A storm has come for the future of anime. One with the potential to destroy good taste for the next decade, as mass cope and denial run rampant along with the name of this season's new Top Slop Anime: Solo Levelling.
Short Summary and ‘TL;DR’ waiting at the bottom.
In this preliminary period, most reviews and takes are read as desperate cope from manhwa readers, unwilling to accept that their beloved series has been made into a mediocre, substanceless slop - filled with glaring and awkward issues within its very first few minutes. In some cases these reviews have convinced me in their own words why
...
this show should be at best, a 5, then proceed to give it a higher rating anyways. It's as if those who don’t like this show slept through some sort of psy-op; people with garbage taste both like or hate this show, and the same can be said of people with good taste. It's bizarre.
This anime wasn't made for greatness of any description, a statement I'm very comfortable making as we are seven episodes in. The character work is lazy or non-existent, the premise is childish, Grade-A ‘cringe’, and the pacing of many episodes, let alone the first three, serves to kill interest for anyone without high levels of patience.
The art is fine, the music is swell, but the rating of five is written on it as-well. Unlike most people it seems, I'm not afraid to delve fully into why this preliminary has thus far been dull, poorly paced and nonsensical, lacking anything to bite down on and actually invest in. I know most anime fans are beyond understanding this, but stories are supposed to be more than power fantasy garbage. Power Fantasy is at its most tolerable when there are things to supplement otherwise uninteresting or predictable story-telling, like the other characters or creative plot-threads, something this show hellaciously avoids.
I’m not going to wait for the preliminary to finish, it's time to accept this creation for what it is: and that’s mid.
Premise -
First, I’ll make something very clear; I don’t give a damn about the manhwa. From a first hand friend's account, I’ve heard the art is good, and by comparison, the pacing and characterization is better by comparison. Something I imagine hasn't changed from the source is the core premise. A shame, because it's of the laziest, dullest and most unimaginative premises one could pry from the depths of their mind: VIDYA GAEMS & DND, IRL!!!
Alright, this isn’t exactly true, but it also kind of is. There are paladins, fighters, healers, and the whole nine yards in this setting. That’s well and good, checks a box on slop fantasy bingo, but seeing a story with this premise commonly regarded as “THE BEST MANHWA OF ALL TIME” nearly made me spit on my monitor.
The gist is this: For no reason that is to be explained in the near future, funky anime portals inexplicably open up randomly around the world (South Korea), and generic, uninspired DND knock off monsters come out of them - presumably to kill people and run rampant. Alongside this slop fantasy epidemic, people begin to “awaken” meaning they get the privilege to LARP and kill fantasy monsters, epic style. The awakening process is of course accompanied by the arbitrary and overused trope of a “ranking system” from rank S at the highest, and E at the lowest. BUT WAIT! What separates this arbitrary ranking system from all the others you’ve probably seen is that once you have your rank, you're stuck with it, forever! (Unless the writers/author decide a character needs to become stronger in the near or late future.)
On the surface is there anything totally wrong with this premise? No, but yes. There are a few problems. Aside from the inclusion of an arbitrary ranking system automatically making you a hack writer, this premise is sloppily presented, serves to excuse any lack of real character growth, and is generally - stupid.
Slogging through the terrible introduction to the world, we understand that these DND knock-offs can’t be killed with earthly weapons. They can only be killed with weapons made from special materials dropped by them when killed, or just generally found inside these portals/dungeons.
If you stop and think for about three seconds you may have asked, “Why don’t these people turn this material into guns, or bullets, instead of LARP’ing a DND campaign?” The answer to that simple: F*** YOU, don’t ask that! This simple question could have been caught and snuffed out in a few seconds of plot pruning, but is completely ignored and to my knowledge; never brought up or justified even within the manhwa.
Issues related to world building are just wildly rampant. There are many easy, yet missed opportunities to better expand on how this thinly veiled world operates and is conducted. Instead, we’re subjected to god awful pacing and scenes which introduce people and plot threads with little or no relevance to what's current. If done optimally, episodes 1 and 2 could have been condensed into a 30/35 minute special. But, you know what, who cares! The Fellowship of the Ring never flew the eagles to Mordor, after all. That excuses everything and anything when it comes to god awful world building!
The main takeaway is that the premise is dumb, childish, and easy to poke holes into. Sloppily presented, as it is in this adaptation. But what about the rest? Surely, the story based on one of the “BEST MANHWA OF ALL TIME” has a gripping story with deep characters, crazy twists, sinister/threatening villains and a well written main character to make up for the god awful premise, right? Well…
- Story
Before we’re introduced to our “Just Like Me!” main character, this anime manages to take a dump on its own chest with the most jarring introduction to a world I’ve ever seen. We open with poorly drawn navy ships surrounding an island. We’re then taken to a scene featuring the most generic slop fantasy LARP characters ever seen in anime - fighting against the Giant Ants from Elden Ring, and utterly contrasting what was just on screen.
If I told you this anime made me laugh, you might assume there's bits of comedy throughout, but the real comedy comes from how seriously this show takes itself. I don’t think anything is meant to be construed as comical, but I found myself laughing every time someone died - or mentioned ranks, magic, and other DND or video game lingo with a straight delivery.
This is truly based on the best manhwa of all time.
After we’re through the terribly delivered exposition and world building, leaving more questions than answers, we finally get to sink our teeth into the pulsating flesh of our main character, J…! Something. I think his name is kinda like that one guy from some Korean R&B group? Jim-Man John, I think was his name? (RIP G.O.A.T)
I don’t know, I’ll just be calling our MC Jim from now on, only for the sake of this review's english localization. Some Jim-Who. The character of which the entire world revolves around.
We’re introduced to Jim through a very clever and subversive character introduction where two nameless and ugly bastards talk about him with zero substance.
There's fat-man, and skinny-man. One of them describes our MC as the most useless, worthless human being on the planet, incapable of killing so much as a fly. Jim himself is aware of how much of a loser he is, which I imagine is supposed to heavily resonate with the entire target audience for this genre of anime. Despite being a massive loser, Jim endeavors in his career as a Hunter, the name for the people bestowed with those arbitrary ranks. As expected, Jim is the absolute lowest rank and is an active burden to everyone he works with, unable to pull his weight to even a minimal degree. Regardless, he persists in this pursuit as he is the only breadwinner for his family, trying to pay for his little sister's schooling as-well as his comatose mothers sickness.
This doesn't sound that bad, right? Jim’s initial character and motivations give us maybe just a little bit to nibble on, but we have a problem here - the taste turns to sulphur the moment you begin thinking. Delving just a bit further into the first episode, Jim’s level of uselessness is presented as nearly comical. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are many ways to make money in this world, no? The career as a ‘Hunter’ is supposedly a fast way to earn profit, but it's also explicitly alluded that payment is in line with your CONTRIBUTION. Jim literally can’t do anything, he is as useless as described. I’m saying, this idiot shouldn’t have been our main character. The author was fishing for sympathy points and went too far, making our main character seem like a massive idiot rather than sympathetic. Although, him being an idiot and making poorly thought choices at-least remains a consistent character trait.
