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I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I love this show. This was my first rewatch after initially watching it many years ago. It's clear why that's the case. It's one of a kind in a few ways.

First of all, let's talk about the animation style. It's definitely kind of old, kind of cheap, but you know, pretty average for the time. So why is it unique? I'm afraid that even the mediocre animation style will never be replicated in modern times. That's because people really think that slapping crappy low polygon CGI models of infielders and outfielders on the field is more cost effective than ... just doing what this show did: reusing animation frames and doing a lot of close ups. Think about it: despite the show having a lot of closeups of people picking up the ball, catching it, or hitting the ball, there's not a lot of high fidelity scenes where a player is running with a detailed background. That's okay! The show had pretty average budget so they decided to storyboard more closeups while still maintaining the feel of a baseball game and having the viewer understand the action involved. Nowadays, if an animation studio wants something cheap, they'll just try to recreate a high quality scene with no budget and the result is some crappy CGI rigs running on a field with a poorly animated and reused running sequence of the main character in the scene. Unfortunately, hiring people in Indonesia to poorly animate 3D models is much cheaper than actually trying to storyboard with what you got. This show, despite having relatively bad budget, made the most of it, used good storyboarding and animation to still tell a good story.

Second of all, and of course, the more important and less technical is the fact that it's a psychological baseball anime. Everyone knows that when you play baseball, the mind games between the battery and the person battery is crucial in determining the outcome of a duel. This show definitely capitalizes on that. What if you had a main character who could literally read the minds of the person he's facing? Well, the batter would never hit the ball. And that's Tokuchi. Bordering complete mind-reading levels of ability, Tokuchi is able to pitch balls effectively with 120 mph fastballs with no breaking balls to professional Nippon Professional Baseball players and get strikeouts because he can predict exactly what the batter is thinking and pitch accordingly. But that's also super unfun to watch. How is Tokuchi different from Echizen from Prince of Tennis, for example? Echizen effortlessly wins official games no matter how the tides are against him, similar to Tokuchi? Well, the difference here is that Tokuchi is playing a team game, and everyone is out there to get him. It's not just a game of baseball, it's a battle of wits against hostile agents that want to maliciously harm Tokuchi. It's about abusing baseball rules and mechanics on both sides to try to get the better of each other. Tokuchi has to listen to the manager? Well, how can we convince a manager who got bribed to not screw over Tokuchi? Similarly, how does Tokuchi use his extremely smart wits to manipulate his own teammates, the enemy team, and other people to meet the conditions of certain obscure baseball rules that come into effect that benefit Tokuchi in the end? It's very fun in that you get to learn a lot more about how baseball can be manipulated, even in official games, and because of how Tokuchi is always on his toes because anyone can try to screw him over. It's definitely not a battle shouenen where Tokuchi perfects his craft and becomes friends with his catcher while he's at it. No, it's about a degenerate gambler that's highly intelligent, in a highly unfavorable contract and situation, unbeatable in orthodox terms, but still has use his wits in order to outsmart the people around him.

What about the people around him? How are the characters? I love them! Again, it's not a traditional baseball show. Why bother characterizing each baseball player on the team? It's not high school baseball either. There's many substitutions being made, and it isn't feasible to characterize a whole cast of Nippon Professional Baseball players. Instead, you have just a select few characters that you know and love. You got Kojima, one of the main characters. He's the star batter of a terrible team, Lycaons, and he's desperate to win. He's in awe in how he got defeated by Tokuchi and recruits him to the team. Tokuchi the pitcher needs no introduction. The catcher Ideguchi is in a similar boat with Kojima, being one of the few players that is deeply in awe of Tokuchi's skill and you can say that these are the characters in Tokuchi's camp. They'll basically follow every order of his and they are his loyal allies. Fujita and Imai are regular professional baseball players on the Lycaons, they represent the naive majority that are subject to manipulation. Not to say they're bad characters, I actually love them too! They're fun to watch as they joke around and comment on the state of things without knowing too much. Finally, we have the Owner of the baseball team himself.

