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- LocationWrocław, Poland
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Nov 8, 2024
Black Clover has taken 2 years of my life. Was it worth it? Probably not, but it has yielded some interesting things to think about.
Its biggest crime is that the author can't write characters for shit. Stupid two-dimensional characterisation prevents it from being something greater. Cool moments occasionally make their way through hours of rubbish comedy and boring sequences led by paper-thin characters repeating their one personality trait over and over again. Let me share with you a drinking game I've come up with, where you take a shot everytime one of these things happen:
1. Asta is impressed by something
2. Noelle says a cartoonishly typical
...
tsundere phrase
3. Noelle has family issues
4. Luck wants to fight
5. Gordon creepily talks about friendship
6. Vanessa drinks or talks about drinking
7. Charmy eats or talks about eating
8. Charmy is head over heels for Yuno
9. Yuno's fairy is head over heels for him
10. Mimosa is head over heels for Asta
11. Gauche is head over heels for his sister (...)
12. Finral hits on girls or talks about hitting on them
13. Charlotte is head over heels for Yami
14. Sol calls Charlotte "sister", which results in the latter getting annoyed
15. Sol hates men
16. Nero lands on Asta's head
With this, you can actually have some fun, as these things happen so often you can get hammered in the span of a single episode! Well, you get my point now.
While the plot itself does have some intense and fun-to-watch moments — such as the battle between Black Bulls and Vetto, Asta's special powers awakening (vague to avoid spoilers), the climax of the elves' scheme (same here), or Yami's poop jokes (funniest shit I've ever seen) — it is all incredibly infantile and lacks depth. The characters' motivations behind a plot point can be so shallow that at some point I legitimately viewed Black Clover as a collection of over-exaggerated parables, painfully mawkish to allegorically demonstrate the values beneath and make sure that no one misses them. And I almost accepted it because Black Clover's values are really positive and motivating, even if trite.
That's also why for a while I developed another theory that Black Clover's world is like a family - a family in which there are flaws you grow to accept and cherish the ensuing highs. For some time, I had somehow accepted the shitty things and started perceiving even the filler sequences as family time as a result of spending a lot of time with the characters.
But I think I got manipulated by Black Clover into refraining from criticising its repeated flaws, lmao. That's just bad writing. Good moments are placed within hours of either poor humour that oversimplifies the characters to the point of them seeming as caricatures, or tiresome fight scenes consisting of repetitive cant and a random clusterfuck of spells and attacks at which my brain turned off. You also can't accept lack of nuance as an intended measure — as is the case with the LOTR books, for example, where everything is set in stone and the story unfolds like fulfilling a destiny — just because it's long-running. I wonder if that's what the majority of shounen giants suffer from, baiting the audience into forgiving the flaws for an interspersed cool moment or two.
I also want to mention the last arc specifically because I think it needs individual treatment. The build-up to it is literally just one big filler that is justified by "training". Another thing are the plot twists. They have overall been quite random, forcing their way into a previously established landscape and flipping it on its head as a cheap solution to a problem. But the one with the emergence of a new character in the last few episodes is just taking the piss, you know what I'm talking about.
There were moments when I had fun, I can't lie. I also like the core ideas behind a lot of the stuff here. The poor writing is just inexcusable, though. It feels to me as if Black Clover was straight-up disrespectful towards its viewers, even if with good heart all throughout.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 15, 2024
Sousou no Frieren is absolutely packed with great, unique ideas. Every episode is full of interesting intricacies the world has to offer. There is tremendous care put into the lore, giving us information in little pieces, which makes it organic instead of just being an empty info dump. And in all this, there are universally applicable insights to be found throughout, none of them being your typical shallow platitudes – there's truly touching and inspirational beauty all over. It really is constructed like a profound work of art, tackling various subjects in a poetic way. And I think the fact that everything feels so poetic
...
and artistic elevates Frieren to such a high status. The thematic profundity is complemented by the gorgeous visuals, often interweaving the present with the past and building upon it, showing certain themes in a new context for Frieren, and developing her personality as she learns how to appreciate life.