Moving on, some things happen and Jim drags his feet alongside a group of hunters conducting a “raid” on one of the DND portals, clearing out a dungeon until they find an optional path. The group decides to vote whether or not to continue, leaving a split decision and Jim to break it. Now, with everything there is to know and has been seen of this character so far, any choice other than cutting his losses would leave Jim looking not only STUPID, but short-sighted, selfish, ignorant, and BRAIN-DEAD. You can most likely imagine which choice he decided to make, because otherwise the story would end there. The events following this are extremely spoilerly, but to gloss over it: Things happen, characters become either stupid, unreasonable, or smart because the author needs to create cheap and sudden tension - which doesn't even work as there is no real tension in the sequence I’m describing.
He made a clear cut mistake, yet in the aftermath he feels no visible or real guilt and faces no immediate consequences, a running theme for most of his actions - he even benefits in this instance.
Otherwise, Jim-Who as he is introduced is awful, almost worse than what he quickly becomes. This character sucks, a laughable attempt of creating a character cheated by ‘muh society’. Lazily and poorly written around a poorly rationalized motivation, a combination ill befitting the so-called, “Best MANHWA OF ALL TIME”.
Though, at the very least, Jim has the luxury of being ‘written’, unlike ANY of the other characters, a poisonous root problem this anime suffers from chronically.
- Characters
Usually, I have a lot to say about an anime's cast of characters, even some of the worst garbage I’ve ever watched leaves me with more than a footnote for most of them.
But here? This anime breaks new ground, as none of the side characters have any meaningful writing or development. Nobody is allowed to say or accomplish anything without minimal loose involvement or relevance to Jim-Who. Seven episodes in, and the only major character with a semblance of development and motivation is Jim-Who’s, of which becomes artificial and unimportant respectively.
Jim’s sister is an empty kawaii girl husk who only complains or talks at her brother about her brother. She looked like she had an important friend, but they’ve never been seen since episode 1.
Jim’s mother is a comatose vegetable, not even a tasty one. I said I wouldn’t talk about the manhwa, but I know the animators had to add the scene where Jim actually visits her in the hospital, because it doesn’t actually happen within the span of 50 chapters. She’s only one of his primary motivations, totally not important at all, right, author? There was also a funny flashback where she spontaneously falls on the floor and nearly cracks her head open.
The following isn’t a spoiler, as I find anyone could see it as painfully predictable.
Fat-man from before signed his death warrant in the first episode - making the mistake of announcing he has a wife and child with no prior prompt. He was just husk only tasked with talking about Jim-Who. Skinny man is the same, except he didn’t mention his wife and child so he didn’t die - but he may as well have cause he’s no longer relevant. So, why’d he exist to begin with?
One of the hunters, a girl, at one point warranted mention as she was unconditionally clingy and concerned with every breath drawn by our MC, Jim. However, she hasn’t been seen since episode 4, so I guess the show is trying to tell me she doesn't matter.
There's a pattern here. Most minor characters like Jim’s Sister are just brainless bug-men and women who have no goal or task of their own that doesn't involve the main character, Characters talk at him about things in brief stints of ‘tell don’t show’ garbage, which infests light novels and slop anime everywhere.
So, this brings us back to Jim, he’s an idiot, but the show fails to present him as one, instead jarringly transitioning his character into a knowledgeable Wizz-ler with no build or prior alluding. Had the Fat and Skinny man instead said, “This guy is a useless loser, but he’s pretty smart too.” That would correct his sudden character contradiction, but also create another, because if he were smart he would’ve opted for a career he can actually perform in. Would a skinny twig-let go to college football tryouts? No. So why is this useless idiot trying to be anything but a McDonald's cashier?
Though, we still aren’t through with Jim and never will be, because now we approach the crux of the show's namesake. Here, Jim-Who no longer needs to have ‘character’ development at all! Not outside of what’s artificial, contrived, or uninspired.
- The Best Manhwa of All Time (How to Level Down Your Story Telling)
The third episode triples down on the bad pacing by being slow and dull, wasting precious seconds on nonsense which could have been used to develop anything or Jim-Who himself. But, at this point any development for Jim-Who will only be artificial.
Here, Jim finds out he became the Hokage or something, because it's finally time for him to walk the path of becoming our overpowered and unbeatable protagonist, gaining the ability to ‘level up’ as the title suggests. Because some things happened in the last episode, Jim has had some form of what's called a ‘second awakening’, where a hunter might arbitrarily change to a higher rank because the author wants them too.
The introduction to this concept is made redundant and confusing shortly after - because what actually happened is through arbitrary and chance means, Jim now gets to do real life video game quests; so that he can level up his new video game stats and skillzzz.
Anyone who still thinks this story is worth a 10 or anything near it needs to book a clinic visit.
The video game garbage levels down the storytelling in the sense that Jim-Who will only have development and changes through arbitrary means, rather than as a person. We may as well be watching an actual video game character.
The worst has to be, despite being a real human being, Jim-Who has ‘fatigue’ as well as a literal health bar - though the ladder isn’t shown until a later episode, used to create cheap tension while Jim-Who is fighting ‘on the ropes’. This doesn't matter, anyways, because both mechanics are regularly forgotten about or unmentioned at different points, to where I forgot that fatigue was even established.
But now we’ve finally reached the crux of the issue. Every single character likes Jim-Who, or they will suffer consequences. Character interactions not including Jim-Who are either about him or something poorly implanted where the story currently is. Jim-Who is the world - so as a result the world, characters and setting all suffer tremendously and are left meaning nothing because Jim is lacking as a character. If the world and characters mean nothing, what's the point of watching Jim do anything or beat anyone when the outcome is as predictable as knowing when you’re next going to breathe?
Obviously this is going to be the focal point in 'Solo Levelling', don’t fool yourself into believing nobody understands this. The point is to watch Jim-Who beat monsters and level-up, and even that aspect is dull and bland.
Jim levels up, says something stupid, has a flashback or screams, then wins.
He isn’t allowed to fail or develop as a person, the author practically hand holds him through any difficult character moments through the floating screens. I don’t find him relatable at all, despite relatability supposedly being one of his redeeming qualities. Sit back in your gaming chair and think, what else is there to know about Jim-Who? He has a sister, a mother, is an idiot, and wants to get stronger. If you can compile a greater list I’d be more than happy to read it.
- The Rest of the Crap, Cont. (Residue From My Notes)
The only thing I can think to commend this anime for is this: With how seriously this anime takes itself, I’m still surprised that thus far, this anime has NOT overly sexualized women or school children. No big, distracting, ill placed bouncy breasts like other trash. No ‘fanservice’, none of it. This is very shocking in this hellish dark age of anime, and oddly refreshing. I can’t wait for it to be contradicted in the near to late future!
