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Apr 2, 2025
Who could say no to this adorable demon girl!!!
This sat on my must-watch list for a few years, and I finally started it LAST year. I like demon-lord reincarnated comedy shows I suppose. And the first cour/season 12 episodes of Great Jahy did not disappoint. There were some moments in this that were so funny I laughed myself hoarse, and cried.
It's sort of similar to the Level 1 Demon Lord One Room Hero anime of a couple seasons ago; she was "2nd in command" of the Dark Realm, and ends up somehow in our world, but lives in a 'one room' apartment and has no
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money. Jahy's goal is to try and make some money and search for 'mana crystals' so she can accumulate enough of them to return to the Dark Realm.
Her efforts are in vain; and she ends up having to work part time at a restaurant. She doesn't have enough power to maintain her adult form; so she alternates between being a little girl (with just that t-shirt on) and a busty woman with kind of bikini attire and boots (well the proprietor lady at the restaurant gets her some normal clothes) She works herself half to death, and finally finds a single mana crystal and thinks she is on top of the world.
My favorite parts of this show were the 2 minute vignettes at the end where Jahy explains some of her cost-saving hacks- like how to make bean sprouts with all these different flavor packets that are 20 cents different in price- if you were a struggling college graduate, or know what it was like to be one, you'll relate to all these scenes and it's comedy gold. Jahy has a heart of gold. You just want to see her be happy.
If I could have rated just the first season, I would have given it 9 or 10 it was so good. But then the 2nd half really takes a nosedive. I barely recognized the show by the end; Jahy is still the center of everything that happens; but the jokes just aren't as good, the situations aren't as desperate, and I said in my episode review that with comedy if the joke overstays its welcome- it becomes long in the tooth. They didn't even do the little vignettes at the end anymore. The anime lost the kind of Riches-to-Rags feeling it had going on in the first half. It dragged so bad from episode 13-18 that I sort of dropped it; and didn't pick it up again til a couple weeks ago. I just wasn't motivated to watch it anymore. There are some good things that happen- after Jahy meets Kokoro, a little girl that thinks she's actually a child like her (this is all VERY funny at first) she eventually fights the magical girl, gets help from her landlady etc but it just isn't as FUNNY. And if a comedy isn't funny anymore- that's game over.
It isn't all bad news- The character Suarva remains funny throughout- apart from Jahy she was my favorite character; and the voice acting in this English dub is excellent and the person who plays her as Chibi-Jahy REALLY SELLS IT even when the script itself isn't as tight as it was in the first half.
But the way it drops off in the 2nd half just drags the show down, and I can't say it's really a great show anymore. So if you watch this, watch 1-12, it will make you laugh very hard. There isn't much reason to watch the rest. It's sort of like with comedians, they can only be on stage for a limited time- stay too long and you tire of the jokes. It gets long in the tooth... and seeing her fangs in that cover picture makes that actually kind of a funny joke in itself haha- 7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 28, 2025
When this was announced, I saw the cover art of a cute elf boy (he's actually demonic) with long braids and thought- oh yes sure this looks interesting. When I learned it was an epic fantasy, I was excited. When I found out it's actually a very long manga series that started in the early 2000s- I was surprised. When Amazon picked it up- I was apprehensive- but I have access to someone's ^_~ so no problem there. But when I saw the first episode of the anime.... I was laughing.
How does this look so terrible? Why is that monster head just sitting there
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on the ground and why does it look so goofy? Why is everyone in this show so dead serious, but I'm finding it hilarious?
Ubel Blatt (which I quickly nicknamed Ubel SPLATT, then Ubel BLEAAAAAARGHHHH!!!) is one of the most perplexing viewing experiences I've had this year. I'm still on the fence about whether it was actually good or not. To determine that- normally I look at the production, everything I see on screen, how it flows together, how well it's written, being as objective as possible then adding in how entertaining it was overall as a more subjective take and score it that way. But here; the two sides of that are REALLY far apart. I mean really, really far.
So, the animation. This is a pretty big studio eh?
I mean, the titles I see under Satelight aren't small properties. So what the hell happened here?
