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Note that this review is of the english VA done by funimation as I saw it in theaters in the US. I'll try to avoid spoilers as best as I can.

Story: 8/10

The story portion of the movie was very well-written, but in my opinion shortened a bit too much. I would have liked certain details not omitted and felt that more could have been done in this department, though I think that's because the longterm DBZ fan in me wanted to see some of the things like King Vegeta's revolt against Frieza and Bardock's attacks as well. I also really wanted to see more of ... Gine but I heard that the original script was up to 3 hours long. I feel like they probably decided to in the end condense the contents of the movie to prevent it from being that long because there is probably data to indicate that people would feel overwhelmed if the movie was too long.

Art: 10/10

The animation of this movie was some of the best I've seen in my life. Seriously if there is one thing I feel that this movie did better than anything else it's the art and animation. The artstyles used resembled that of the original series while still looking fresh and modern at the same time, and honestly makes me worry that any future DB-related movies (and hopefully anime series continuations!) won't be able to compete. Dear lord that was outstanding.

Sound: 7/10

Part of the sound score is related to the english VA and part of it is for the music tracks used in the song, and part of it is for the sound effects. So while I really do like the voices used, I feel like some of the screams for some of the more intense moments felt less intense than some of the screams for smaller punches and blows. If I had to rate the voice acting alone it'd be at about an 8.5/10. As for the sound effects, I'd probably go for about a 7/10. I feel like based off of the scope of some of the enormous damage done to the landscape and energy blasts and forceful blows, the sound effects didn't match up with the visuals as well as they could have. They felt a bit lacking/quiet though not in a low quality way that detracts from the enjoyment. As for the songs... I was enjoying everything except for the "go! gogeta! go! gogeta!" and "go! broly!" stuff. I really think that all soundtracks used should be instrumental, but hey maybe that's just me.

Character: 9/10

This gets a 9/10 from me and I'm genuinely surprised because I didn't think this would be a strength of a movie featuring Broly in it, but they did such a fantastic job at making the viewer sympathetic for Broly. I actually found myself rooting for him. In the old movie from decades ago, Broly was just this big hulky pointlessly evil monster that wanted to kill everyone and had no iris/pupils. In this movie, he has an interesting backstory and a bit of a personality. He seems very similar to how Goku was as a kid in the sense of being so innocent and pure. I definitely found myself liking him as a character after seeing this movie! Additionally the side characters were likable and pretty much nothing bothered me whatsoever with how any character featured in this movie was done except for Beerus. It is a gripe I've had with DBS that Beerus went from being an all-powerful and well-revered god to treated as a comedic relief character that doesn't do anything relevant.

Enjoyment: 10/10

I enjoyed this enough to drive through a snowstorm in traffic out to a mall if that says anything, and I literally avoid going out unless it's absolutely necessary because I prefer to watch my stuff online and indoors... but fuck waiting, I had to see it! I so badly wish it could have gone on longer because I found myself as excited to watch it as Goku is for a fight. I could watch this until I faint from exhaustion I love the dragonball series so damn much. I'm so glad all of the hype I've had for this wasn't in vain!

Overall: 9/10

When I compare the movie with the rest of the things I've rated, this was high-tier. While I pointed out some of the things I've noticed that in my opinion could have been improved, it is without question to me that this movie has been one of the most outstanding things to bless the dragonball fans since the conception of it back in the 1980s. I highly recommend this movie to anyone out there!

***SPOILER WARNING***

This review is going to be comparing stardust crusaders 2nd season with not just the 1st season, but also the prequel to that, with the blood phantom and battle tendency arcs.

Story: 5/10

Sadly the story of the 2nd season didn't really develop anything meaningful since the 1st and that resulted in a lot of episodes feeling pretty meaningless. The 1st season has the crew finally arrive in egypt after defeating the woman on the beach with her stand and pretty much every single thing of this whole season of 24 episodes can be summarized with one sentence:

"The crew search for DIO and repeatedly get inconvenienced ... by a bunch of people ordered to kill them and eventually after beating all of them, they fight him and win."

That's it. No actual plot twists or anything, just that. So all of the episodes of this season are dedicated to battles and a bunch of them feel really like filler due to how obnoxious some of the characters are, which I'll get into.

Art: 7/10

The art of stardust crusaders in general is fine, though I personally find the art of the blood phantom and battle tendency arcs to be more enjoyable than stardust crusaders. As far as quality is concerned, it has objectively improved along the way regardless of my own preferences.

