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The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this is "why?".
There was absolutely no need to remake this anime, as we already have the 2008 rendition, which still stands the test of time to this day. The art and design is beautiful, the animation is great, and since this is not some edgy action anime, frame rate and CGI doesn't play here. The VO and localization team is the same as well, and bring about the same quality.

What [b]did[/b] change is the characters themselves. In the original, Holo is a dignified albeit fickle goddess with surprising bouts of vulnerability hiding under ... her austere and beguiling nature. While Lawrence is an experienced and shrewd merchant who wouldn't take her shit, but is also mesmerized by her often playful nature and incredible insight. Holo is intrigued as to how Lawrence could treat her as an equal and wouldn't just succumb to her godlike power and feminine charm, and Lawrence's empathy and compassion instinctively wants to protect the fragile heart hiding in her hard shell of animalistic pride and ancient wisdom. It's this delicate power dynamic that makes their relationship so interesting and fun.

In this new version, however, everything goes out the window. Holo is presented as an angsty, hormonal teenager throwing tantrums, while Lawrence comes off as a total pushover. Gone is the amazing banter, the masterfully crafted back-and-forth between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. The depth and charm of their characters are replaced by awful caricatures. Holo the unstable tsundere and Lawrence the simp. Even the upgrade in art and animation doesn't trade for killing the soul of what made this anime great.

My suggestion is, stick with the original 2008 rendition of Spice & Wolf.

First, there was isekai. Then when people got bored of that, came the joke isekai that made fun of the whole thing. And then came the anti-isekai, the genre deconstructions that turned the whole premise onto it's head, etc etc...

And now, we have the post-isekai, where the rules go straight out the window and whatever happens, happens. I mean, this is one of those entire-paragraph-title anime that says all you need to know right on the tin. Dude gets isekai'd, wakes up in another world, but instead of embarking on the Hero's Journey or having some weird/funny ability or modern day technology, he just has ... the ability to kill anything instantly. Period. That's it. No chanting, no straining, no casting, no flashy animations, the guy just says "Die!" and the target just keels over, dead as a doornail. No explosions, no dragged out screaming and deathrattles, no bursting into sprays of blood and guts, just...dead. Works on literally everything. Hordes of bad guys, dragons, gods, unimaginable forces of evil, whatever it is, just gets unalived at the drop of a hat. No drawbacks, no limits, no rules, the guy literally just kills things, anytime, anywhere.

If that sounds insanely boring, well, it is. But it's also pretty entertaining in a weird way. The MC is as bland and bogstandard as it gets. He is also the most reasonable and likeable MC I've seen in basically any isekai, ever. He has one simple goal: he just wants to go home. He doesn't want to engage in any of the isekai fantasy otherworld hero's journey pseudo-video-game BS, he doesn't care about heroes and monsters, good vs evil, gods and demons, ethics and morals, one world-ending armageddon or another, the dude just simply wants to leave. He is not a murderous psychopath, a fish-out-of-water idiot, a flamboyant edgelord or some weird mix of these, he is just a simple dude who is over all this BS. He is not violent or angsty, but he is not over just straight up killing anything that threatens him. The one other skill he has - other than instant murder - is he can sense if anyone wants to kill him, and of course kill them right back whatever or wherever they are. This, aside from making him basically immortal, just removes any and all excitement when you realize just how low stakes are.

The rest of the story is just an incoherent mess. What makes the whole thing funny is just how desperately everyone else around him is trying to make the whole fantasy video game isekai stuff happen. Medieval kingdoms, dragons, spells, heroes fighting demons, leveling up, zombie apocalypse, resurrecting unimaginable ancient evil, blademasters, wizards, tournaments, you can find basically every single trope in here. And the MC is just over all this, he literally walks right through all that with a "no, thanks". I mean, some insanely powerful ancient evil keels over mid-monologue, dead, because MC was bored of their BS. It's stupid and very funny at the same time.

They try to cobble together some semi-coherent backstory, the MC being some ultimate alpha-omega embodiment of fate or something, but even the anime gives up halfway in a "whatever, you don't care, we don't care" kinda way. I mean it doesn't really matter, does it? The MC is just it's own plot device, pointing out just how ridiculous the whole concept is, which I can totally get behind.

In summary, is this a good anime? No. It's aimless, boring, incoherent and bland, cramming as many isekai tropes in a single anime as humanly possible and setting it all on fire. This anime doesn't just turn the isekai to 11, no, it rips off the friggin dial, stomps it to pieces and then pisses on it. There is fun to be had, watching the MC completely disregarding all the implied rules and laws of isekai and just side-stepping all that stuff. If you can turn off your brain and take it for what it is, it could be a reasonably fun time.

[TL;DR: Excellent insight into the world of anime creation. Great art, animation, industry insight and some drama to spice things up. If you ever wanted to know how the proverbial sausage is made, Shirobako is highly recommended!]

What Bakuman is to manga and New Game! is to video games, Shirobako is to anime. It's the quintessential industry piece, and eerie look behind the curtain to see how what you are watching is actually made. The anime mainly follows Aoi Miyamori, a fresh face at Musashino Animation's production staff and her dream to fulfill the promise she made with her four high-school friends to produce their very ... own anime one day.

