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I enjoyed seeing Griffith get the shit beaten out of him multiple times again, but I will remember the seventy-day countdown to a Blu-Ray and JPG as the funniest thing to come out of the Memorial Edition.

For Berserk first-timers, the OP spoils way too much stuff—even what they didn’t adapt—so please skip it.

For those who’ve already watched the three movies/read the arc, this adds the Campfire of Dreams, Judeau and Corkus’ conversation (without Corkus guess they couldn’t get the VA), Wounds, Rickert talking to a merchant, Guts’ Declaration of War, and improves the CGI throughout. The Memorial Edition still leaves out Guts’ full childhood, Samson, ... Owen, Zodd’s assist, Griffith’s second assassination attempt, the Queen, Minister Foss, Godo, the tournament, the Bakiraka assassins, Wyald, Gaston’s talk, but most importantly the Snail Apostle. These missing pieces add up.

So while I give it an eight, I still like Studio 4℃’s adaptation. Skull Knight coming down looked amazing. Same for Shiro Sagisu’s music, from “Hundred Years War” to those heartbeats at the end of the Eclipse. Hiroaki Iwanaga continues to deliver as Guts when he reprised the role for the bonfire and declaration. And I got to see Donovan’s throbbing screentime. I’ll say, the movies should’ve been this originally, rather than confining Miura’s writing to ~100 minute blocks. It tightened too much while lacking density. Like, the ten-minute table conversation can’t use up that much runtime but can here, and would’ve been even better with Corkus. Doesn’t stop this from being very good overall.

This manga excels at keeping you on edge. While it has the vibes of a soap opera, I was thoroughly entertained by the tenseness of every reveal and would not say it’s melodramatic. Rather, it lacks the dumb twists I anticipated, subverting those expectations in place of ‘adult-like’ drama and suspense that culminated to something satisfying. The biggest mystery is discerning what every character is actually thinking or actually knows, like who’s to blame or who’s the victim, which pairs well with the subtle dialogue you can easily miss while flipping through every page thinking “What the fuck am I reading/is going on?”

Its short runtime ... works in its favor, helping avoid dragging most of its plot points. I wouldn’t call reading this weekly a fun ride, but it was very good at creating an apprehensive atmosphere. The conclusion—happy ending or not—ended this dumpster fire fantastically.

Spoilers below.

Among her yaoi oneshot and Dear Sa-chan, Iori’s art did not save their mediocrity. Serious subjects do not equate to a good narrative. Thankfully, this plot isn’t dogwater. Reika’s kid not being Shuuji’s plus his infertility, Miyu actually being a good character, Kai not getting murked, Sakuraba’s memory loss, Kamoshita needing meds, Ebihara not being a nutjob, Reika’s previous pregnancy and abortion—these curveballs worked unlike Shuuji’s balls because they didn’t break the plot and weren’t wacky. It was fun to imagine her as some gaslighting, gatekeeping girlboss, but that would’ve been silly. Reika was not some yandere mastermind, and Haruma didn’t have a split personality responsible for killing Shuuji. They just both suffer from trauma, were held down for years by that turmoil, and successfully found support in each other’s company. They found genuine happiness together in the end. Cliché as it is, it was the sweetness I appreciated from this bleak love story.

I didn’t enjoy how I knew the baby was Haruma’s by like Ch. 13, yet the author kept dilly-dallying. It felt painfully obvious as the manga went on. The only way it wasn’t his would be if some entirely different person was involved, and Ebihara’s arc did not persuade me at all. Anyway, I reread the flashbacks of Reika and Shuuji’s marriage while listening to Kendrick Lamar’s “We Cry Together” to soak in the inspo, and I’m glad I picked this up because Black Cat Scans were shilling it until their last* breath. This really was a dog and a scum. Yay!

Here’s the bottom line: this is fast food manga. It’s the type you consume when you want a straightforward plot, anime titties, and flashy art. Doesn’t break any new ground, gets the job done, and is a great way to unwind after a hard day’s work. Like Popeyes.

By 2020, women rule the world and have these rules because their gender is the only one able to consume peaches, granting them special abilities. Usual shounen stuff. The power is from peaches because they look like asses.

