Back to Rahzek's Profile Rahzek's Profile

Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight is the biggest meme of 2018, and by that I mean people have been tricked into thinking it's actually good, I'm going to delve into the first few episodes because that was all I could take of this pile of garbage so let's get into the breakdown of what makes this show as bad as it is.

First off we have our main character Karen, who's aspiring to be the top performer within her theatrical school and attain the lead role in the last play that their class will be performing together. The previous year they had the lead roles performed by ... Maya and Claudine who are the current #1 and #2 performers of the class, as we get deeper into the series the show brings us numerous episodes showcasing one or two of each girl at a time in order to give us some sort of background on them, now while you would think that's a good idea this series manages to completely scrap the character they just took the time to tell us about just to jump into the next one after bringing them into the limelight, as if those were their 15 minutes of fame only to be forgotten immediately after.

Let's talk about the major focus of the series now, the characters. Every single character is single pane dull to the point that you know every word out of their mouth before they even say it and not one constructive thing is said. I'll just take a second here to give an example of this. Hikari says to Karen: "I'm going to become a star." Karen says back to Hikari: "Wait, Hikari! Let's become stars together!" and that's literally every interaction with all of the girls in this series, you have Karen's roommate who seems to be in love with Karen but somehow Karen doesn't notice and her roommate's only lines are that of worrying that Karen's attention is being shifted away from her while throwing in comedic verses as she takes care of Karen's personal well-being because Karen can't even seem to wake up on her own.

This series may have the worst take on superstar competition that's ever been conceived, the top performers in the theatrical class are invited to take part in a Revue, or battle of bow and sword on a stage play beneath their school by a talking giraffe that doesn't allow the girls to talk about the existence of what transpired; if we put this into a metaphor the entire stage play battle beneath the school was actually the personification of the girl's talents battling with each other, but it's done in a way that's entirely serious and takes away not only from the characters themselves but deviates the story from moving any further ahead. It's said that even after losing one of the stage battles they have the chance to work their way back up to the top of the Revue, this would be a metaphor for them being able to overcome people with more talent by hard work and willpower, but because of the way this is presented they instead pit the losing girl against the winning girl again only to crush her dream completely.

The inferiority complex between Claudine and Maya may have had the most potential to be somewhat interesting given that they were clearly the most talented people in the school, but Claudine backs off and doesn’t give herself the drive to push further after putting in extra training and builds a mental wall stunting her performing ability, had there been more focus on these 2 characters this series could have done better than if we were watching Karen and Hikari’s rise to stardom. Unfortunately even Maya and Claudine weren’t free from the stigma of being completely dull and the lack of dialogue really hinders any chance this series may have had.

The last thing I’m going to say here is that I’m genuinely upset that people weren’t mentioning Karen’s voice actor’s performance, not only was the singing absolutely atrocious in comparison to the background characters, her lines were so lacking of any sort of depth that you would think she wasn’t the main character and just there for comedic relief as someone chasing after a dream they could never actualize, Karen had no right to be aiming for the top spot given her lack of innate talent and Hikari was such a poor excuse for someone that had been attending the most prestigious school before her attendance at Karen’s school that it’s almost funny she wants to be an actor but can’t even bring herself to develop emotions outside of jealousy and her underhanded tactics to get rid of her competition. Hikari’s only redeeming quality would be her ability to sing and dance which unfortunately also fall short of both Maya and Claudine.

Had this series not tried to be completely serious in their intention to present such stupid ideas for their metaphors and lack of overall story and character interaction I honestly might have liked it as an abstract series as something similar to Yuri Kuma Arashi and it was very unfortunate that it didn’t have a better direction. Given that I only saw 5 episodes of this series before dropping it I might have been inclined to watch the rest if I didn’t see so many reviews stating that it “stays great” so I’ll be backing far away from the second half and just assume Karen and Hikari become stars together because their talking giraffe granted them their childhood wish even though they both lack the necessary talent in the performing arts.

I’ve seen a number of people attempt to break down what they don’t like about Sword Art Online and absolutely none of them have me convinced that they were able to comprehend the series, so I’ll take this chance to give you some insight on how some of those so-called “plot holes” are entirely justified within the series.

