Back to RaidenPSX's Profile RaidenPSX's Profile

This is it? This is Baccano, the super hyped-up anime that many claim is a masterpiece? This obnoxious, messy disaster? Really? Did we watch the same anime? I'm just totally confused.

Baccano is a convoluted headache. I hardly know where to begin with it. For one, on the surface, the concept of this show sounds really cool. It's set in 1930s prohibition-era America, which is half the reason I was interested in this show because I love that setting, and it's about some alchemists who get their hands on an elixir that gives them immortality. Wow, cool. An awesome setting that is unique for anime, and ... a cool concept about alchemists and immortality. Sign me up. Unfortunately, as I stated before, Baccano is just a total mess. It is convoluted for literally no reason other than for the sake of being convoluted. The show has FAR too many characters, with no central protagonist to make things more digestible. The plot jumps around between several years, and it makes things hard to follow. On top of that, the plot doesn't even really have a purpose. Things happen, and that's the best I can say about it. No characters really grow or change, except maybe that homunculus girl Ennis? I guess Jacuzzi stops being a crybaby as much? I feel like I'm grasping at straws here.

The characters are all one-dimensional and are basic archetypes because this show just simply isn't long enough to give more depth to the countless amount of characters. Isaac and Miria are just goofy and silly, Jacuzzi is a crybaby, Ladd is just a vicious psychopath, and honestly I don't even remember enough about all the other characters to comment on them. They're all forgettable and you will likely spend the entire show saying "Wait who is this guy again?", and "Oh it's that guy! What was his name again...?"

The plot, as I mentioned, is nonsense. There's several plots going on at once, and it jumps around between different years. One is about an immortal dude killing people on a train, one is about a girl trying to find her delinquent brother, and the other plot is about a bunch of immortal people trying to get revenge on this one old immortal guy who is a total asshole. I guess these plots kind of get resolved, but they felt so pointless? Like they had no purpose or reason to even happen. The worst part is: you're given no reason to care. I don't care about any of these characters, the show hasn't given me any reason to care. I don't care if these plots get resolved or not, because once again, I don't care. It feels like this show just wants to throw as much at the wall as possible, but it ends up feeling bloated and fruitless.

There are some things I can compliment about Baccano. The jazzy soundtrack was nice and fit the setting well. The art style and animation, while a little run-of-the-mill, does look nice and has aged fairly well. I would also say, despite how nonsensical and stupid the whole story was, it was interesting to watch until the end, because I did want to know where it was going, even if by the end it didn't really go anywhere.

That's really it, though. This anime was bloated and overly-convoluted, and I didn't care for any of it. Dumb story, weak characters, wasted potential. I don't get the hype.

Holy. Shit. Believe me when I say that Gundam SEED is possibly the worst anime I have ever seen. This show was absolutely appalling from start to finish, and I honestly can't believe I sat through it. I can't believe something like this was even created. It's so incredibly bad I'm not even sure where to begin with it.

I am a massive Gundam fanboy. Particularly for UC. As much as I love UC Gundam, I've always had a bit of a hard time getting into most of the non-UC stuff. Everybody adores Gundam 00, but I couldn't get into it. Gundam SEED seemed pretty well-liked, ... and I wasn't really expecting anything from this show, but holy crap, this is absolutely fucking abysmal in every single way.

For one, the whole concept of this show is basically just the original Gundam series from 1979. A colony gets attacked by the enemy faction and a bunch of people from the colony have to escape on a massive ship that is basically just the White Base, except now it's called the "Archangel". I don't really have a problem with doing the old Gundam story again, and for the most part Gundam SEED does make an effort to be different from it, but it does leave a bad taste in your mouth right from the start. As the show goes on, it basically has no real story or conflict. The Archangel just kind of floats around, fights occasionally happen, annoying teen drama happens, and that's the entire show. I'm not kidding. There's no fucking story. You might try to say "wasn't the original Gundam like that?", to which I would say "no". The original Gundam series did have a kind of episodic structure, but at the same time there was a central conflict that was progressing throughout the show, there was character development, and by the time it was over, it had a satisfying conclusion to everything that was going on. Gundam SEED just has no damn story. So many filler episodes just exist to waste time and spread out tiny things to extremely long lengths. I found myself speeding up or skipping half way through some episodes, and I missed absolutely nothing.

