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There is a certain genre of Magical Girl anime with darker themes that arose in the wake of Puella Magi Madoka Magica's success; a genre that has developed a reputation for being shallow, derivative, overly edgy and generally lacking in quality. Magical Girl Raising Project is one such anime and it must be said that it very much lives up to the genre's less-than-favourable reputation. The anime has a fairly simple premise, centred on a death game which (as the title suggests) features a cast of magical girls. Unfortunately, the creators evidently failed to understand the appeal of either genre, resulting in a joyless unfocused ... meander of an anime that fails to take advantage of its own ideas and presenting its audience with disappointment after disappointment.

One of Raising Project's biggest issues is its extensive cast. With more than sixteen characters to keep track of over the course of only twelve episodes, the anime spreads what little time it has for character development extremely thin. As a result, most of the cast have little in the way of proper motivation or characterisation, with maybe a smattering of largely irrelevant backstory at most. What's worse is that the show makes poor use of the characters it does have. Generally, the more likeable or potentially interesting a character is, the sooner you can expect them to be killed off, meaning that the last third of the anime consists largely of unengaging fights between glorified extras, only occasionally stopping to check in on Koyuki "Snow White" Himekawa, the requisite do-nothing pacifist protagonist who can be summed up as a shallow Madoka Kaname expy with all the character's depth left out.

In terms of plot and themes, Magical Girl Raising Project is a messy directionless trudge through a valley of exposition and action scenes, punctuated by the occasional flashback or character moment that serves no greater purpose than cueing up the audience to feel sad when the character in question dies. While a good Death Game anime would use its premise to raise questions about the ethics of survival by pitting good people against each other, this is impossible in Raising Project, as half of the cast consists of cold-blooded remorseless murderers. Yes, literally half of the cast; that wasn't hyperbole. This makes it all the more galling when the anime attempts to generate sympathy for one of the underdeveloped murderous psychopaths just as they're about to die.

Another common direction for both Magical Girl and Death Game anime is the clash of ideals, in which the protagonist's idealism and refusal to make moral compromises is tested against both the harshness of the scenario they find themselves in and the cynical self-serving attitudes of the antagonists. Naturally, due to Raising Project's shallow characters and constant use of a meandering "and then" style of storytelling, this angle is also squandered, with Snow White surviving as long as she does due to her irrelevance to the events of the story, as well as the occasional rescue, rather than any virtue or ability that she possesses. Even the show's moment-to-moment storytelling is poor, fraught with poorly established and inconsistent rules, characters that just stand around or forget about their abilities when the plot requires it and other such contrivances occur even in plot-critical moments.

To conclude, Magical Girl Raising Project is as lacking as one would expect. Too derivative and blatant in its intent to be subversive, too clumsily constructed to tell a compelling story and too overstuffed with with half-baked characters to get the audience invested; Raising Project is a resounding failure in every regard and in no way can I recommend it. There are plenty of Magical Girl anime and Death Game anime better than this one, so there's effectively no reason to waste your time on it.

Horror is a sparsely populated genre of anime, which is a shame. A good horror series can offer creative concepts, a gripping story, compelling drama and moments of high emotion. Unfortunately, Angels of Death offers none of these things. Instead, this anime presents a mind-numbing barely-plot featuring a cast of characters the audience never properly gets to know and that not even the series itself seems to care about, thinly varnished with superficial allusions to Christianity. This is a series that wants be perceived as cool and meaningful and perhaps even deep, but which puts in none of the required effort to actually be so.

Angels ... of Death is a series based on an RPG Maker game and it shows. The bulk of the anime consists of the lead characters, Rachel and Zack, ponderously navigating a nondescript murder house while being assailed by a procession of one-note psychopathic killers. While this premise naturally raises questions about the building's purpose or how the characters are connected, Angels of Death is content to brush those inquiries to one side for the majority of it's runtime, only begrudgingly sparing a sentence or two in its last act to deliver an unsatisfying barely-answer. Instead, the audience is subjected to episode after episode of two boring characters wandering around in a stark and utilitarian environment, interacting with the requisite puzzle elements found on each floor. This makes the show feel like a glorified walkthrough rather than anything worth watching.