It’s a solid shounen-ecchi-harem mishmash. The action and schmovement is well-paced for the biweekly upload schedule and there’s plenty of good ... shots and paneling. There’s stakes, but characters aren’t pushed to the point of being bloody messes. Yuuki is actually more than just a slave and a caretaker and I don’t see him as a sucker idolizing mediocre pussy.

The slave ability allows for the ecchi content, because Kyouka has to reward the slave. That means foreplay, softcore porn. Kissing, licking, ass-to-face, tits-to-face, whatever. Now, it’s ecchi, so everyone gets sexualized and objectified to give me a stiffy, but I like the fact that they’re over the age of eighteen. You can easily find better stuff to fap to than Mato as one can go to a local Mexican place for something far better than Taco Bell, but sometimes you just want that five dollar Cravings Box. It’s not the same, but there’s nowhere else I can get a Baja Blast Freeze.

This is femdom, but it’s not hardcore. It’s fluffy. No girl wears a latex catsuit, takes out a whip, and starts smacking his ass before chucking anal beads into his bum. The start of the manga plays them out to be wary and rude to Yuuki before proper development since I assume talking to a guy is like talking to a homeless person. Both receive unfair treatment and societal shame. The villains do force the ecchi content without consent because they’re villains, simple as. No villain so far has yet to peg Yuuki or do CBT.

Like Tatsuki Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man who admitted in an interview that he enjoyed having a girl kick down his bike and taunt him, once said:

“I want women to be in higher positions than men.”

So they are here. And for the sexual content, they tend to be in a higher position than Yuuki too.

In Mato Seihei no Compensated Work Benefits, the plot doesn’t have too much slog dragging it down. Like, hearing Yuuki say his sister was never found means she’ll probably show up later, so it was nice to see her show up so early. Same for Kyouka and how her backstory ties into something she directly confronts. I’ve read stories where they dilly-dally and jiggle my balls for like fifty chapters.

And, y’know, he is literally a slave in an unequal, oppressive world, but he still manages to be less of a bitch than Kazuya. That’s not a high bar, but I like to shit on that manga because it’s funny.

He can cook and clean the house too. The girls who wanna diddle his do have good reasons to like him. If you’re a girl working 24/7 fighting Temple Run dudes and you see this attractive guy who is submissive and has the perfect traits to be a househusband, it sets up the possibility of romance unlike other nonsensical harems where love is handed on a socially inept platter. He’s got respectable traits that make him a tidbit more appealing than his other spiky black-haired, spineless doormat love-triangled brethren.

Of course, there are pitfalls. Mato is Mato. The Tuesday special is only on Tuesdays. It’s like every single girl has conveniently never lusted over a man before he came along, and the reward is forced. In these romcom stories, the thought of a woman ever having crushes on other guys rather than the main dude breaks the wish fulfillment. The main guy is always the object of affection, the end goal, and any side bitches aren’t allowed to be like, “Fuck this guy, I’m gonna go date someone else.” Only the main character is able to decide the lover, not them. Even the MILF and GILF’s husbands are never seen. Not a single himbo DILF exists. The mums probably got artificially inseminated because they’re down to show Yuuki their tits like it’s nothing. I chalk it up to society.

I expect the upcoming Tomato Tamato anime reception to be an anti-feminist shitshow and I would not have read this manga if Ren Yamashiro didn’t exist, but overall, the score’s an eight out of ten.

If you want some profound dive into the idea of humanity and demons and expect every major character to be multifaceted and morally gray, then don’t pick this up. Pick up Innocent, Innocent Rouge, Imomushi, or some other cool and wicked seinen.

You’ll enjoy this hentai if you like seeing lolis being raped by animals to the point of mind break as they’re humiliated and dominated. Grotesque methods include impregnation and dehumanizing them into human cattle—emphasis on the breeding part. The darkness of it is possibly arousing for you. These three short volumes span from 94201 to 122557 and 221638.

You won’t like this if the stuff above doesn’t turn you on. Me? I wasn’t fond of her cleaning smegma off a monkey’s cock, as well as orgasming when she birthed one, to say the least. Her and her friend losing to pig cock in the end was ... more horrifying than it was gratifying, but it fits the niche deviant fantasy people look for in fap fuel. It sickened me, so I found it an appalling one out of ten. I’m certainly not the intended audience. The art is neat since it’s from the guy behind Nagatoro. He’s good at sadism. Give this a five if you got a half chub or go higher if you got a full-on stiffy. If you gave it a ten, that oughta put a smile on Nanashi’s face. It don’t on mine. I’m gonna go read Komi-san now. Thank god Nagatoro got popular so no more shit like this comes out of the author right?

