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This season of Tower of God, and particularly part 2, felt like everything was being ad-libbed. Like the characters are just making up lines and plot points as they go, because there is no overall structure to what's going on. You could honestly watch this show in a language you don't understand without subtitles and not miss much at all, because it's all just kinda nonsense anyway.

The pacing is a particular sore point, with things moving so quickly that absolutely nothing has any emotional impact at all, it feels like things are just happening randomly and you're supposed to nod along as you accept it ... without thinking about it at all.

I won't harp about the animation quality being abysmal, that horse has been beaten to death already. It continues to be as bad as it was in the first part of season 2, but since there are more fight scenes, it stands out more - the fights truly looked absolutely awful.

There are some positives. Some of the newly introduced characters are pretty cool, with visually appealing designs. Music continues to be stellar, a high point for Tower of God since its beginning. And while the actual lines that the characters speak are nonsense, the Japanese voice acting is superb - though that is to be expected given how they have some of the most high-profile voice actors working on this project. Perhaps that's where all their budget went and that's why they couldn't afford animation lol.

It's a terrible shame that season 2 is this awful. Don't get me wrong, season 1 wasn't a masterpiece either, it had tons of issues and the story was a bit of a mess there as well, but it had some interesting concepts and the visual design was unique and interesting. All of that has been ruined in season 2, it's one of very few anime I would legitimately describe as a trainwreck, but this really was a nuclear disaster of a show.

The plot for this anime was written by a 14 year old. I cannot explain why it's so bad in any other way.

Tokyo Revengers has an interesting plotlline: the main character goes back in time to try and stop the murder of his ex-girlfriend (and some other, less important characters') in the present. It's similar to that of Erased, which is why some people have compared the two - but such comparisons are simply insulting to Erased.

The most interesting part of such a plotline is how the main character will use the information he obtains in the present to change the past. This show seems ... to understand that, as to its credit, it spends a decent amount of time in the present, with the main character and his accomplice in time travel (the younger brother of said murdered ex-girlfriend) looking for information that can help them prevent these murders - which is the most interesting part of this show. They formulate a plan based on that information, and then the main character goes back in time... only to ignore or completely forget said information and act like a total idiot.

No, seriously. Tokyo Revengers is an extremely frustrating watch because of this - events will begin unraveling around the MC in the way that he KNOWS will unfold and lead to said murders, and it's within his power to prevent them. Alas no, all he does in this show is just scream and cry (literally!) until events just kind of magically resolve themselves because someone was impressed with how hard he cried or whatever. There's no sense of progression in the plot as a result, things just kind of happen and the MC is just there for it.

Staying with the plot for a bit, I'll be brutally honest and say that the writer who wrote this just cannot write. I would normally comment on the pacing for instance, but no such thing as "pacing" exists here -- event A doesn't lead to event B and so on. As I mention previously, things just kind of happen, and there's very often no logic why A happened and how that led to B. The plot just wanted B to happen, and the writer couldn't write a scenario that plausibly leads to it, so B just... happens, and it's very jarring to watch.

Now some of this could be explained by the fact that the characters in this show (at least in the past segment, where the majority of events we see take place) are 12-15 years old (the writer's mental age tbh), i.e. children, and children are illogcal creatures. But no, the show is completely inconsistent on that front - these children (who are riding bikes and beating up adults at age 12, lol) are portrayed as deeply mature in one scene, then in the next scene some inexplicable nonsense happens and you're thinking "WTF did I just watch?"

All in all, I really struggled to finish this show, which is uncharacteristic for me. There's usually SOMETHING that's decent about every show I've ever watched, something that I can enjoy about it, but there was no such silver lining to this cloud. The art is mediocre, the animation is atrocious, the music is bad (cool OP, but cool music starts playing out of nowhere while the MC is crying or something asinine happens, lol). This show is a disaster through and through, and I only give it a 4/10 because the time traveling premise was very interesting and I kept hoping it'd be utilized better later on... alas no such luck.

