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I was really surprised by this one. It starts off kind of childish - and it is a film made for kids - but there's a surprising depth to this film that you don't see until later. Multifaceted characters, an excellently paced and written plot, and a message that reaches both kids and adults. The stakes feel real. The highs are soaring and the lows will have you genuinely fearing for the characters, and there are points where I had no clue what was going to happen next. I was crying by the end. It really is a special film.

And of course, the visuals ... are sublime - Ponoc took the signature Ghibli style and made it their own, swapping out the blocky colours for shading and detail. It still feels like a drawn animation, but has the flexibility of CGI. The music is fantastic, the voice acting in the English Dub is on the level of any major children's film. It really does have everything.

I absolutely recommend it.

It's a bit of a mess. A beautiful, creative, devious mess. But still.

Urasawa falls into the Ryōgo Narita school of writing. Neither of them seem to have the slightest idea how to drip feed information to their audiences, which information should be given freely, and which should be held back as plot twists. In Pluto, as in Monster and Narita's stories, Baccano and Durarara, this results in a mess. A simple story made convoluted to the point where it's borderline impossible to understand what's going on most of the time. Even many of Pluto's plot twists don't hit home, because it's more mess to add ... to the existing mess. It's not until you get close to the end when you're given enough information to make sense of it. At that point, viewers will often think 'wow that was hard to understand, which means it was probably deep.' Part of this is a pacing issue, but it's mainly a problem with the writer.

It's disappinting, because Pluto has so much going for it. Great animation, great music (though it won't blow your socks off), great detail, production value, and voice acting on both the sub and dub. But it's all held back by the spaghetti slop story. And unfortunately, that story is Pluto's main draw. I can look past that enough to appreciate what the story had going for it - its themes and ideas. If they'd been structured differently, Pluto would have been the masterpiece many pundits will no doubt call it anyway.

As it stands, the best I can do is a (generous) eight

Violet Evergarden is one of the greatest anime ever made. It contains one season, two one-shots, and a movie. Recollections is designed to condense that first season into ninety-five minute recap film.

But Evergarden never needed a recap. It's not a long show, and there wasn't much (if any) fat to cut.

In the original, Violet ventures out each episode to help a different client express their true feelings in the form of a letter. The scenarios are creative, beautiful, and often touching, but what matters is how Violet learns from them. She gradually comes to understand the meaning of love by seeing it reflected in her ... clients, and that helps her reconcile her tragic past. Seeing Violet grow into a fully realised human is part of what makes the show so remarkable. Spread among the one-shots are episodes focused on Violet's relationship with her beloved Major Gilbert - these are the 'important' bits, but it's the one-shots that make them work.

Recollections cuts most of it. The two introductory episodes are crammed into thirty minutes, and then we watch three of Violet's most popular assignments, largely unchanged (though they are all shortened). Gilbert's storyline is edited down into a nine-minute sequence which will no-doubt confuse first-time watchers. The original show's two-episode finale is totally thrown out, and in order to avoid any inconsistencies, the character of Dietfried - Gilbert's brother - is thrown out too.

The result is a rushed and disjointed experience. None of the characters (especially Violet) feel well-rounded because all their quiet, contemplative moments were cut. None of the emotional beats are given the time they need to settle. Before you can process one heart-wrenching scene, you're whisked along to the next. Recollections is inferior to the original in every way. At best, it's a excuse for existing fans to revisit some of the show's best moments. But the idea of a first-timer choosing to watch this is all sorts of horrifying.

Please don't do that.

Just watch the original.

There's a phenomenon in sociology called the 'Halo Effect'. It's all about how hot people are treated differently from ugly people. They make more money, experience less mental illness, and even live longer on average. When surveyed, most people see them as morally better. We all have this bias, even if we don't realise it.

Hundreds of anime use attractiveness as symbol of goodness. Villains are often ugly and heroes are usually good looking. Plenty of western shows try to empathise with ugly characters, but this rarely happens in anime. At best, they are the comedy side kick, but never the hero. No one wants to ... buy action figures of ugly guys, or masturbate to ugly girls. Go figure.