But it is also just incredibly fun to watch. The fight scenes are insanely well-done, being a cut above many action-focused shounens. You wouldn't think a show so dialogue-heavy and emotional would go so hard in terms of the animation. Also, the grain effect adds to the fantasy atmosphere, making one feel like they are truly experiencing an entirely different world. Madhouse really delivered. And I've mentioned it before, but everything feels beautifully rich, organic, and believable. Many anime series just randomly insert all these fantasy elements on a whim whenever they want to add something cool. Frieren on the other hand has constructed a coherent landscape of different nations, races, professions, and rules governing it all, while also staying cool as fuck. I am absolutely invested in everything this world has to offer.
Despite all the action sequences, Frieren is, as I said, dialogue-heavy. To me this is a great thing - at times it allows the anime to breathe, and at times it builds everything up as it feels like every word holds weight and steadily reveals more and more. Even when there are jokes, they are very heartfelt and showcase the personality of the characters without dumbing them down. It's a pleasure to experience an anime that understands people (or rather living creatures in this case) and feels truly human, putting care and heart into everything.
I'm glad Frieren has received such a positive reception and people see it as a masterpiece that it is. It's crazy what a well-written fantasy can achieve. I love everything it conveys, and I cannot wait to see more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 4, 2024
Ever since I watched the first season of Goblin Slayer, I knew I heavily disliked it, but the exact reasoning behind it kind of eluded me. I obviously had some grounds for this strong distaste towards it, but only now, after finishing the second season, I attempted to fully understand this repulsion and list all the things that bother me. It was easier to do so as this season showcases all the faults with the series way more jarringly, as well as introduces some new ones.
- In the 2nd season, it is already made implicit that goblins are the biggest evil in the universe because
...
the 1st season presented it so much that it doesn't need any further explanation. We know that goblins bad and our main guy wants to slay them. And a few years ago when the 1st season came out, I've already found this aspect of worldbuilding very cheap and one-dimensional; it was enough to prevent me from immersing myself in the story because of how shallowly the main focus of it was treated. Goblins harm people simply because it is in their nature to do so, and they devise many devious tricks to ruthlessly carry out their vicious deeds. We have seen multiple times that they are not weak creatures and their minds are fully capable of well-planned, dangerous attacks. There is more than enough ground for everyone in the world to realise that, and yet, there is still this continuous pattern of people underestimating goblins and thinking of them as weak creatures who you just laugh at and look down upon. How the hell has no one else besides the main party and some other individual characters come to the conclusion that goblins are the real shit? Especially after them straight up invading villages and injuring or killing so many adventurers in plain sight? It's very easy to just blame that on people's misguided prejudice, making everyone aside from the main cast ignorant of reality when it comes to this one aspect for some reason. If the problem in question was approached reasonably, the anime would lose its main driving force - an autistic dude and his friends who are the only ones who know the truth about the goblins and try to get rid of them - because it didn't give two fucks about carefully establishing it in the first place.
- Another problem I had with the anime even while watching the 1st season was the emptiness and the lack of personality of the characters. They seem to possess a few traits only, and literally everyone feels like a caricature without any depth. I think I can describe the main party with a few words for each of its members - Goblin Slayer is a cool loner who wants to carry out his revenge and eradicate goblins while being inept at social interaction; the Elf is playful, impulsive, and adventure-seeking; the Priestess is shy, naively kind-hearted, and she looks up to Goblin Slayer, wanting to better herself based on her high opinion of him; the Lizard is a polite Stoic who loves cheese and his religion; the Dwarf is a cheerful old man who likes to drink. There is very little to them besides that, seriously. There is a small arc at the elven village, but no further information about the Elf came out of that.