As we know, anime - while being reasonably popular in it's own right - is generally not the main medium for stories, rather than a vehicle to popularize and further market the original work they're based on. Being remarkably harder and vastly more expensive to produce compared to printed works, an anime adaptation is often a reward for a manga or novel series doing well in sales and popularity. While there are notable exceptions to this, anime kinda always played second fiddle to other forms of entertainment, being the follow-up or companion piece rather than the main act. While generally used as a marketing tool for domestic sales in Japan, they couldn't keep this beast caged forever. The exponential rise in popularity of Japanese animation overseas has led to, among many things, the creation of this very website. However, while being a widely recognized and respected medium, anime by it's nature is very hard and expensive to make, and most anime to this day are produced at a loss, the cost of which the production companies usually hope to recoup with sales of the original work, merch, sponsorship deals, live events, product tie-ins and the likes...with varying degrees of success.

Shirobako completely sidesteps explaining anime's place in entertainment history, business or popculture, and instead laser-focuses on the production aspect and inner workings of an anime studio and it's denizens. We follow the day-to-day work at Musashino Animation and see what it takes to bring a story from an idea all the way to the TV screen. It's very interesting to see how storyboards and rough sketches become animated, voiced, living characters on screen, telling stories in beautiful detail. Dozens of artists, engineers and production staff working tirelessly day and night to make this magic possible. Like clockwork, all the different departments working together to each bring their part of the whole: characters, backgrounds, animations, special effects, ADR, sound and foley work, post-production and editing, all coming together to form something more than the sum of it's parts.

Of course work like this comes with it's fair share of hardships and pitfalls, which are in full display in the anime. Impossible deadlines, scheduling conflicts, personal issues, technical problems, mistakes made during one point or other, and of course the production staff desperately scrambling to keep this speeding train on track, mercilessly hurtling towards the air date of each episode. Being on schedule usually means you forgot something, as we watch Miyamori and co putting out fires left and right, pulling one all-nighter after another, barely seeing the inside of their own homes, just to bring the latest episode of your favorite show to your TV screen each week. One has to wonder if it's at all worth it, to give years of your life to such hectic, mentally exhausting, stressful and ultimately pretty thankless work, and the anime asks this very question on more than one occasion through some excellent character work and their relationships during the show. They say only weirdos and crazy people work in anime, because they are the only ones mad enough to go through this production hell to bring these stories to the screens of millions worldwide. The ultimate reward for all that is....to each their own. The dream of honing your skills, to become a professional, to watching your work on the big screen, to see the smiles of fans everywhere, to making a living doing what you love. It's different for everybody involved. But the one thing tying all these mad magicians together, is their love for anime.

As for the quality of this very anime: it's great! Shirobako, while not doing anything remarkably exceptional, is a really good anime. The art style and animation is nice, the sound and music - while nothing special - fits the theme well. The characters and stories are no doubt greatly based on real life people and events, and while dramatized for effect, you can feel their heart and soul in it. In fact, for the keen-eyed, there are several easter eggs from the anime industry at large, like popular anime, animation studios and even artist cameos like Hideaki Anno (Evangelion), Ichiro Itano (Mr Itano Circus), Hiromasa Ogura (background artist), Masao Maruyama (president of MAPPA), Masahiko Minami (president of BONES), Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (president of Production I.G), Seiji Mizushima (Fullmetal Alchemist director), Naoyuki Onda (Berserk character-designer), Takeshi Nogami (mangaka of Girls und Panzer), Takashi Ikehata (director of Genshiken) and some others.

In closing, all I can say, if you like anime as much as I, do yourself a favor and watch Shirobako. You might enjoy the overall story or characters much, but the insight you'll gain into the inner working of this medium will make you appreciate the efforts all the men and women working tirelessly to bring you your favorite stories on your screen in it's full animated glory.

[TL;DR: A weirdly compelling sci-fi action-schlock that ultimately fails on executions. The cool premise, the art and design are all thrown under the bus by awful animation, terrible dialogue and abysmal writing. At least it's short, and there's Bunny Miku, so it's not all bad. Might worth a binge on a boring afternoon, but don't expect a life-changing experience]

Tonkatsu is one of those adaptations that makes you go "WHY?". Why was it made? Who was it even made for? For the fans of the source material it's very lackluster and undeserving, and for everyone else it's confusing, trashy and short (the latter of which is ... a blessing in this case). It's not that Tempura's story is bad, it's just obnoxiously poorly realized. Which is a real shame, because there are seeds of a really cool story and universe underneath all the trash.

I mean, the basic premise is good...mostly because it was good in all the other - much better made - versions of it. It's the quintessential "unlikely bunch" story, where a group of misfits with violently different personalities are forced into a situation where they have to put aside their differences and learn to work together in order to survive...yaddy-yadda. I mean, we've all seen this before hundreds of times, because it's a good premise...when done right. But this story's success is hugely dependent on the quality of characters, where they all have to be well-written in their own right AND create a cool group dynamic....and sadly that's where Karaage fails first. Our five main protagonists are anything but good. Their uniqueness is barely skin-deep, the series does a really bad job at making them even remotely interesting or likeable. I'm not sure if they are better realized in the source material, but they are shamefully shallow in this adaptation. We have our stubborn "stay out of my way" Japanese dude, the loudmouth British girl, the buff meathead American, the "why can't we all just get along?" Swedish guy and the stoic charisma-vacuum Chinese girl. It doesn't help, that the rest of the supporting cast are even less memorable or interesting, save for the bunny version of Hatsune Miku as the AI, who at least brings some very out of place levity (and shock value) into the mix. So unless you are particularly fond of badly animated anthropomorphic animals, you won't find much to enjoy here. Speaking of which...