The first problem is with the set design: most of the backgrounds are fairly standard fantasy-world architecture; wooden houses, stone fortresses, cobblestone streets, wagons and horses (and elephants... oh you just wait- we'll get to that!!!!) Well there's nothing wrong with the world, but everything is covered with this purple and black goo THE ENTIRE 12 EPISODES and it just makes the whole thing look dim and difficult to see. It's trying to be GRIMDARK, okay fine. Then there's the characters- they're a mix between very pretty attractive characters like Koinzell, the main protagonist who is a reincarnated (not in the isekai sense trust me) warrior in the body of a demon boy. Aht, an equally cute warrior with a skimpy outfit, and a pink haired girl (unfortunately named Peepi... just roll with it) like most of the female and Demi-human characters look nice. Then there's the men, who all look like they came from Berserk. Big, muscular, ugly bastards. But none of the characters move well. At times, they make a shocked face and just stay still; and 2D cutouts of the characters are just moved up and down on the screen without any of their limbs moving!!!
It's alright when they're flying over scenery or just walking around a town, but when they start fighting (which happens in this anime A LOT) things really fall to pieces. A good chunk of the action actually is stills- just stills, no movement, and it looks so cheap and flat it just brings out laughter again and again- for scenes that are supposed to be dramatic and momentous.
The storytelling. Here, I'm afraid it's not much better.
I don't need to spoil this in a review, but I can say it really does storytelling the same way it does animation. It just jumps from scene to random scene, showing people running going "RAWWRRR!!" and knaves getting slashed in half etc, then Koinzell or another character will jump off a dragon or something and slash someone- then there's a scene with two people talking to each other- only to realize it's a flashback or something shoved in. It's an absolute mess. The pacing, the dramatic timing, it's all over the place. It basically just feels rushed. Like the studio got commissioned to adapt several volumes of a manga but with just 12 episodes. Rather than pick one arc, they decided to just jam as much as possible into this and run.
But over all of this, there were moments Ubel Splatt JUMPED THE FUCKING SHARK so high I could only put my hat on and tip it to the man who thought "Oh yea, I've done a good job on this"... and no moment captured that feeling better than the invasion of one of the cities by enemy troops, who deploy a couple of ELEPHANTS with their cavalry..... Oh sweet Jesus.... I don't think I've ever laughed harder watching an anime in my life. That there, that was some God Tier level of GOOF.
They don't move (obviously) but oh man ...
So was it entertaining? Hell yes. That's what makes this weird- it's another one of those so-bad-it's-good experiences; except it shouldn't have been bad in the first place. It SHOULD have been better. At no point was I ever bored watching this, I liked and cared about the characters, only for the flaws of the awful animation and the clumsy pacing to SUBTRACT FROM THAT EXPERIENCE.
"Just go read the manga" is what I'm going to be told, but I'm watching the anime, and no matter how good the manga is the anime has to be judged on its own merits and I'm afraid- it's just average.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 28, 2025
Re:Zero- Season 3 (though if one is honest, this is like the 6th actual season of this show) The most recent installment of the Other World Adventures of Subaru Netsuki and all his friends... it seems everyone has forgotten this is actually an isekai.
The story has really focused around Subaru's curse of regenerating after death- sort of like a time-loop, being forced to relive the same sequences over again Groundhog Day style until he gets it right and can move forward.
The problem is, we've long lost sight of where or how he began; and he's died and revived so many times he has come
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to treat the curse more like an ability- an escape hatch for when he gets caught in a situation he can't fix, or a cheat against an unbeatable opponent. Nevertheless, the guy still looks and acts exactly like he just stepped off the bus at his low-income public housing complex in District C... he hasn't really adapted to the world he's in nor built himself an identity other than 'pathetic whining victim' who whines and complains about his predicament.... FORTUNATELY this season deemphasizes his worst tendencies; but it also suffers from some very obvious flaws that prevent it from being a truly great show.
The worst problem is the size of Re:Zero's cast has swelled to include so many people that I honestly cannot keep track of the names- even of characters I know I love (like Otto- what's his brother's name again?) and Julius (had to look that one up) and all the Princess Candidates (Priscilla, Anastasia, Crusche.. I'm sure there's another, need to look her up) Now there's Garfiel (not "Garfield" Mr Autocorrect!) who has a brother and sister and of course we have Wilhelm and his whole family basically... it just goes on and on. Rem and Ram (who?) also used to be characters in this show!
The problem with a cast so huge is obviously it leaves no room for most of these characters to really come into their own. What is Reinhard really, besides a heroic warrior who comes to save Subaru's ass so many times? How is that different than what Julius does a couple of times? The show could live without Anastasia, and Crusche really only works as someone for Felix (I mean "Farris") to play off of... and I love Felix, but he's another character who gets hardly anything to do in this season.
