There's so many wonderful
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things about the series that it's hard to know where to begin. How about the art, which has been controversial? Take it from me, an artist: Oda is a genius. Drawing a comic is not easy: before you even start you need simple iconic characters. You need an aesthetic. You need to design the world and draw it constantly. And then you have to draw it over and over, in different poses and angles. And then design new characters, etc. Other artists, peter out, quit, or phone it in and it shows. But Oda has been drawing for 23 years and he seems to be getting better and more excited. The world is drawn in more and more detail, Oda designs a billion new unique characters, everything is a new aesthetic.
You can tell some artists like to show much work they did (your Miuras and Muratas) while others prefer simplicity (like Azuma, and Togashi used to have a very loose sketchy style) Oda manages to keep a perfect balance. You can tell how much effort went into each page because it's chock full of detail, yet it all keeps a very loose sketchy style, as if it was scribbled in a single go. There are manga chapters made in a month that don't hold a candle to what Oda does in a week. By far the most striking thing about the art is the TEXTURE. When a character wears leather, you see its sheen. When something explodes it's not a puffy white cartoon star like in other manga, it's a black cloud with fire just like a real explosion. All this in black and white too! When was the last time you saw lava look as good as it did in One Piece?
The story too is a thing of wonder. It's famous for its consistency. A lot of serialized manga hook you with a strong premise and then lose their focus after a while (see: Naruto), or get repetitive with how it keeps yanking your chain over and over (see: My Balls(the manga)). A casual reader of One Piece can start at any arc and find a dense, thought through story, with a detailed world and a backstory that ties everything into a fitting picture. But the committed reader who reads the whole thing start to finish is enthralled with ANOTHER overarching plot layered on top of that. It's a spectacular juggling act. I would personally complain that Oda is a little slow, but still, hardly anyone else can do this.
But no one walks away from a One Piece arc without saying how much they wanted to cry afterwards. This series is high on emotion. Oda has a natural sense of story-telling that always leaves each scene with an emotional take-away, whether it's laughing at a joke, ogling at scenery (or breasts) or grinding your teeth at the evil that a villain does. And when Oda wants to, he will make you bawl, if nothing else from how perfectly he times the reveal. Such an emotional simplistic series may lead one to think that, philosophically, One Piece slouches, but its simplicity is its philosophy. One Piece oozes with the joy of being alive. To exist. The most natural and simple good there is. What other series would have a big feast after every arc? It's the romantic freedom that people admire of the pagans, who trusted their natural instincts.
If you have time to read this review, you have time to read One Piece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 13, 2017
Quan Zhi Gao Shou is a Chinese cartoon, and it's not very good one. The plot revolves around playing an MMO, or some kind of multiplayer game, but they never once explain how the game works. It has some kind of open world like an MMO, and has loot and leveling up, yet reaction speed and input speed are important? Exactly how do you play this game? I can't truly believe that the main character is some kind of God at this game when I don't entirely understand what's happening in it! You will sit through scene upon scene of the show hyping up the
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main character, so this flaw basically ruins the entire series.
The anime looks pretty bad, to boot. Sure, the character designs are alright and they don't really go off model, but it's very clear that there weren't any decent animators around that knew how to get the characters to move. The fights are composed of rather awkward looking stock animations and ugly run cycles with a wonky perspective. Once again, I can't really be impressed by any of the gameplay, so I'm mostly twiddling my thumbs waiting for that scene to get to the point.
And did I mention this anime doesn't have a proper ending? There's no high point or climax, it just ends, to be continued next season guys! What a waste of my time. Really, the only reason why I kept watching was to experience the novelty of a Chinese anime. But after seeing some of these "novelties", I never want to see another piece of Chinese animation ever again.
This show has constant McDonalds' advertisements in every episode. A WcDonalds appears in most Japanese anime on occasion, in order to portray a fast food company while dodging copyright. It's charmingly free of corporate involvement and it actually shows some level of distance between the art piece and the company depicted. Quan Zhi Gao Shou is initially content to show the real McDonalds in the background, but then at the end of an episode a random character starts shooting an ad for a McDonalds ice cream for a good 3 minutes at the end of one episode. Then characters start randomly praising this product in every episode since, just as an aside. It feels slimy as hell.
An interesting counterwieght to this example is Neo Yokio, the Netflix anime, and how it uses its product placement of Toblerones. Sure, it's equally as random as Quan Zhi Gao Shou's McDonalds, but at least in there, there's a certain level of irony to it. It becomes relevant to the story and leads to some hilarious scenes and lines. Having a character walk around with a giant toblerone for no reason is part of the joke.