You can say that the Owner is one of the cornerstones of the story. He's hilariously evil. You can say that his only personality is that he's a rich CEO that uses underhanded methods to gain money. Basically, the typical CEO in real life. He doesn't care about the fact that the team he owns sucks. It brings profit margins. He just sucks out all the money he can while putting as little money as possible to make profit. It kind of reminds me of insurance companies in the USA denying essential healthcare claims because it cuts into their profits. Oh capitalism! Tokuchi is described as a gambler. He only cares about the outcome: win or loss. Ultimately, with a similar drive to the Owner, Tokuchi wants to win money and he'll do underhanded methods to do so. However, there are a few major distinctions. Tokuchi uses all his cards in his disposal to win, but he's actually talented. After all, he's OP and can read minds. He's literally the best baseball player and gambler ever. The Owner is a typical money grubbing CEO. He isn't particularly talented at anything, doesn't contribute anything to the team, and even if he had the drive to create a team that would win the championships, he'd probably fail at it. He's narrowminded enough to never consider that he made a mistake in his decisions to deal with Tokuchi, and he goes through every illegal and underhanded method in order to prove that he was correct. He literally risks bankruptcy just to prove that he is smarter than Tokuchi. Secondly, and you can say the most important distinction though, is that Tokuchi honors his promises. Tokuchi did verbally promise Kojima that he would help him with the championships. That is to say, there's nothing but trust in a verbal promise that binds Tokuchi to the Lycaons. Tokuchi could have easily backed out of his agreement with Kojima, but due to his own stubbornness and also gracefulness of taking a loss, Tokuchi actually follows through anyway. If the owner was the one making this promise, I'd have to get it legally binding for it to be worth anything. After all, he'd probably just back out saying that he never said such a thing. Overall, the dynamic between Tokuchi and the owner is one of the most fun things to watch. and It's obviously easy to keep the viewer engaged because Tokuchi is the "underdog" while the Owner with all his power is trying to crush Tokuchi down however he can.

I usually soldier through with really short works like these but the lack of ability to write is too apparent in this one. The way the story progresses can only be described as "dreadful." There's a lack of any sort of tension or drama. The mechanic of swapping souls is very under-utilized and everyone's IQ can only be described as abysmal. The way that "mysterious" characters that could be X are framed just to add tension to the story is boring. There's not a single well written piece of dialogue and the story just goes on and on where people just find random clues. Nothing ... about the powers or the story is particularly well done as it's kind of just unable to keep viewer retention. I'm not surprised that the manga closed out very early in only 4 volumes as it was unable to string together a remotely fun and dramatic story.

For those who never read the novel, it feels like Quanzhi Gaoshou 3 is an almost separate theme compared to the previous seasons and even the movie. That's because this entire show is taken place all in real life! Most of the time, you're just seeing characters in real life talk and socialize, or whatever happenings in the real world.

To be fair, there is a great deal of dialogue that happens in the real world even in the webnovel. In fact, if there was a good balance between gameplay and dialogue, that'd be for the best. The previous seasons kind of felt a little ... bit too fast paced or lacked good character development due to cutting out a lot of these real world scenes. However, rather than trying to balance and focus on character development this season, Quanzhi Gaoshou 3 just has a lot of dialogue because it's easy to animate.

Clearly this studio knows how to animate. The movie is one of the few animated movies I like period, and the animation is very nice and smooth. Of course the first few seasons aren't perfect, but first were fun to watch nonetheless. This season...fights just suck. Either they abstract a lot of the fight sequences out or just show subpar fights in general. It's a shame that the budget got slashed due to greed. Even just the people talking in real life are statues. They don't move, their lip syncing sucks, even the voice acting is kind of pretty bad. The only few moments where there's some higher fidelity animation is when there's some chibis characters on the screen or there's some more simplistic things to animate. I definitely feel the passion of this studio for the show. The first few seasons were great and that passion showed through. It showed thoughtful adaptation of source material that's frankly too long to fit in an animation medium. Even this season, the artstyle itself is fine and even good, and the CGI, whether it be backgrounds or just background characters is still miles ahead of most Japanese studios. However, the frame animation just isn't there at all. It kind of just sucks.