The characters are all absolutely awful, and I hate all of them. The main character, Kira "Jesus" Yamato, is nothing but a Marty Stu who can do literally anything and has no flaws. All the girls fall in love with him because of course they do. He cucks his best friend from college by stealing his girlfriend and having sex with her, and then beats him up when he gets upset about it. As hilarious and absurd as it was, it's amazing to me that anyone writing this dog shit honestly thought this was a good idea. The other characters are all forgettable and have no real personality. There is a Char Aznable clone with a weird name who does absolutely nothing the entire series. There is Kira's childhood friend Athrun who is now on the opposing faction from him, and that's probably the only interesting thing in the show, but it's barely explored at all which leaves it feeling like a waste. The characters typically spend their time crying, having emotional breakdowns, and having teen drama. Because that's what military organizations are all about, right? Crying like a bitch and acting like a child! It's amazing to me how there is absolutely no discipline in either faction and they all act like toddlers.

The art style is awful. I hate the character designs, I hate how everyone looks like a muppet with no nose, I hate how all the men look like women, I hate it. It just looks like shit. Every time I see any other anime with the same character designers and art style, I get PTSD flashbacks to how bad Gundam SEED was.

The mech designs were... okay. There was some cool ones in there, but most of them were pretty bland and looked all the same. Every mech essentially looked like the Strike Gundam but with different colours. I didn't really find any of them interesting, and for a Gundam show, that's pretty bad. Many of the mech fights were mildly entertaining, but not good enough to sit through 50 episodes for. If you want good mech fights without having to waste so much of your fucking time, just go watch 08th MS Team or something.

The music is probably the only saving grace this show has. The opening song is a banger, and most of the other music throughout the show was pretty good, not that I can remember much of it though.

That's about all I have to say. Gundam SEED was so damn bad that I just had to write this review to express my feelings, because I absolutely can not believe this anime gets so many high ratings from people. Granted, if I had watched this anime when I was 12 years old, I probably would of liked it, but that's not exactly a compliment. Gundam SEED also made me stop watching Gundam for a long time, and I still haven't returned to the franchise as of writing this review.

It's not often that I find an anime so mind numbing and poorly written that I literally can't bring myself to finish it. But it happens sometimes, and this is one of those times.

My Hero Academia. It's the biggest anime around at the moment, taking Naruto's throne. Superheroes are massive right now, so it's no surprise the biggest anime of the current times is a superhero anime. With all the rage there was about this series, I started watching it a few months back with season 1. I enjoyed it! Season 1 wasn't particularly anything that I hadn't seen before, but it was exciting and ... the vibrant art style and characters were very appealing. It wasn't amazing, but I liked it. The action was good and engaging, and I rooted for Deku to succeed the whole season. It left me with a taste for more of this series. I liked the idea of a new superhero series with fresh new heroes that weren't DC or Marvel, as I'd definitely grown tired of seeing Batman and Iron Man for the millionth time. I thought I really understood why this series was popular now. Oh, but per usual, I was wrong. Very wrong.

Season 2. I started season 2 a little while after I'd finished the first season, quite excited to see the continuation of Deku's story.

And then there was a sports festival. Oh, dear God.

I knew it was going to be bad the moment they started talking about a sports festival. I knew from that point, season 2 was in trouble. But I kept watching anyway. For over half the season, 12 episodes if I recall correctly, they were doing that stupid sports festival. It was so god damn boring. It didn't even make sense for superheroes to be competing in a sports festival. Aren't they meant to learn to work together, not to compete? Yet somehow, I managed to sit through that god awful crap. The sports festival amounted to nothing at all, really. All it gave us was minor character development for Todoroki. Other than that, it was mostly all filler and I still to this day don't know how I sat through it. Eventually it got back on track with the main story involving the villains, and I hesitantly finished season 2. At this point, my hopes were destroyed. Basically the entirety of season 2 was filler and meaningless crap that didn't interest me or engage me at all. But despite all that, I still thought, "Now that the sports festival crap is over maybe season 3 will be good!"