In fact, Neo Yokio in general is an interesting show to compare to Quan Zhi Gao Shou. Both are foreign made entertainment that visually resembles Japanese animation, yet Quan Zhi Gao Shou is recognized by MAL but Neo Yokio is not. Why IS that, though? Why is a website about anime allowing content from China and Korea, but not western shows that even have Japanese studios involved in its production? Of course, Neo Yokio isn't made for a Japanese audience, and the feel and tone of the series is very different from anime, but you could claim the same things about QZGS!
China, Korea and Japan are very different countries, you know that? The culture, history and political climate of each culture is not the same. Quan Zhi Gao Shou doesn't feel like an anime. The kinds of characters and tropes you see are different. The style of writing and dialogue is different due to the different language used(Beijing Mandarin). It is every bit as not anime as Neo Yokio is. Yet of course, arbitrarily, all East Asian animation is all lumped together as anime, while rejecting media that is very clearly inspired by anime on some level. What's the standard here?
Either you open the floodgates and let Neo Yokio in, or this doesn't count as an anime.
The moral of the story is fuck McDonalds and fuck Chinese cartoons.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 7, 2016
I really wish people would stop touting this as the "omg saddest story ever" Not only does it mislead potential viewers, it also does an injustice to what this movie's about. This film has themes that go beyond two children who died. In fact, the movie tells you right off the bat that both of them die, so it isn't played up as a dramatic reveal at all. It's not a spoiler. In fact, it's inevitability is what makes it a such tragic story.
That's right, Grave of the Fireflies is a tragedy, but not in the way you think it is. Most people who've seen
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this movie are, to be blunt, looking at it in the wrong way. Even the MAL synopsis feels so misleading, that I want to run through the entire plot, with "spoilers" and all.
The story of Grave of the Fireflies revolves around two children, Seita and his younger sister, Setsuko, who have to move in with their aunt after their mother was killed in Allied bombings over Kobe in World War 2. Eventually, after getting into an quarrel with his aunt, he leaves the house with his sister and lives alone in a cave. As the war continues to bring destruction to Japan, the two slowly suffer from starvation and Setsuko dies. Eventually, after the war ends, Seita dies too and joins his sister.
What makes it a tragedy is that Seita brought this on himself. It was his own pride and his own stubborn attitude that brought the death of his sister. It's SUPPOSED to be his fault! That's what a tragedy is; an otherwise sympathetic character bringing about his own destruction because of his one fatal flaw. People go into this movie and feel so confused because they expect bad things happening to sweet and innocent children. Seita is flawed, and that's the point.
Seita personifies the arrogance of the militaristic Japanese government at the time of World War 2. See, Japan entered WW2 for two reasons, one was to gain resources from colonies to feed its rapidly growing population, and the other was because the Japanese were becoming increasingly militaristic and nationalistic, and it wanted to become an empire for the glory of the nation. In WW2, Japan's absolute refusal to surrender led to the USA dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the movie, Seita died shortly after Japan's final surrender to the Allies.
Notice how throughout the movie, Seita boasts about his father being a Navy captain, fighting for the glory of Japan? Seita is prideful, and that made him move out of his aunt's household. Ultimately, Japan's expansionist dreams didn't benefit or help this people. Seita failed Setsuko.
Agree or disagree with the politics, that's the big anti-war statement in this film, and I've never seen anybody explore this! The reviews of this movie all respond on a superficial surface level, where the movie's quality is entirely based on whether you felt sympathetic for the two characters. Heck, in an interview, the director, Takahata, said that he never intended to make people cry that much. To quote: "...some even say 'I cried so much, and I don't want to see it again.' I tell them, 'it would be more fun if you watch it one more time.' -laughs-"
However, if anyone here's a diehard Ghibli fan, they might ask me: "Hey, didn't Takahata also say that this movie is about how today's youth shouldn't try to live in solitude? And didn't Miyazaki also say that this wasn't a war film, but a movie on how children should be grateful for what they have?"
Well, I would reply that all of these are valid interpretations. See, a critic should not only analyse how good a movie is, but also look at the themes and messages of this movie. As the film takes place in-universe in WW2, and the film exists in the real world as a movie made by a pacifist director, I'm choosing to interpret it as an anti-war film. This method of reviews might seem out of touch with most audiences, but I think Studio Ghibli has earned such analysis; everything they make wants to be the classiest and artsiest anime in existence, and that's awesome.
So that's Grave of the Fireflies. It's more than what you give it credit for, and simultaneously not what you give it credit for. The 8 is for how beautiful it looks, and how solidly the story was constructed.
It's a great anime.
And yes, I teared up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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