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On the surface this is a show about how science won out over backwards theology. Science is fucking epic and it beat the church's stupid }&oRBass with facts and logic. Thanks to our modern perspective on the model of the universe, that is an easy way to interpret this show.

However this is really an anime about how the state and the prevailing belief system we live under exists through violence and and terror. It wasn't just people being backwards that kept people believing in geocentrism--it was torture, murder, and fear. The only hope for escaping such a regime is to be ready to suffer and ... die pointlessly; until you and your fellow heretics can overwhelm its enforcers, who will basically always win, nothing changes. All that the heretics can do is to "simply accept the nightmare that confronts [them]." Only those who are truly determined to lose everything else for their beliefs make any real contribution to the furthering of those beliefs.

And beyond simple torture, the state is always ready to exploit anything someone cares about: friends, family, possessions, works, in order to ensure its interests are put above all else. The show is accurately nightmarish in its depiction of state power and willingness to violence. The main villain of Orb is one of the most genuinely terrifying people depicted in animation since Ed Wuncler from The Boondocks.

It's also an anime about the hope of discovery and the personal fulfillment of having complete conviction in your own beliefs. People who seemed to be in complete despair despite believing in the eternal paradise afterlife of church orthodoxy found much greater hope in the belief that the church was wrong. The idea that prevailing ideology is wrong and there is a better way is a powerful motivator, even allowing many to believe that destroying the prevailing ideology is worth sacrificing themselves and handing the torch to the next generation.

This is a show that visually depicts the highest beauty, with incredibly gorgeous images of the unfiltered night sky as we would see it without modern light pollution. It also depicts the horrors that people are capable of, with marathon torture sessions in dark basements--however, it is not torture porn, and does so in a tasteful way. The character designs are unique but fitting for medieval Poland; no one feels out of place. The background art likewise is fantastic. There is also great attention paid to the lighting; since this was pre-electricity, scenes are often much darker than they would typically be, and used in a way that add a lot of tension.

The characters are well-developed, even when they last an episode or two. Each has their own unique motivations, fears, relationships, quirks, and arcs. The longest-lived character seems to be a constant, but by the end has clearly started to change. It would be easy to say that you're rooting for the protagonists to prove their beliefs, but that isn't actually true. They add the very real complexity of people who believe things that are true and want to prove it, but are awful people who you don't really want to win.

This show is a gem, a rare anime depiction of European history that really works. Also c'mon the show is named "Orb". Watch the Orb show. Orb.

This show is way overrated. It's enjoyable enough, but it basically has one joke (what if food was so good it made you cum haha get it?). I did watch to the end so it wasn't totally offputting, but there are better cooking comedy anime out there, like Yakitate Japan, that have more than a single joke.

Soma also has some extreme plot armor so the drama isn't very good either. The food art and the Aldini brothers were probably the main thing that kept me watching.

If you think people getting horny over food is riotously funny, then you'll like this, I guess. But for ... everyone else, I would recommend browsing through the "gourmet" anime for less overrated ones before catching this one.

Gundam 0083 is the absolute pinnacle of cel-shaded animation, rivaled only by Gunbuster. It also has a great 80s-era soundtrack, certainly one of the better ones among Gundam series.

The only problem is it uses that animation & soundtrack to tell one of the most dogshit Gundam stories I've ever seen.

One half of the show is every character making the worst, most nonsensical decisions possible. Like the equivalent of your mortal enemy dropping their gun and you picking it up and handing it to them and saying you're sorry that happened to them.

The other half is every male character being over-the-top horny (but not enough ... to be funny) for the blonde white lady character, and the other female characters acting like giddy middle schoolers about it. There is no perceptible depth to anyone in the show, and no real reason to care about any of them. I mostly just want to yell at them for being complete dipshits all the time. The one exception is Mora Borscht, who has a terrible name but is an absolute queen and the only character with any personality.

It's really unfortunate, not only because of the animation & sound, but also because it has Hajime Katoki's mecha designs, which are some of the coolest in all of Gundam. I'm rewatching it right now and even though I hate it, I'm continuing to the end just to see Neue Ziel in action.

If you're a Gundam freak or a completionist, then you'll have to watch this. But if you aren't compelled by an obsession or other mental disorder to watch every UC Gundam, skip this one. Or maybe just watch the first and last episodes.