But the show still introduces NEW characters- like Lilliana, and I have to say, she's a wonderful ray of sunshine and an inspiration.... a great character on her own, but her story is shoved in the middle of a long-running isekai about someone else; she deserves an anime of her own. Someone like her would have breathed desperately needed life in the dull slog that was Frieren for example.... but I digress (again)
Yet despite all these criticisms I make, the whole season taken together is really great. White Fox does a super job with the backgrounds, the world design, the Italian style architecture (count how many Duomos you can spot) and the character models are jaw dropping. Everyone looks sharp and attractive and just lovely. It portrays sunshine in a Renaissance City just as well as dark, grim, and destruction. And the music- especially Lilliana's string song- the opener and closer- are excellent. The episode about Lilliana is the high point of a terrific season. Even though I gripe about the details; the huge cast the lack of narrative direction and yes it sort of devolved into a Battle Shounen with just an endless fight that dragged on for 6 episodes or more (and had an abrupt, totally disappointing end) I still enjoyed every single episode. I picked this up mid-season and caught up to current VERY quickly. Both the English and Japanese vocals are superb- the English track is actually slightly superior (Emilia, Subaru, Beatrice and Lilliana are standouts); but they stopped dubbing up to 3 episodes before the end so I had to make the awkward switch to the Japanese vocals and... the show remained just as good.
No, you will NOT start here if you want to start watching Re:Zero, you really do need to start at the beginning. So this review really isn't very good as an advertisement to newcomers, but if you are wondering whether to bother continuing after the last season- YES- DO IT, Definitely. It's good, you will not be disappointed.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 27, 2025
Ever since Hand Shakers, the modest studio GoHands has had a reputation. Hand Shakers was awful because of its characters and story, over-rendered CGI notwithstanding… but every season this studio debuts a new show, the criticism has been a little too predictable. MAL featured an article about this show that caught my eye, and rather than do what everyone else says and moan “bwaaah Gohands!” …I decided to give it a try.
It is a huge, huge improvement over Hand Shakers. A group of girls are hanging out in a very glossy, crisp and clean city- but there are no other people around. They meet
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someone new- a girl named Renge- who is bashful around them and has some adorable funny faces as she fusses about how to introduce herself. Each of the girls is very pretty, beautifully drawn, and with different color hair, stylish outfits, and their own pet phrases. But what you may notice first is- the camera angles.
The camera swoops all around in I suppose GoHands signature style, birds-eye, worms-eye views and all kinds of other angles, but the girls themselves are possibly more animated than anything you’ve ever seen before. Their boobs bounce- up and down and left and right- they move their heads and shoulders around constantly, and EVERY STRAND OF HAIR is moving- and it’s not choppy- it moves like fluid. You can criticize the stylistic choices and the lackadaisical plot, but you can’t deny the characters are beautifully animated.
As the show progresses, the laid back feeling finally shifts to some action and even a shocking character-death that was really very dramatic… the number of people watching the first episode had dropped to a dedicated few by the mid-way point, and all I could wonder was why?
Yes it’s true, GoHands has an offbeat style… more like they lean way too heavily on 3D graphics programs, and someone at the studio can’t keep their hands off the ‘increase contrast’ knob; and for some reason they are obsessed with making cherry blossom trees glow brighter than the downtown of a medium sized city on a Friday night. And the monsters they fight, even the weapons they fight them with- have neon colored glowing liquid LIGHT spewing out of them… if you were vegging out on a typically boring, visually flat episode of Magic Maker and suddenly switched to the middle of one of these fight scenes, I’m pretty confident your eyeballs would catch fire.
But maybe that’s why I love this show so much.
Aren’t people tired of seeing the same crappy 2D drek with the same archetypal isekai protagonists, dull colors, wooden dialogue, and the same unimaginative magic crap in season after season of mass produced slop? What is the real reason you like anime as a medium? The stories? You can read a story in a book. Don’t you want to see ANIMATION???
That’s what this show was made for!
I have a completely different view of it- and the studio GoHands- than I did at the beginning. The reason anime became so popular was that it did radical things western animation didn’t attempt, it had exciting camera movement, (and stories for grownups), action-packed fights, memorable characters and…. loads of cute girls. All of those things are packed into this anime, it is a dazzling overload for the eyes- maybe that’s what anime should be.