I'd recommend that you stay away from this show unless you're really starved for time travel "mystery" plotlines or you really like the "Japanese delinquent" aesthetic, which was honestly just butchered in this show anyway.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Hunter x Hunter was one of those shounen anime that I dropped back in the day after a few episodes because it was clear that it was just... yet another shallow shounen anime, with awful worldbuilding and terrible pacing, merely a focus on hype and action without much thought about stuff.

I decided to pick it up this year, both the 1999 and 2011 versions, to see if my hunch was right, and boy I was disappointed to see it was. This review is on the 2011 anime, which I consider particularly bad and a step down from the 1999 anime, which wasn't ... that great to begin with.

Artwork & Sound
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Being a high budget shounen anime, there's no denying that this show has superb artwork, animation and sound design. Action and fight scenes all look amazing, while in the 1999 version, the animation ranged from okay to laughably bad, so there's a massive improvement there and credit is due.

However, anyone who has watched the 1999 version before would have to point out one of the biggest issues with the 2011 version - the color palette. The 1999 version tends to be extremely dark and gritty, which serves very well to give the audience a sense of threat and danger coming from this large, mysterious world.

Meanwhile the 2011 version has a more colorful palette with overall brighter colours, which does not fit the setting at all, as people get murdered on screen and the only cue we get that this is a dangerous situation, is the superb sound design, which cannot carry the sense of dread and danger the audience should be feeling on its own.

A notable example of this is during the Hunter Exam arc, specifically the part where Gon is trying to steal Hisoka's badge. In the 1999 version, the scene takes place during night time, with most of the screen being obscured by darkness, helping the audience relate to the fear Gon would be feeling in that situation. Meanwhile, in the 2011, it takes place in the daytime, with bright green trees and beige rocks dominating the scene, undermining the sense of fear completely.

Story & Pacing
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MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

The story and worldbuilding are by far the largest weakness of Hunter x Hunter. They're honestly terrible, just completely nonsensical. The story revolves around Gon, a boy who wants to become a Hunter in order to meet his father, who has challenged Gon to find him... and then eventually he just kinda shows up and is like "hey Gon what's up", defeating the whole premise of the show.

For more examples, the entire Greed Island arc was 100% pointless, far too long and convoluted. It ultimately made no difference to the plot, it was just a fairly weak training arc. Meanwhile, the Hunter Exam arc, which serves as the series' foundational world-building, is kinda rushed through, specially compared to the 1999 version, and as a result we really don't get to know much about the world, its inhabitants, its mechanics, etc.

Another example of shoddy storywriting is Nen, the magical energy inside humans that allows them to accomplish supernatural feats. It's a top secret that only a select few know about - f.e. apparently Kilua's assassin family never even told him about it, it's that much of a secret - and then one day it's introduced in the show at roughly the 1/4 mark. From that point on everyone uses Nen, in increasingly quirky and unbelievable ways. It's the world's worst kept secret, and it takes very minimal thought to understand how little sense it makes from a worldbuilding PoV.

There's many pacing problems, which are very evident when compared to the 1999 version. The Hunter Exam arc scene I mentioned above for example - in the 2011, Gon just kind of sleeps Hisoka's punch off, acts weird for a few minutes, then all is well again. We do not get the sense of frustration and psychological turmoil that Gon experiences in this situation, because there's simply no time for it.

The pacing problems just keep getting exacerbated past the Greed Island arc, which is where the 1999 version left off at. The Chimera Ant arc lasts for what felt like 200 episodes, with super dragged out episodes that do not advance the plot one bit. The arc in general feels mostly meaningless, and then when it's over we get 10 episodes of the Chairman Election arc to wrap everything up at lightspeed pace.

