Back to Small-Sailor's Profile Small-Sailor's Profile

Short answer -
Disappointing. Jokes get kind of repetitive and it flip flops between being self-aware and not at all. You will probably enjoy if you laugh easily or like ecchi jokes.

Long answer-
My friends recommended this to me non-stop and its all over the internet how 'funny' it is. Now im not gonna invalidate people if they liked it or found it funny, its clearly their cup of tea and there's nothing wrong with that. That being said I hope people don't take it personally when I say this, but it was incredibly unfunny to me.

I realise I probably had way too high expectations for ... a dumb light anime full of fun, but the jokes and one-note characters fell incredibly flat to me. That and I've grown out of my desensitised to ecchi stage and now I mostly just get grossed out by panty and sexual jokes in anime. The jokes get old fast but the author still relies on them like beating a dead horse.
I think the jokes lack a lasting punch because they're one-note and repetitive and the anime itself lacks substance.

My biggest problem with this anime was that I found it unfunny and generic. I got told that I was wrong because actually "its subverting isekai and harem jokes duh" and I say to that "then tell the author that!". He's the one """subverting""" generic isekai/harem tropes but then playing into them the next scene. It can't seem to decide whether it wants to make fun of those stereotypes or be those stereotypes.

A poor adaption of one of the most well written visual novel's out there.

Watching this before I played the VN, I did feel it was "alright" if not a little frustrating a times. But even back then I could see charm and decent plot shining back through, so I got the game and found out myself. Even the old first version of the game that was released on psp (and has been vastly improved upon in a PC version released more recently) was leagues better than this pathetic excuse.

Chizuru as a character does lack a lot personality (she's not quite a card board ... cut out like many VN protags, and I'd say her passive personality is more reflective of the attitude of women at the time) but thats kind of the point. In game, you made up for that with your own feelings and choices. However, the anime really should have taken more time to expand upon her, and give her more of a personality. The game can get away with a bland personality, but the anime cannot because it lacks the player autonomy the game has.
Arguably however, the anime did expand on her personality and even added some! Specifically the traits of; weak, dependant, sulky, selfish and generally around being unlikeable! Hooray!

The route the anime appears to take is the Hijikata route, yet it does it in ways that purposefully damages other routes (making the MC look annoying, stupid, and useless at best). Admittedly the game's first version shares this problem, but it wasn't so much a story thing as it was a mechanic thing, simply an option there if you didn't want to raise the other character's affections (the new game fixes this, by pretty much giving you chance every time to raise your desired characters affection without really lowering others, so its much more bearable).

The only things I can really compliment the anime on is the art and historical accuracy; though even then these are both things the game did BETTER. The only thing good to come out of this adaption is the possibility of interesting people enough for them to look up and play the game its based on.

I know I'm comparing this anime to the game a lot, but as a wise man named Dom once said, "If you want the huge boost in audience interest you get by taking on the name of a popular piece of work you have to accept that you will be compared to that piece of work".

As of the time of this review, the manga has not finished but I am completely caught up with the english translation of it.

This was a hard manga to score as I am reluctant to give any series a 10, but this manga really had me reconsider my position on that. I am so very tempted to give it a perfect score because of how well executed this is and how much I loved it. However, I will wait until I see the final chapters/end before I give it a perfect score. So for now, it stands at a very solid 9/10.


Lets start with ... the story; its fast paced but well earned. Though sometimes in hindsight I do wish it had a few more side stories/fillers, its purely because of how interesting the world and characters are that I desire to see as them as much as possible. The story has a very clear direction, and it sticks to it. Not in a way that it feels constrained, just more like its following a precise vision and isn't floundering around in the dark to find its footing or waffling. Plot wise; its fast pace but in a good way. A keeps-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of way. Every arc feels like it moves the plot along and doesn't feel tacked on for the sake of filler. Characters are introduced somewhat naturally, with some getting more screen time than others - but overall, a very natural and deliberate flow to the events of the story.
The characters are varied and well written. While you might see a stereotype or two at first glance, they always bring something new and interesting to the table, so all of them stand out. Even when you feel you might not like a character at first, the writing does a very good job of warming you up to them. The interactions especially with the main gang, are often absolutely hilarious and a welcome surprise. The sense of camaraderie between the characters is strong, and makes for some very funny but also warm moments. A loss of a character is very tangible to the reading, and personally had me in tears each time it happened. There is a very real danger for all characters, so you genuinely feel worried when a character is in a precarious situation, and it makes you really root for the main gang.
Back onto the main story; the theme and atmosphere of this series strikes a very good balance between dark and light. The main story is often quite tragic and although its a shounen, doesn't stray from gory scenes or harsh realities - which was frankly a massive breath of fresh air form me. However, the smaller moments are often packed with some good jokes and fun interactions between characters. If this was executed poorly, this would have been some pretty intense tonal whiplash. Thankfully however, this is done right, and so instead the two contradicting tones compliment eachother. The light moments make the tragic moments hit that much harder, and the tragic moments give the story a very grounded feel to it. Just overall, a very good execution tonally, and one of the reasons why I recommend this to anyone one, mostly regardless of taste, because it hits both bases so well.