Enter Lookism. Its protagonist, Hyung, is short, fat, and pig-like. He lives terribly and is cruel to the few people who take his side. The show really goes out of its way to drive home how disgusting and loathsome Hyung is. It's almost comical how vile everyone is towards him. That is, until he wakes up looking like a kpop idol. Lookism isn't really breaking any ground here. There have been 'glow ups' across anime and manga. Sometimes, like in Devilman Crybaby and Cyberpunk Edgerunner, it's used to show how strength and power can corrupt. Sometimes, like in FFXV Brotherhood, it's done to reveal the layers of a character's childhood insecurities. Sometimes, like in Mob Psycho and Attack on Titan, it represents a character's journey to self improvement.

And sometimes it's wish fulfilment. Actually, it's usually wish fulfilment.

Place yourself in Hyung's shoes, humble uggo, and you too can experience what it is like to be sexy (probably - I wouldn't know). But there's a catch. Hyung's original body still exists in parallel to his handsome one, and every time he goes to sleep, he switches between the two. A lot of the anime's runtime is spent on his hijinks as he exploits his newfound attractiveness (and lowkey super powers) to beat up bullies, protect nerds, and win girls. At its core, Lookism offers the same power fantasy as Spider-man, but boiled down to its most basic concept. There's no complex plot at work here. It's mediocre fanfic level, but makes for some easy viewing. Like narrative junk food. There's some fun to be found in watching him juggle his alter egos, but this is escapism first and foremost.

The inherent benevolence of being tall and ripped gradually starts to rub off on Hyung, who develops an inner beauty to match his outer. When you examine the show's deeper messages, they're pretty harmful, but you're not meant to look too hard. Its half-hearted criticism of society's treatment of ugly people collapses in on itself pretty quickly, because the show also wants to glorify the fuck out of attractiveness. It's really best to just let the pretty colours wash over you. Aside from its plot and characters, Lookism is well animated, with good music and a talented cast of voice actors. Studio Mir is known for its work on 'western cartoons' like Legend of Korra and Voltron, and that style carries through strongly here. Mir's animation is weaker here, with some wonky CGI in parts, but still good. Unfortunately, not even that can save Lookism from its mediocre... everything.

The manhwa is big in South Korea, so I might be missing something. Maybe the source material gets around to a good message in the end, but there are hundreds of chapters and this adaptation has only eight episodes.

Lookism is the sort of show you put on in the background while you're doing something else. It is best experienced from the corner of your eye. It's not bad. But it sure as hell isn't good. If you want to see a well executed glow-up, you're better off watching any of the other anime mentioned in this review.

A major selling point of this anime is the abundance of rippling abs and the flocks of women breasting boobily about. But sexy anime characters don't appeal to me, so I was only sticking around for the schlock.

And there's plenty of schlock here. It's got that unashamed old school corniness to it. Insanely dumb in an endearing way. The first episode was a joy to watch, the second was fun, and the third was okay. By the eighth, the fun had worn off and I wasn't sure why I was still watching.

The production value was... better than this show deserved. Surprisingly pretty animation, ... lovely use of light and colour. Great music, memorable and distinct character designs. I listened in English and I was happy with the dub. On the down side, the characters were weak and the plot bounced around like a pinball. It was badly written, but self-aware enough to be entertaining.

This is probably a show that would have benefitted from a weekly release. It's simple enough to remember across a season, and releasing one episode a week would have kept the silliness from getting stale.

Overall I give it a 5/10. Not good, not bad.

I absolutely love this anime and was really looking forward to the third season.

In terms of execution, it was good. The animation was never the draw of this show, but it did the job. I enjoyed the music too. Everything from the production side was fine.

Unfortunately, ten episodes wasn't really enough to fully flesh out all the different arcs they were going for. There was the high priest conspiracy, the adoption plot, the merchant plot, the magic plot, the orphanage plot.

Inventing the gutenberg press somehow felt like a side quest despite arguably being the culmination of the whole narrative from season one onward.

With so little ... time, this season needed a razor sharp focus. Instead, it felt like the first ten episodes of a really good 26 episode season, with this as the mid-season rallying point.

But there is no other half. This was a full season, and odds are, it's the last one we'll get.

And for that reason, I can't rate this as highly as I would like.