EDIT: I realized that in this review I forgot to talk about one of the most horrible issues of this show as it relates to the storytelling & pacing: the narrator. I never thought I'd consider a narrator of a show an issue, since usually they're discrete, they just speak a couple of lines here and there to give additional context. But holy shit the constant narration in HxH 2011 - particularly in the Chimera Ant arc - is insufferable.

The show doesn't trust us that we understand that the big bad evil character is strong. No, the narrator has to go on this 2 minute tangent explaining JUST how strong he is, repeating stuff that the character just said and adding very minor context, usually relating to irrelevant Nen jargon. It can be mildly annoying to excruciating, with scenes being completely taken over by the narrator talking, or fights that have about 2-3 minutes worth of animation taking up the entirety of the 20-something minute episode, because the show pauses completely when the narrator is talking.

It's honestly such a baffling choice that I can't help but wonder if the person who decided that had brain damage of some kind, because it really just doesn't make sense from a storytelling point of view. It's the complete antithesis of "show, don't tell", and it drags on so freaking long.

Characters
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MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

The biggest victim of the show's awful pacing are its characters, and mostly the side characters.

Another one of the 1999 version's strong points is its attention to detail to minor characters. Even characters that are only around for 1 scene or 1 episode at most tend to have individual personalities, they tend to exhibit some sense of ulterior motive, they feel like living parts of the world. The 2011 version doesn't have time for that - all characters beyond the main cast and the villain of the day are simply NPCs, with a simple one-liner to help push the plot forward and nothing else to their name.

But minor side characters are not the only ones affected by this, by any means. More important characters, such as Chairman Netero, Hisoka, the Phantom Troupe members, etc have significantly diminished roles in the 2011 version and all suffer for it, being mostly 1-dimensional characters with very little personality for a very big part of the show.

To give an example of how bad this issue gets, you have the character of Kite. One of Gon's father's closest friends and pupil, who was the one that spurred Gon to become a Hunter, and some sort of father figure and teacher for Gon. He is in the show for a mind-boggling 9 episodes before he dies, and his death is supposed to be this shocking event that psychologically destroys Gon to the point of becoming suicidal... after knowing him for 9 episodes, in a show that had ran for 85 episodes already at the time, a trivial amount of time.

The only redeeming quality to all of this are Killua and Kurapica. Another way to put it is that as long as Gon is not involved, the show is decent. They have incredible depth as characters, and their character arcs are actually intertwined with the world in general in a sensible way, unlike Gon and his entire character arc which is mostly stand-alone and largely makes no sense.

Summary
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Honestly I've used a lot of words to say that this show is bad. And it is. There's some good to it, but it's largely not worth it, suffering through painfully bad pacing and awful worldbuilding for the few good moments there.

If you do decide to watch this show, I recommend that you start with the 1999 version to get a glimpse of some of its good parts at least, because most of them aren't there anymore in the 2011 version. I'd also recommend that you fast forward through the Greed Island and Chimera Ant arcs because they have particularly bad pacing compared to the rest of the show.

I've heard that as of late the manga has focused mostly on Kurapika, and I sincerely hope that continues to be the case and one day we get a sequel based on that arc with better pacing, because that legitimately could be interesting. That's about all the positivity I could muster for this show.

TLDR: Toaru Majutsu no Index II is a less confused mess of a show than the first season, that has improved on its story but still handles its characters spectacularly bad.

General

After finishing Index, I was not too eager to see what happens in Index II, I'll be honest. I was expecting more of the first season as the writer seemed really incompetent and only interested in fan service and furthering his power-fansty through his obvious self-insert in Touma, the main character.

But I decided to give it a go, see if it perhaps gets better, and I was pleasantly surprised that it did. There were still ... massive issues with the story and the characters, but in certain regards it was better than the previous season.

Story - 5/10

To put it simply, the story is still a jumbled mess. It's still cut into 4-5 episode arcs while each arc's plot feels like it'd take at least twice that many episodes to meaningfully be flshed out. There's still a barrage of random stuff and jargon that is usually completely inconsequential.