All this show does is focus on a lot of dialogue and abstract ALL the fun fight scenes away. For example, one of my favorite matches was the first match to qualify for the Pro League when Happy plays against Team Everlasting in the Linjiang Water Corridor. It was fun to watch because there was a lot of strategy at hand, and it shows the very first time the Happy pro team plays in a professional setting. There's a lof of kinks to work out and the fights are chaotic while Ye Qiu throws some strategy into the mix. And this show just animates NONE of it. The entire best of 3 is just done in a few minutes. Plus, in those few minutes, A LOT of animation and scenes was just Ye Qiu issuing commands in the real world to his teammates to get rid of the need to animate anything. Even the Finals where Samsara and Blue Rain fight, even in the most critical moment of the fight where Zhou Zekai is in a 2v1 situation and clutches out the fight, it's not even shown!

So no, this show doesn't "slow down" or anything, it just feels like that because there's no animation going on and the show decided to just hyper focus on only dialogue to avoid animation anything intensive. I feel sad because I know the studio can do better and was only forced to create garbage due to some random higherup deciding to reduce budget by 10x.

It keeps on dragging on and on and on and on about very petty, unimpressively done melodrama and love and stuff. Rather than actually develop a love polygon or relevant character development and side characters, you're kind of just led around the nose with very small quabbles, monologues, and basically not a lot going on. There's time skips because the author can't actually write thoughtful characters and story so he has to skip through stuff to make the relationships progress in the way he deems fit.

You'd think the main couple or romance would be somewhat interesting, but it's really not. None of the new ... characters introduced give anything new to the story while the old characters get cast aside or barely do anything in chapters other than moan and complain about their melodramatic woes.

I wish there were more dynamic scenarios, more heart to heart dialogue, or anything that would make the story more interesting. As it is, it's a pretty below average manga about body-swapping with not much to tell for it. Them main ship is obvious and the characters that meddle in it, support it, all basically don't matter at all.

Rising Impact was written by the same author as Nanatsu no Taizai. And you can tell just by a few tells. For example, the low-brow and so unfunny ecchi humor that it's actually funny that the author still bothers writing them in at all. Or the fact that the main character has the same exact face as Meliodas, the main character of Nanatsu no Taizai. And it's also no wonder that both are extremely formulaic in certain ways.

The pilot is soulless. Yet again, you have a "young prodigy genius" kid that randomly picks up a golf club and shoots 300 meters as a first grader. ... It's only emphasized 500 times that he's a genius and never picked up a golf club, and how he's a "hard worker." Yet again we are thrust into a story where Gawain, the main character is playing kids 5-6 years his senior and beating them handedly. Antagonists and conflict are artificially created to heighten tensions in a mundane and boring story.

Overall, despite possessing a lot of similarities with Tonbo!, such as an orphaned child living with their grandparents, living in a secluded area with no hope to actually get taught golf, and being thrust into the world of golf by a loving mentor, this show misses the mark on all of them. It's mainly because Gawain isn't a very empathetic character. And I think that's the point. The point of this show is not to create good characters, it's to introduce a shounen sports show with conflict and intense matches while Tonbo! carefully crafts characters that fit the story and chooses to highlight a child's growth in many facets.

It's neither here or there. It's a shounen that introduces to typical comedic relief characters in a semi-serious/episodic setting where our main character Asano protects his wife, or the head of the family in different scenarios.

Obviously, the plot is nonsensical. The fact that the setting is about spies and danger doesn't really register. That's pretty obvious, It's just a way to introduce some action in a lighthearted way, and the characters and story reflect that. Not once did the show give you expectations that spy work literally meant "spy work." However, it's so off-kilter compared to what you expect from that line of business it ... might as well be dismissed almost entirely. Unlike Loid and Spy x Family, this show doesn't really embrace "realistic" spy work, not that what Loid does is exactly realistic, it does very much stick to the theming of it and makes the most out of it. It's not just a throwaway setitng.

Then there's the actual characters. Each of them are pretty boring and cringe. When you introduce like 6 characters in the first episode and you get to know them in episodic sequences that are built entirely so that the viewer can somehow understand their personalities in a very inorganic and mechanical manner, it does kill the show. Even the main couple and romance are so weak. Mutsumi and Asano happen to have feelings for each other, but really, other than them telling me this directly through dialogue, it doesn't really register since the show also doesn't really care to focus on that either.

There's nothing that I find well written or redeeming in any manner, and despite the crutches of writing nonsensical settings, characters, and random action sequences, the show still fails to remotely pull me in with either compelling characters or storytelling.

