Back to Silcaria's Profile Silcaria's Profile

Monster of the week tokusatsu series with no real plot or character progression, with almost every episodes being carbon copies of each other.

Nobody figures out who Devilman is. No one is proactive towards achieving anything. Devilman doesn't need to train to get stronger since he's just busted right out the gate. Character relations aren't worked on. etc, etc. The fact that Go Nagai worked on this with Toei and decided to go the exact same route a few years later with Great Mazinger is wild to me, especially when he worked on titles with better narrative structure in-between. But hey, whatever makes money, I ... guess.

For being a tokusatsu, the fights are a bore. Akira has a few attacks that he uses. Three are brawling moves, two more are powered up range attacks, and lastly, he has this one big finishing move that can pretty much one shot anyone called devil beam that he can use multiple times in a row. Now, here's the thing, 95% of all fight scenes are structured in a way to pad out time. Outside of maybe two or three encounters, where there's an in-story reason for why he can't just his devil beam attack immediately and call it a way, they all happen in way to last as long as possible in order to stretch the runtime. Instead of just seeing whoever he needs to defeat and blasting them to kingdom come, he'll kick them, chase them around, wrestle, punch them, and finally, after jerking off for six minutes, he'll use his devil beam to finish them off. The fact that it bothers to give a reason a few times as to why he couldn't just one shot them makes every other battles all the more insulting, as well as making every fight scenes super formulaic.

Despite all the characters starting off as completely unlikeable some of them do get better. The MC becomes less of an asshole. He doesn't grow, he just becomes less of a dick. The little kiddo, Tare, becomes more than just a comedic relief character that pisses his pants every time something happens. This is mainly due to him him getting a little girlfriend. There's also one character that gets introduced in the last quarter that I found to be the redeeming part of the entire thing that made finishing the series much more bearable.

Unfortunately, it has no conclusion or resolution to speak of. The last episode may as well be any other. The big bad still has a legion of demons at his disposable ready to go hunt Devilman. The series just kind of ends abruptly.

Production-wise, outside of the first one, there's maybe five or six other episodes that are nice to look at. The rest are average to below average in terms of art and animation. Sound design is also pretty average.

In the end, much like Great Mazinger, 1972 Devilman is a show that doesn't care or try to be anything more than an episodic monster of the week series. If you really want to watch Devilman, watch any other entry in the franchise.

Stand-alone movie length mini arc story that turns into a three hour ordeal through pointless fluff. The story reaches its natural conclusion in episode one. That alone should've simply been fleshed out and developed more in order to be a 1h30 film. Had it been that, this would've been fine. Unfortunately, it gets stretched beyond its perfectly fine ending point via retcons and plot convenience.

Half the second episode is unnecessary, whereas the third has its conflict arise from a situation in which Kenshiro shouldn't be in. Even if it truly wanted to go past the plot of episode 1, there's still no reason why it ... is as long as it is. At worst, SHnK should have been no more than two hours, not three.

Speaking of plot convenience and the dumb scenario of the third episode. The original series saw Kenshiro bend metal, blow stuff up, and lift boulders the size of buildings. What keeps Kenshiro from going and beating the bad guy in episode 3? A cell with metal bars. The same type of metal bars that he was previously shown being able to bend.

With all that said, it's not horrible. It's not as good as HnK, but it is better than the sequel.

This series is alright. It does a fine enough job parodying shoujo, the production is good, and the comedy is fairly solid. With that said, it isn't perfect.

Beyond being a comedy, it doesn't really do much else. There's no real plot, the romance aspect remains stagnant, there's no character growth, and the school setting is there more so to get all the key characters together than anything else. With how the parents are basically nonexistent, the kids may as well have been adults living an everyday life.

The production side of things is probably the show's strongest point. It's well directed, visually consistent, and looks good ... from the beginning until the end. The sound design is also great.

Watch this if you want a quasi-shoujo parody.

Seeing as it's a continuous story, I'm writing this review to cover both seasons.

This series is made by the same guy as Detonator Orgun and Dangaizer 3. It had some potential. The core issues can essentially be boiled down to the series being bloated, whilst simultaneously not knowing what to do with its runtime.

For a show that constantly add things to its narrative, it spends way too little time developing/fleshing things out, and too much on its comedy and raunchiness. Having so many things happen offscreen, when half of almost each episodes, and all of some, get spent on things that neither service the ... plot, nor the characters, is an affront to the audience.

Aside from the aforementioned problems, it also leads to there being narrative creep, abandoned plot points, characters that are nothing more than archetypes, pacing issues, lack of proper worldbuilding, lack of development, lack of fleshing out, a B plot that may as well not be there, mystery bait for the sake of mystery bait, continuity errors, etc, etc.