- Speaking of the elven village, I really wished for the anime to focus on how their lives and perspectives differ from other races, which would build on the fantasy world it is set in. I wanted it to say something actually interesting and informative, and expand upon its setting. But unfortunately, Goblin Slayer didn't do that, and the elven village ended up being used simply as a background for the goblin slaying. The things we are told about the elves are superficial, and the anime does not delve into the subject but merely scrapes it instead and calls it a day. Apart from learning virtually nothing about them, and certainly nothing worthwhile, we are also left with having no idea what part they play in the entire scope of things. And I feel like the same thing happens with every single character or place introduced - we get a surface-level exposition treated with no care which only purpose is to somehow connect them with goblins. No insight into the geopolitical and biological landscape, no effort in establishing the relations between the characters, nothing. I don't understand it, what's the point of any attempts at constructing plot elements when they are only used as a vapid stage for an epic Call of Duty montage or a cringy and lifeless slice of life?
- Complaining about the story a bit more, it is fragmented and doesn't feel like a continuous experience. The characters do one thing, there is a short conclusion of an arc, and then they just start doing something else. I know some shows like to have it episodical, but I don't think this was the aim of Goblin Slayer, at least it doesn't seem to be that way for me - I think it's just awkwardly glued together without enough content to link the events. Shit just happens, but I don't find it connected; something might as well be taking place years before or after. It's like everything was haphazardly placed without any thought behind it.
- When it comes to the atmosphere of Goblin Slayer, I still find it hilarious that the controversial sexual assault at the very beginning of the 1st season tricked everyone into thinking that this was going to be the most brutal and realistically (for the presented setting and its intrinsic rules) dark anime out there with a cruel and unforgiving world that doesn't care about your feelings. After that tasteless introduction made purely for shock value, the series began to show its true colours - dullness, repetitiveness stemming from the lack of ideas, and an overall subpar uninspired fantasy anime shit. Another thing I also found very irritating was this almost mechanical division between the happy-go-lucky moments, with the main characters engaging in the most unnatural and unfunny banter you'll ever hear, and the precarious battles.
- With the studio change from White Fox to LIDENFILMS, the animation quality takes a dive. A lot of the sequences look very cheap, with, for example, repeated, unnatural movements to lazily fill the space when characters talk. The backgrounds are very simple, but in a bland, underdeveloped, and uninteresting way. I particularly remember this one scene where the gang arrives at a big city near the end of the season and the priestess is in absolute awe of the place, but when I saw it, I thought it looked like shit - Steam Workshop-like textures of bare-bones and boring buildings without any style to them make up the entirety of this city's random ass and ugly urban planning.
- The attempt at introspectiveness at the end was a laughable icing on the cake. It provided no insight whatsoever and amounted only to a dumbed-down reiteration of the premise, making the caricatural Goblin Slayer look like an even bigger caricature of himself. The last words uttered in this season are "I go on adventures and slay goblins. That's what I chose to do. And then... Nothing will change.", and I think this is very fitting in regard to the whole series.
With even so many of the fans disliking it, the second season of Goblin Slayer is an even more unlikeable creature devoid of any substance, the initial popularity of which I completely fail to understand.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 9, 2023
I usually don't mind these shounen movies that follow the formulaic standard, but this one in particular seems to me pretty lazy and derivative.
We're presented with a real tearjerker from the very start with Hiiro's backstory, but all the cinematic shots of him standing in the rain and missing his comrades just don't feel genuine. I couldn't discover much behind this facade that wanted to forcibly make the viewer feel sad without any effort in properly establishing the character first. And the same can be said for Towa - we only know that her lineage has been suffering for generations, but her implicit love for
...
her kingdom and her acts of kindness, including an outrageously unbelievable sacrifice, are really the only traits she possesses. It's supposed to be enough to make us feel sorry for them and care for them, but such cheaps tricks just don't work for me.
My another point is that these two characters that I've just talked about seem like caricatures of archetypes. Honestly, this critique could be directed towards many characters in the entire Slime franchise, but I don't think TenSura has ever been so visibily guilty of it than in this movie, maybe with the exception of "Tensura Nikki". We get a desparing warrior who wishes to avenge his village and an insanely benevolent woman ruler who will not think twice before giving up her life for her people. What should have been the main novelty of the movie left no impact on me whatsoever as I'm sure I have already seen all of it somewhere else. There is nothing wrong with characters that can be linked to a certain trope, but it becomes a problem when there is not much else to them. The movie really wants to emphasise their traits, but it feels so superficial and cursory that I'm sure I will forget about their existence the moment I finish with this review.