Look, this is shounen drivel at it's finest. It's about a guy who "is kind and protects his friends," and has mysteriously OP powers that uses to bulldoze the enemy; an enemy so evil that they're practically different beings. That's right: they're dragons!

Now, why would I rate something like this remotely high? I hated Demon Slayer and it had around the same plot, and the animation quality surely was multiple times higher. Well, it just has to do with good character development. All the characters in Ragna Crimson are pretty fun to read about. When people or demons in Demon Slayer die and they show ... their flashbacks, it kind of just is some throwaway sob story that no one cares about. While Ragna Crimson does employ a similar tactic, it's a lot more genuine because you actually know a lot about a character through their actions and interactions in the story. It isn't just slapping a sob story to a random that died and now the author needs to make the viewer feel a bit empathetic with the side character, but moreso fleshing out a character that already was strong enough to stand by themselves. Almost as a last hurrah, you get to know the last piece about them before they die.

And that truly is what makes this generic shounen kind of fun to watch. Both sides are quite human. They literally ARE human, despite one side being so-called dragons. So that means that both sides would have human-like aspirations, and you're basically just watching a shounen show with both sides possessing shounen characteristics. OP characters with OP abilities, random powerups that are completely OP, and so on and so forth. It's again, like watching two shounen shows at the same time. It's not just a hero cutting down the demon lord. It's kind of more like heroes of both sides trying to beat each other. It's quite interesting.

But of course, the most interesting is how character dynamics come into play. You're lead to believe that Crimson is a mastermind-type individual, trying to micromanage and make use of all chess pieces as much as possible. And you're right. So how does a pretty much clueless hero-type individual like Ragna cooperate -- and perhaps rebel against Crimson's orders? I mean the main reason is plot armor, but nonetheless, the delicate power balance between Ragna, Crimson, and the dragons is always kept. There's always some way that Ragna can keep Crimson in check and vice versa, while both will still ultimately want the same goal of killing dragons and eradicating them. You're not really going to have a chummy relationship where Ragna and Crimson suddenly fall in love or something absolutely stupid like other shounen shows have you watch. Hopefully in the future too.

Plus, there's no BS arc of "training camp." Our MC Ragna is already pretty strong. No need for random high school academies for learning the arts with his peers, or just randomly getting strong because of a breathing technique his father passed down to him or something absolutely dumb. The show maintains a good amount of action the entire way, and it's split into a few parts due to actual plot reasons. You're not given a random raven that tells you another point of interest you need to go to in order to progress the plot. It's more like there's always some sort of reason (some flimsy, granted...) Ragna and his crew are somewhere. Whether it's to investigate or by pure misfire, Ragna and Crimson find themselves in situations that they crafted themselves ultimately.

Ragna's an absolute archetype of the typical shounen protag, and so the fact that he gets put in his place by Crimson and vice versa, there comes an actual story to tell. I still won't lie, it's still very shounen-driven. Friendship, random powerups, plot armor, and more are commonplace. Still, it's a bit equalized. Of course, Ragna and Crimson are practically immortal, but the rest of the characters are quite equalized. Yes, you could also find a lot of plot holes that don't make a lot of sense. There's a weird hybrid of science and magic that gets thrown around a lot with Crimson as well. It's like Crimson was deliberately nerfed so that there's a story to tell! I wouldn't watch this show for an in-depth story, but rather just suspend your disbelief and let yourself get shown the narrative the author wants to craft for the story and characters.

"Bro, Undead Unluck is actually really funny you just have to watch it bro, please bro believe me. you have to understand the complex humor, bro how are you not laughing he groped a woman for the 500th time please bro it gets better at chapter 150 I promise it's so funny bro"

Need I say anything else? Shounen manga aimed at 13 year olds aren't exactly a "slow burn" sort of series. It's pretty blatantly clear the themes of the show, even if there is a so called "dramatic plot twist" at chapter 990. It's honestly a bit laughable to see people thinking that the ... romance in this show is realistic or something. Hell yeah bro just ignore like the entire first 500 chapters or something and then it gets better. If the foundations are shaky, then how can the rest be good?