HA HA, nope. Season 3 somehow finds a way to be even worse and even more boring, to the point where I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. And I don't want to ever finish it, because this show sucks and I don't give a flying rat's ass about it anymore.

Season 3 starts with all the main cast going on a field trip somewhere. I don't remember why or for what purpose, but they go on a field trip and camp for a while and do some activities. Then the league of villains attack, and lots of violence and fighting ensue. All the action at this point felt forced and like it didn't really have any reason to happen, so I didn't think much of all the fighting. But at least it was more interesting than a sports festival I guess?

The show goes on, and more battles with the villains happen. Then later on All Might has an enormous battle with the main villain or something like that. At this point my brain just doesn't care and it's barely comprehending anything that's happening. There's a lot going on, a lot of action, but my interest is at an all time low. The action is entertaining enough that I keep forcing myself to get through this slog of a show, until the show reaches a point where now All Might is worn down and can no longer retain his power, and now Deku has to find a way to take his place despite the fact he's still struggling with his own powers. Deku hasn't made any progress since season 1 at this point, and it's become very grating. After some more nonsense, Deku figures out how to use his powers more efficiently by focusing on using a kicking combat style with his legs instead of punching like All Might does, as he was copying All Might all this time, and he now has some support things that will stop his legs and arms from being harmed during combat, which was a major hurdle he had to get over throughout the series. This happens over half way into the season, and it felt very insulting that it took this long for Deku to do anything. 3 seasons and about 50+ episodes into this crap, and only now Deku is starting to figure out how to use his powers properly. The entire second season may as well not have existed with how little it did for the story. This probably sounds like a bit of a lazy recap, but people who've seen this stupid season will know what I'm talking about.

It started to get a little bit interesting again, as finally SOMETHING was happening. Deku was figuring out that he has to use his own style and can't just copy All Might for everything, and it felt like some kind of progress in the plot was actually happening, for the first time in like 50 episodes of this series overall. Oh, but then guess what?

BACK TO THE COMPETITIVE TOURNAMENTS! OHH YES!

The show goes straight back into a competition with all the characters where now they have to throw balls at glowing points on each other's body, and they can only be hit 3 times before they're out. I let out a gigantic sigh as this began to happen, as I realized now it was time for more filler to stretch out this very simple story to stupid lengths once again. I tried. I really did. A few more episodes and it just kept feeling like a blur because I really did not care at all. I tried to finish this slog. I thought: "There's only a few more episodes, just finish it." But I reached episode 18, and still nothing was happening, and I simply just couldn't take it anymore, and shut the stupid thing off. It's not often I'm driven to this point where I physically and mentally can't take a show anymore because it's so grating and boring, but somehow this show broke me. I seriously couldn't take it. I stopped there, deleted it off my hard drive, and never looked back on this steaming pile.

3 seasons and over 50 - 60 episodes and absolutely nothing happened. Basically no character development, no story progression except ONE thing, that ONE thing being Deku finally figuring out his own fighting style. No world building whatsoever, all we know is there's places in the city named after Star Wars planets and nothing else. Absolutely nothing. I have no idea how you even create a show this long and have absolutely nothing happen in it. All this show has going for it is some nice visuals and fancy action scenes, but they DO NOT make up for a horribly written story. I have no reason to care about any of the massive fights or action when there seems to be no real reason for any of it happening. I also have no reason to care about pretty visuals when the show has no depth and basically no freaking plot. It's empty garbage, all of it.

Think about it. 50 - 60 episodes is about how long it took for a massive epic story like Fullmetal Alchemist to begin and end. That's roughly how long it took for Avatar The Last Airbender to begin and end. And yet, in that amount of time in My Hero Academia, NOTHING happened. NOTHING AT ALL. It's pathetic.