Speaking of the characters, Angels of Death has a very weak cast, with each member coming across as a human-shaped vessel for a collection of disconnected traits that fail to amount a coherent personality. From the first episode onward, Rachel is unemotive and vaguely defined as religious, while Zack is simple, temperamental and prone to violence. Neither are particularly inquisitive, most of their dialogue consisting of observations on and reactions to whatever situation they've been placed in, leaving very little time for character development outside of the few scattered intervals in which some tepid backstory is delivered via flashback, brining the story's events to an abrupt halt. Needless to say, this utter lack of character makes it extremely difficult to get invested in the lead characters, even ignoring the fact that Rachel's main goal in leaving the building is to be killed, meaning there's little point in rooting for her to survive. The show's antagonists are no less flat, each having one gimmick a piece. Danny is obsessed with eyes, Eddie is a possessive stalker that digs graves, Cathy is a sadistic prison warden and Reverend Gray is a judgemental priest that tests people.

While Angels of Death is listed as a horror anime, a label that the gloomy art style and decently atmospheric soundtrack make a token effort to earn, in truth, the series' horror themes are only skin deep. With its motley character design, superficial religious imagery and semi-frequent indulgences in action, it's not hard to tell that the anime is trying harder to be cool than it is to be scary. One can always tell when the leads are or aren't in danger, undermining any potential for tension, and the series' attempts at dark imagery are few, brief and unimpressive. What little ambition Angels of Death has manifests in attempts to build ambiguity (it would be too generous to call it mystery) about the history and mental state of the protagonist, Rachel. Alas, even if the show gave this plot point the focus it deserved, it would still culminate in a series of unimpressive and sometimes laughably predictable twists that only undermine the viewer's investment further while saying nothing meaningful. In general, the show has very little to say, existing seemingly for its own sake while using its imagery as set dressing that contributes nothing to the story.

To conclude, Angels of Death is an anime that fails at just about everything it tries. Its on-screen action is dull and tedious, its attempts at horror are non-existent, its story is a pointless slog, its characters are cardboard cut-outs and its imagery is piss-puddle shallow. At the time of writing, I genuinely cannot think of another anime that has bored me this much and I can think of no reason for a person to subject themselves to this series. If you're looking for a horror anime with actual tension, watch Another instead.

Food Wars is an anime focusing on ambitious chefs-in-training as they vie for dominance at an elite culinary school, a premise that should surely appeal to culinary enthusiasts while also promising a high degree of competition, as is only appropriate for a shounen anime. The show's lead characters, Soma and Megumi, are likable and compelling enough, if somewhat basic, with goals that easy to understand and root for. The cast in general has enough quirk and personality to entertain, though the show does expect the audience to be invested in even the less developed characters with decidedly mixed results. The visual style of Food Wars ... is consistently pleasing, with appealing character designs and lovingly detailed close-ups of the food.

The meat of the anime, so to speak, is the cooking, which I suppose is to be expected. A typical episode follows one or both of the leads as they are placed in a scenario in which they must either outperform an opponent established to have exceptional skills in a particular field of cooking or meet the standards of a seemingly unpleasable judge, usually illustrated by a succession of nameless extras presenting their own unsatisfactory meals. Whenever a named character's dish is being eaten, the eater will, without fail, squeal and convulse in nigh-orgasmic delight, then describe the taste and cooking technique with purple prose so thick as to make Lovecraft blush, accompanied by some kind of illustrated simile. This style of presentation may appeal to the technically minded, but grows tiresome and repetitive over the course of the season's 24 episodes. It's hard to be impressed with the main characters' skills when just about every dish is treated like Manna from Heaven and one can expect to hear terms like "umami" and "depth of flavour" thrown around ad nauseum. For this reason, Food Wars works best when the leads are forced to come up with creative solutions, focusing shifting the focus away from sensory spectacle and more on to problem solving.