Besides that very welcome exception to the cliche’ rules of anime, this show takes itself way too damn seriously for what it is. If you were to look at my profile or merely this review, you would be under the assumption that I just hate fun, or anime as a whole. While the second statement can make a hardy debate topic, this show is anything but fun, but by all accounts you’d expect it to be. The premise is so silly you would expect some clever jokes, subtle humour, etc. Instead, this show treats itself with such gravity that it loops around and becomes hysterical. The opening scene features people getting straight up disembowelled, to where they begin bleeding a slaughter house’s worth of blood by themselves.
The unintentional hilarity from the buckets of blood only increases with time. I won’t go into detail, but there is no shortage of moments where a certain someone is getting thoroughly killed to death, and you’ll wonder how they haven't died from how insane and goofy it looks - which destroys any tension there could’ve been.
- The End of Good Taste - Conclusion/Short Summary
Is this truly based on the “best manhwa of all time”? Doesn't feel like it to me. If you’ve bothered to read this far or watched bits of it yourself, does it feel like that to you?
I first wrote this in the context of only episodes 1-3, before it was removed for being too epic and cool (Editing in further context is not allowed). Though now on episode 7 I found I had to rewrite very little, as most core points still stand strong.
The premise is rotten, becoming worse as Jim-Who ‘levels up’. The Storytelling is lazy, poorly paced and predictable. The characters are unintelligent or given nothing to work with. The world is held together with paper and tape - vulnerable to having half a dozen holes poked through it within the first episode, which are never to be addressed. These points should be apparent for anyone who has viewed media for more than fifteen years, yet they seem to have gone over many people's heads.
Try not to take any offence to this reader, but this story comes off as hackily written, dull, cookie cutter, power fantasy slop - hardly different from light novel garbage infesting each new season of anime. Video games and DND in real life. Damn, why didn’t I think of that after the age of twelve? I might’ve been rich, or something.
We are halfway through the season, so at this point it's safe to assume nothing will change in the grand scheme. The idea that this show could even scratch the surface of a 10/10 in someone's mind is utterly baffling, helping to create the diluted rating of 8.46 at the time of writing. Still, I may hate this show, but I still love how it tries, how seriously it takes itself. I’ll probably keep watching for the spectacle of such bland storytelling being unproportionally popular.
Besides episode 7 being a vast improvement compared to the others, I can’t think of a single thing I genuinely like about this whole show. Rather than a rating of 3 or 4, I still know in my bones that a 5 is still where it belongs.
My interpretation is that most who like this show to an unrealistic degree are subconsciously forcing themselves, since the source material has, for some reason, resonated with a lot of people.
“It can’t be bad, it can’t fail, because what I LIKE is what it's based on. SO, it isn’t bad.” That's roughly the thought process I can imagine.
And so, this is Solo Jelking, in all of its glory upon our screens. Even if you read all of these silly words and agree or disagree with most of them, I have a challenge for you. If you already watched any episode of this travesty, compare my words against your own interpretations. Ask yourself If the things I’ve said are true and if that's what you thought as-well. If the answer is that my words aren’t true? There's nothing more I can say - except this.
“THE BEST MANHWA, OF ALL TIME” sure does make for a pretty crappy anime.
TL;DR: This anime is not good, all of its hype is based around the source material, where people describe how cool things are when they haven't even been shown on screen yet - or are worse, completely made up in their head and don’t match what we’re actually watching. The best words to describe every aspect of this show are arbitrary, contrived, and mid. It feels like you’re watching a different show than everyone else. If you have no bias going in, just know most people are all talk. Something this generic, uninspired and poorly organized in every way has no business being considered THE BEST, or anything close to it.
Feb 19, 2024
Ore dake Level Up na Ken
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(7/12 eps)
A storm has come for the future of anime. One with the potential to destroy good taste for the next decade, as mass cope and denial run rampant along with the name of this season's new Top Slop Anime: Solo Levelling.
Short Summary and ‘TL;DR’ waiting at the bottom. In this preliminary period, most reviews and takes are read as desperate cope from manhwa readers, unwilling to accept that their beloved series has been made into a mediocre, substanceless slop - filled with glaring and awkward issues within its very first few minutes. In some cases these reviews have convinced me in their own words why ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 30, 2023
Seiken Gakuin no Makentsukai
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(3/12 eps)
This is over 4200 words long. Short summary at the bottom. First Episode Spoilers are forewarned before mention, but not the main focus. The Demon Swordmaster of Excalibur Academy is something I fully expected to hate. I still do, but a little part of me wishes I didn’t have to. This slop-anime is so very close to being in a refined form, but it's just another dumpster fire of contrived logic, stupid people, and tired as hell tropes which comes together to form the final vision of a logically deprived world. It's no big surprise to find this show features yet another harem to add to the ... infinitely growing list. The inherent problem isn’t that we have a predominant female presence, it's that the female characters include minors with oversized breasts, thigh-high short skirts and at-times ear splitting voices - oh, and did I mention they’re all minors? Here we have the usual affair for this god awful trope, where these characters will not change, develop or show anything more than one dimension for however long we are made to suffer them on screen. They always amount to a massive group of non-characters, and this is best presented by the head of the idiot crew who will be referred to exclusively as Main Girl. This is because she is the first woman to show up on screen, and I can’t remember her name. Subsequent girls are named and ordered by the same principal. The art and animation is overall fine. The quality does take massive leaps and dives though, in that it's inconsistent in its range of fine to distracting. A prime example is in the first shot of the big sci-fi city, the perspective places the characters on a sheer drop straight down towards it, which is not the intent. A lot of the perspective even for simple square shaped buildings is kind of off in many places. The intro animation is bland, uninspired nothing, mostly consisting of reused shots ripped from the show. If you gauge the quality care in an anime by its opening quality, then this is a truly bad omen. Something should also be said about the magic sliding JPEG of the motorcycle animation. It's shown a couple times, since our Main Girl is the one riding in it, and I burst out laughing both times I saw it too. This description doesn't do it justice, maybe that alone makes this show worth watching. All of these things are fine and dandy, but the core element that makes something ultimately worth watching or ‘consooming’ is the story, world and characters. So, let's see if any of it is worth a damn. (It isn’t). Premise/World - From the beginning, our MC is a Demon Lord, who has put himself into a form of long term stasis in order to avoid the consequences of his actions. I imagine whatever he did must have been unspeakably evil because we don’t really get anything contextual as to what he’s done, or is capable of overall. He is a Demon Lord and that is the core of his character. 