Overall, this is more of a review of the entire show up to this point, more than it is a review of season 3 specifically, but I wanted to get this stuff off my chest. I hate this show with a passion simply because of how much of my time it wasted. I wish I had just given it up after season 2, but my stubborn wishful thinking always drives me back until I reach this point where I can't take it anymore.

God help you people who decide to watch season 4 when it comes out. I have no idea how you guys even sat through all of this so far. God freaking help you.

Take On Me is a very satisfying conclusion to the story of Chuunibyou. As a die-hard fan of this anime, I felt a little nervous going into this film. I hoped that it wouldn't end up with a disappointing ending like season 2, which seemed to put a lot of people off the show, but I was proven very wrong. It's been 4 years since season 2 came out, and honestly I was hyped out of my mind to see Chuunibyou make a return. Ultimately the movie lived up to its hype, as it was basically everything I hoped for it to be. Though we ... may not ever see a third season of the show, this movie was more than enough to wrap everything up and give fans a satisfying conclusion.

The story takes place only a few months after the end of season 2, and has Touka forcing Rikka to come with her to Italy. Yuuta and Rikka talk about this to their group of friends (Nibutani, Deko, Sophia, etc) and they tell them that they should try running away together so that Rikka doesn't have to go to Italy. So Rikka and Yuuta recklessly run, and when Touka gets word of this she sends Dekomori and Nibutani after them, blackmailing them to do so. And so begins a wild goose chase through Japan as Yuuta and Rikka travel from place to place, running away. At some point Yuuta decides he wants to speak with Rikka's mother, and so they take a plane to where she lives to go talk to her. Throughout the whole of this story we see Rikka and Yuuta's relationship progress ever so slowly, as it has through most of the series, and we see Nibutani and Dekomori fight and argue like they always do. It's somewhat comforting to see my favorite characters return after many years, and yes, if you are wondering, we do indeed finally get to see Rikka and Yuuta kiss. That's something that us fans have waited so long to see, and we finally get it. It's eventually revealed that all of this was a very elaborate plan by Touka to have Rikka, Yuuta and the rest of the gang come to her wedding in Italy, and to give Rikka keys to her new home, which was a surprise. We get a happy ending with closure. Closure as we see Rikka and Yuuta FINALLY kiss and become more comfortable with eachother, as well as being able to live together in peace, and closure on the rest of the characters.

As for everything else, soundtrack and sound is great, the visuals are more beautiful than the show already was, seeing as it has a bigger budget because it's a movie, and the story is satisfying as we finally see our favorite characters get some closure. If there's any complaints I have, it's simply that the movie isn't long enough. Its pacing might also seem a bit too quick to some, but this is mostly to blame because it's a movie and not a whole season. I'm not sure if you can even say that's a flaw, seeing as it wrapped up everything it wanted to do perfectly in its given time. It's a bittersweet feeling after you finish watching it, you feel really happy that the movie didn't disappoint and you got some closure to the story, but then you feel kind of sad and depressed because you realise Chuunibyou is finally over. Maybe it's not though, we could always see another season, maybe another movie. But not for a long time at least.

Thank you for reading this review. I'm really happy this movie was good and if you're the type of person that felt disappointed by the ending of season 2, then it's absolutely essential that you watch this film. It will make you feel a lot better and put you at ease. I love Chuunibyou, it's an anime that means a lot to me and this movie is the cherry on top of it all. Thank you, KyoAni. Thank you so much.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS – I will not be holding back on spoiling every little detail of this show, so if you haven’t seen the show but want to, then go finish it first. Thank you.

Darling in the Franxx. Where to begin with this utter disappointment of a show? For the most part, this show left me gobsmacked at how stupid it was. I really couldn’t comprehend how STUDIO PROFESSIONALS, who have been doing this stuff for years, could produce such piss-poor garbage. This is probably one of the most headache inducing shows I’ve seen since Sword Art Online, which is saying a lot, because if ... you’ve seen Sword Art Online, you know how abysmal it is. The fact that this show is what is popular and trending in today’s anime community is very concerning, and I fear we will see more lazily written, rubbish anime like this because of how big it’s become. Now, allow me to rant about how much this show upsets and enrages me.