In certain ways, the show is even more formulaic than before, as it sticks even more strictly to the "new villain appears, some random stuff happens, Touma punches the villain in the face" formula. This time he's mostly punching girls rather than guys, but their motivations are just as laughable as in season 1, so not a whole lot has changed there.

But at the very least, the arcs are no longer self-contained. There's some degree of cohesion between them and they affect the larger plot. For instance, the events of the end of the first arc are the basis of the events of the last arc. A fairly small event in the first arc actually has some impact in another subsequent arc.

And for once, the worlds of magic and science actually interact with one another in a meaningful way. It's not much - the beef that so and so villain affilitiated with the church has with Academy City is usually incredibly dumb and convoluted - but it's something.

The pacing of the story remains its biggest obstacle, as things happen way too quickly generally for them to have any impact on you. After a while it becomes boring because you just don't pay attention to the story. However that's generally massively improved in the last 2 arcs - featuring Accelerator once again, what a surprise - which manage to be the highlights of this season with their solid pacing.

Characters - 3/10

The side characters of this show were its biggest crime is what I said in my season 1 review, and this is still true here. There's still too many of them, and the show keeps introducing even more, all with really silly motivations and not enough screen time to be fleshed out at all.

But at least there's some cohesiveness to them. Generally, after Touma punches the villain, they now join his team instead of being completely forgotten, giving them a small albeit real sense of importance within the plot, as they're usually back with a minor role in subsequent arcs.

Index once again has a very minor roles in every arc, but at least she's featured in all of them for more than a couple of minutes. Her character is relegated even further into being #1 in Touma's harem, however, which is unfortunate.

But that's a problem with mostly every female character in season 2 as they REALLY lean on Touma's harem there. Even characters that previously had some decent plot significance, like Kanzaki Kaori, have now been sidelined to simping for Touma. The villains all fall in love with Touma after being punched in the face. It's honestly pretty annoying.

Art & Sound - 8/10 & 7/10

The art was season 1's strongest point and it remains true here. Fights scenes, wide panoramic shots of the city, solid animation, all very defining of this show.

The scale of the battles is now even larger than before, but the fight scenes still manage to convey a sense of action and urgency that's just right, despite the comical motivations of the villain usually making them fairly silly.

The sound quality has been improved for the largest part, too. It's not particularly noteworthy, but it mostly helps build up hype when the fight scene is coming, suspense when things are getting difficult, etc. It's subtle, but it's very much there.

Enjoyment - 6/10

I'd honestly rate my enjoyment of the first 20 or so episodes as 3/10 or 4/10. It was more of season 1, with annoying jargon that mostly went nowhere, confusing explanations for things that don't matter, villains with hilariously bad motivations and annoying personality quirks that just end up being tsundere for Touma's attention, etc.

In many ways it got worse than in season 1 because the pacing was so off that I just lost interest in what was happening. The various plotlines are so convoluted that even if you miss a large part of them, you haven't missed all that much in the end, anyway.

But the final 4-5 episodes delivered on the promise of the first 2 episodes of season 1. They were very well paced, with exciting action scenes, interaction between the worlds of magic and science, and actual character development for multiple characters, most notably Accelerator once again. I'd honestly rate these last 2 arcs as 8/10 to 9/10.

It's a shame that it took so long for it finally get on course, but at least it did. I am hoping season 3 and the Accelerator spin-off keep up at this pace and don't revert back to the same formulaic nonsense that was season 1 and the first half of season 2.

Overall - 5/10

TLDR: Toaru Majutsu no Index is a confused mess of a show that suffers from an exceptionally jumbled story and too many uninteresting and undeveloped characters.

I don't usually write reviews, and I don't usually give bad scores, but Toaru Majutsu no Index was such a truly bizarre experience that I felt I had to write about it.

General

I had originally watched all 3 seasons of Railgun and loved it. The first season started off very slow, but eventually it ramped up to something very interesting, with great pacing and well fleshed-out characters that for the most part felt like they contributed to the show.