I can’t understand the appeal of liking something because it’s flat and boring and safe.
This show is bright, colorful, loud, obnoxious, confusing, and absolutely bonkers-
and that is EXACTLY THE REASON you should watch it.
Now- you CAN look for every flaw in the scenery or point out the direction of the shadows not matching up, or some other pedantic gripe about some background detail. You COULD also sit back and watch the world spin, see colorful girls twirl around and scream while riding guitars through the air attacking some hilariously stupid looking glowing monster..
When it’s put that way, that choice seems easy- I had a great time watching this show and I wish more anime were like it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 26, 2025
What makes ANIME special? What sets it apart from animation from the west? What makes it so popular for so many decades?
There are so many ways to answer this question- and it might be the same answer as why it’s still popular. When you think back to some of the great anime from years past- like Akira- it’s a simple story about a guy becoming so powerful he became a monster- an interesting concept, but the way it’s animated is what makes it special.
Western animation didn’t do anything like this. Everything from the colors, to the camera angles, to the concepts, to the
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design of its worlds and characters. When Japan wants to- it can put out some of the best animation the world has ever seen- and do things that make Hollywood studios with their billions of dollars jealous. Anime can be an amazing medium.
Then there’s this.
It’s hard for me to understand, how an industry that created all the incredible stuff it has over a century would even bother making something like this.
What makes Magic Maker special? What sets it apart from other animation from the west?
What sets it apart from other anime?
The answer is simply nothing.
Absolutely nothing aspirational, hopeful, useful, inspiring, exciting, thoughtful, creative or interesting has been put into- nor expressed by- this anime.
It is NOT about interesting concepts. It is NOT well animated. It is not creative. It’s a miserable pile of cardboard cutout characters and generic CGI backgrounds and glowing bubbles of mana mashed together into a painfully boring 23 minutes of flavorless pith.
Normally I would not rate a show so harshly when its characters look at least mildly well drawn or the backgrounds were decent- but I am not giving credit anymore for a major studio like this who are just importing a bunch of stock backgrounds; while half the episode consists of a non-animated chibi of the character talking against a blue or green background; and the other half takes place with a brick wall pattern behind the stock characters, or the stock house they imported from minecraft. They can do better, and with enough choices, so can I on my own PC.
The entire reason so much of this rubbish gets made is not just because it’s popular but because it’s EASY. It’s cheap. There is hardly any animation in any of these episodes, and even the fight against the goblin, and near the end the demon guy, were barely anything, and the goblin was another stock character import (and they didn’t even bother to integrate it!) It’s low effort mass produced chaff. There isn’t even a need to write a story, because the ‘story’ of most of the episodes is: boy tests making mana bubbles, boy tests making more mana bubbles, he fights a monster with them, sister and father look amazeface, the end.
No it is not the worst anime I have ever seen, its biggest sin is just being BORING.
Week after week, I had to force myself to watch this. It does not attempt anything interesting with its animation, camera angles, designs, story, or characters. It plays it safe in every department, it remains content to just be as bland as possible. I cannot see how anyone could be impressed by this, unless your expectations were so rock bottom that anything better than a total train wreck would have seemed brilliant. There was a time when anime had something to prove, and went to great lengths to create things you couldn't even imagine. And we have come full circle to something that does not even try.
It depresses me that the once great animation powerhouse that was Japan, who have produced so many incredible, inspiring, fascinating anime for so many decades, has fallen so low.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 23, 2025
I wasn't even going to bother reviewing this. But I feel compelled to warn future generations about its awfulness, as a kind of public service. It was on Crunchyroll of all places (I wonder if the execs are aware this is in their catalog) and that means it is extensively censored- and all I can say is:
THANK GOD this is censored.
The other reason I review this is as a way of demonstrating what makes a terrible anime distinct from everything else. I have seen plenty of bad anime, in fact watching bad anime is a fun pastime of mine. But some cross over
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into the downright offensive, or are so badly made and incompetent that they are irredeemable. This is BOTH of those things.
The pink haired main character is named Makoto (that's all you get to know about him) and he looks different in every scene. Not like he's in disguise but like he was illustrated by a different person each scene- off model. The guy in black, who only wears a sleeveless shirt and no pants, is Kintaro. He is Makoto's bodyguard because all the guys in his school are trying to assault him basically... and that's all the plot there is.