Alright so there are a few scenes that some people might be a little confused about or think are just too good to be true in the SAO series. I'll go over them starting at the final battle between Heathcliff and Kirito within the dungeon and how Asuna ... was able to move after literally everyone else other than Kirito had been paralyzed, and why is it that after her sacrifice Kirito is able to miraculously come back to life for the time necessary to catch Heathcliff off guard and deliver the finishing blow? I’ll also be explaining how Kirito turns into a giant monster in the chasm on their way to the world tree, as well as how he defeats Sugou in ALO even though he was a game master.

The answer my friends.....is Yui. After Yui had been targeted by the Cardinal system, Kirito accessed the active GM console using Yui's admin credentials and converted her data into an object in the game, note this happens BEFORE her admin credentials are revoked meaning that this object is still technically an administrator and being held by players of the game causes data corruption within the players themselves. The only people to hold the item containing Yui's data are Kirito and Asuna and because their data has been affected by a fragmented administrative power it could override a player debuff such as paralysis. Right after Yui has been converted to the object and corrupted their personal data, they’re sent to the front lines to fight the next dungeon boss so even if the system had been scanning every possible player for corruption routinely there wouldn’t have been enough time to catch and correct the issue, however, the most crucial part of all this is that Yui's data is being saved to Kirito's nerve gear’s local hard drive, meaning he is more heavily corrupted than Asuna being that she only made contact with Yui's heart through inventory shared storage. The reason he didn’t die (and no he never scattered apart, that “You Are Dead” sign and his character breaking apart were what he was thinking about; being that he had died during the beta test he knew what it would say and imagined himself breaking apart) was right after he scatters there are golden lights that appear to form his body back together within his realization that he’s dead; if you were paying close attention, those lights have the same animation that Yui’s body gave off after she was targeted by the Cardinal system. The next scene comes back to what’s actually happening as Kirito’s hands go from solid to ghostly since the system has a harder time rendering his death effect with Yui’s corrupted data which had her AI program with administrative credentials saved on his local hard drive.

We can confirm this corruption in the episodes that follow where Kirito logs into ALO for the first time using an entirely new avatar that wasn't converted from his SAO account, however because he used the same name, his local nerve gear storage containing Yui's data had corrupted the new avatar even further and combined the stats of his new account with his SAO account while having intermittent admin credentials. Yui’s data was reconstructed in ALO to be used as a navigation NPC, however because she’s registered as a SAO administrator she still had access to the character logs which allow Kirito to access Heathcliff’s character and apply them to his own, which is confirmed when Kirito is facing off against Sugou after he's about to give up against all the odds, he's confronted by Kayaba in cyberspace who projects himself before him and grants Kirito access to the high game master character Heathcliff, Kirito then uses Yui’s administrative credentials to apply Heathcliff’s high game master status to himself with his character logs that Yui pulls from the SAO database and is able to demote Sugou because Kayaba is obviously the high game master of his own system as ALO was created using the Seed engine. If you’re not familiar with what a high game master is; most games that have game masters will have one specific game master above them, either in the form of the server owner or someone designated to correct the other game masters should one cause trouble in the game’s future.

I said I would mention why he turned into a giant monster didn’t I? Well I don’t want a bunch of whiners so I’ll put that down here at the bottom since there’s a bit more to explain about the world of ALO and how it’s run in comparison to SAO. While SAO was stat, proficiency, and level based, ALO didn’t have any form of character leveling system, instead characters could equip items to increase specific stats and increase skill points regarding types of proficiency. Kirito’s ALO avatar’s corruption had combined the base level stats from his SAO character and also the proficiency skills he had leveled up; while ALO had a new set of skills, the skills he had maxed out before such as listening or detection to name a few had also been reworked into the corruption of his new skills, meaning his magic proficiency was one of the converted skill proficiencies from SAO that was no longer in use but carried over the skill points that it used to be considered for into a new proficiency. The use of the spell was obviously very close to, if not already max level for it to be as effective as it was. We can also infer that a basic spell’s effectiveness is increased by the level of the player’s proficiency as everyone is surprised to see Kirito cast Smoke Cloud and the wide area it covers.