I think giving slow pace shows with a lot of dialogue, setup, story, and character development makes sense. Something like Shinsekai Yori. In this show you're just fighting people with superpowers. It really is just super bad version of Jojo. It's got nearly identical concepts in terms of powers and fighting, but rather than our main character just figuring out the enemy's weakness because there's actually some more thought put into the story, they're just dumb as bricks. You can't actually be serious about how dumb some of the antogonists or enemies in the story are utilizing their absolutely broken and OP powers but because it's a dumbed down shounen manga somehow our MC is the only person that's able to abuse mechanics on how powers work. It's pretty apparent that the only reason why fights pan out the way they do is due to plot armor.

At first glance, I honestly thought the show was adapting off a really old light novel series. Just the cover art of the anime exuded 80-90s style. Something like Orphen, Slayers, etc. And I thought that such an old light novel had potential to finally shine since it's finally getting a modern adaptation.

Yeah, can you believe that it's a manga adaptation that was made in 2020? Come on. We're living in the modern era. A show with such a predictably cringe, oversaturated with tropes, and a white bread MC whose only trait is that he's "kind and protects his friends" really doesn't cut it. It's ... even set in a medieval fantasy school world where there are such predictable young arrogant masters trying to get in the main character's way. Plus, sprinkle in a few female side characters that are infatuated with him one way or another, you got a pretty much a formula from the 80-90s.

For such a synopsis and set of characters to actually appear in a traditional shounen manga is not what I expected. It's not even a gag or trying to make fun of the generic fantasy setting. It's literally just a very cliche and old fashioned, brining absolutely nothing to the table other than make yet another boring shounen show.

SHIKA.......NOTSU. If you're not Japanese, you'll still probably understand these phrases after watching the show (not that notsu is an actual word...)

Actually, despite all of the great opening you have, the comically bad but also funny deer CGI, and overall a great premise of Noko being a boke in a gag manga, the actual show is pretty tame. I'd say the show is not the highest production value, but it definitely nails all of the comedic execution. By taking liberties of animation Noko as a blob sometimes, Torako as a chibi when acting as a tsukommi, and a few other shorthands, the comedic value stays ... the same while still providing good entertainment value. I have nothing negative to say about how the anime decided to create multiple sound tracks with only the word SHIKA. By changing the tone of the OST, you go from some generic happy/sad/somber OST to something actually quite entertaining as you're listening to "SHIKA" being sung in many different tones depending on what the OST is.

However, that being said, I just don't find the characters to be up to par. Just the manzai between Noko and Torako is pretty average. However, the rest of the deer club is just abysmal. Despite Anko and Bashame making up half the deer club, you barely get to even see them talk. Most of the time, they're just on screen and not talking, or if they are, they stick to their pet phrases and archetypes without contributing to the comedy, dialogue, or scene. It's very weird since you'd think these major side characters would be on screen more often, but actually the student council members probably have more screen time than them. And even if they don't, frankly speaking, the student council body is a lot more funny than Bashame's one pet trait of eating a lot of rice and Anko being a generic yandere sis-con. There's exactly one scene where Bashame and Anko interact with each other that sort of gives some sort of characterization, but it's way too infrequent and way too late.

Like I said though, just even the manzai between Torako and Noko is pretty average. A lot of the longer gags are just very unfunny, like Noko acting as a shrine maiden for 5+ minutes, or Noko acting as a flower arrangement instructor, to say a few examples. Same thing with a lot of the short ones too. Noko sleeping in class and blowing bubbles out of her antlers isn't particularly anything too funny, and honestly, shows like Nichijou, Joshikousei no Mudazukai, and more have way better gags and funny moments despite them being more grounded in reality. When a bizarre show about a high school deer is less interesting and has less varied scenarios than other shows that are more strictly slice of life, you have a problem. And this can be seen even in the setting. 99% of the show is in the club room and student council room. The lack of interactions in the classroom, interactions out of class, and overall just moving around the area hurts the show a lot. Noko never actually pulls the deer club to some random events or anything.

Overall, I feel like all I said was negative, but still, the animation and storyboarding alongside the sound design are good enough, and pacing is good. The anime features some fun gags here and there despite most of them missing the mark. I give it a high score only due to it literally being my favorite genre of all time. If you're not a fan of gag shows, you definitely won't like this one. Many eclipse this show in all departments.