This is 9 minutes long, but felt like an hour. It will take longer to type this than it did to watch the anime (and longer still to wash it from my mind). I uttered "Ohmaigaaad" at least 16 times while watching it, right from the very opening scene a warning appears that says it's not appropriate for children- which is an exclamation mark- and then TWO dots appear below the exclamation mark, which then sways back and forth. How is that for subtlety?
It's basically straight up hentai that has MERCIFULLY been censored to hell and back. Some dude steps up, says he's gonna hurt Makoto, then naked guy says "Uh uh" and, as far as I can interpret, puts so much dong in their faces that they give up and ask for forgiveness.
The amount of professionalism, care, skill, and thought put into making this was zero. The amount of perversion is on the opposite end of that scale. The only positive thing I can say about it was it's kind of goofy, not violent, and wants to just be humorous BUT it's really just a 9 minute long perverted joke made by someone right handed with their left hand, while their right hand was doing things the Catholic Church advises you ought not.
Now I need to go wash my eyes out. WITH ENGINE DEGREASER
The one positive thing I can say about this experience was that it was mercifully short, and at least I know now what kind of BL I do not like. I guess that's two things. It's okay, that's two for the price of 1.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Mar 9, 2025
Nice looking movie, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be praising here, is this an origin story for Emilia?
For an OVA this does not have especially good animation and relies mostly on a couple of characters, just Emilia and Puck for most scenes, with some other unnamed characters. The dialogue, especially that of the weird spirits she fights is kind of cheesy. This whole "you're a half demon and simply existing in this world is enough reason to kill you" is not a very compelling plot device.
This is mostly a monster fight between Puck and some very corny fire spirits. It
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felt like an episode of Fairy Tail. The fight against the fire spirits, which for some reason appear as flaming pegasus, and announce themselves in a commanding voice but speak more like a bunch of Daleks. And since none of the other characters from Re:Zero are present, it doesn't feel connected to the rest of the story.
And if the story of Emilia's origin was more than "Waaa why does everyone hate me!" without ever getting a convincing answer- it might have been interesting. Unfortunately it just felt like a chore.
I have never liked Emilia as a character in Re:Zero, she is too much of a hopeless damsel in distress and goes around acting like a victim. Nothing about her says 'leader', nothing about her says she should be a Queen Candidate, and apart from her loyalty to Subaru she has no other real function in the story.
If you do like this perpetually weeping, helpless waif of a girl then you might like this movie. If you find her kind of helpless and uninspiring, it will just be another hour or content you can miss.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 22, 2025
STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE: MC is a child and loves playing around; daddy is an important scientist doing research for Good Cause and is killed by Bad Guys; MC is saved by mentor who reveals daddy’s Real Plans for MC and secret weapons hidden away “in case this happened”; MC swears revenge and is training to Get Stronger to take on Bad Guys and find out who killed daddy.
If you read this far without stopping, congratulations on finding this anime’s plot highly original, and clever.
For everyone else, this is so cliche it’s almost comical. The MC in this case is
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Rikka, whose father is a researcher and grandfather is a ninja. She is also called ‘Lily’ by one of the other characters, which is conveniently confusing, if you like being confused.
The character’s reactions to things don’t really match the surroundings very well- Rikka sobs herself into oblivion when gun-toting assassins show up at her dad’s very sus underground lab that is more impressive than the entire Iranian atomic bomb program. And the other chick Mia falls for her abusive dad’s shit four or five times in a row and still cries over him… Jesus Christ- CONTEXT!!!
Rikka, on her own, is living in a rented apartment in a crumbling building, and goes out trying to find out where the bad guys are. It's implied she does odd jobs for people to make ends meet- but nowhere near enough is shown to prove this so I'm not sure. She has high-tech cloaking and the black fox mask and some weapons; but is utterly shit at being a ninja.
She meets Mia by some accident, who is equally shit at being whatever she’s supposed to be. Mia’s dad is apparently the scientist who took over after Rikka's dad at the sus looking lab, and is using HER as the experiment…..
I have no complaints about the style, or the characters or the music; all of which is perfectly competent and well done. You see the cover art for this and it's captivating enough to make you want to watch it. And you would go into a movie of this length expecting a story that is probably fast paced, but has an arc that concludes by the end in hopefully a dramatic spectacle. I don't believe I'll be the only one saying I felt like something was missing while watching this; almost as if it was supposed to be the first of a trilogy or at least an intro to a TV series.