There you have it, you're welcome. I think I’ll mention that I also enjoyed every single arc and there are no issues with the pacing if you understand what the series is trying to do. I still feel bad for the people that can't see why this series is as good as it is, but I don't care at the same time, it sucks to be them. I could actually list more great aspects to this series that people don’t seem to understand but why should I bother? I’ll go re-watch the series and actually enjoy it just to spite them. By the way, the English dub sucks and the introductions of every single girl in the show had a deeper meaning than their relationship; I would say try watching it again to realize what I mean but odds are you won’t get it…. 10/10

Sword Art Online II is Outstanding, but first let me talk about what's wrong with it, episode 2, that's what's wrong with it....the introduction for Sinon didn't have the impact or seriousness that her character portrays and the overall episode is lacking of anything that would bring you to actually like her or expand on the depth in her character. Both seasons have those episodes that just aren't good, the first season would have been the execution of the Yui arc's fishing episode, this season's would be Sinon's introduction, but everything after that-when we get to know more about her is just fantastic.

Sword Art Online ... has always been a series that tackles as many genres as possible, if you're not open minded and only wanted an action or only wanted a romance; you're more than likely letting yourself down by not appreciating what it brings to the table. My biggest fear for this series is that season 3 somehow doesn't have as fulfilling an ending we had for each sequential season but part of me just knows it's not gonna let me down. We've had 3 great ending scenes already between the awakening from the Nerve Gear, the reunion of Kirito and Asuna, and even this season's ending was great because we know what our main characters want to do with themselves and work toward a goal for the future.

I actually love that this series' reviews are often as low as they are, because it tells me that they're being left out of how much I enjoy this series....and I feel so bad for them.

Divine Gate is the absolute worst show I've ever had the displeasure of watching to completion, let's go over a rundown of our characters and what they're trying to do.

Before you go any deeper let me explain that this isn't a review, this is a complete summary of this series and why you should never, NEVER watch it.
I'm not going to bullshit you with any of the plot or on their names either, it's really going to be as bad as it sounds.

The Divine Gate is basically an all powerful wish granting device and it was used previously to inadvertently tear apart the borders between ... the realm of the gods, spirits, and Earth.

We have our protagonist Blue, his "friends" Green and Red (yup, those are their names) Blue is the suspect to a very serious massacre that happened years ago but there's an adapter academy that doesn't actually have any classes that wants to recruit him to join their school (adapters are people capable of using supernatural elements). A boy named Arthur is something like the student council president and has The Knights of the Round Table featuring a bunch of ripped off names left and right such as Lancelot.

When Arthur was a boy he was sent to some other world to escape something, while here he met a young boy who called himself Santa Clause. Ever since Arthur met Santa he's been bent on restoring order to the world by using the Divine Gate to segregate the realms to their original planes. Arthur seems to be friends with 2 gods that find him interesting for whatever reason and so they say they're "observers" of how he plans to go about reaching the Divine Gate; Loki and The Wizard of Oz... The world is run by a "council" which doesn't necessarily explain how order is kept. The council isn't against the idea of Arthur seeking out the Divine Gate but pulls more of a "We don't care if you try to get there, but if you get there we'll have to kick your ass" kind of approach towards him.