One of the reasons why these things are so jarring is that we don't really get much of Rimuru, the driving force behind TenSura that gives meaning to the whole. He just isn't given enough focus to entertain us through the story. And when the spotlight belongs to him for a while, he appears relatively emotionless and empty. Paired with the lack of real stakes for him (which was to be expected if you've seen the anime) and a pathetic excuse of a villain being Rimuru's main enemy, there isn't much to care for and be engaged with.
However, I have to acknowledge that I enjoyed the recontextualization of Rimuru's status as a Demon Lord, even if unsubtly exercised. The fact that he seems quite detached throughout the movie allowed me to perceive him in the same way as I perceived the other respected Demon Lords, such as Cromwell or Guy. The Raja officials' high regard for Rimuru and Violet's recognition of him as capable, without either of them being under his rule, feel natural and well-deserved as he really does seem like a Demon Lord even to the viewer, which is done so partly by removing much of his typical banter. The slime is one of the big dogs now, and it is well-known in the international arena. It's cool to see how different the strangers' opinion of him is compared to how it was before his rank-up.
The fights were very pleasant to watch, and I continue to have not a cavil regarding TenSura's visual department. Really solid animation.
I don't hate the movie, and one more quick word of appreciation I can add is that it is nice to have another kingdom added to the geopolitical landscape. It's just a shame that the actual contents are rather uninteresting and there is not much to make up for the excessively convenient nature of the plot, with which the previous instalments managed to succesfully deal with, in my opinion.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Mar 20, 2022
I do think the show's quite underrated, since anything below 7 is a relatively low score here on MAL. It has a lot of problems, but the rough start develops into an actually decent action flick.
Well, the beginning is awful and may put off many people (including me before I came back to it a couple years later) because of the romance which is unfortunately the highlighted focus of the anime. I myself am not truly devoid of making the Twilight connection in my head because the first 3 episodes had established so and ended the 12-episode cour with that in my mind. But I'm
...
getting ahead of myself, let's start from the beginning.
The start of Anzai and Tsukasa's relationship feels unnatural, forced, and rapey, even. The girl had trouble with dating and couldn't reciprocate the feelings her classmate had for her only to later randomly fall in love with a dude who kissed her all of a sudden. The dynamic between them had to start somehow, but it did on a bloody fan-fiction level of writing. A formerly closed-off girl falls in love with an emo vampire with bags under his eyes who "saves" her - how can you not compare it to Twilight after seeing this mess?
Just when I thought I would end up laughing watching the remaining episodes, the fourth and fifth episodes happened. The introduction of Lee (which I find to be the best character in the show alongside later introduced Ishimaru) spiced things up, as he expanded on the whole vampire thing. Shortly after, we were introduced to a certain fraction, which really started the world-building process. It took me a couple more episodes to realise that Devils Line wasn't strictly about romance anymore and instead focused on the grand moral issue of humans and vampires coexisting, all the while slowly but surely connecting the dots and characters which purpose was to build upon the narrative.
Now, I must say, the characters aren't the best, and they seem to be lacking proper treatment, but it's not like they are complete cardboards either. What I like about the show is that it doesn't throw away characters, and many of the supposedly episodic ones end up returning at some point. They also have their own motives and don't exist only to serve a single purpose.
There are some pretty exciting twists in the story, and I like how everything smoothly transitions. Unfortunately, the romance thing hadn't died off. It's still a fairly promiment matter that I've purposely omitted to show the good sides of the anime, which I cannot understand how everyone fails to see. And even despite the romance not dying off, it's now handled way better. The couple tries to understand each other, and they show some kind of maturity (Anzai's a little bitch, though, lmao). The other thing that showed potential is that their love story serves a purpose to Anzai trying to fight off his inner demons, and in that sense, it makes sense. I won't, however, forget how cringy some of the scenes could be, and I just really wish there was no romance at all.