What does ero guro nansensu mean nowadays? A thirteen year old girl will direct a Gacha Life yaoi torture movie (18+). Folks on r/guro will wholeheartedly admit to joerkoffing to a girl being flayed and eaten. You’ve probably witnessed that one gif where a girl is standing in a machine. Guro has gu-rown into whatever it wants to be.

With The Death Panda, it’s all about sex and violence. That’s the guro status quo. It’s not pleasant to look at and I don’t blame you for outright hating it. At the same time, it doesn’t break any meaningful ground in the genre. I understand the claim ... that this a love comedy cranked to visceral absurdity, topped with black humor and whatnot, but I really didn’t resonate with it. True love is being killed, turned into a tan demon, shapeshifting an animal you see at a zoo, and cannibalizing people, I suppose. Love transcends all boundaries, including death. The point of Death Panda was to exaggerate the classic tsundere dynamic found in a shounen. It’s shipping the hero and villain. It’s the lovable heel turn. This tried to be like the Madagascar movie—you see, those characters were relatable and genuine because, unlike us, the monster was on the outside. Death Panda ended up as predictable and boring, however, knowing the fights would end in his win because that’s the only way the brutalizing can occur.

I discovered guro via shock images that led to Gurochan back in 2016. I was like fourteen. That hellhole had me come out disgusted and queasy, but nothing in Death Panda made me feel that. Shrine girls fight a horny roided evil panda, get raped, and die horribly. That’s about it. The point of ero guro in my eyes is to make you upset and want to censor it, plus show how horrible life could be in an unhinged society. This is not the worst thing I’ve ever read, but it’s very bad nonetheless as generic guro. I prefer Hello Panda.

Man, I love farming. Understand that Silver Spoon’s plot is shallow in the sense that there isn’t anything else that matters. Literally some kids are farming and growing up in agriculture school. What matters is how this premise is executed so well by virtue of its character interactions.

Like every good teenager, Hachiken doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life and feels exceptionally lost. He’s good at academics, but studying is not a fulfilling passion. I like that he doesn’t find a concrete answer in the end, because my high school self certainly didn’t know when I dropped out. Even so, he’s a ... little less lost. The future is still unknown, but taking comfort in that helped him. The comedy was mostly a miss for me, but that wasn’t crucial for my enjoyment.

The vibes are like Yuru Camp: charming, soothing, and educational on occasion. You won’t find anything action-packed, brutally deep, or with dramatic stakes here. The drama that does occur is played out in a mellow, quieter way. If you want to unwind, sit down and enjoy the smaller moments in life, Silver Spoon is very good at that.

This show is enjoyable dumb fun. If you take this seriously, no shot you’ll like it. If you don’t find this funny, it’ll be a drag. There’s tidbits of fanservice if you care about that. Animation’s fine, but characters are the real treat. They are complete trash.

I think Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Rejected Girlfriend, and Vicariously-Living Girlfriend is a deconstruction of harems. I say I think since the original author wrote Aho Girl which was a joke, so later he probably saw Quintessential Quintuplets and was inspired to make a harem satire. And satire it is, since everyone in this show is overly dense and randomly horny. ... That sounds awful, but the absurdity is cranked up to a point where it wouldn’t be entertaining without it.

Sakisaki is the resident tsundere main girl, Nagisa works hard and is too caring, and Milika wants to end Naoya’s polyamorous relationship since she wants him by herself. Naoya Pannacotta Fugo, the main guy, is lovingly shallow like the beach water I dip my toes in while enjoying the gentle sea salt breeze at Santa Cruz. It’s cold even in the summer, but I relish the ocean scenery. The vast deep blue, spanning beyond my vision, ends at my feet at last.