One of the most egregious failings of this series is the terrible, cheap visuals. Don't get me wrong, the art, the character and world design is pretty good! The sci-fi stuff, the space ships, the tech, even the animal people and their gear is pretty well made. However, it's so poorly framed and animated it just ruins the whole thing. I'm not particularly fond of full-3D-CGI in anime at the best of times, but Kushiage makes even these cool designs look bad. All the badly framed action shots with abysmal framerate and animation even made me dizzy when it went on for too long. Like watching a cheap slideshow, it all looks rushed and flimsy. It's either that, or basically still shot-reverse-shot talking heads with barely any animation. The weirdest part is, the only thing that looks halfway decent is the bunny-ified Hatsune Miku AI, that looks really cute and well animated in basically all the scenes, which is a jarring contrast to the rest of the visuals. It's probably a brand deal thing or something, but I digress.

On second thought, I won't go into detail on the awful writing/dialogue and the plothole-ridden, incoheren story, because I could go on for many paragraphs. Even if the basic premise and story elements are great, the whole things fails terribly on execution. The only good thing is the voice actors at least gave it their best, considering the pathetic writing they had to work with. It doesn't help that the CGI character designs don't lend themselves particularly well to nuance and facial animations.

I'm very hesitant to recommend Nankotsu. It's short, only 6 episodes, so it won't take up your valuable time, and there is some cool design and a decent story hidden in there somewhere, but it's sadly barely watchable, and there are tons of way better made series out there you could watch instead of this one. It's a shame, because I REALLY wanted to like Teppanyaki, because I'm a sucker for good sci-fi stories, but this one, sadly, didn't make the cut. Thanks for reading!

[TL;DR: if you've watched the previous season, this is more of the same with even more insultingly shallow emotional manipulation, pointless timeskips, arcs that make even less sense and a story that lurches forward aimlessly like the knocker zombie it is. TYE had all the ingredients for a great story, then went and jumbled it all in a horrendous mess. Season two continues the trend of screwing up wherever possible and ruins whatever little interest there was left in the show.]

"I failed to save everyone again. It's all my fault they died...AGAIN" could be the tagline of To Your Eternity, it is as true as ... it is completely nonsensical and contrived. Fushi - the utterly hopeless godlike alien device - continues it's reign of useless moping and blasé self-flagellation, while introducing a huge drop in animation quality, even more annoying one-dimensional characters and trope filled set-pieces, which leads up to a finale that retroactively retcons any character development that might've happened during the two seasons.

I'll say it again: To Your Eternity is not just bad, it's insultingly, infuriatingly bad. I can excuse a show that was built on a bad idea or cheap production quality, but this one was NOT! To Your Eternity started out amazing! The basic premise of the show was great, interesting and fresh, only for the writer to go and drown it in a swamp of nonsensical bullshit, terrible pacing, awful tropes and cheap melodrama. The second season ramps up the "emotional damage" to 11, stringing along all those in the audience who've fallen prey to its shallow, manipulative tricks.

We pick up the story with Fushi in self-imposed exile on an island, where it spent the last 40 years(!) basically feeling sorry for itself and playing in the sea. It fought the knockers whenever they showed up, then...ate them (for pure shock value, nothing else). What it didn't do is what it should've been doing since day one, which is train, figure out its skills and abilities and learn how to fight and defeat the enemy. Then a descendant of Hayase magically shows up. Remember the totally unhinged, disgusting villain from season one who would go to any lengths to defeat Fushi and murder its friends in droves? Yea, turns out they are the good guys now, who formed a shady cult that worships Fushi and fights the knockers. Or...maybe not, because they poison Fushi and immediately get its remaining friends (who also magically showed up) killed for cheap shock value. Oh, and it looks like even the knockers got tired of Fushi's pathetic martyr complex, because they started killing everyone in a zombie apocalypse. To which Fushi immediately springs into action and...proceeds to do absolutely nothing for hundreds of years. Well, that's not entirely true, he did get fat and read some books on cooking or something. No, seriously, I WISH I'd made this shit up.

*** I'm sorry, but I can't just leave this hanging: Dear writer! This world had no established rules, the "knockers" were as ambiguous and mysterious as it gets, basically a blank slate, you had the opportunity to create unique, interesting and varied enemies to challenge Fushi (and the audience) in various ways and you went with fucking ZOMBIES?! REALLY?! Literally the least imaginative, zero-effort, done-to-death garbage that ever graced popculture, and… Oh, the fleshy tentacle-monsters, yea, absolutely no one had done those before either... Jesus F. Christ, after such a great start, how did this show degenerate into such an enormous black hole of creativity and imagination, it just boggles my mind.

It’s not enough that we get some of the worst, nails-on-chalkboard annoying characters we’ve ever seen, the show spends an inordinate amount of time building them up, only to tear them down in service to cheap melodrama and emotional manipulation. Bon, Echo, Kahaku, all interesting characters in their own right, built up, and then simply made into unbearably shallow plot devices, without any real agency in the story.