1000 years later, the world has drastically changed to a much more technologically advanced time. There are also ‘terrifying’ creatures roaming the world that threaten human-kinds way of life, and they fight back using the most obtuse magic system possible in the form of the “Holy Swords”. The problems start here, as we are introduced to two high-school aged girls, Main Girl, and Second Girl. These girls are on some form of expedition alone in an uncharted tomb and unsupervised by any adults. An interesting choice, but it gets better when you realize Main Girl is entirely useless in any form of combat. Returning to the Demon Lord, he awakens in this time to find one of these idiot girls trying to shoot open his stasis chamber with a gun, aiming centre mass at his goddamn chest even though it's clearly not working. When he breaks free, he finds that something has gone wrong and that he’s been reincarnated as a shota, rather than his adult human form as he intended. The first episode has honestly fine pacing, and it establishes some nuggets to tickle your intrigue for the what's next. But, at the same time the show has already dropped its pants and taken multiple steamers on character and world logic. Firstly, why did Main Girl and Second Girl go on this dangerous expedition, when one of them is literally useless in every single sense? As I said, they essentially have no safety net when it's pretty clear that the world's monsters can show up whenever they want. There are *supposedly* other Holy Knights who *hypothetically* exist in this world, but there’s no mentor or supervisor around, even when these girls could just get killed in the field at any moment. I guess nobody cares. Main Girl has a gun, and yet upon using it we find out it's effective as a wet sock. The people of this world seem to know the bare-minimum of these monsters, yet this little idiot is somehow surprised her dinky little pistol is entirely useless. These still don’t cover the larger problem, as my mind has been numbed to tears by impractically dressed anime girls. These two little girls open the show trying to fight monsters while wearing waist high-skirts and overly girlish uniforms, despite the ‘Excalibur Academy’ being a supposed form of military school. Why wouldn’t these students have some kind of battle uniform, or just any form of actual protection when they’re going out to do dangerous crap? It must be the same reason they have no adult supervision with them, no-body cares about basic ideas of practicality, even if it makes the world and story look stupid - especially the creator. Moving on to the second episode, and the world-building and logic REALLY starts to get stinky in the first few minutes. Our Demon Lord allows himself to be accosted and escorted to the big sci-fi city along with Main Girl and Second Girl. From this point forward, no one asks or inquires about the sudden appearance of a random child. None of the girls seem to care, and there's not an adult in sight with the urgency to ask. You’d think with the extraordinary circumstances this kid was found in, he’d be the talk of the town if not the academy. Yet this feral child is let through an unmanned city checkpoint, without as much as one person around, which is just unbelievable and lazy. No one in the government is made aware that a total stranger has been allowed into the city? No one suspects anything even outlandish, like that he could be linked to the monsters they’re fighting against? OK, I guess this ‘last bastion’ type city just has no security protocol, OR due-diligence of any form or fashion. This world overall has an almost interesting Death-Stranding type setting, along with the mixture of technology and magic. That potential itself is massively wasted, as most things just seem modern without much of a twist on things, and magic just does everything. Returning to our MC, he is as to be anticipated, overpowered as all hell. This comes as no surprise, and is even appropriate considering the core premise, but we aren’t given a proper gauge for what the limits/rules of his own powers could possibly be, other than the regular assumptions of how magic would work in a slop fantasy. There was a showcase of his power in the first episode, but he himself says it's at only a third of what it once was, so we’re just expected to imagine that he’s utterly unstoppable and can do anything, which probably isn’t too far from the truth. This isn’t the end of the world, but surely there would have been precious seconds available to hint towards or quell any of these obvious concerns. This power system of the Holy Swords is also just as if not broader in scope than our MC’s. There are few tangible rules established other than that its users get ‘tired’ after prolonged usage. Really though, I have little issue with the power system other than its naming, which is pretty silly. Magic weapons are called ‘Holy Swords’ yet all but one of them is shown to be an actual sword. The Main Girl actually tries to explain it and says, “They are weapons, so we call them swords.” A sword is an object that provokes a certain image in your brain. It’s a weapon yes, but it’s also a tool with a specific use and expectation of functionality. This isn’t all that important, but you can’t just name something what it's not and expect it to work. This is like calling a scooter a car. Yes they are both vehicles, like a sword and a gun are both weapons, but the two are very distinct in what they can do and what they are used for. With this in mind, the naming choice of ‘Holy Swords’ for a giant cannon, magic wand, and other non-swords are overall confusing and ill-fitting. The setting of this anime, and the set-pieces it takes place in are far too grandiose for its own good. The scale is simply far more vast than what the studio was apparently willing to commit towards. We are In a futuristic mega-city, made to float millions of people across the ocean, yet there are modern vehicles in use and a lack of pedestrians in what should be dense areas. This city exists to essentially lay siege against the big bad across different parts of this world, but I guess everyone's on break because NO-ONE is going in or out of it at any time. The renowned Excalibur Academy, allegedly full of warriors in training, also suffers greatly from this. There are almost no students around the premises besides the few which blend into the background, looking as if they were frozen in time. It’s pretty distracting, and It might have been better to just say that it's a Sunday. I guess the rest of the students are all in class, or playing hookie, cause at most we are shown a handful of blurred still images at a time. At the very least, we’re shown two non-cardboard girls during the tour of the Academy grounds, where one of them makes an amazingly contrived and inappropriate comment that boys like our MC grow up to be “a Demon Lord in bed”. It's funny you see, because the MC IS a Demon Lord. If you haven’t, that's the part where you’re supposed to laugh. Wait, what's that? You don’t find sexual innuendo targeted towards a child, funny? What are you, NORMAL? This is unsurprisingly, a major point of contention I hold with this show - the Demon Lord being in the body of a child does little good, as every female character has to drown him with their ‘affection’. In the short work of three episodes, there is a good chunk of pedophilic undertones that this show ‘tries’ to present as ‘comedy’. Multiple girls lay eyes on what they perceive as a little boy, and suddenly the topic of perversion and sex materializes in their walnut sized brains, not to mention there are several times where our Demon Lord is smothered in someone's breasts. This kind of crap is just unnecessary. It's not ’’’fan-service’’’, it's cringe, kinda-gross and hard to watch. Is it impossible for Japanese authors to avoid this kind of garbage? Answer: yes. Anyways, hopefully the absent students are learning a crash-course on how to better make and develop characters, which this show could also make potent use of. The Stupid Ass ‘Characters’ - Any side characters I fail to mention here are either not worth talking about, or I haven’t watched enough to have anything to say about them. Overall though, you can easily guess what most of the harem girls' personalities and ‘character’ will be like by merely hearing their voices. I’ve gotta be real. Even on re-watching some episodes I can’t remember anyone's full name, though it might be from a partial lack of trying. Everyone in this world feels the need to introduce themselves with their full legal name, and I loosely remember how comically fantastical they were made to sound. I do know at-least that the Demon Lord's middle name is literally ‘Death’. The Demon Lord, or Mr. Death as he may also like to be called (allegedly) is kind of a non-character by the core of his being a generic anime Demon Lord. While that’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, I still like him most over the other non-characters. The inherent issue comes from his own very title and the presumptions it carries along with it. His motivations are somewhat clear at the start, but also broad and aimless for what he might do next. He’s trying to get used to the world he’s been re-born into, but ultimately he’s just floating down the river until the plot kicks in. Additionally, some of the questions he asks while guising as an unknowing ten-year old are kind-of stupid and a little contrived. He for example asks what refugees are, and precious seconds are then wasted to present exposition on the basic understanding of what a refugee is. There's a lot of little things like this throughout this show, where time is taken to explain things that could be better spent on more important questions. The first antagonist we are shown is another painfully generic and un-subtle bad-guy archetype. You can literally tell this guy is an evil idiot before he’s even in full