I'm not an artist myself so I won't say a great deal on the art style. Its consistent, unique and adapts to the situations. Lighter situations have a bit more of a goofy and fun style to it, while fight/plot scenes have a very detailed and serious feel to the art. I would say that art style perhaps makes characters look a little younger than they are (most are on the shorter side), but it gets much better as the manga goes on and honestly kind of grew on me. The way the sword techniques are drawn are also very creative and well represented.

Onto characters. I already did a more general overview above in story, but I'll continue by focusing on the leads.
Tanjirou is probably one of my favourite shounen protagonists yet. Normally I've very skeptic of mains, especially sunny/justice driven ones like Tanjirou, but boi did he grow on me. Its hard not cheer this ball of sunshine on when you see how hard he works and all he does to protect his family and friends. Tanjirou is perhaps "talented" but not a prodigy or genius like some of the other characters, and yet he still manages to come off as a badass when he pushes himself past his limits for his ideals or others around him - and not kind of pretentious like some other shounen protags do when they ignorantly ignore warnings of others and still try to help despite being useless. Tanjirou is nurturing, loyal, protective, friendly, trusting, hardworking and empathetic. And while that sounds a little generic and lacks major flaws, it works really well for his character. Honestly its hard to put it quite into words, but he is a very likeable character. He's not the deepest character, but they make up for it in his sheer likeable-ness, I don't know how you can't cheer the kid on.
Now Muzan, as the main villain. We don't know a great deal about him even this far into the manga, but so far he's been a good villain. He's noticeably cruel and pragmatic but not in 'kick a puppy' kind of way. His psychology is clearly deeper than just 'evil', but he certainly isn't one of the deeper characters. His plans aren't the dumb 1 dimensional ones you see in the movies, but he does lack direct involvement in the story. You can argue that he's basically the final boss so it wouldn't be right to have him do everything himself and come into early. And I definitely get that, his haughty personality even complements the stance - but I can't shake that maybe he could a *little* more. But overall, a good villain who doesn't attempt to go down the sympathetic villain route (which is interesting considering Tanjirou's emphatic disposition and the series overall message about demons being human once yada yada), and sticks to the pretty much irredeemable bad guy. It knows it can't justify his awful actions so it doesn't try to, just fleshes his horrible personality out so he at least feels natural in the story as the final boss. So while not the best villain I've ever seen, certainly one of the better ones.


Thats pretty much all the main points I can discuss without going into spoiler territory.
So would I recommend this to EVERYONE? Tentatively yes. I personally feel that it has a good balance of tones and elements of action, bonds, and comedy that most anime fans will like it. Of course there will inevitably people that don't, but I have high hopes for this series and with its recent release of the anime, I'd say this has a chance of becoming one of the next big series.

Read the first vol of the Light Novel and didn't continue.
Went and read the manga adaption and fell in love.
DONT READ THE LN! IF YOU'RE INTERESTED, THEN READ THE MANGA

The short version- The writing is abysmal and reads more like a shitty first draft of somebody who has never read an actual novel in their life and only reads manga.
The manga, thankfully, translates the story much better because of this and is overall a much better experience.


The full version-
As I said above, the LN reads like a poor attempt at a script for a manga. Its riddled with tropes unacceptable in the writing ... industry and barely tolerated in the visual medium of Manga. The writing is at the level of a junior high school kid and gave me frequent painful flashbacks to my primary school days of writing short and terrible stories about vampires and angels.
It constantly breaks genre rules (and I don't mean in an innovative or subversive way) and just honestly lacks the grace and experience to execute the relatively good story.
Its hard to quite pin point just what went wrong with this LN. The poor writing, terrible execution of ideas, the clear lack of actual knowledge of books. Maybe its all of it.

But it has potential! And we see that in the premise and eventual adaption by the manga. The mangaka is clearly an experienced artist, and takes the good elements of the story, improves upon them and then translates it into the medium it was really meant to be in. The art is gorgeous like the cover, it forgoes the unnecessary protag introduction (which was frankly so bad, it made the protagonist unlikable from the get-go, which didn't help when the entire story is about feeling bad about him and wanting him to get the better over his enemies), and executes the tropes its diseased with in a decent way.

I understand why people might prefer the LN. It uh for lack of a more polite way to say it, it gets 'to the point' really fast (somuchsoitsrushedcoughcough) and the language is simple/easy to read (meaning you aren't choked by unnecessary prose or flowery writing). The pain the protag is forced to go through is *just* enough to make you sympathise with him and root for his eventual triumph over his enemies.

But. If you actually read books regularly, then you'll likely struggle like I did to get past the frankly insulting standard of writing and execution in this LN.

So, READ THE MANGA.