And then the last arc of the season happens, and I gave up all hope on this dreck. After gaining the ability to see ghosts from convenient plot device Bon, Fushi somehow learns to literally resurrect dead people, and goes on to undo two seasons worth of story and character development in an instant. We’ve seen Fushi completely sidestep important plot points before by whipping out some heretofore unseen magical power (like new technology, magic weapons or teleportation), which was terrible in it’s own right, but when even death has no consequence in a story, it is truly and utterly fucked. Now all the suffering and sacrifice of those who have fallen or given their lives to a greater cause, to save others, the loss and pain of those left alive, are now all made meaningless. All the consequences, lessons and character building from experiencing the human condition is now null and void. But hey, that cute girl March is back, so it’s fine, right?

Fushi’s nature and abilities have always been left purposely ambiguous and unexplored, but the story found ways to break even those few existing rules just all the damn time. These godlike powers are incredibly inconsistent and only serve plot convenience. At one point Fushi can create objects, raise entire buildings, castles out of the ground without breaking a sweat, it can teleport all over the place, change forms, sense everything, etc. But when the plot suddenly needs the stakes to be raised, suddenly it starts struggling, bleeding, passing out, etc., seemingly telling us “see, he’s only human” even though it is not, and that’s my other huge gripe with all of this. Even the writer seems to have forgotten, that Fushi is not human, never was. It is a device, a construct, created by Robe Dude to - as we later learn - serve as a replacement to him. Robe Dude, the creator, never acts human. He’s pragmatic, methodical, completely indifferent to the suffering and destruction in the world, as his goal is for Fushi to rise above all that shallow human emotional crap, all those “precious lives” it failed to save anyway, and finally start to utilize its seemingly infinite godlike powers properly. But it never does. Fushi acts like a moody child, throwing decade-, even century-long tantrums, shaking its fist at the clouds whenever it lets another dozen or so of its “friends” die for obvious shock value and cheap heart-string-strumming. It’s utterly stupid if you just stop and think about it for a second. For starters, The Nameless Boy, its first human, is just one of its many forms, and everyone seems to have forgotten that he really lived, he was a separate person, and not Fushi’s “real” form. After the first episode in season one, we never see the Boy as his own person again (or Joan the wolf for that matter). The Orb was imbued with human form, human-like intellect and behavior, but it still is not human, it was never born and will never die. Also, its intellect has been stuck at a human level, even though Robe Dude himself said that it could be capable of so much more. It’s a huge disservice to the story to not explore this intriguing concept. To throw the whole thing to the wind and just treat Fushi as some dumb isekai hero with magical powers is beyond stupid.

Again, if the show was inherently terrible, chiché and cheap, I could’ve simply just ignored it. But even in the second season there were glimmers of great ideas and fresh takes that ultimately led nowhere and fizzled into boring, tropey, manipulative trash. It’s as if this was written by two different people: one who came up with awesome ideas, and another who then went on to squander them all in the worst ways possible. There is a third season coming, and I have no idea how they could possibly ruin this story more, but I’m sure they will find a way...

[TL;DR: A great idea, squandered, again. A novel concept with huge possibilities, that ultimately fumbles and collapses under its own weight. What starts out to be a genuinely interesting and captivating journey into the philosophical and scientific nature of the human condition on the surface, is slowly peeled away to reveal a disappointingly bogstandard, trope-filled mess, full of boring melodrama and cheap emotional manipulation. Points for trying, the art and sound is good, some ideas are straight up great, but the end result is ultimately disappointing.]

To Your Eternity is infuriating. Not so much because it's obvious failings but because it squanders a really great and ... unique concept - again - that could've been otherwise made into a similarly great story. It is not the first time Yoshitoki Ooima - the original creator - did this, as her previous creation Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice) was a similarly high-concept idea turned into a shamefully exploitative, manipulative, emotional black hole. To Your Eternity takes a similarly interesting, out-of-left-field concept to draw you in, and then holds your emotions hostage while it feeds you meager scraps of world building and some occasional character development.

[Minor spoilers ahead. No specific plot points, just overarching themes and some out-of-context stuff]

Credit where it is due, the core concept is a really interesting one. Our protagonist, as it were, is a device. The Orb, that starts out as a small white ball, is an empty shell that has the ability to take on the form and function of whatever it comes in contact with, and it’s unceremoniously thrown into the world so the rest of the plot can happen. Now, as far as basic premises go, this was incredibly intriguing and filled with a huge amount of possibilities. However, the way how the device works is not made exactly clear, as the story repeatedly breaks its own rules regarding how this replication mechanic functions. Fushi - as the device comes to be referred to - is immortal, can mimic living beings, animals, and even humans. Not only that, but it can also create inanimate objects, seemingly infinitely. However, these awesome godlike powers have a weird plot hole, in the form of intellect, or rather the lack thereof. Apparently Fushi can mimic an animal or human in perfect anatomical detail, but not the brain or even genetic traits or instincts like...eating. Right in the first episode we can see the device has to be taught to eat, even when in the form of a wolf, which by all accounts should instinctively know how to do. Even me, someone with only a layman's level understanding of biology, genetics and behavioral science, this already rubbed me the wrong way. The device can utilize SOME innate traits and instincts of the form it takes immediately, but VERY selectively. Like walking, complex motions (like walking upright on two legs, jumping, etc.), hearing, sight, scents or even the concept of sleep are no problem, but not eating, reacting to danger, or any of the very basic instincts of living creatures, that are in fact not learned behavior, but genetic, evolutionary traits they should instinctively do. Also, as it is immortal, it can immediately heal any injury, but only when it serves the plot.