This show started off pretty great, I won’t lie. I started watching this show at around episode 2 and kept up with it every week until it finished. So, I’ve basically been here since before the hype started rolling in. Starting off, I loved it. I thought the show had a great premise and had so much potential. The setting was an intriguing and mysterious world with many secrets, and the characters all seemed to have something more to them. Though I thought the whole ‘ass piloting’ thing was stupid, and the mech designs were incredibly weird and whacky, I still generally liked what I had seen. The show felt like a perfect blend of the over the top style of Gurren Lagann and the personal drama of Evangelion, two other mecha shows that clearly heavily influenced Darling in the Franxx. “How could our beloved studio Trigger do any wrong? They’ve made nothing but great shows in the past” is what I stupidly thought as I watched this show progress more and more. I mean, I loved the other works of Trigger. They worked on Gurren Lagann with Studio Gainax before departing into their own studio, then made other highly enjoyable shows like Little Witch Academia. I kept ignoring all the red flags because I thought “Oh, there’s still plenty of episodes to go it’ll fix its problems and get better surely.” Again, I was wrong. Clearly my blind love for Trigger has lead me to nothing but despair, as this show proved to be nothing but disappointment.

The first red flag for this show I ignored was episode 7. The whole first story arc of this show, which involved Hiro, the main character, trying his hardest to get permission to pilot with 02, a strange klaxosaur-human hybrid girl, ended at episode 6. Klaxosaurs being the strange tecno-organic shape-shifting creatures the characters fight in their mechs through the whole series. Episode 7 was the, well, “fan service” episode. It was the episode where all the characters go to the beach. How generic. Yet, I let it slide because there was some (very minor) world building. After all, it’s episode 7, there’s still way more to go, right? Then came episode 8, which is an episode I can’t forget because it nearly made me drop this show. It’s an episode where the boys accidentally see the girls nude, which leads the girls to act immature and draw a huge line in the middle of the ground that the boys can’t cross. This episode offered absolutely nothing to the show what so ever and was nothing short of filler. Not even the minor world building episode 7 had. In the end of the episode they learn they have to get along or else bad things could happen. That’s all that happens. It’s incredibly stupid and was an utter waste of an episode slot and was the biggest red flag that was to come, yet I forced myself to keep watching after that anyway. Once more, I thought “Trigger can do no wrong.” Yet, they did do wrong. The whole of the show proved to be nothing but a waste of time.