As a story, Food Wars walks a well-trodden path, focusing first and foremost on Soma's ambition to reach the highest echelons of Tōtsuki Academy and surpass his father in terms of culinary skill. Despite the school setting, characters are rarely shown learning or training, instead preferring to throw its leads from one sink-or-swim challenge to another, trusting the audience to assume that they already have the necessary skills with maybe a flashback or post hoc explanation as to how the characters developed them. This isn't an invalid method of storytelling per se, but it's easy to see how some people could be turned off from the show because of it. Characters that play antagonistic roles will generally show some combination of smugness, elitism and outright corruption, to the point where one starts to wonder if Tōtsuki is even that good of a school. For example, in an early episode, the character Erina Nakiri oversees the school's entrance exam and refuses to admit that she enjoys Soma's cooking, causing him to fail. In another, an instructor attempts to expel Megumi for altering a recipe, despite having only done so to compensate for the deliberately poor produce that she had been forced to use. As such, the show ends up fighting an uphill battle when it inevitably attempts to portray these characters in a more understandable ore even sympathetic light.

To conclude, much as I may gripe, Food Wars is generally an entertaining anime. While it struggles to stretch its premise out over a length of 24 episodes, its makes a valiant effort throw new obstacles at its lead characters and provide a range of competitive cooking scenarios for the audience to enjoy. Fans of all things culinary will likely get more enjoyment out of the series than most, but for a more conventional shounen-watching audience, there are certainly worse ways to make use of one's time. Those who prefer a more ambitious storyline to spectacle or have little patience for repetition, however, may wish to give Food Wars a miss.

It's a shame that the horror genre of anime is such a sparse one, as the horror genre holds plenty of potential for creative concepts and compelling stories, especially when paired with its natural companion genre, mystery. Naturally, the idea of a mystery horror anime based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, one of the more notable contributors to the horror genre, is a promising one. Alas, Housing Complex C can barely be called a horror or mystery anime. Its myriad strange writing decisions and nakedly manipulative presentation elicit far more questions than its barely-there plot and cast of barely-characters, and never to positive ... effect.

In terms of mystery, Housing Complex C offers a heaping helping of dead ends and red herrings, going to great and nonsensical lengths to obscure the nature of events and the identities of its antagonists. Characters often bend to the whims of the mystery plot, completely changing their personalities as required and putting on facades for the audience rather than each other. Meanwhile, the few actual clues the show offers are delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer blow to the face, to the point where one is liable to dismiss the actual answer as a possibility on the grounds that "it couldn't possibly be that obvious". This leaves the eventual reveals feeling cheap and unsatisfying, not helped by the show's reliance on meandering explanations and confusing infodumps

The series fares no better as a work of horror fiction, with tame and played out supernatural imagery, a complete lack of tension or atmosphere and no real scares to speak of. With only four episodes, the anime has little time to establish and develop its characters, so there's little cause to mourn their eventual offscreen deaths. Its most meaningful attempts at horror come from very occasional uses of gore and mutilation, a thin layer of Lovecraftian lacquer and the invocation of a decidedly sophomoric form of misanthropy, delivered with a side of ham-handed commentary about the evils of xenophobia.

To conclude, Housing Complex C is a thoroughly unimpressive and undercooked outing, taking promising concepts and source material, mixing them with basic takes on tired themes and sacrificing them (if you'll pardon the metaphor), along with character, plot, tension, logic, consistency and general writing quality, on the altar of an amateurish murder mystery that concerns itself more with ten-a-penny depictions of social strife than with earning its reveals through clever writing. The series evokes more frustration than horror with its awkward dialogue, reams of cavernous plot holes, underdeveloped characters, overdone themes and answers that only raise more questions. If it's a mystery or horror series you're looking for, you could do a lot better than this.