I also had slight problems with the animation, as the characters didn't look great and had these weird white outlines. The background was pretty plain most of the time, and the action sequences were meh, but it wasn't anything jarring, and I doubt it will bother you that much.
The adaptation isn't full, so the ending left much to be desired. They went in an interesting direction, but the entangled cheap love-dovey aspect was, sadly, sigh-inducing. I can't help but get frustrated at how unnecessary this romance thing ended up being most of the time.
But even despite the noticeable flaws which a lot of people have also pointed out, I realised halfway through that I was simply having fun. I became interested in the plot outside of the silly romance, and it was my intention writing this review to shed some positive light at the story and the world-building.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 12, 2019
This was painful to read.
And I don't mean it by that it was sad or tragic, or whatever. The problem is that Just be Friends' first part is the most uninteresting thing ever and the second is just plain stupid and insulting.
These characters, while in high school, and all of their lovely adverntures are like the most basic and lazy usage of stereotypes. Giving someone a popular trait is not bad in itself, because you always add something yours tho.
This had nothing of that. Yeah I mean it's supposed to be an interpretation of a song but it's still a self-written piece of story influenced
...
by something.
Extroverted, carefree and popular girl enters the school and everyone is just "wooow". There's also our typical loner who is supposed to be smarter than the other guys. They sit next to each other and start dating.
That description seems pretty sweet fundamentally, but we already know they are going to be together from the first few pages. Therefore there's not any anticipation over what's going to happen. It still doesn't mean it won't be good - it's a nice concept that could work pretty well actually. But yeah like I was saying it's just formulaic to the bone. I swear to god I've seen the exact same storyboard and progression in a couple of other manga combined together. The romance part was completely boring, which already doesn't make me want to wait for le big reason why Miyuta broke up with Tachibana.
Another thing are these generic as sentences like "We got closer, but the distance between us is only increasing" bullshit or "What a coward, I can't even say what I feel omgggg". Come on - this is a textbook example that's been used dozens of times and it's impossible to feel moved or know the characters better in the way they're portrayed. I just don't sense even a tiny bit of personality in them. They are like living templates.
You could say that this setup was all "intentional" just to show a not really known side of what happens after the confession, but that's the only reason of counter-argumenting myself I've found. If that was true, then they even failed that - the actual reason of them breaking up is problematic as fuck, which I will talk about in the second part of this.
After the first time skip we are shown that Miyuta is feeling unwell because of Tachibana's work. He thinks that their relationship is pointless and he wants to break up with her. Thus we reach the climax of the second part, where he finally says it. But here's the thing - he had large trouble doing this and he still had feelings for Tachibana, yet he still didn't even think of like, I don't know, talking with her? It's the fundament of being a couple. But what I despise the most is that the author makes this desicion seem like a mature departure and ending this chapter in their lives. Tachibana devoted herself to the thing she loved the most, while still loving Miyuta, 'cause she thought he was ok with it, I mean he wasn't fucking syaing anything. Then out of the blue Miyuta drops a bomb on her, because he's not emotionally strong enough to discuss his frustration.
That fucker is basically justifying the breakup as "help with Tachibana's carrier". Can you imagine how disgusting that is? He's trashing her feelings for him and decides by himself what's better for Tachibana,
A couple years later Miyuta says something along the lines of "if I had been more mature back then, would I end up with her?", but it's just a silly thought, cause he says he's happy with his new girlfriend. Well, it seems like a great character development. But unfortunately just seconds later he says he wants to be born again and again just to see Tachibana. Come on dude, it that were to happen you'd just ruin another person's life (his new gf) without feeling even a bit of guilt. Every single human does harm to someone unknowingly but this guy keeps on manipulating and using others without a shred of realizing this, let alone remorse, or at least it's shown that way.
I am fully aware that Miyuta is just a human being and it's natural that he would encounter these unpleasant things, but it's shown here as if he did not do anything wrong and these forcefully melancholic situations are explained by cheapest values and usage of morals possible.
Oh and the art is just lazy, not detailed by any means and boring with unnatural face expressions.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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