In fact, all the device's abilities are seemingly only there to serve plot convenience, as they are incredibly inconsistent throughout the series. Sure, I can chalk most of it up to writer's choice and suspension of disbelief, but - try as I might - it's hard to take a story seriously that can't even be trusted not to break its own rules all the time. The writer essentially sidesteps this issue and drops the REAL nature of Fushi the first chance she gets. As soon as it can be imbued with human traits, feelings and behavior, the story throws its entire basic concept out the window, conveniently forgets that the device is, in fact, a device, and starts treating it as a human, albeit with limited mental faculties. At that moment, we lose The Orb - the construct - as the protagonist, and get Fushi, the moderately retarded orphan child with superpowers. That's when the anime goes from a highly intriguing concept piece to a mediocre isekai and loses all it's soul and purpose.

That's also when the shameless emotional manipulation, jarring changes in tone and the trope fest starts. The story regularly shelves Fushi to introduce a slew of new side-characters, build them up, make them cute, relatable, easy to care about for the audience, only to use them for bad jokes or fabricated melodrama. Much like her earlier works, the creator is not above using underhanded tactics to elicit catharsis from the audience. Using various human conditions, like small children, the elderly, mental and physical disabilities, disfigurement, needless cruelty and abuse, that all could be part of a well-written story in the right context, but here, it only serves as cheap emotional manipulation in a sort of “look, how sad that made Fushi” kinda way. And all that, of course, gives way to tropey “I have to save my friends” and “I can’t let them get hurt because of me” type faux-heroic set-pieces that all end as we all already know how they end, killing off the odd side-character for some cheap tugs on the heartstrings and to serve as motivation for a device that shouldn’t need any.

The infuriating thing is, that the writer is fully aware of what she is doing! The Orb’s creator - the weird space wizard dude in the black robe - regularly reminds Fushi of its purpose: “to preserve this world”. The story introduces the laziest, no-effort antagonist I’ve ever seen: a purposely ambiguous “enemy” that comes out of nowhere, and is seemingly tailor-made to fight the device...but only when it’s convenient to the plot, obviously. For most of the time it’s happy to twiddle its proverbial thumbs and let the various storylines and montages unfold, and only strike when Fushi is good and ready to receive its next dose of drama-drenched reality check. Robe Dude often makes it a point to tell Fushi, that it needs to get stronger and learn how to fight the enemy (as it is its singular reason of existence), and to move on, to let go of its human attachments as these only serve to impede this progress. But since Fushi is now fully treated as a human, it defies its creator and starts acting like “Default Good Guy Hero Anime Protagonist”, with impeccable morals and ethics, who blames itself for all the wrong in the world, wants to save absolutely everyone and spirals into a mopey-ragey depression when some of them are killed off for blatant shock-value. And Robe Dude just goes along with it. No, seriously. He feigns some anemic resistance, but eventually just becomes an “enemy radar”, only there to warn Fushi when the enemy conveniently decides to attack at the Worst Possible Moment™.

I think I ranted enough about the failings of this anime. Mentioning the lackluster season finale, the overblown villain character, the way everyone just goes along with Fushi’s superpowers without a thought, turning one of the most intriguing characters (Robe Dude) into a one-dimensional plot device, or any of the rest would just feel like adding insult to injury. In the end, what To Your Eternity is, is a great concept blatantly squandered and turned into just another cliché’d, manipulative melodrama. Would I recommend watching To Your Eternity? No, I would not, unless you like cheap thrills, bad writing, surfing plot holes and watching a great idea devolve into bad soap.

[TL;DR: Excellent conclusion to an excellent series. Join Mob, Reigen and the gang for one last hurrah, where we get to say goodbye to a truly great story and characters. If you liked Mob Psycho I and II, you can't miss this one! Highly recommended!]

It is a rare thing in anime that a series fully adapts a manga and actually stays true to the source material. The anime adaptation is usually just a publicity stunt or a "reward" for good ratings for a popular enough manga or light novel, it's often not taken too seriously. The Mob Psycho anime, however, goes above and beyond, fully ... adapting the source material and staying with the original story and art style.

The story of Mob, his scam artist "master" Reigen and the odd ensemble of characters is one for the ages. Funny, intense, sometimes sad but also heartwarming. The characters are diverse and fleshed out, with their own personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and most of them do get enough screen time to be worthy additions to the story. The fight scenes are action-packed, well animated and intense, without going overboard with the violence, blood or grit. The character driven, more introspective, feel-y parts are also very well made and effective without too much forced tears or incessant melodrama. Even the humor is smart, witty and funny without resorting to bad slapstick or low-brow fanservice.

I'm sure just like many others, I would love to see more Mob Psycho, but sadly, the manga is finished so this is all we're going to get. At least we got to have a truly satisfying conclusions to the story, unlike hundreds of other - otherwise really great - anime, that never got similar treatment. It's a bittersweet end, but at least one we have. There is some tiny hope for some small, original OVA shorts or specials/spinoffs, but I think Mob Psycho already got the five star treatment it deserved.

If you liked the previous seasons, you'll love this one, and you get to see the conclusion to a great story! Highly recommended!

[TL;DR: A largely forgettable moe blob. The art and animation is great, the music is nice, the humor is hit-and-miss but at least has some original ideas. Sadly, the MC is extremely annoying, the other characters are cardboard tropes and the story is formulaic, cookie-cutter snoozefest. Throw it on if you have nothing better to watch, you might get a few laughs out of it, but don't expect an earth-shattering experience.]