Then I decided ... to watch Index in order to get some more context on Touma's power, and after the first 2 episodes I was hooked. It felt strange that apparently this massive plot was taking place at the same time as Railgun's plot, but it was very interesting nonetheless, with some very promising storyline hooks. Which led absolutely nowhere.

Story - 3/10

This show's weakest point is by far its story structure and cohesiveness. It follows a pretty strict format of 3-4 episode self-contained arcs where a new villain or threat is introduced. But the villains' motivations are comically stupid and their methods are nonsensical.

So the villain shows up, does bad stuff, bunch of random stuff happens and Touma punches the villain in the face with his magical hand after giving a childish speech. That's the the general format of each arc, and it's very unsatisfying.

It's all made worse by the fact that Touma's speeches make 0 sense, and I'm usually a fan of preachy characters. The delivery of his speech is incredibly stupid and their content is usually just "don't do the bad thing!!"

Moreover, the show has a habit of throwing out a bunch of random stuff at you, like the names of places, organizations, characters, abilities etc, but these largely don't even matter within their self-contained arc. They are never explained, and as soon as the arc is over, it's as if nothing had ever happened.

For instance, after the first arc's ending, Touma suffers from COMPLETE AMNESIA. No memories of his previous life whatsoever. But that essentially doesn't matter at all for the next arc, is very slightly relevant 2 arcs later, and then goes back to not being important at all for the rest of the show. Why would that plotline then even exist at all then? Nobody knows.

It's important to note that this mostly concerns the magical side of the show. The science side, mostly relating to Academy City, Misaka, etc, all suffer from the similarly weak arc structure, but largely avoid the problems of pointless, inconsequential jargon, there's some sort of continuity there.

Characters - 3/10

The characters of Index are its second weakest point. Not in their backgrounds and premises, but in the way the show handles them and their development.

For instance, Touma, the main character. I'm honestly a fan of the "I'll save everyone no matter what!" type of main character, in anime that execute them well at least. But this show really doesn't.

It reveals too little about his background and the origin of his power, it never fleshes out his overarching motivations or gives any context as to why he's this much of a goody two-shoes. He's also inexplicably good at hand-to-hand combat, being able to defeat enemies significantly stronger than him.

Then you have Index. Her character is incredibly frustrating. She's not a very deep character, but her property as a collection of forbidden grimoires containing immense knowledge and power, is very interesting. I was looking forward to her bond with Touma developing as they avoid being captured by the various organizations that are apparently after her.

Except after the first arc, nothing happens with that plotline, or indeed, Index altogether. She's relegated to being a comic relief tsundere that's on screen for a couple of minutes per arc, and even not at all during a certain arc. She's the titular character and she gets less screen time than the side characters.

Speaking of whom, the side characters in this show are probably its greatest crime. There's simply far too many of them for the show to spend any time meaningfully fleshing them out, so what's left of them is a cardboard cutout representing something that could have been.

As I mention in the story section, the show throws so much random jargon about these characters at you, such as the name of the organization they belong in, the name of their abilities, etc.

But it never builds up on it, it's jargon for jargon's sake. The characters' motivations are bafflingly stupid and as soon as their arc is over, it's as if their arc had never happened at all. It's impossible to describe just how frustrating Index's treatment of its side characters is.

The one exception in all of this mess - and you've probably heard this one before - is the character of Accelerator. While he's also only in the show for a small fraction of its total run-time, he manages to breathe some fresh air into what's an otherwise extremely frustrating line-up of unexplored characters, as he gets some great character development. It's incredibly ironic that the one character that kind of keeps it interesting is on the science side, not the magical side at all.

Art & Sound - 8/10 & 6/10

Honestly this is Index's redeeming quality. While the sound is by no means outstanding, it's at least decent enough, while its art and animation does all of the work. It's fact difficult to believe how a show with such glaring storyline problems managed to get such a high budget for its art, but it really is very good.