You know, Milika sounds like milk. I like milk. I make protein shakes and smoothies with it; estrogen too. Cows work hard to produce gallons everyday. I thank the dirt for my lunch, as the dirt grew the grass they ate to make the dairy. Low-fat 1% is my favorite, but Milika is whole milk in the sense that she contributes the most content in the show. Her introductory arc has her camp outside the dude’s house and film MeTube videos, content within content. Did you know whole milk isn’t 98% or 100% fat, but 3.25%? Sakisaki is 2% reduced fat milk. The industry standard, she beats the shit out of Naoya because slapstick is funny. Nagisa is fat-free skim milk. You can’t go wrong with choosing that. It’s nice and has less calories. Shino’s existence in the show is basically like the opening. Kinda there, far away, not really involved. She isn’t important until like the last three or two episodes, so you barely know her. Her shtick is being stripped naked for some reason. Read the manga if you like girls who resemble stereotypical grandmas. She’s 1% milk.

I can’t tell if I enjoy this ironically because it’s shit or because the show’s a joke and trolling me hard, so this is a seven and a two at the same time. Simultaneously horrible yet good.

I was looking around for old, obscure shows when I saw a thumbnail of what appeared to be the Annoying Orange’s Japanese ancestor. It caught my eye because his/her/their/[insert neopronoun here] smile taunted me.

Now, Extraterrestrial Oranges/Mikan-Seijin is a short anime with twenty-six episodes spanning twenty-two seconds or less. You can literally finish it within twenty minutes via a YouTube playlist. Unfortunately, it’s an assorted batch of shoddily made gags. Humor is subjective, but I didn’t laugh, grin, or even exhale air out of my nose. Just imagine sitting through an unfunny TikTok compilation. Maybe you kinda get what they’re trying to do in the dozens ... of seconds your brain is stimulated, but it’s not entertaining and rather boring. How it resembles a tween’s first time making a Flash animation with stolen MapleStory assets doesn’t help either.

Each episode is basically like the clip you see after a show returns from a commercial break during the halfway point. They typically end with a burly lad v-clipping into frame as a masculine voice shouts ‘Aniki,’ or ‘brother.’ I, too, shouted out my brother’s name because I needed medical attention for the blood coming out of my ears due to the incessant screeching giggles of those fruity fucks. There’s no dialogue though, if you discount the guy yelling and some background music of a woman singing. These unnamed sour-sweet ballsacks walk around the screen in plenty of places doing plenty of things, but they never stick with me or make me feel satisfied for the handful of seconds I went through to consume. My reaction for the majority of them was more or less, ‘Oh, okay.’

Sometimes there’s an onion character, monkey, or multiple muscular men involved. Expectedly, there is no memorable feature that makes anyone stand out in the fleeting runtime. There’s no suspectable main character among the gang of oranges. I occasionally see the enigmatic smile and bushy eyebrows of an anthropomorphic orange on my ceiling, so I presume he is the head honcho haunting my midnight delirium.

The only way to salvage this show is to use its quick-paced routine and smash zoomer humor into it. These easily digestible clips are ideal for retaining my minuscule attention span, but the content is not worth sitting through each episode.

Nothing of substance was gained or lost with this show, so I found it an apathetic two. I’m not sure how twenty-one people discovered this show, completed it, and gave it a ten out of ten. It’s a wonderful world. When people complain about how modern anime sucks and that older shows had more soul, there is probably only one weirdo who points to this niche series from 1992. Watch it or don’t—it’s repetitively horrible.

I read Kanojo, Okarishimasu or Rent-a-Girlfriend solely for its premise a little before the anime got announced. The phenomenon of Japanese herbivore men who don’t want to put in any effort of going outside and forming a real bond with someone is a pretty interesting topic. Worn down by school and work, they instead watch embellished romcoms, VTubers, and have imaginary waifus that provide easy-access escapism. Most importantly, some rent out girlfriends to do shit couples do. I thought this show would tackle that humorously.

I didn’t know that the author would turn the rental girlfriend business into the shittiest anime romcom I’ve seen since Senryuu ... Shoujo.

Dickhead main characters are good if written right. Kazuma and Ataru are horny degenerates, but it’s still fun to watch their antics. Kazuya is not fun to watch like holy shit dude he reminds me of Zenitsu and Zenitsu made Demon Slayer worse. The only thing I like about him is how much he jerks off, his pet fish, and his friend Kibe. His overall bitchiness just never makes for good content.

He’s supposed to improve from the first episode onward. He’s supposed to be less of a loser and more sensible, but it never happens. Main characters have negative traits so they can be fixed, but he never changes. Watching him stumble again and again to progress the relationship between Chizuru is like going through Groundhog’s Day, because it never gets anywhere and their dynamic is terrible. Everything is just a series of contrived coincidences.