Shiki starts with a solid premise: a small Japanese village experiences a sudden increase in unexplained deaths. Initially attributed to an epidemic of as of yet unknown disease, it becomes increasingly apparent that Sotoba is beset by the vampiric Okiagari. So far so good. It's unfortunate, then, that despite it's potentially interesting ideas, the series is lacking in a number of areas. It can suffer from confusing direction at times, raises plot points only to drop them later, disregards its own rules on multiple occasions and while the series offers graphic and violent imagery at times, it fails to instill a sense of fear.

The show's ... art style is highly inconsistant. While some characters, usially older ones, have highly detailed and realistic features, other characters are extremely stylised, with wide eyes and pointed chins. The character design in general is questionable. Many characters possess exotic and even comical features, such as Tatsumi's turquoise wolf ear haircut, Masao's strangely elongated face and Chizuru's bevy of absurd outfits, which make them seem out of place in a horror anime. It's hard to take the onscreen action seriously when the monster of the hour is either too cute or too silly looking. That said, Shiki's soundtrack is uniformly excellent and always pulls its weight in selling the intended tone. When paired with appropriately grotty visual and audio effect, as well as some of the show's more disturbing imagery, this contributes to some masterful scenes of tense and visceral horror. Unfortunately, despite being easily some of the best and most memorable scenes in the show, such moments are few and far between.

The series also has issues in terms of its characters. Most are not very well defined and have little time to flesh themselves out before their deaths. Megumi Shimizu, for example, is established as a wannabe urbanite who hates anything she deems "old and gross", but nonetheless fantasises about aristocracy and the Kirishikis' european-style castle mansion. Before this apparent contradiction can be resolved, she's drained of blood and tossed in a ditch. In general, getting invested in the characters isn't something that the series rewards at all. By the end, any initially likeable characters are sure to either be killed, revived and brutally re-killed or become cold-blooded murderers themselves. Another recurring issue is that characters on both sides of the conflict fail to take advantage of the opportunities presented them and generally put minimal effort into what should be a life or death situation. Doctor Toshio Ozaki, for instance, is not what one would call a proactive protagonist. He neglects potential allies, keeps evidence to himself and has no plan for how to capture an Okiagari until one is essentially delivered into his lap. The Okiagari themselves aren't much better in that regard, as they allow the Doctor and the Tanaka children to live long after they've been recognised as threats.

Speaking of the Okiagari, there can be no discussion of Shiki without mention of its themes. The series often attempts to make the point that its monsters are only killing for the sake of survival and that, in that sense, they aren't that different from humans. What the series tells its audience, however, is quite different to what it shows. Victims of the Okiagari only die after being drained dry over the course of several days and it's both stated and shown that people can recover from being fed on. What this means is that the Okiagari could easily coexist with the living if they just preyed on different people every night, but none of the characters acknowledge this. Even more damningly, it's revealed that the Okiagari are intentionally killing people as part of a plan by the Kirishikis to take over Sotoba by killing off and replacing the human population. Even if one ignores the fact that such a large population of vampires with no humans to feed on is obviously unsustainable, this fact still completely invalidates any excuse they may have otherwise had. While it's easy to sympathise with individual Okiagari in the moment, the fact that they all participate in the Kirishikis' murder plan (and not always unwillingly) cannot be forgotten, nor can the townspeople be blamed for retaliating.

To conclude, while Shiki has some promise and can be an enjoyable watch at times, its execution is generally lacking. As a horror story, it lacks the necessary atmosphere and only occasionally delivers effective scares. As a thinkpiece, it's self-saboutaging and without anyone on the Okiagari side to counterbalance the Kirishikis, the thought of how easily the story's events could have been prevented is a constant frustration. Nonetheless, if the concept of a more humanising vampire story is appealing or if one is just interested in the sparsely populated anime horror genre, Shiki may still be worth a watch.