At first, I was very confused when I watched Bocchi the Rock!, for many reasons. This is a series of the seasonal lineup you simply couldn't avoid, pictures, videos, memes were slapping me across the ... face wherever I went on the internet. Reviews gushing about how incredible it is, the best CGDCT ever made, a peerless masterpiece, swearing left and right Bocchi is "just the best anime ever, you guys!". Imagine my surprise, when I finally relented and watched it, and found something totally different...

First of all, praise where it is due, Bocchi is a nice CGDCT ("Cute Girls Doing Cute Things") Slice-of-Life fare, with very good art, great animation quality and some really good music. The humor is mostly hit-and-miss, but there are some novel, hilarious visual gags that really hit the spot. The show is otherwise completely inoffensive, cute and well made. The characters are your usual, tropey moe blob with the ultra-positive/tomboyish singer, the broody stoic bassist, the charismatic leader drummer and...uh...the absolute psychotic trainwreck guitarist, our protagonist, Hitori Goto.

Most of the bands story takes a backseat to showcasing Hitori's insane antics with self-inflicted social anxiety. At the drop of a hat she launches into a full blown psychotic meltdown basically every single time she has to interact with anyone for any reason. At school, on the street, at home, among friends, she is a constant nervous trainwreck who lives in a constant state of paralyzing fear and misery. The show never unpacks this, rather treating it as a source of comedy how she is utterly incapable of existing in human society.

[I'm about to launch into a lengthy rant about the show's main theme of social anxiety and it's apparent misuse, so if you don't care, simply skip the next few paragraphs]

***Let's get one thing out of the way first: social anxiety is real! It affects many (including me) and can make life very difficult for those suffering from it. It makes one get unreasonably nervous in otherwise normal, everyday social situations. It can cause people to act out in unpredictable ways or simply freeze or shut down. In worst cases it can even develop into outright social phobia and can cause one to avoid social interactions altogether and affect their quality of life in very negative ways.

Having said that, social anxiety never exists in a vacuum. It always has well defined causes, unresolved past traumas, like family or relationship problems, bad upbringing, problems at school, bullying, abuse, rejection and heaps of other negative social interactions and traumas, that would make one afraid of even more painful experiences, hence the fear and avoidance of social situations.

Now, I always say you can make fun of everything in the right context (stick & stones, etc.) and social ineptitude was always a great source of humor, especially in anime. However in Bocchi, it is turned to 11 and then some. Hitori (yes, the name is also a pun, as it means "alone") is portrayed as an absolutely nerve-wrecked loser, who's afraid of her own shadow let alone interacting with another human. She basically lives in a closet, has zero friends or human connections and the only thing she does is secretly play the guitar. From what we can tell from the story, she lives in a good neighborhood, a big house, she has a lovely, caring family, they are well-off, she goes to a good school, she is not bullied, not abused, she is smart, talented, cute/pretty, and so on, we've been given zero indication of baggage she might be carrying, if any, etc. In short, she has absolutely no reason for acting the way she is. She even runs a very successful youtube channel, which is kind of at odds with her gimmick. Also, her parents are not the sharpest tools in the shed, they called exorcists instead of a shrink to cure their psycho daughter, but I digress.

Far be it from me to try and psychoanalyze an anime character - which I totally just did so whoops, I guess - but Bocchi just rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons. Like I said, I'm not above making fun of quirks or disorders (even one I also have) in the right context, but Hitori's case seems completely self-inflicted and used straight up as a selling point. The "ooh, that's so totally me" factor to give the viewers someone to identify with, it's a no-brainer as for the usual target audience of angsty teens, otakus and weebs, some form of social anxiety is pretty much a given. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if she was some comic relief side-character they only pull out for laughs, but I seriously have to question the motives of the creators when her cosmically overblown neuroses are the focal point of the entire story. Because Hitori's case is not just some social ineptitude or lighthearted ditzyness, but full blown, life-breaking, paralyzing, clinical-grade social phobia. Humor and laughs are one thing, but using a serious mental disorder to sell an entertainment product is just in bad taste. I mean, I'm fully aware how psychological issues and mental health in general is abject taboo in Japanese society (and how the mental health infrastructure is a disaster and basically non-existent) so instead of taking it seriously and trying to treat such disorders they instead opt to make a joke out of them or at worst completely ignore the problem. Bocchi is a shining example of all this, not only making fun of a mental disorder, but straight out using it to sell manga/anime. Sure, maybe I'm taking this a bit too seriously, feel free to criticize me for it, but I can't help feeling this way about Bocchi.

[/rant]

Other than that, the story is pretty formulaic and expected as far as slice-of-life goes. Girl meets girl totally by chance, she drags the social outcast into forming a rock band, they practice and train, ups and downs, school festival, lots of moral lessons and personal growth, etc. It's not bad, it's just a little bland. K-on did this a lot better, with way better characters and writing. As for the characters, they are tropey, and don't really get fleshed out through the 12 episodes, as Hitori's antics always take center stage. I would've liked to learn more about the band members, their goals and motivations, etc., much rather than watching Hitori pout in a trashcan over and over. I do have to praise the art style and especially the animation quality, which is really good. They made it a point to make the band and music part of the show realistic, look and sound absolutely great, so gold star for that.

Even if the rest of the show is really well made and fun, which it totally is, the presentation is top notch, the girls are cute, they are doing the cute things, plus being in a rock band is badass and all that, but in the end the central gimmick just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If you don't care about such things and can take the show for what it is, a well-made CGDCT anime, then you'll have lots of fun.