Sound: 8/10

The sound quality in general is good, and like the 1st season there's plenty of hilarious yelling from old man joseph, which was extremely enjoyable for a lot of episodes. However, there are some characters with voices that just sucked horribly and they just wouldn't go away! Mondatta comes to mind first, which was one of the "opponents" referenced above that made multiple episodes feel like total filler. The voice of this character was comparable to nails on chalkboard.

In addition to that, I feel the VA was pretty poor for Iggy the dog. It sounded too distant from what a dog barking would actually sound like, enough to the point where it hardly felt like the character was even a dog.

When I think about how fun the blood phantom and especially battle tendency arcs were to watch, it really puts it into perspective how much less entertaining JJBA is without speedwagon constantly losing his shit as he's narrating intense moments in the show. There are also way less explosions and it feels the intensity levels overall were botched in stardust crusaders.

Character: 3/10

In my opinion this is where JJBA's stardust crusaders falls short the most, because of multiple different reasons. First let's start with the main protagonists and compare them to the blood phantom and battle tendency arcs.

So in blood phantom the main protagonist was Jonathan Joestar, first introduced as a loyal and righteous boy with a wealthy background, struggling to cope with life thanks to DIO's invasion and grows up to become a hero, becoming manlier and braver as the episodes pass. He has actual character development and as such is very likeable as a protagonist.

Then the battle tendency arc comes about and we're introduced to the grandson of Jonathan, Joseph Joestar. This has to be BY FAR the best protagonist of JJBA. He's hilarious, clever, strong as fuck, brave, quick-thinking, and full of surprises and entertainment from start to finish of the show.

Then when we get to stardust crusaders it all falls apart. Joseph at this point is an old man, so the spotlight is mainly given to his grandson Jotaro Kujo. See, there's literally NO character development whatsoever with Jotaro. The moment he's introduced into the series, his personality is the exact same throughout both seasons 1 and 2 and he's never at any point more interesting than his grandpa was at his age. Is he a badass? Sure, of course. He has his moments in the show where he outwits his opponents and pulls out some awesome finishes but there's only so much you can do with that before everything feels the exact same.

The other protagonists are where it *really* went to shit, however. The forced deaths of Avdol in season 1 and season 2, in addition to Kakyoin's, were so pointless and obnoxious in my opinion because it felt as if there was literally no way to make the fight with DIO interesting enough as it was without forcing some of the main characters to die to make it seem more serious than it actually is. I personally was fine with Iggy being discarded because he was pretty much only added as a comedic aspect to the show and ended up being more annoying than he was funny, imho.

Now we're left with the antagonists. The entire time, everything was centered around DIO, who we remember as the main enemy of blood phantom that caused Jonathan to die, so we are immediately interested from the start of season 1 to see how the story will play out and to see more action like that! Yeah! ... no.

We hardly see DIO *at all* for the whole 48 episodes of stardust crusaders... until the last 4 episodes of season 2. He was the only opponent of season 2 that wasn't a joke honestly and with all of the crazy obscure shit that the stand users pulled off in both seasons 1 and 2 you're expecting something INTENSE for DIO to have when the crew finally finds him in egypt, right?

Well his stand is literally just the same as Jotaro's with strength/precision and he can stop time for a few seconds. While that's obviously powerful, it feels like such a cheap trick... it's so unexciting and so much less mighty and god-like that I expected and made him seem so much less powerful than I believed him to be... and sure enough, he dies pretty easily at the hands of Jotaro anyways. Clearly the author of this had a lapse of creativity here because this was a pretty big letdown for me.

As an antagonist, DIO in stardust crusaders was so much less sinister than he was in the blood phantom arc and you can't even compare him to how terrifyingly powerful and threatening to humanity that the pillar men were in the battle tendency arc.

Enjoyment: 7/10

Despite my gripes with stardust crusaders, I still found it entertaining enough to watch. There were some episodes that were a lot more interesting than others, such as D'arby the poker player that Jotaro defeated. I also found the episodes with old man Joseph getting into trouble with the magnetic force stand user HILARIOUS. I couldn't stop laughing at his terrified yelling!

Overall: 6/10

The stardust crusaders seasons are worth watching but in terms of story and character development and overall enjoyment it absolutely fell short for me compared to the preceding arcs.

I am going to try to be both objective and opinionated in this review after finishing the 25th episode just now.

Story: 6

Honestly the biggest gripe I have with the story is the way that it began and the slow way that it progressed. From the first episode the main character is immediately engulfed into this strange new place and it's never explained at any point throughout the show why it happened. Eventually we figure out what's happening to him, but we never know WHY. It's fine to have some suspense here but this sort of thing is the basis of what the plot is outlined ... to be and when it's not elaborated on at all it's a huge letdown.