Chizuru is the only sane person in this show who’s just trying to get money and work toward her dream job. That is all.

Ruka forms the love triangle because Kazuya was nice to her one time, I guess. Her entire character is just to love him even though he doesn’t even want her/care about her. Think Yui Yuigahama but lobotomized and trepanned. You can self-insert as Kazuya and imagine being surrounded by all these chicks, but I’d honestly feel bad for you.

Sumi is a watered down amalgamation of Komi-san and Miku Nakano. The only point of her character is to be cute and submissive. She’s also my thirteen year old cousin’s waifu alongside Rem and Miku, which I find funny.

Mami is the best part about this show. Her interactions make for great content. It’s not often that a romcom has a shallow asshole ex as some main villain, but her saving grace doesn’t get enough screentime. I don’t know why she’s so engaged with Kazuya’s life, but what matters is that she makes the show watchable. She moves the plot forward more than he moves his dick.

I want you to know that KissAnime shut down while this season was airing, so piece the two together and it’s abundantly clear that Rent-a-Girlfriend was so awful KissAnime didn’t want to host it and offed itself. Thankfully, they won’t have to deal with hosting the second season in the afterlife.

Positives: The Peggies made the opening. It’s a good song. Like I said earlier, Kazuya’s pet fish is funnier than him and Kibe is too sensible for this show.

Oshi no Ko is a good look into the entertainment industry in Japan.

The main character Goro/Aqua’s story is engaging and the bulk of the story. It unpeels entertainers who don’t meet expectations and lose out on opportunities to grow, manga artists who have deadline grinds + shitty adaptations, actors in romcom dramas who are burdened by social pressure, being too old to be an idol and how easily replaceable they are, why I don’t talk to theater kids, and how a lot of jobs/livelihoods are on the line.

Much of the plot is relevant today and oddly educational if you know little about the nebulous entertainment ... industry and agencies. There’s mentions of YouTube, TikTok, livestreaming, social media, etc.

For example, there’s this scriptwriter who plays telephone with his manager, the producer, IP manager, editor, assistant editor, and finally the original author. He’s talented, creative, and genuinely cares about the manga source material as he’s turning it into a stage play, but all the miscommunication, deadlines, and tedious work fucks him over. When you think about shitty adaptations, it’s easy to blame those who just want money, but Oshi no Ko provides the complicated, nuanced reality.

Aqua participates in all of these things one way or another, providing some introspection into what show business is like. Turns out that being a part of it sucks ass and is soul-crushing. Still, the arcs usually end on a happy note thanks to Aqua helping out behind the scenes. It’s refreshing that these characters act like real people and not overexaggerated, trope-y anime cardboard cutouts who constantly scream and shriek. Reminds me of Beastars a bit.

Ruby, the other main character, gets shit all screentime and her goal of becoming an idol isn’t as deep right now. 52 chapters in and it took Ch. 32/the 4th arc for her to get a proper start. She’ll probably be much more influential later, but I don’t really read the manga for her.

The reincarnation aspect gets brushed off aside from Aqua and Ruby occasionally thinking about what they used to be and how they changed. It’s gonna matter when they realize their pasts are related.

Baking Soda and Akane are two girls who form a love triangle with Aqua, and are actors from different industries. Don’t care who wins because I don’t read for romance and it’s gonna be Baking Soda anyway.

Early spoilers: Goro dies and becomes Ai’s kid Aqua. Ai dies by like Ch. 10 and he enters the entertainment industry solely to find his father who probably orchestrated her death and kill him, as well as learn Ai’s past. The start is slow and not anything crazy, leaving some mysteries in the flash forward.

I really only picked this up to see what else the Genius Mangaka Aka Akasaka wrote and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s got his style of drama + comedy from Kaguya-sama and hints of edginess from Instant Bullet. Didn’t know much about Mengo Yokoyari until I found out she wrote Kimi wa Midara na Boku no Joou.

This stands at a low 9/10, so here’s to it going up in the future. It’s not Act-Age, but it doesn’t need to be. Shoutout to Ai’s Fanclub who translates this comic for my lazy ass to read for free. I’ll buy the English physical prints whenever my local Kinokuniya has them.