Thanks for reading!

[TL;DR: A sublime and heartwarming story about the art of storytelling and the remarkable people involved. Two polar opposites united in the struggle to save a dying artform from obscurity. Even if you don't like (or know) rakugo, this heartfelt look behind the scenes of this performing art - and into the souls of those who practice it - could enrich your life in unexpected ways. It's short (13 eps) and great, a big recommendation from me!]


Here we are again. The Japanese and their incessant propensity to turn absolutely EVERYTHING under the sun into a form of art. Not just the usual stuff, like painting, ... music, the myriad of martial arts or even cooking. I mean, most people already know some of the odd ones, like flower arranging (ikebana), paper folding (origami) or short poetry (haiku), and some of the lesser known ones, like wood joinery (miyadaiku) or stacking stones just the right way (gobouzumi). If you visit japan, point at something, anything, and you can bet your assets there is a whole art form connected to it, complete with centuries worth of tradition, a laundry list of strict rules, official associations and a strong hierarchical ranking system. And also how such a system can both preserve values and stifle progress. How it can teach incredible skills while killing individuality. How it can weather the tides of centuries and then swept away by a breeze...

Rakugo, the art of storytelling, is no different. It's not theater and not stand-up comedy, it's something in-between. A single artist, performing an entire short story himself, playing the narrator and all the characters, and his only prop is a small folding fan. These stifling constraints where artistic talents can truly shine. Or can they? Bon and Shin, two young boys thrust into the world of rakugo, having completely different personalities and outlook on not only life but on the artform itself as well. Bon falling headfirst into the footsteps of giants, while Shin trying to carve his own way in a relentlessly strict jungle of rules and tradition. This uncanny duo, while heading in both directions, are still inseparable and fight as much as they depend on each other.

Shōwa Rakugo is exactly as it says on the tin: rakugo in Shōwa-era Japan. Don't let the intro text fool you, all that stuff about an ex-yakuza and a tomboyish girl and whatnot. They are in about two episodes of the thirteen and have basically nothing to do with the story at all. The whole series is one giant flashback sequence of Bon retelling the story of his youth and his perilous climb through drama and adversity to reach the top of the rakugo profession. Save for the very beginning and end the entire series takes place in Shōwa-era Japan, mostly around the 1950's. This already gives the series a unique vibe, since we don't often see this period depicted in anime. Much less through the lens of such an interesting and dying art form. In the post-war era, with the huge influx of western culture, music, movies, etc, the popularity of traditional entertainment such as rakugo crashed through the floor. Seen as outdated and archaic by most, it was up to the performers to save this art from extinction.

The excellent dynamic between Bon and Shin is what kept this story together. We get to watch their totally different styles of rakugo. Shin being the energetic and fun crowd-pleaser and Bon being the sublime, dramatic/emotional one. Me, not being the theatrical type, I was honestly surprised how entertaining it was watching the shows and everything that goes into these performances behind the scenes. I already liked "profession" type anime before, like New Game for video game development, Bakuman for manga and Shirobako for anime making, etc. Shōwa Rakugo did an excellent job at immersing the viewer - even a completely oblivious one like me - into the world of rakugo without being too show-off-y or pedantic. By simply showing us how an average rakugo show is performed, we learn everything we need to know about the concept. In subsequent shows we can actually see the small details what makes each performer unique in their own way, and how the entire experience can change dramatically just by the way someone tells the story.

The drama part, well, it's a rollercoaster. Happy times, sad times, downright dreary times, it's all in there. The relationships between the characters are what drives the story forward, and just like life, they are unpredictable and we don't always get what we want. But if we try, sometimes we get what we need.

[***The next paragraph is SPOILERS, skip it if you want***]

That dumb b#tch ruined EVERYTHING!!! I can scarcely put into words how angry I was at Miyokichi for basically the entire series, but especially at the end. A flagrant wh#re who doesn't give a sh#t about anything or anyone, sailing through life as a freeloader not giving a f#ck who's lives she ruins in the process as long she gets her booze and entertainment. She even revenge-married Shin after Bon (rightfully) dumped her, and then ruined his life as well. The crazy harlot even abandoned her own child! She would've just outright murdered Bon if Shin didn't jump in at the last second. And don't even at me with the "she was so madly in love" bullshit, because you don't friggin kill the person you love, only unhinged egomaniac psychos do that. I was so friggin mad Shin had to die like that, especially after he finally got his act together for the first time in his life. Eh.

[End of Spoilers]

I guess it's a huge achievement on the creators' part for making me care about these characters so much, that the show can ellicit such strong emotions. It was a nice breath of fresh air after the long trail of trope filled shovelware anime I've been watching lately. Shōwa Rakugo actually made me care a lot more about the characters and the story than I imagined, and I'm really thankful for experience.

In closing, all I can say is: watch this! It's only 13 episodes, so it won't take much time out of your busy schedule, and it's a really nice ride from start to finish. The art is great, the sound and music is excellent, the VO is phenomenal. The entire show is just a really entertaining experience that'll stay with you for a while.

Thanks for reading!