Aside from that, the show had quite a lot of potential from the first few episodes. The world was beginning to build and I was looking forward to seeing the potential adventures that would unfold. Sadly not a ton really happened story-wise and the plot didn't thicken a whole lot, because the same sort of thing would just loop over and over throughout the first 2/3 of the show with very little story progression. For that reason I can't give the story much higher of a rating than 6/10, because it felt sluggish and very unsatisfying due to not a whole lot actually happening from episode to episode.

Art: 9/10

One thing Re:Zero did well was the art and there's not much to complain about in this department. It clearly excels in the aspect of art and animation, and the colors in the anime are always vibrant with great quality. Regardless of what gripes I may have with this show, it was for sure a top-quality series of episodes. I'm giving it a 9/10 only for the fact that it doesn't strike me as the absolute best that I've ever seen, and doesn't really deserve to be referred to as "outstanding" when I've seen other anime that have impressed me more.

Sound: 9/10

This was another strength of Re:Zero -- the sound quality was very good and the voice acting was all rich with emotion. Unfortunately there were a few instances when I felt that some of the music played wasn't very fitting for the particular scene, but any of the times that I've not been satisfied with the sound were little personal issues of mine and it's undeniable to me that overall sound wasn't much of an issue in the show.

Character: 3/10

This is literally the worst part about Re:Zero so I will elaborate on it a little bit but be warned: SPOILERS AHEAD.

First of all, I do not like the main character Natsubi. He's stubborn as hell, makes frustratingly irrational decisions that I don't agree with a lot of the time, and generally unlikeable to me.

Second of all, I never got on the Rem hype train like so many others did. Both Rem and Ram were some of the most dull characters introduced in the entire show and suddenly at some "twist," Rem suddenly gets a personality and then [spoiler] the next half a dozen episodes are based ENTIRELY on her and Natsubi. It was actually painful to get through these episodes and it wasn't until around #18 when shit finally veered off of that useless portion of the show.

At this point, it became pretty clear the way the producers intend to have the rest of the show play out. Literally no other characters were actually relevant for this portion of the show, just these two... and for what, fan service? Well when this part finishes, Rem goes back to being completely irrelevant and even entirely absent for the last few episodes.

Probably the most interesting characters in the entire show were Roswaal, Beatrice, Puck, and the witch herself (possibly Emilia too). Sadly Roswaal was barely shown in the whole series aside from the stupid first few episodes and Beatrice stopped being relevant pretty early on to my dismay.

I also really don't like how they went over the top with Wilhelm. They should have just stopped once he went apeshit on the whale. I don't like how they made him flying all over the place during the last few episodes, slaughtering everything in sight. It feels like the fanbase probably were all going nuts over how badass he was when taking down the white whale and wanted more, so that's what they gave when it didn't make sense for him to be so powerful comparatively to everybody else. It felt like he was the only person there who wasn't useless.

Before I forget, fuck Felis. This was such an obnoxious character that just didn't need to exist. The fact that they just had to be in nearly every episode past the first dozen really drug down my enjoyment of everything.

Honestly before I ramble on too much, I'm going to conclude this segment of the review by saying that it sucks how so little of character development happens and how everybody introduced ends up being little fillers to drag along the story. I would have liked it if people remained relevant, so I can't honestly say that the character aspect of the review deserves anything higher than a 3/10 at best when hardly anyone individually remained relevant at all.

Enjoyment: 7/10

Despite my complaints, I still found myself watching every episode aired on sundays after I caught up (didn't begin watching it till episode #18 aired and binged it up to that point) because the show was still interesting enough to find entertainment.

It's not a bad anime by any means but I feel the need to point out some blatantly obvious flaws in the anime that I've found, particularly more so because of how hyped Re:Zero has been lately.

Overall: 7/10

I have to review this objectively and with a personal bias, and when taking everything into account including how I feel about this show when matched up with everything else that I've seen... it deserves a 7/10.

Re:Zero is above average most definitely, but the characters and story were so deficient and poorly executed that it made it tough to feel satisfied after watching it. Maybe the light novel was done better? I'll have to look into it.

It's just a special bonus episode, but... ***WARNING: SPOILERS*** anyways.

Story: 7/10
Didn't particularly care for the story in this episode but I understand that as a special you can't really have a complicated and deep plot.

Art: 9/10
It was great as usual.

Sound: 4/10
Yeah... sorry but I cringed a lot at the voice actors' attempts to speak English. It was difficult to take them seriously because it was just... too thick of a Japanese accent. They need to work on their English I guess :P
...
Character: 8/10
I found it really cool to see the future mother of Suzuha :D

Enjoyment: 6/10
Not a whole lot happened in it, was a little bored aside from a few parts.

Overall: 7/10