And so begins Arthur's adventure to the Divine Gate, naturally he brings all the members of the Knights of the Round Table but also invites our 3 little classmates Blue, Red, and Green. Arthur opens a portal which everyone goes through to start their journey to the Divine Gate which basically is a seemingly endless amount of hallways with additional doors to open until you finally reach the gate. Halfway or so through these endless corridors our heroes are met by the Scandinavian gods, who were sent by the Wizard of Oz with super powered weapons to "stop" them from continuing their journey, and so the Wizard of Oz knows just how powerful these gods with these weapons are and knows there's absolutely no chance for them to be defeated. Oz assumed Arthur and friends will turn tail and give up on the Divine Gate, but that doesn't quite happen. they fight their hardest, until just about everyone that's a part of the Round Table becomes a sacrifice to allow Arthur, Blue, Red, Green to continue going through the corridors. The Wizard of Oz finds out the Scandinavian gods killed everyone and starts to act like he's all butt hurt over sending his pals to kill everyone, so then he tries to make things right, by crying about it. After narrowly escaping the Scandinavian gods Arthur and the color brigade have to face the next trial before they can reach the Divine Gate, which is that everyone attempting to reach the gate has to have experienced a massive amount of despair. Arthur is excluded from needing to go through despair, Blue has been through despair his whole life being abused by his family because he wasn't supernaturally gifted "yet" while his brother was loved by them, Red thought his father had died in a lab accident, and Green had a childhood friend that wanted to be her "one and only best friend forever" and Green was like "that's too heavy, why can't we just Netflix and chill?" and her best friend was like "I don't understand!" and runs off never to be seen again. so now Loki joins the fray with his pal Shakespeare who has the ability to write a story that traps whoever she wants within an illusion to act out a play. Amidst the entrapment set by Shakespeare, Red meets his deceased father and believes it to actually be him, but then realizes that he was too nice to be his father and dissipates the illusion, as for Green she meets her long lost best friend within the illusion and then realizes it's not her because she said it was fine that they didn't need to be the best of friends. Immediately after breaking free of the illusion, Red is faced with his real father who actually isn't dead and said the council used that as a cover up, but just as they rejoice to find each other again, one of the Scandinavian gods shows up and his dad tells him to escape while he fights off the god, naturally his dad really dies this time right in front of him and he experiences enough despair to reach the gate, then we move on to Green, after her illusion she's confronted by her long lost best friend; who had actually been with the Wizard of Oz this whole time for some reason and changed her name to Dorothy. You know what happens next; that's right, a Scandinavian god shows up and kills her right in front of Green. Blue has to fight to the death against his brother who was the actual culprit of the massacre years ago, but Blue loves his brother he can't just kill him. so then Blue defends himself until he has to retaliate and his brother's all like "I knew you didn't love me, because you wouldn't let me kill you!" and then he walks off, so now that everyone has the appropriate amount of despair to get them to look at the Divine Gate they go through the final corridor and reach the gate, the color brigade then uses their powers of despair to open the door to the Divine Gate to let Arthur inside, but soon as he gets in there Loki shows up and now it's time for Arthur to pull out Excalibur and fight Loki off, Arthur loses of course but he's not really hurt, Loki throws down a demonic mind control sword and says "just grab that sword and everything will be okay" and of course he picks the sword up after saying "you won't take control of me!" and then he gets mind controlled. Soon as he gets mind controlled Lancelot who miraculously survived the onslaught of the Scandinavian gods shows up and runs to Arthur asking how things are going, and mind-control Arthur stabs him through the chest just to make sure none of the Knights of the Round Table survive. The color brigade knows better than to fight against mind control Arthur and Loki so they get outta there real quick and plan to come back for Arthur later.

So they're back in town and the council knows they got to the Divine Gate and even though they didn't get to use it they're so mad that they're gonna pull the color brigade in for questioning and send them to prison. They had a guy who was like their friend at school who says he's gonna help them explain themselves and so he runs off to see the council, when this fucker comes back he literally brings the swat team to their hiding spot and is like "JUST TURN YOURSELVES IN YOU CRIMINALS!" and then Santa Clause shows up through some magic portal for the first time in front of the color brigade to help them gtfo of this mess, the color brigade is like "how we gonna trust someone named Santa that carries around a bat with nails in it like some delinquent" and eventually they're like "alright let's see how this goes" and then Santa goes berserk mode on the swat team and they get the hell outta dodge.

Santa's got a plan, they're gonna go back to the Divine Gate and rescue Arthur so they go back through the endless corridors and get to the Divine Gate a second time, so they get there and the color brigade is totally talked out of using the Divine Gate because they're told "is your wish worth changing the entire world?" because any wish made would have the fabric of the universe change for some reason but then the corridors start to collapse and shit's falling everywhere and so they just up and get the fuck out of there, didn't even save Arthur yet or anything. They're outta there and are greeted by Lancelot and everyone now is just like "I THOUGHT ARTHUR KILLED THIS GUY?!" and then he's just like "Nah, all the Knights of the Round Table are safe too" after we saw them all die, and then Lancelot's like "We're gonna get Arthur back though" then you hear the council say "The location of the Divine Gate cannot be confirmed."

BAM series ended.

There are slight minor details I skipped over obviously being that I don't want to recall this pile of shit, but I think most of it is right there for you to understand.

I hope you never watch this series because oh my god it was horrible.

You either get SAO or you don't.

SAO covers many different sub-genres -so if you're not open to a wide range of different genres and looking for a straight up action go watch some power rangers because you won't even understand the draws in this series.

If you need everything MMO-based explained word for word in an easy to understand dumb-down way go watch Log Horizon because this series expects you to have a little common sense and be able to infer on how they work.