On paper, No Game, No Life is an anime with a lot going for it. It's premise is inventive, providing the opportunity for creative battles of wits in the form of fantastical games. The setting, Disboard, is a far cry from other fantasy universes, a world of competition governed by ten pledges that function like laws of physics. The art is colourful, distinctive and generally quite pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, while these may seem like the makings of a standout series, there is one major flaw at the core of the anime that outweighs them and taints any potential enjoyment that might be gleaned ... from it: the show's protagonist duo, Sora and Shiro, are easily some of the most detestable lead characters ever to appear on the small screen.

Making up the team known as Blank, the pair are quick to display their Mary Sue qualities to the audience. It's no accident that one of the series taglines states, without exaggerating, that "Blank never loses". This is true even in cases where the protagonists should, even by the show's own overly generous logic, lack the necessary skills (such as public speaking) or information (such as the details of the population of a specific area of a city) to succeed or have a better-than-even chance at success. As if that weren't bad enough that the main characters are always guaranteed to win, the duo's personalities are so unbearably obnoxious that there's essentially no reason to want them to, with Sora especially having an ego that's roughly the size of the moon. While he's all too happy to rattle off sanctimonious speeches about humanity's potential, he actually has very little respect for humans in general and only uses these lectures as a way to glorify himself. Worse than their attitudes, however, are their actions. Upon arriving in Disboard, Sora and Shiro use their nigh on supernatural game skills primarily to exploit others to their benefit. While they're given the opportunity to expose a cheater and help Stephanie Dola (the Princess of Elkia and one of the anime's few likable characters) keep her throne, they choose instead to do nothing, then manipulate an irate Steph into a rigged game and use the pledges to brainwash her into loving Sora, reducing her to the status of a glorified slave, and subsequently claim the throne for themselves. Steph is the first of the slaves they accrue in the show and far from the last. Despite this and many other heinous acts, in characteristic Mary Sue fashion, the pair receive an endless stream of praise from both the characters and the narrative itself, their every misdeed being instantly forgiven and their every flaw revealed to be merely an aspect of their Sherlockian genius. Still not bad enough? Then perhaps the elements of heavily implied incest between Sora and Shiro (his eleven year old sister) are worth a mention.

With such awful protagonists, it was inevitable that the show's story would suffer as well. The duo's quest to conquer all the nations of the world and challenge the god Tet (against whom they had already won a game of chess) for his title makes up the bulk of the plot and, with their victory a foregone conclusion, is about as engaging as a staring contest for the blind. Never before has the fate of humanity seemed so inconsequential. The games themselves are spread thin across the series and not all are created equal. One game takes place almost entirely offscreen, while others are undercut by strange, vague rules. Since the leads are never allowed to lose, the series is forced to manufacture tension by essentially cheating, having Sora lie to the audience in his internal monologue to obfuscate his 4D chess-style plans. The show's attempts at comedy and fanservice are equally flaccid, revolving around the aforementioned and long-suffering Stephanie Dola, who acts as the series resident chew toy. Despite having a more pleasant personality than either of the leads and being more competent than the anime would like the audience to think, Steph is regularly insulted, abused, ordered around, publicly humiliated and stripped of clothing in an attempt to elicit laughs and/or arousal. In the context of the show, however, these supposed "gags" and fanservice moments tend to come across as uncomfortable, frustrating and mean-spirited more than anything else.

All in all, while elements of No Game, No Life have a great deal of promise, its lead characters drag down every aspect of the anime, exerting a black-hole-like grip on the series' quality. Simply put, there's little joy to be had in watching the inevitable victories of an overly idealised Light Yagami stand-in, however imaginative or ostentatious the surrounding setpieces may be. In general, the series makes poor use of its ideas and characters, as well as failing to tell a compelling story or build to any kind of satisfying conclusion. Anyone looking for an anime about games or battles of wits could do a lot better than this show.