The character development is pathetic. The fact that they dedicated entire episodes to fleshing out some of the main cast only for me to still not care about them at all proves how poorly written it is. All of their backstories, and I mean ALL of them, are basically the same. “Blah blah blah, something in their childhood.” This whole childhood thing started off pretty reasonable, until it became the source of each character’s motivations, which then it started coming off as a very poor, lazy plot device. The only characters whose backstories were actually engaging at all was 02’s and Hiro’s, but even then, I still couldn’t care less about either of them. I believe the first ‘character development’ episode was episode 9, which centred on Goro. One of the more central male characters in the main cast. It was revealed he’s in love with Ichigo, a girl who’s the leader of the squad and who is also his partner, because, well, ‘something to do with their childhood’. Mitsuru, another boy in the squad, who was once close to Hiro, is mad at him because he’s forgotten a promise they made when they were younger, which again, happened in their childhood. Ikuno, a girl in this squad, also confesses her love for Ichigo, which, you guessed it, is because of ‘something in their childhood’. The show has the balls to have a lesbian (or at least bisexual) character, but then also just forgets about it. The whole ‘childhood’ plot device becomes redundant VERY fast. Not to mention, it doesn’t even really matter because these events are never referred to again. Ikuno and Goro’s love for Ichigo is never mentioned again, Mitsuru’s friendship with Hiro is never mentioned again, etc, etc. There’s even a “chubby” character in the show, a boy named Futoshi, who is shown to have an eating disorder, as he has bulimia. Then it’s never mentioned again. They basically make all this drama and just forget about it. Most of the show is teen drama, which becomes annoying very quickly as well. The show loses sight of itself and becomes directionless at this point. It becomes full of characters who are all in love with each other ‘because reasons’, it becomes full of teenagers crying and being emotional, and the worst part is I didn’t care. To contrast with another show, Evangelion’s characters have certain depth to them, they all feel real and relatable with their struggles, hell even the side characters are memorable in that show. Yet here, I’m struggling to even remember the main characters. Hiro, who is the main character, doesn’t have any depth or any real reason to care about him. He lacks any kind of real personality other than the fact he just loves 02. 02 in her own right is not interesting either, she just wants her ‘darling’ and goes berserk when she can’t have him. That’s all there really is to those characters. Hiro and 02 just succeed in everything they do ‘because reasons’. The love plots are pathetic, the teen drama is pathetic, it’s all really pathetic. At some point Mitsuru, and a girl in their squad named Kokoro, get married, and that was just dumb. Then Kokoro has a baby with him in the last episode. Ugh. Again, Hiro is the main character, he’s meant to be interesting and we’re meant to root for him when he succeeds, but instead we sit there feeling nothing at all. Let’s compare this to Simon of Gurren Lagann, a main character who’s generally similar to Hiro in concept. We watch Simon go from zero to hero. He starts off as a scared nobody who, over the course of the entire series, grows a lot and completely changes as a person, becoming a badass, brave hero that we all love and root for. He shows that with enough confidence you can become anyone you want to be, that you, too, can go from zero to hero. While here, we have Hiro. A character that doesn’t really change or develop at all over the course of 24 episodes. He starts off as a depressed loner who wants someone to pilot with, to someone who is allowed to pilot. That’s kind of it. Yeah, he loves 02, but the whole love plot between the two feels unauthentic. Maybe it’s because they’re teenagers, but still, that’s beside the point. Hiro doesn’t really develop or ‘change’ at all. He’s just the same the entire series. From the beginning he clung to 02 because that’s all he has. In the end, he’s still clinging to 02. As I said before, his personality is nothing but the fact that he loves 02. We don’t feel excited or feel emotional over Hiro, as we might do with Simon of Gurren Lagann, we just see nothing but an extremely tropey main character who spends the entire series just chasing after 02 blindly. This is why he’s a garbage main character. This is why all the characters are just written poorly.

The action. It’s crap. There’s no real impact or “oomph” to the action; it all feels very plain and generic. Watching Michael Bay’s Transformers movies would be more satisfying than the action in this show. The fight scenes are insanely forgettable and they aren’t exciting to watch at all. The mechs feel like they have absolutely no weight to them and the enemies they face aren’t threatening at all, and the action just isn’t enjoyable or exciting. Again, I will contrast this with Evangelion, more specifically The End of Evangelion. In this film, there is a fight scene with Asuka in her mech fighting off a massive swarm of enemies. This is one of my favourite action scenes in any anime, because there’s so much weight and realism to it. Asuka lifts a large sword in her mech, and you can really see her struggle to contain the sheer weight of it. When she swings at an enemy, you can really see how heavily it impacts them. It’s so brilliant to watch and you can really feel the sheer weight of the mechs and the impact of their attacks. Darling in the Franxx lacks this, all the mechs feel like plastic toys and the action doesn’t have any impact like that at all. You don’t feel the weight of the mechs, you don’t feel the impact of the attacks, you just feel nothing. It’s completely missing what makes action so fun to watch; the struggle and ambition to win.

The show’s visuals are nothing worth mentioning either. There isn’t any atmosphere and the art style isn’t particularly special. I didn’t feel engaged in the world or interested in it at all. The world building, for the most part, doesn’t amount to anything. The world comes off as bland and boring. Even when the characters go to space it looks boring. In a lot of anime shows that involve space, like for instance we will say the anime short film Voices of a Distant Star, they made space look beautiful and breath taking, while in Darling in the Franxx it just looks so lifeless and bland. The character designs are “meh” and the mech designs are just goofy and dumb. Visually, this show is nothing special at all.