The first third of the show is outstanding. It has youth liberation, poly relationships, and a militant worker's revolution.

But of course it's a commercial product so that all sort of fizzled out and it turned into just another super robo anime with shallow badass characters. It's enjoyable enough to keep watching to last episode, but the ending is very bad. They tried to have some sort of moral pathos with the epilogue that is not earned at all by the events of the show.

I would recommend the first 20 or so episodes. Then just watch a better Gundam.

Summary: This show is really good for just having something on the TV while you work or when you can't stay awake because you're 32 and one benadryl takes you out for half a day now.

The show strikes a weird mix, it's like Gintama but not as funny, Dai Guard but not as charming, and idk what other shonen I'm thinking of to compare the action to. It's pretty corny in the exact way that tokusatsu shows are.

Simply put, its main strength is that Osamu is almost completely incompetent and doesn't magically become stronger through cursory training like in similar shows.

The animation is pretty ... bad so the action isn't very fun to watch. It's mostly serious so it's not a straight up comedy. The plot doesn't move forward very much in this season so it's not particularly story-driven.

But, Osamu is very relatable to us as people who aren't an alien child soldiers with science magic bodies or murdered parents, so it's easy to stay interested in what happens to him. The other characters are mostly well-developed and have clear and consistent motivations and behavior. Many of them are even likeable.

If you're looking for something that's really good, you can skip this one. But if you're looking for something to watch casually, or if you really like tokusatsu-like kaiju battle shows, you can probably get into this.

And I do love when the announcer guy says "turiga, on!" at the end of the episode.

Beastars first season was very surprising to me. I didn't expect a show about anthropomorphic animals to be as good as it was, especially since the last comparable thing I saw was the popular US CGI animal copaganda movie. The characters were multifaceted and there was a pretty intricate set of conflicts.

Beastars second season was more surprising in that it was only okay.

Here are my issues with it:

-The story is almost entirely focused on the singular storyline of fighting Tem's murderer, and some of the major developments in that story didn't feel earned.
-The alternate storyline feels repetitive or stagnant rather than having a back and ... forth tension
-Haru was almost completely absent, and her reactions to Legoshi basically disappearing reappearing at will didn't seem realistic.
-The new character, Pina, seems to exist just to move the plot along. He's hyper-competent, except when he isn't, and I didn't understand his motivations.
-Multiple deus ex machina to resolve the conflicts. All the time spent training, which was essentially the entire season, was seemingly pointless.

The characters and momentum from the first season are enough to carry the bad writing across the finish line but if this were a standalone show I would probably say it's just not good. If you're reading this when season 3 comes out and don't have unlimited time to watch anime all day, I would say skip everything after Tem's murderer is discovered and go straight to the next season.

I already have very little love for Sword Art Online. I have mainly watched it as something to have on in the background while I work. I don't find find it very engaging; its sole virtue is its production value. GGO was, for me, the best season, because it had cool fights.

Alicization was a little different. I thought it did a much better job of creating tension and stakes than the previous incarnations. It actually developed the character relationships. It actually managed to be something other than background watching.

War of Underworld is not only back to being background level for me, it's not even very ... satisfying on that level. With only a handful of exceptions, there aren't really any fights. They're more like massacres: hordes of monsters show up, and then a knight says something epic and mows them all down. There's no back and forth, no tension, a without ever creating a feeling that the protagonists might lose, there's no stakes.

By the time the season ended, the feeling I had was "that's it?" I'm not even sure that you'd have to watch this season to understand what's happening in the story. You could probably skip all but the first episode or two and have no trouble following the next season.

This is a refreshingly different isekai series that I have been recommending to everyone. The main conceit of the show is creating modern technology from stone age implements, but what really drew me in was the overarching ideological conflict. Everyone I tell about this conflict, including people who normally don't like anime, think it's really interesting and want to check the show out.

That said, the biggest downside of that conflict is that I side with Tsukasa much more heavily than Senku, so it's hard to root for the protagonist. I have read to the current chapter of the manga, and every subsequent action Senku takes ... only confirms how correct Tsukasa was in episode 2.

Another big issue I have with the show is that it's very fanservice-y, which I warn people about when I recommend it. There is one frame in the show with Ruri that is easily the most pornographic thing I have ever seen in a shonen anime. Fortunately the show's strengths make up for the faults of being too horny and having a villain protagonist.