frame. This character is in a school-setting, but his drawn style makes him look thirty years old. This wanker rolls up with his own personal harem of big breasted anime girls possessing no other personality. I don’t even think they’re allowed to say more than a single word between each-other, and of course our bad-guy wants to add Main Girl to his literal “collection”. This moron character is so predictable, you can literally guess what he will do or say with 85% accuracy. Every word that comes out of their mouth is the most clownish non-human dialect you could ever think of. He only exists to get beat and embarrassed, and to give us some cheap exposition on Main Girl in an unnaturally spoken fashion. People don’t just go up to others and list the reasons why they suck with no nuance, context or subtlety, but I guess that’s pretty funny upon further inspection. The show also features Schrodinger's monsters, and what I mean is that they both look fine, and like crap at the same time. Some of them look more silly than scary or intimidating due to the 3D, which I imagine was not the intent. I can’t remember what they are called and don’t remember anything else about them, but at-least there's some form of antagonist that can bring urgency to a situation, if there could be any such thing in a slop-isekai. Japanese media and little girls with massive breasts, name a more iconic duo. As already stated, these Harem Girls are by design non-characters with no urgency, and no brains. If one of them isn’t stupid, then they’re annoying as a substitute. The Second Girl insists on dressing up as a maid. That's practically all I have to say about her, other than she’s shown to also be a massive idiot, just like Main Girl, but not to the same degree. There's a flashback in Episode 2 where Main Girl is literally screaming exposition and character information into Second Girl's face while they're both hiding in a bunker. This is exposition that Second Girl should already know, and that we could have inferred later on without it, but the show just decided to throw it in hap-hazardly. I didn’t know how to properly incorporate this into a review, I just thought It was really funny while watching it. I don’t have much to say about the Third Girl, other than she has comically massive breasts and a Holy ‘’’‘Sword’’’’ which I imagine to be a literal convenience machine, and seems really important for the Academy’s overall functionality. Does she go around and use her power for the entire school? Does the school have multiple people with similar powers? Or, is the school simply poorly equipped, and devoid of proper logistics? From what's visually shown, the latter seems most plausible, though I have no idea if these questions will ever get answered, because I don’t care. Now, for the main course. Main Girl is one of the biggest idiots to show up on screen. She and Second Girl go into a decrepit tomb which is uncharted and undocumented, but she’s of course fine with Second Girl wanting to split up just because a door is taking too long to open. Second Girl is evidently an I-pad baby with a 0.5 second attention span, because not but several seconds later… the door is opened. It's here, upon entering the Demon Lord's chamber that Main really shows her mental fortitude. Seeing him in his stasis crystal, Main Girl immediately jumps to the conclusion that he’s trapped, and decides to shoot CENTER MASS towards the their torso with her gun. This doesn't doesn't bode well for the case of her mental capacity, but it only gets better (worse) as the story goes on. MAJOR 1ST EPISODE SPOILER (if you still give a damn): Main Girl and Second Girl have the in-genius idea to split-up, again, this time being attacked. Main Girl’s pea-sized brain doesn't understand it would make more sense to stay with the only person that can actually defend you, because right now the story needs a contrived reason for something important to happen. Main girl is literally killed by a monster because of this stupid choice, though it's presented as a fake out. The Demon Lord resurrects her, and she is turned into his undead “Vampire Queen”, which is revealed to her a little later. When this life-altering and world shaking revelation is made clear to her, the reaction of this air-headed girl is massively tone-deaf and unsatisfyingly tame. She does not panic, break-down or ask the numerous complex questions anyone else in her position would be prone to ask. In something just slightly better written, this revelation and steps to get here would have been used to grant Main Girl some urgency as a CHARACTER and add some much welcome drama to the plot and premise that would only ever serve to strengthen it. For a start, instead of arbitrarily splitting off from Second Girl like an idiot, perhaps despite her efforts Second Girl is unable to protect Main Girl from getting hit in the midst of a chaotic scenario fight. Second Girl may be left thinking Main Girl is still fine, but she’s really dying outside of her peripheral vision. The reason this wasn’t done is because the point of her dying was to show us the Demon Lord's power, which both girls aren’t supposed to know about. I’m still sure there could have been a better way for the events to play out like they did, while still having it be a little-less contrived. Returning to Main Girl, her predicament could have made her into a convincing second perspective character, or even the main perspective character in the story with the Demon Lord taking a morally ambivalent role. The parallel is right there with the evil-idiot from earlier who owns his own harem. Main Girl loathes evil-idiot because he wants to make her what's essentially his mind-slave, and yet she’s now become the slave to another person. Do you understand how big of a miss this is? Not only would this direction be logically sound and satisfying, but it also would leave numerous paths to choose in terms of story, character themes, dynamics and development. We instead take the most safe and dull approach of having nothing of substance made from this whole ordeal, and Main Girl merely accepts this f***ed up scenario with no objection, questions, or resistance of any kind. This is because she only exists to be a brainless doll, an object rather than a character. (SPOILERS END). Main Girl is just another non-character. She has no urgency. Besides anything threatening her directly, she acts with sub-par intellect. She’s only able to be unconditionally kind and caring to our main boy and the rest of the harem, and scornful to what's obviously evil in the world. I don’t think there's a single thought coursing through her head, just an unbelievable nothing like all other girls in harems. Faint Praise - I actually liked a few things from this slop, despite how much I hate it. Enough to warrant some deeper mention and a slow-clap. This story is bottom barrel - full of sloppy world-building and tired tropes, but not everything is uninspired in regards to both the story and its production. There are some tricks used that a keen eye may spot and appreciate, for what it's worth. For example, I suspect a certain weapon is actually a 3D model well masked as 2D, since its design would be a little annoying to draw with precision. Having the story perspective of an ancient being reawakened in a different time is an underutilised take on “isekai” and just fantasy in general. Our main character is ultimately in the same world they were born in, but so much has changed that it is functionally different. Unfortunately, my black soulless heart found the Demon Lord to be kinda cute with his oversized robes. Though, having an underaged character collect other less-underaged characters is still an off-putting trope of slop isekai, and presents a gross feeling for most viewers - or at-least it should. Otherwise, Mr.Death Demon Lord’s characterization is done well-enough, and is even a little amusing at times when he says or thinks something overly grandiose while in the body of a child. Overall, the concept of an ancient evil being a fish out of water in their own world is a concept bearing potential pathways to interesting stories and character arcs. Potential is just that though. What could have been does not enhance what is. SPOILER(again): Seeing the Main Girl get horribly perforated was invigorating as all hell for my psyche. She hadn’t even done anything other than miss-use of her brain-power - it's just something I needed to see. What I enjoyed most about her ‘death’ was the subversion that she's still really dead after being ‘resurrected’. A pleasant surprise, as I had assumed she was only saved from death because she’s on the cover-art. Giving death and subsequent resurrection active consequences is a smart way to remove the cheapness of fake-out deaths, it's only a shame the following pay-off from this is painfully weak. Conclusion/Short Summary - The Demon Shartmaster of Loliporn Academy is a nearly-remarkable addition to the grand slop pile. If you have some higher standards, maybe just don’t watch it though. The worst of it doesn't just come from the story or characters, even