The plot is terrible. Genuinely terrible. As I’ve said, most of the show is teen drama. Then it seems the writers completely forgot that they were writing an actual story and shoved the ENTIRE plot into the last 5 episodes. Episode 19 is a big backstory episode, which is basically a carbon copy of Evangelion’s backstory episode, even going as far as to say the mechs are made from klaxosaurs (sound familiar?) and in the span of 3 episodes later, literally 3 god damn episodes, a new enemy has arrived, some alien force named VIRM, which the show never hinted at or built up to at all what so ever, just randomly shows up, then one episode later tons of characters have died and a massive fight happened, then one episode later 02 has turned into a GIANT ROBOT GIRL HYBRID, I can’t even make this up if I tried to. Words can not explain how shocked I was at how pitifully stupid it was, my jaw was on the floor in thinking that a professional writer could actually come up with this crap. Lots of characters die yet you don’t care of feel anything for them, they might as well not even be in the show. There was just nothing. The plot is convoluted as all hell, and I don’t care nearly enough to try and unravel everything about it. I really just don’t care, I’m completely apathetic to anything in this show. The ending to the story was also incredibly rushed and at least 6 or 7 episodes worth of events transpired in the one final episode. There’s literally an 8-year time skip in the final episode on its own. It was more rushed than any other ending I’ve ever seen to a show, and so much was forced. Just nothing more than a dumb ending to a dumb show, it honestly isn’t even worth talking about.

The show doesn’t even have its own identity. As if everything else I talked about wasn’t enough of a problem. It straight up just steals elements from the likes of Evangelion, Gurren Lagann, Diebuster/Gunbuster, etc. The show makes references to these shows a lot in hopes that people will think it’s ‘cool’ and ‘hip’, to distract from the fact that the show itself is garbage. Hell, the backstory episode, which is episode 19, straight up just steals from Evangelion’s backstory episode, even going as far as to say the mech’s are made from klaxosaurs, just like the Evas being made from Angels, as I mentioned before. It doesn’t contribute anything to the story, it’s just a “le epic reference xd”. People speculate 02 turning into a giant girl-robot hybrid is some kind of reference to Diebuster, and the list goes on. I’m not saying the show can’t make references, but the fact that these ‘references’ seem more like just stealing elements from other shows because it doesn’t have its own ideas and tries to convince the viewers to like it because it references some of their favourite anime. It really does feel like the show doesn’t have its own identity, it’s as if it’s relying on people’s love of other shows to mask the fact it’s complete garbage and to try and get positive recognition. When in reality it’s basically just copying them because it’s too afraid to be its own thing. Some would say this is a problem with a lot of anime in today’s world, that they just keep relying on referencing iconic shows to get positive reception and to mask the fact that they just don’t have any original ideas, and for the most part it seems true.

This was a show that started off really solid, and quickly ruined itself. Poor action, mediocre visuals, stupidly convoluted plot, piss-poor characters with piss-poor development, the show not even really having its own identity, annoying teen drama, just to name a few. Simply put, it’s just bad. I give it a 2 purely because it started off good, even though it quickly became an insult to anyone who watched it. Not only that, but also a straight up insult to itself, its own plot and characters, just everything. The ending was insanely rushed and really was the final slap in the face to anyone who watched that far. This show feels like an insult over all. I can’t really name anything redeeming about this show and I absolutely cannot recommend it to anyone. That’s honestly all I have to say about it. Thank you for reading this behemoth of a review and have a good day.

Just a little disclaimer: this is my first review on this site and it may seem a little messy because I don't really know how to structure reviews very well, but I hope you can appreciate it anyway.