The fight scenes are all very well choreographed and animated, which is impressive given that Touma's power makes most of them close quarters. They're well paced, and there's a decent balance between flashy effects and just normal stuff happening.

The backgrounds and environments all have a very good amount of detail, and while the character designs range from decent to bland, they are animated well enough that you don't really mind the simplicity of their designs. Less is more works there.

Enjoyment - 6/10

Honestly, despite its many, many drawbacks, I still enjoyed Index. If you can just switch your brain off and not hyper-focus on how what's currently happening on the screen makes no sense at all, you can still enjoy some light-hearted humour and some decent action scenes. It's like a bad Hollywood popcorn flick in that sense.

Overall

However, even though I enjoyed it, there's no getting around the fact that this show is just bad.

The amount of wasted potential, mostly with the character of Index and some of the prominent side characters, just feels sad.

Moreover, the disconnect between each arc feels incredibly jarring. I had to go back to the previous episode just to check that I hadn't skipped an episode by accident multiple times, the show was just too happy to completely throw away the previous arc's events in preparation of a new villain that would 100% get the same treatment.

There's a parallel universe out there, where the writer decided to focus on Index and the magical world rather than Touma and his increasingly more peculiar harem. They go on dangerous adventures together, and explore this side-story to Railgun's incredible story that kind of explains why Touma has his magical hand. Alas we do not live in that universe, and that is perhaps the most frustrating part about Toaru Majutsu no Index.

TL;DR: If you're interested in this because you liked Mirai Nikki, read the manga first. The anime makes very little sense if you haven't read the manga first, sadly.

I really wanted to enjoy this anime because I loved Mirai Nikki and I had already read the manga. It was immediately alarming however that this was a 10 episode anime, as the manga had a lot of material. The only way this would work would be if this was a season 1 that covered the first part of the manga, but alas, that was not the case.

It is apparent to anyone who has read the manga ... that in order to fit everything into 10 episodes they cut everything they didn't deem 100% necessary for plot progression, such as explanations for the characters' powers and character development, which is why it feels like things are going too fast, there's just no downtime. They even cut 2 entire arcs for some reason.

I could forgive all of this, honestly, but they didn't even freaking manage that either - the anime ends at the end of the manga's part 1.

This next section will contain spoilers.

Manga readers already know who the characters are, how their powers work, the reasons behind some of the things that happen that were never explained due to a lack of time, etc, so it was passable to us - despite being an enormous clusterfuck to everyone else, of course.

What really can't be forgiven though is that despite all of the sacrifices they made, essentially turning the anime into a very long "last time on Big Order..." sequence that makes no sense by itself, they still failed with completing the story in those 10 episodes and went with the oh-so-hated choice of an anime-exclusive ending, finishing the story at chapter 32 - and the manga goes on for another 16 bloody chapters.

All of the show's build-up falls short because of this. Rin's inner turmoil over being wrong about Eiji and dealing with her emotions, Iyo's rivalry with Rin and maturing as a character, Sena's... anything really, Sena didn't even get her moment of glory when she was debating Gennai trying to convince the world that Eiji was innocent - they cut that to save time herp derp - so they could have at least given her part of the character development she got in the manga, - nope, not even that. I won't even get into the not-so-minor characters such as the Group of Ten and Hiiragi in particular.

One could even forgive that they messed up twice like that, but no, the new ending is just horrible. Big Order was never big on coherency but the anime ending takes the cake here - in the span of 2 minutes they introduce the "God" character, establish her invulnerability, and then get rid of her. And following this, we are taken to the next arc of the manga, where Eiji, Rin and Iyo are attending school together... except no, because it ends here with a bittersweet happy ending and no closure on anything.

Honestly anime adaptations like these serve no purpose and would have been better off left unproduced until a respectable budget can be attained. It's a disservice to Esuno Sakae and the fans of Mirai Nikki otherwise.