with their many core issues. The worst is from the erratic quality control and shoddily presented world. The biggest issues this show presents are not exclusive to itself, but that's not a good excuse for anime to be below-mid and embarrassing to watch. Maybe the light-novel is a better depiction? It probably is but I don’t really care, and light-novels can all go to hell. This is slop nearing its most refined form, not exactly good but I imagine it would be acceptable for any of the starving piggies out there. The world had some potential, but multiple different elements worked against it to leave it feeling empty and dead. Even with all that I’ve said, I don’t violently hate this on the same level as the other things I've suffered through, and I’m surprised I had this much to say about it to begin with. Another harem, where all of the characters are stupid children and our MC is also a tiny little boy making it far more weird and off-putting to watch. The tired notion that slop anime is only expected to be boring, repetitive, uninspired and enjoyed without substance or thought is one I will never understand. “I love watching crap” is essentially what you’d be saying. Maybe it's not that bad, I can understand having a mixed opinion. Even though I wouldn’t recommend this overall, my thoughts are kind of mixed as-well. I’m willing to believe it could get better, but that's not the point. The point is that in three episodes I was unable to muster the will-power to keep watching. I don’t really want to watch a harem share one whole brain-cell between itself and fumble around this messy world. The slightest of changes to the characters and world could make the story far more gripping and interesting than it is from its start, even enough to look past all the weird stuff. But, either its author, or the people behind this adaptation were unable to see it - or they didn’t care.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 22, 2023 Not Recommended Preliminary
(4/12 eps)
With all of the Isekai garbage that comes out every year, there's always at-least one or two that present a spark of hope in the long line of unoriginality, boring tropes and uninteresting worlds.
It's from the temporary subversion of this expectation, that this show will you leave you feeling dead inside. Like a real assassin has stabbed you in the back and twisted the blade until your insides are nothing but jelly. The production, music, visuals, and animation are all utterly stellar. The opening especially is just magnificent as-well, but all of these solid elements only serve to heighten expectations to an insane degree, along ... with the first episode. When I watched the first episode, I couldn't believe this was made by the same bastard who conceived Redo of Healer. That slop truly is from the darkest hell-pit of his insane, logically deprived mind. One of the biggest stinkiest turds on the anime market. Until the final couple minutes, the first episode sets expectations far higher than the stupid long winded title ever could imply. It serves so well in introducing our MC, Jon Assassin, who is able to show character and even point towards future character development throughout the episode in an efficient manner. This culminates to where he finally gets Isekai’ed, in the most grandiose fashion a man of his talents could ever ask for. Everything up to this point is good and well presented, I simply couldn’t believe it. “They did it.” I thought, “They made slop that is kind of watchable! Yeah, there was some weird crap at the very beginning, but, I can watch this, and maybe not be afraid that a family member sees me watching it!” But then, along with the most irritating ear-splitting voice you could ever hear, we’re reminded that this is an Isekai, and the slop gets back to business as usual. Time to roll around in the mud and squeal like a piggy. From the final few minutes of episode one, and the opening stretch of episode two, what looked to be something unique quickly becomes another isekai, borderline ecchi harem show. The Goddess character, I want to see her dead. Simple as. Her shrill, obnoxious, annoying voice is still ringing in my head. She claims to have summoned Jon Assassin to her from death - in order to assassinate “”“The Hero”””, preferably after they defeat “””The Demon Lord”””. This is all because of an inexplicable and unexplained reason that “The Hero” will apparently become an evil idiot, and unleash chaos upon the world afterwards. Why, God? Why must it always be this way? I will say this, the world building it at-least is for the most part competent further on in the fantasy world. Maybe I’ve just been deprived of decent world-building for a while, though. But, unnamed characters with generic isekai crap names like a nondescript Demon Lord and Hero should be a red flag for any work of fiction. It exposes a lack of care or just laziness for a world in its entirety. Don’t name the Hero, sure, maybe save it for later, but come on, what good ‘big bad’ doesn't have a name of any sort? There is a ludicrous amount of demon names from all forms of culture and language. Just pick one, for god's sake, and at-least give “The Hero” a name as-well. Wanna know why you should? Because by introducing these two elements as some kind of prophecy, it is then intrinsically part of world-building. Not naming these two elements or elaborating on them in ANY WAY further is then a disservice to the world in its entirety, and loses engagement. I know this is a crime committed by many slop Isekai crap, and just anime in-general. But it did it to itself by setting the bar to a decent standard and then instantly dropping miles below it. But anyways, why are we doing this, like this? Jon Assassin was showing signs of a real character, and now we have to cut his nuts off for almost ten minutes so he can ask out-of-character, word soup sounding questions about all the world's skills and magic and whatever the hell else. I appreciate the explanation job for many things, I really do, because it's all extremely contrived. But Jon Assassin’s now core motivation is the most unexplained of all the world's elements, and for otherwise there might be juuust a bit too much explanation regarding anything else. The drastic turn from the first episode had me and my fellow Slopoholic shook badly. We were COPING like, “nah bro, maybe it’ll get better again?”. For the most part, I can at-least say it doesn't get much worse at least but really, it's just another Isekai. One who’s events and characters you’ve seen time and time again. All but one woman character is massively annoying, with shrill voices and giant comedy breasts (and of course the child characters have some of the largest breasts of all.) As far as I’ve seen, there's a lot of build-up, and a lot of explaining, but you can still form a story alongside these things. The story is mostly Jon Assassin learning and ‘adapting’ to the different elements of the world alongside his new parents, but otherwise there's not really a plot going on. Not that a reincarnated child would be expected or able to take on the overpowered “The Hero”, as despite how powerful Jon Assassin is, as its said “The Hero” is basically multiple times stronger than anyone else in the world. There are still some little nuggets of interesting concepts and ideas in the world and Jon Assassin’s re-upbringing. But comparing that to the interest generated by the first episode alone is like Coughing Baby vs Hydrogen Bomb. I’m not gonna sugar coat it. At first I thought this was missed potential, but now my third eye has opened, and I see that isekai as a whole has no potential for anything other than coomer bait harem slop. A stupidly long winded title, with an interesting opening episode that does nothing unique or interesting with the core premise. It merely falls back on the usual tropes of isekai, because the creator of this slop is a coward, but his success is not truly his fault. It's the fault of the coomers and teens of Japan and the world who slurp up this slop without a second thought. This is what you’re forced to watch in purgatory, we are all in Isekai hell forever and there is no escape. A massive budget and impressive production value cannot save isekai from reverting to its true self, no matter what promise it's shown to have. Just make what sells. Creativity and money simply cannot co-exist. This is ultimately just another Isekai, and if that intrigues you, then the world has fallen - and Billions must watch Full Metal Alchemist.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 20, 2023
Boushoku no Berserk
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Funny Preliminary
(5/12 eps)
Berserker of Gluttony is truly a good example. A good example of how to subvert the lowest of expectations, and then subvert them further by being even worse. I’ve seen people say the show had potential, ‘’’binge-worthy’’’ even. The only way this slop would be worth bingeing is if you’re an insomniac, because by episode three you’d be fast asleep. Most everything I’m going to say about this snore-fest is simply objective.