After the Rain is an anime that, looking from the outside without having watched it, will turn a lot of people away. Many websites will give you the basic synopsis that this show is about a 17 year old girl that falls for her 45 year old boss, and not much more. The promotional material and even the opening of this anime will also give you the ... intention that it's most likely going to be a romance story about such things. Yet, that's not how it is at all, really. The show more or less deceives you into thinking it'll be a romantic love story, yet is more like a quite unique slice of life story of two people helping each other overcome their troubled past. So if you look at the synopsis for this anime and say it seems "messed up", then read this review, because I'll tell you the truth about this show and why you should consider watching it.

The story follows 17 year old Akira Tachibana and her boss, 45 year old Mr. Kondo. Akira is clearly very detached and lonely, as she was once in a running track team and was highly praised, until she suffered an injury on her ankle leaving her unable to do that anymore. Mr. Kondo is her boss at where Akira works, and at first seems like nothing more than a simple 45 year old guy just trying to get by in his life, but later throughout the series we learn more about him and see an interesting friendship form between him and Akira. There is also Akira's friend, Haruka, who also has something of a big role in the story. Haruka is part of the running track team and was a close friend to Akira, but grew apart with her after Akira's injury. Lastly for the important characters worth mentioning, there is Chihiro, Mr. Kondo's friend, who have been close since high school, but much like Akira and Haruka, grew apart over time.

The show is very much focused on Mr Kondo and Akira. It starts off with Akira becoming infatuated with Mr. Kondo, and trying to confess to him, and eventually does, rather awkwardly I'll add. The show goes on and it's still kind of awkward between the two, until eventually they agree to just be friends. From that point on, the show seemingly takes a turn. It goes from what looked to be a romantic story, to more of a slice of life about the struggles in Akira and Mr. Kondo's lives. Both characters feel saddened about their pasts, their pasts filled with hope and promises that they'd forgotten after so long. Mr. Kondo and Akira occasionally share their musings about life to each other and try to overcome the troubles left in their past, especially as Mr. Kondo's friend, Chihiro, managed to pursue a dream that Mr. Kondo also wanted to pursue, which was writing novels and becoming a successful writer. And so, Mr. Kondo is reminded that he let this dream of his die every time he sees his old friend. This can be juxtaposed to Akira, having being forced to give up running in the track team, is constantly reminded of it as her friend Haruka continues to run on without her, though Haruka grows increasingly upset about growing apart with Akira, and even gets angry at her near the end. The characters in this show all feel quite realistic and well developed, and if you can relate to problems like this, having grown apart with old friends and such, you might find it to be quite tear jerking. To me, this is what made the show for me. In the end, Akira and Mr. Kondo's relationship never grows past being just friends, hence why I stress that this anime really isn't a romantic story. If there's any real love to be found in the story, it's of personal things, like Mr. Kondo's passion for literature and writing, or Akira's passion for running with the track team, as well as also taking a somewhat minor interest in literature herself. All these help the characters feel even more likeable and relatable. The characters are very complex and a lot of things are left to be subtle, much like that of real people. This is where the appeal of the show really lies in my opinion.

The art of this show is quite a feast to look at. The show is always very colourful, and yet expresses its tone very well. A lot of the time the show goes from raining and to sunny, and really expresses the feeling of when the sun comes out 'after the rain'. It really fits with the story. The art style for the characters is somewhat unique and distinct, and overall the show is a delight to look at with its expressive characters and colourful environments.

There's not really much I didn't like about this show. I'll say it's probably not for everyone, however. The anime is pretty slow and not a lot happens. I personally enjoy shows like this, but many probably won't. If you can appreciate complex characters and the relationships they have, and can appreciate a show that doesn't always have a whole lot happening in it, you'll probably end up liking this. It's a more down to earth and contemplative kind of slice of life anime. The show can be a little awkward at times also, but I really can't list many things that I thought were glaring problems. I basically just enjoyed every minute of it.

In the end, don't be put off by the synopsis because it really will exceed expectations, and at times can be a pretty deep anime that may even make you think about your own life. It's only 12 episodes, and in saying that, if what I've said in this review sounds appealing to you then definitely watch it, especially since it's not a long watch.