There seem to be a number of people bringing up that our main character Kirito is "overpowered", however this actually isn't the ... case as he's constantly facing isolation, loss, and defeat progressively throughout the entire story.

I'm not going to say the series is perfect, there are a number of issues I have personally with some of the scenarios and to be honest I think the Yui arc was the worst point of the series, but no one really seems to give mention to that since they're blinded by their hate. The fact is that none of the people that watched this series really gave it a fair shot, they were told by their friends "Go watch this; it's the best thing you'll see in your life!" and they went in with the highest expectations, and tried to nit-pick absolutely everything in the series and actually ruined the experience for themselves.
SAO was never really about Sword Art Online, it was about getting out, there was no point for them to extend the Aincrad Arc because the entire objective was not being there, hence the time skips which people misunderstood as poor pacing.

The ALO arc has many good points, however as soon as it gets to the "incest-like" part of the story, literally everyone who isn't okay with that sub-genre says the series is garbage and that it shouldn't have happened, which was really just another point that you as a viewer needed to be open to in order to enjoy.

While I've watched SAO 5 times already, I did watch the series once English dubbed, and it was absolutely terrible, the characters lacked all emotion, there were awkward silences and changes between certain dialogues and it just felt pathetic, so if you saw the English dub first, you've just made a fatal mistake.

Fencer of Minerva is that one rare series we all wish there were more like it; a hentai with a captivating story that doesn't revolve around sex but instead uses it as a component to the larger story.
(In case that isn't clear enough, no this isn't a fap-able title)

The Art for its time was actually fairly well done, the style grows on you throughout the series with no characters looking misshaped.

There is one minor misstep to consider before viewing this series -being that there are 2 versions. The Censored and Uncensored; most people would tend to go toward watching the Uncensored version however with ... this series that would be a mistake. The Censored version actually covers the same content scene for scene but features a higher resolution. The Uncensored versions are also hard-subbed meaning the resolution affects how well they show up as well. As for those of you hoping to purchase the DVD be aware that there are 2 parts to this series listed as "The Tempest" and "The Emergence" so you don't miss out on half the series.

The Sound is the weakest point at least for the BGM from time to time, however there are no issues with the character voices which makes it easy to overlook.

This series may be listed as a hentai and have some dark themes on the outside, but watch it to completion and you'll realize it did such a tribute to the adventure genre that it's a little ironic we haven't seen another series like it in the 20 years since its release.
Story-10, Art-7, Sound-6, Characters-9, Enjoyment-10, Overall-10

I like to think of myself as being open minded, but this show just has some effect on me, I just watch it and get all hot and bothered, sweat trails down my armpits all the way down to my underwear since that's all I'm wearing while I watch this show and I just get drenched.

Now I'm not saying this show will make you go gay, but it's one of the best romantic comedies ever made even without the yaoi aspect in place, there's a few scenes some closed minded kids might think is close to rape -but as we say in the west, "if ... it doesn't go in, it didn't happen", and so I'll start off by letting you know this is one of those series that gets better as you go, you'll watch episode 1 and be like "eh this is like a 7.5/10", then you'll see after the credits and think of that one asian guy in school yelling "Ha! Gayyyy!" from that movie none of us have actually seen. Then you'll go on to watch the next 2 episodes and just think to yourself "I like where this is going", then you watch a few more episodes and you're just like "Oh man!" and then you think to yourself "If this has a good ending I'm gonna shit myself...." because it's just that good. You finally get to the last episode, episode 10, everything is totally wrapped up and you just fell in love with 2 men and don't even feel gay about it and you're just left with this sense of fulfillment with your life.....then you find out there's an OVA literally titled "Episode 11" and you're in shock and dismay at the same time because you just hope they don't screw up those last 10 episodes for you, and then the planets align and a comet shoots by during a meteor shower and you snap a picture of them all in the same frame to have the OVA not only continue the story where it left off, but to make it even better....I know it doesn't seem possible, but this is the show you'll watch and right as you finish it you'll be covered in a thick white sticky substance and everyone will come in the room and you'll have to explain that there was a spooky ghost and it got ectoplasm everywhere like Randy Marsh from South Park.

Go ahead, go watch it, but if you don't watch the OVA after the series you might as well give up on life.