Outside of the story and world, in short the character designs are either bad or uninspired, the animation is un-exciting, the music is there and voice acting is the normal affair for any slop ... anime. All is serviceable at best and dull at worst. Though I haven’t and won’t look at the source material, I despise light-novels. I thoroughly believe that light-novel to anime adaptations are responsible for the degradation of the entire medium in the last decade or more. They have served to dumb down the fantasy genre among other things to where the most basic, un-interesting and lazy garbage storytelling is now accepted as good. Premise - Let's start from the top. The show makes a terrible first impression by using VIDyA’ GAME stats and skills in a fantasy setting, which is wholly unrelated to an actual video game context. This is a common crutch I’ve seen stories use to gloss over the non-existent character progression and growth with artificial stats in their place. When set in the context of a game world, I would take little issue, but this is clearly presented as a ‘living’ fantasy world and not a damn video game. From here on, our MC is Jon Glutzerker, because I can’t remember anything about his name other than that it is very stupid sounding. Jon Glutzerker has no character flaw, weakness or any form of real arc as far as I have seen. His only technical ‘weakness’ is that his skill gives him a perpetual hunger, which cannot be quelled unless he kills monsters or people to absorb their literal souls. Jon Glutzerker’s video game ‘skill’ is first seen as useless, but of course turns out to be able to absorb other people's stats and skills, which allows him to become in-consistently over-powered as the series goes on. Jon Glutzerker starts off working as a Gate Guard for the castle in this unnamed and uninteresting fantasy kingdom. Prior to the story's beginning he is the object of torment for the most comical, unapologetically evil ‘characters’ I’ve seen in a while. Right from the word go, we can tell that there will be absolutely no interesting world-building or original ideas outside of the MC’s main power, or really any form of logic that is applied to this world. This conclusion can be made on this from the first, and most prime example: Our MC is the gate guard for a castle keep, the only one, mind you. The evil ‘Holy Knights’, which are mostly all of them, have him wearing rags as opposed to any kind of soldier attire, on-top of paying him like trash. What would be the in-universe point of having what is essentially a hobo guarding a castle keep, other than because three nit-wits use it as some archaic form of ‘abuse’? With no in-universe uniform and only a shoddy spear to ‘guard’ the gate, there are a dozen reasons this is massively stupid, and security risk would clearly be one of them since nobody likes the comically evil establishment. There’s allegedly a king, but he’s never visually shown so I guess these ‘Holy Knights’ can just do whatever they want, even though all they do is torment and harass the populace. From the first episode alone, you can already tell from basic pattern recognition that this show will have no: Interesting worldbuilding, depth, logical consistencies, character development or anything that makes a real story worth its weight in the time it takes to consume. Of course, who am I to expect the bare-minimum in storytelling from a Light-Novel’s adaptation? Obviously the point is to hardly try, and make slop for all the little piggies to slurp up, and roll around in the mud afterwards. What's worse, is as this mid-drek goes on, no real plot or story takes place despite Jon Glutzerker being a proactive ‘character’. Speaking of which… Characters - As you’d expect, every single character in this generic fantasy hole of a story is either one dimensional or- actually no they’re all just one-dimensional. Some might say a story is only as interesting as its villains. If that's the case, this story triples down on how dull and uninteresting it is as its villains are irredeemably, comically evil, having no motive or incentive to do or say anything, other than because they are evil. The main(?) bad guy has something going on where he is conspiring a plan to become inexplicably immortal. I can think of no incentive or cause for this to be on his bucket list, other than: he is evil, and therefore must seek power without cause. One of the Holy Knights is later shown to literally kidnap children for the explicit purpose of executing them with a bow and arrow; which does nothing but double down on his one and only character-trait - he is evil. If this was a character who presented himself as kind, or had some form of facade to cover what he really does, that would be partially interesting, even engaging. It may even be necessary to convey how evil a ‘character’ truly is if they present themselves as otherwise. But it isn’t necessary, it's just fluff because he already is blatantly evil. This is how children beneath the age of ten interpret and create villains. All of them have no motive for anything they do. No end goal in sight, no character motivation - no character at all other than their life-style as cartoon villains. Love-Interest, as she is only to be called, is the best looking drawing in the entire show. She is also an air-head, who does not openly recognize how everyone in the Holy Knights besides her is evil. From her introduction, she already looks out for Jon Glutzerker, and there is no further relationship development as they are always both overly bashful with one another. This is also one of Jon Glutzerker’s only character traits, to be flustered and bashful whenever the Love-Interest so much as looks at him. Returning to Jon Glutserker, things happen and upon activating his skill for the first time, he goes to find a proper weapon. He conveniently manages to find a sentient sword, which perfectly synergizes with his abilities in a bin full of ‘cheaper swords’ even though it is in pristine condition (visually). I hate this damn sword. It only exists to tip-toe around world-building by narrating exposition whenever it's most convenient. It narrates constantly, to an unwelcome degree, allowing the creators of this show to tell instead of the show, just like alllllll good stories do. In addition, to avoid any form of thought provoking combat, stakes or tension in a fight scene, the sword tells him exactly what to do to win every single time, and has the random ability to transform from some contrived in-universe logic. God forbid we ever have natural sounding dialogue or world-building play out through actual characters and significant events. That would require talent and effort, and this show wasn’t made with either in the budget, besides drawing the Love Interest. This anime does not respect or anticipate viewer intelligence to the point where you would believe this is a kids cartoon. Yet, there is plenty of meaningless and stake-less gore and violence that is so dull it means nothing and bares no intrigue for anyone watching it. The Rest of The Crap - As the story goes on, (unfortunately), an obnoxious flaw in the story is intentionally brought to our primary attention, only to gloss over it every instance after. Glutzerker's sword is sentient, and speaks to our MC telepathically. So of course our MC MUST talk back to it outloud for everyone to hear, which one would expect to make MC look like an idiot or a weirdo. The show acknowledges this, once, and then promptly ignores it for the rest of the story. Any real woman would lose all interest or believe someone to be creepy and weird if they saw them doing this. But of course Love-Interest is an air head and thus she must love our Gary Stu no matter how uninteresting, weird, and obnoxiously bashful he truly is. After slogging through three episodes, I was ready to drop this thing before reading some other reviews. They told a tale of a drastic drop-off in quality from the fourth