***This is a review of the ENTIRE Fruits Basket 2019 anime series (all three seasons)***

[TL;DR: Fruits Basket has the hallmarks of an interesting story with great visuals and presentation, which ends up slowly drowning in a swamp of awful writing, bad tropes, too many characters and just mountains of needless melodrama. There are some really interesting bits about the supernatural, the Zodiac curse and the people involved, stories about redemption, reconciliation and a painfully slow buildup to an epic finale...that never comes. The whole franchise is an ultimately unsatisfying dive into a pit of dark melodrama peppered with bad slapstick and a whole lot of ... unresolved childhood trauma. Unless you are prepared to wade through this emotionally and literarily confusing mess for three whole seasons, look for something else to watch.]


"Bad Parents: The Anime", which should've been the title of this series, since it has absolutely nothing to do with fruit or baskets (or fruitbaskets) in the slightest, but a lot more with just the worst parents in the history of forever. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

*Some light spoilers ahead. No specific plot points, just overarching theme*

The story revolves around the "Chinese Zodiac animals" and the curse/story connected to them, if they were real people living today. It's a really interesting concept and it's effects and repercussions are introduced very early in the series. Meaning two effects actually. One, the Zodiac people turn into their respective animal forms if they are ever hugged by a female. Yes, it IS Ranma ½ level of cringe, and while it's mostly used for comic relief purposes early on, it's completely forgotten by end of the first season, and later only comes up to serve as a dark reminder of how they are "forbidden to get intimate with anyone" or something. The second repercussion is that all the Zodiac animals are bound by the curse to Akito, their God-analogue, to obey, love and worship her for all eternity. Or not. Or just kinda. Or just some of them. Or...who the hell knows, really. Supposedly the main pillar of the entire story, this "bond", The Curse™ is so vague and badly defined, it's rules are constantly changed and contorted in contradictory ways for plot convenience all throughout the series. It's not only confusing and ruins any buildup but goes to show how the anime can't even adhere to it's own rules, which will be a constant theme in the series going forward.

Okay, let's get this "Bad Parents" thing I mentioned before out of the way first. Except for one important exception, every single parent in the anime is the most horrendous, incompetent, evil, abject human trash the world has ever seen. Every single notable character in the series suffers from the worst possible childhood traumas you can imagine (and some you can't), which scarred them for life in various horrific ways. The vast majority of the drama in the entire series comes from this metric F-tons of unresolved mental and emotional baggage that would give second-hand PTSD to even the most seasoned therapists. All these parents are so unrealistically cruel and vile to their children, it sometimes borders on hilarity. Failing to live up to impossible expectations, being used for monetary gain, parents trying to vicariously live through their children, blame them for their own failings or even the deaths of loved ones, the good old "I wish you were never born" schtick, etc. You get an entire smorgasbord of just the worst mental anguish you can imagine which comes up sooner or later with each and every character and addressed in great detail.

The whole series is basically a bunch of fundamentally broken and borderline crazy people yelling/crying at each other about real or perceived atrocities and their hilariously awful upbringing preventing them from living a normal life or having basic human connections. This doesn't just affect the Zodiac people, but most other side characters as well, each bringing their own special blend of fucked up to the table.

Now, the anime tries to turn this whole mess into one giant redemption story, where our Mary-Sue protagonist Tooru, a simple highschool girl, uses the power of Being Nice™ (and crying, like, a LOT of crying) to magically resolve their respective traumas (which would normally need YEARS of hard therapy) and show them they are all worthy of love and respect, facing their past and yaddy-yadda, boom, you're magically cured. The whole series is swimming in incredibly drawn out melodrama. There is yelling, pain, anguish, anger, fighting and oh, did I mention crying? There's a metric fuckton of crying, like oceans of tears and sobbing set to sad music and rain. Which is sometimes rudely interrupted by some awfully placed comic relief bits, but I digress.

Everything I just said still wouldn't be so bad if the series didn't move at an absolute snail's pace. The pacing of the story is all over the place, sometimes speeding through important parts while spending criminally long stints at forgettable side stuff that never comes up again and lingering on scenes that outstay their welcome really quickly. Not to mention some of the character's incredibly dumb decisions and remarks of "we talk about this later", "this is not time for this", "when right time comes" bullshit, that only serves to drag out the runtime. All that, coupled with the insanely droll and drawn out bits of melodrama just makes watching Fruits Basket a real exercise in frustration. You can skip through entire episodes of crying, shouting and flashbacks and you wouldn't miss anything. The whole series could easily be edited down to half the episode count and you'd still get the complete experience, without all the unnecessary slack (which will hopefully happen in the upcoming Fruits Basket: Prelude movie).

***For those concerned: No, I will not address the rampant insinuations of rape, pedophilia, grooming, physical and psychological abuse and other vile acts that may or may not be in the franchise. It's not my place to do so and there's enough awful shit in this mess without me having to go there, so don't ask. 'Nuff said.

The one saving grace of Fruits Basket could be the art style, which is not incredible by any means, but it's pleasant to look at and has some really nice sceneries, decent animation and real production quality to it. The music and sound are also really good additions and enhance an otherwise pretty lackluster story.

In closing, all I can say is, that Fruits Basket had real potential. A really good premise with nice art style, that ultimately got dragged down to a confusing, plot-hole-ridden black hole of incessant melodrama and bad pacing. I know many people absolutely adore this series (judging by all the 10/10 ratings here alone), and I don't mean to invalidate anyone's enjoyment of the franchise, but some things have to be said out loud when it comes to this anime. If you've enjoyed it, more power to you. If not, it's time to move on to different waters. Thanks for reading!