Finally, the author's understanding of pre-state civilization is wildly incorrect and based on the "common sense" mythos that most people share (e.g. we invented farming so we could increase our population further b/c H-G societies are more susceptible to famine, nobody could store food for the winter, the strongest guy of the group ruled, etc.). Of course I'm not completely insane so I don't have such a strong expectation for the author to get this right that it ruins my enjoyment of the show.

Anyone who likes Star Trek will almost certainly enjoy Dr. Stone. Anyone who likes survival crafting games will almost certainly enjoy Dr. Stone. Anyone who likes to see any representation of a communist, even an evil caricature, will almost certainly enjoy Dr. Stone. Watch it, it's good.

This is a criminally underrated show. Considering it's the flagship series of a massive commercial franchise, it's extremely baffling how this is the show that got made: There is almost no action, the story progression is extremely slow, there is zero fanservice (a major bonus as far as I'm concerned), and nearly the entire show is just still shots and dialogue. There is even a gay relationship between two of the main characters that involves neither offensive okama caricatures nor awkward unfunny homophobia nor titillating male gaze lesbian kiss scenes.

The story's conceit, of getting stuck in an online game, is basic by now thanks to ... .hack spawning a litany of rip-offs, but those series are mere specks of dirt on the soles of .hack//Sign's boots.

This is a show about the alienation we feel in modern society, the dangers of not logging off (thank you to my friend Abdul for that one), overcoming abusive parents, confronting your failures as a father, and the joys of escapism. The series tells you the importance of not getting sucked into escapist fantasies, in the gentlest, most sympathetic way possible.

Thanks to this being the start of an enormous franchise, there is a lot of depth to the story, setting, and characters that's lacking in generic stuck in a video game isekai clone #45992. If only the games had been more timeless, I could spend months going down .hack rabbit holes.

Every character is exceptionally written. If you disagree it's because you don't have friends and think characters are only good when they're likable. These characters are good precisely because they're not totally likable; just like real people, they have relationships outside of you, they have moments where they are too stressed or frustrated to be friendly or helpful or funny or insightful, they don't have complete self-awareness, and when they experience those negative emotions it's not necessarily in a way that's funny or entertaining.

The art is great for the time the show was produced. It looks a little dated now, but it also perfectly fits the feel of a real MMO, which is slightly empty and not lived-in. If the show were made today, Mac Anu would probably look more like a real city than a fake game city populated by NPCs.

The soundtrack is 10/10 and only rivaled by Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. One of the only anime soundtracks I have ever chosen to listen to in my free time and that my musician friends appreciate. The show is worth watching just to hear 12 hours of Yuki Kajiura music.

Basically, this show kicks ass and deserves to be what everyone thinks of when they think of isekai.

For once, this show's politics are exactly as bad as the woke liberals say. It's definitely an incel fantasy with a loli harem and slavery apologism. If you can't watch a show while hating the politics and the main protagonist, you won't like this.

However, there's something about it that makes it entertaining enough to keep watching. Among the half dozen isekai series I watched, this was far from the most repellent, despite its unequivocally bad politics and horribly unlikable protagonist.

The show's craft is much better than a lot of other popular isekai series. Despite the main antagonist primarily being a shallow caricature of an ... evil conniving Stacy that torments the incel hero for fun, she and the other female characters still feel like they have actual personalities, especially when compared to, say, TensuRa, where the women are just walking pairs of tits for the protagonist to enjoy.

The subplots are interesting and have some amount of tension, even while we know the protagonist is the typical isekai power fantasy of a loser otaku turned invincible bad ass. It feels like there are actual stakes to the action, which is where a lot of other isekai (e.g. SAO) fail.

You find yourself rooting for Naofumi a bit, even while you realize he's a vengeful prick who helps others only as a way to get back at the people who wronged him. You want him to become a better person, even if you realize the world of the story is completely contrived to make it seem like he has no choice but to be a slave owning scumbag.

This is the rare show that I enjoyed and will most likely continue watching but have no earthly idea why I enjoyed it or why I want to see more. However, it's definitely no masterpiece, so again, if you're put off by the truly awful politics of the show, you're not missing much.