episode, so me and my fellow Slopaholic carried on in curious interest. The consensus? It was hardly different from the rest of the garbage before-hand. Things happen and people do things, and that's about it.. What really woke us up was the beginning of the fifth episode. This may be construed as a minor spoiler, but honestly this show has no plot or real intrigue that could classify as a spoiler anyways. But, here's your forewarning. First, let's quickly go over the Bad Guy from before, the one who likes shooting children. We’ll call him Blue Hair. Don’t worry, this won't take long. Blue Hair has helped his fellow Holy Knights (Purple Hair Twink and Evil Woman) bully and torment our MC, and he likes killing kids. He is the lackey of Purple Hair, who wants to become immortal, and I think he’s his brother or something. There, done! And really, I made him sound more interesting than he is. After some things happen, (a summary of most episodes), Jon Nutzerker faces down Blue Hair, dawned in his ‘cool’ and ‘badass’ school shooter outfit, and his Tokyo Ghoul mask. Despite at-least partially ‘struggling’ to beat lower-tier monsters previously, Glutzerker obliterates a Holy Knight, whomst are feared across the kingdom for their strength and callousness, near instantly. Big surprise, but it gets better. He transforms his sword into a BFG-9000, established in the episode prior. He uses his BFG to blast Blue Hair into orbit, beating him with no effort, struggle, tension or character developments. After literally falling back to earth, Blue Hair is still inexplicably alive and missing all of his limbs in a bleeding mess. Since Blue Hair is utterly spineless and evil, he spent most of his final moments as a snivelling coward, begging for his life, before the MC then kills him, epicly owning the bully, and fulfilling the power-fantasy to set the groundwork for… nothing of substance afterwards. This ‘character’, like the other bad guys, was objectively evil, and mean to the main character with no other written purpose. Even in utterly deserving to be killed, there's just no substance, no stakes and no point in any victory Jon Glutzerker achieves. This killing is so brutal in concept, but everything that has led us to this moment is just contrived, and it amounts to nothing but senseless violence against a blank canvas, meant to represent the real-life bullies of the viewer or author. Again, no-one in this show has a character beyond one-dimension, and the piss-poor world building leaves you with no sympathy for anything that happens in it. The time wasted on Jon Glutzerker fighting un-inspired generic fantasy monsters while the sword explains everything and anything should have been used to develop the world and characters. When someone says a story isn’t believable, the meaning is that you could not believe or relate to the story taking place even if its fantastical elements were grounded in reality. The primary cause for this is most often that the characters don’t act like REAL PEOPLE. The villains aren’t believable, the Love-Interest isn’t believable, and Jon Glutzerker is definitely not believable as a real character. The people of this entire world aren’t believable, and if the characters aren’t believable the world isn’t either. From this point on, you can imagine anything that gets in MC’s way will only exist to make him look ‘cool’, despite how all the action scenes suffer from dullness, and an absence of psychology. Conclusion/Short-Summary - There's not really anything else worth saying, or thinking about Berserker of Gluttony. From the poster, I expected just the bare minimum. I at-least expected an edgy blood-fest for twelve episodes straight, but what this is is a boring, uninspired, and-then story in a dull and tired fantasy world with no creativity in sight. The final breaking point was when the already string-thin world-building was left hanging by a thread, and then with-out any build-up or pretext we are inexplicably introduced to sci-fi-esque series of buildings, featuring bright lights and industrial pipes. On-top of that, this mediaeval fantasy world had introduced unnamed characters wearing modern lab-coats and using modern lab equipment. I would break down how this utterly destroys the world, creates more questions than will ever be answered and is just genuinely the sloppiest handling of a world I’ve seen, but honestly, I don’t care. This world and story were put together hap-hazardly without even the most basic semblance of structure or care. You would think the target audience would be people who have zero media-literacy, or poor pattern recognition - a story for children. That would explain the tolerance for it, but even children would deserve better than this. Yet still, this show features fluctuating levels of gore despite its lack of substance, a demographic mistake other forms of media would get dragged through the mud for. But it doesn't deserve to be a bloody mess at all, because there is no substance or nuance to any of the violence. It's only a sideshow for Jon Glutzerker to get more skills and become stronger, a means to a boring and predictable end. Despite the show being at face value, not worth a damn - at the time of writing, the mean score for this slop is a resounding seven. Outstanding. Truly, the overall taste in anime has evolved. Backwards. Unless you lose a bet, there is no good reason to watch this anime, as it will provide you with nothing in return. The only worthwhile thought Berserker of Gluttony could ever provoke, is “why does this crap sell?” The answer, is that it's just another money laundering scheme.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 16, 2023 Not Recommended Funny Preliminary
(3/13 eps)
Upon the briefest of inspection, this anime is nothing. The first several minutes is soulless ‘and-then’ story-telling that manages to even go below the lowest of anticipated expectations of how described by its title the story would play out. I’m not going to dig into the animation, although I am insulted that this worthless ‘story’ even got adapted from the start, even by something that is obviously a low-budget project. That being said, I unironically believe some of the background stills are partially or fully A.I generated in some instances, but who can blame the animators for phoning it in on such a lack-lustre project.
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I don’t understand why it seems every light-novel ever made needs to become another slop-anime. Honestly, the content of this thing isn’t even offensively perverse or annoying like all the other garbage that gets released. The biggest insult to me is how much of a non-story the opening five minutes are, with the remaining runtime boring me to tears. Everything has to be rush-rush-rush to the action and intrigue, but there is no intrigue and the action isn’t worth anything in a low-budget project. There is no world-building, the characters are rushed forward without a damn given, this is a hollow and soulless world that would make me depressed if I had to live in it. The only way I could imagine anyone enjoying this anime is if they were an illiterate toddler who only likes the flashing colours and hasn't seen or read any other media in their diaper-filling life. I feel nothing while watching this, medication couldn’t numb my brain to the same degree. It's check-list story-telling, with no substance or depth to be found in a mile. Man is adventurer, and then he is injured, and then years later he goes to pick berries, and-then he finds a baby, and-then years later the baby grow into girl, and-then the girl goes to become an adventure (AT THE AGE OF 12???), and-then, and-then, and-then. And then I couldn’t even make it past 15 minutes and finish any one episode in one sitting. This is just simply not worth watching and not worth discussing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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