It also missed out on doing certain seemingly obvious things with what it had. For example, let's take the main mecha of the IP, Gravion. It has human piloted add-ons. The series could've explored themes of trust or even PTSD. The trust aspect from the cast not having enough faith in one another to fire/be fired at the enemy, and the PTSD aspect stemming from the potential harm that they could be facing by being shot at the bad guys/ the harm that their companions could face were they to shoot them at the bad guys. Instead, it does nothing more with it than use it for extra rule of cool points. It's not the biggest deal, but I can't help but feel like a more competent team of writers and a better director would've gone for either of those.

Production-wise, there's not much to talk about. It's pretty average. Although, the song playing during the combination sequence of season 1 is awesome.

Ultimately, trimming all the fat would've resulted in the story being concised, as well as having a wayyyyyyyy shorter runtime.

Schlocky action OVA with some raunchiness. This made by the same creator/director as Orgun and Gravion. It's also the best looking of the three. There's not much to say besides the fact that it looks nice. Ohh and there's no resolution. I assume there were planning to do more with it, but cancelled the project due to it not selling well. That or some other reason, I don't care enough to look into it.

Despite the eye candy, I wouldn't recommend it. There's better looking shows and movies out there that look just as good, and even better, that actually have proper stories.

Crossover movie. Despite the name saying vs, they actually team up in order to beat the bad guys of each stories who have also allied together. The plot is nonsensical, and requires retcons in order to work. It's completely written in a way to make the two stories merge together. The dialogue is also pretty wank. With that said, it has the type of action that both series needed.

One of the biggest problem with the 70s Tokusatsu show is their villain of the week format. Despite facing a major villain that's trying to take over the world, said bad guy always sends one of his ... minion at a time instead of many. Now, there's a couple of reasons for this. One of which being that it would make fight scenes harder to draw and animate, thus taking more time and more money. The other being that they couldn't draw out the series for as long as possible.

This movie rectifies that and gives fans what they had been wanting by having both protagonist take on 10 or so Kaijus at a time, which is pretty cool and fuels the big scale fight scenes that many fans crave. Other than that, it's pretty much like any other episodes of either series, albeit, with better visuals. It's a fun short watch, but that's about it.

This show is a mixed bag. Its first half is a cookie cutter detective show, albeit, with a supernatural gimmick, whereas the second half is where the plot actually kicks in. Even then, it's pretty hit or miss, with the last few episodes salvaging it.

The biggest problem it has, is that at its core, the plot revolves around a mystery. This isn't an inherent issue. The problem is the execution. It essentially has two plot lines that branch out before converging together at the end. Plot A is the mystery, and plot B is a fairly simple narrative driven by a conflict between different groups.

The ... A plot is fine, but moves at a snail pace. Despite the core narrative only being present in the second half, the pacing could've been better. The B plot is mainly there to serve as a way to tie everything together at the end of the show. On its own, it's bad. Mainly because the conflict driving it is nonsensical and shouldn't even be happening to begin with.

Produciton wise, it's pretty average.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this. There's better detective show out there, and better mystery series as well.

You know, I was a bit apprehensive going into this series after being told it inspired a lot of filth. Thankfully, it wasn't anywhere as bad as I thought it would be. Watamote is actually an alright comedy that is well directed, and that has a level of quality that was unexpected. It has a good amount of continuity, call backs, and most of its jokes land. With that said...

The plot goes nowhere, nothing comes out of the few relationships the MC has, there's no resolution, and despite showing some character development, The MC doesn't grow. By the end, she's still the same perverted-anti social-chuuni ... that she was at the beginning. Also, despite most of the jokes landing, the humour is fairly formulaic, and for the most part, banks on the same set up for a lot of its jokes and gags, making it fairly repetitive. Had this gotten a second season, it would've needed to do more with its comedy and branch out, otherwise, it would have gotten old. Think Konosuba.

With all that said, I enjoyed my brief foray with this series. For what it is, it's alright.

A short 4 episode OVA with a badly executed premise and bad worldbuilding. It also lacks focus and concentrates too much on mystery baiting despite providing no payoff whatsoever to any of said mysteries on top of having a cliffhanger hanging. The third episode has very little going on in it and drags on for way to long.

Characters are nothing but archetypes. They do get fleshed out a bit in the last episode, not that it matters since again, nothing happens. Also, the MC is unbearable. The way she's written would be fine were she to go through any form of character growth but she ... doesn't at any point which leaves her to be a cowardly crybaby for the entire runtime which gets old really fast.

The production of the show goes from average to fine. The badly blended CGI probably being its weakest link.

Overall, it's not a something worth watching. It tries to be and do too much and fails at everything that it tries to accomplish.