It has no ending, it basically sets up who the villain is but- then the credits roll. So was this a pilot for a TV anime that got cancelled? It’s really well made despite the paint-by-numbers plot, the animation and sound and art are all pretty good. The girls are all cute attractive characters, the adult characters look distinct, and the way they’re introduced hints at them having a purpose beyond the random scenes they’re in. But after meeting the “boss” guy (who talks to Rikka on the phone once) and the landlady (who has a 40 foot long limo) we never see them again.
My hunch was on this being the premiere for a project that got cancelled, possibly because of sensitivity to the underground lab scenes, due to the UNSPECIFIED VIRUS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN that totally DIDN'T come from a lab.
but you tell me.
As an intro to a longer series, this was solid. As a standalone movie, it’s… unfinished. I don’t see anything to continue watching, so I had no choice but to rate this as a movie. If a sequel ever comes out, maybe this would go up. Anime about girls transforming into ninjas are common, but this one I can't really recommend.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 23, 2024
Ancient anime but this one needs a new review: Game adaptations have been around even longer than you think. This is an adaptation of the Street Fighter II game, which you remember if you’re Gen X. If you’re not Gen X, know this was a very popular game in the 90s, I’ve played it myself (back in college) and am not even a gamer… This is a 30 year old adaptation of the game but it really surprised me. It looks old, the character designs look kind of inspired by American comicbook muscle guys they look HUGE and clunky, with massive square faces, blank white
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eyes, and jaws sharp enough to cut steel, nevermind that Guile’s hair looks like a shoe-polishing brush- the action in this is really good and there were some really surprising scenes. I sort of expected to be bored and just laughing at it, but it was pretty interesting and had a good mix of action and dialogue- decent voice acting; and the visuals are richly colored and the art, the backgrounds are quite good. Even the cars looks accurate- and awesome! There are a couple different 911s, a Shelby Mustang (of course) with New York plates, several detailed Jeeps, an 84 Cadillac, an S-Class Mercedes and incredibly- Ambassador cars in India! A lot of thought and passion was put into this anime and it shows.
The globe trotting was a real delight; they’re in a different city in each segment. My favorite scenes took place in India of all places! I have been looking for an anime set in India forever, and it’s only one segment but it looked surprisingly good and has easily the movie’s cutest character, a little girl who is more moe than moe OMG… I wish we got her name she was so sweet! We need more cute Indian girls in our anime now!!
The main characters in this of course are Ken and Ryu, the two title characters from the game. Other playable characters are also in this like Chun-Li and Cammy… the girls are beefy but also beautiful, I fell in love with Chun-Li after her heroic fight that was very suspenseful.
The soundtrack is mostly 90s elevator music (I felt like midi music was better than most of it), but some of the songs were memorable- like the guitar song that plays in Chun-Li’s apartment.
Of course we can’t forget their magical fight moves! Ken’s HADOUKEN! (“Ha-DOOOO-ken!”) Ryu’s SHORYUKEN! (“Sho-YUUU-ken!”) Oh man I haven’t heard them shout that in almost 30 years! Talk about key jangling…
Another surprise in this: the CGI. Yes- this 30 year old anime actually has some! It’s actually integrated pretty well, and not overused. Back in those days, integrating the CGI with cel animation was actually the challenge. This one does it decently- it won’t amaze you with tech- but it looks fine.
I would say its one weakness is the fights on the mountaintop, that went on a bit too long and the generic background felt like a game scene rather than a movie, and made them less impactful. (Now how do we get down from here?)
Then the American choppers come to take down their BASE. Ahh the base!!
In the 80s and 90s all bad guys had to have a base- when we were little kids after watching our after-school cartoons what ever game you played outside- even hide&seek- the key objective was to capture the opponent's base- the base was everything! And the base this time is in the jungles of Southeast Asia- so with everything it does this anime even manages to give us Americans one last shot at revenge for Vietnam lolol. I really thought that was quite funny!
The ending was okay, then some elevator music plays- but I rate this high for being very entertaining; extremely well made, faithful to the game but given a plot that has high enough stakes you actually care about seeing the next scenes;
If you’re of the slightly older generation that remembers this game, or you are truly curious to see what ancient game adaptations were like in the 90s, this is a must watch. They don’t make them like this anymore- but I sure wish they did.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 7, 2024
A Viral Phenomenon: (noun) when a piece of media is viewed and shared by millions of users online, in a short timespan.
When Frieren first started streaming, I suspected its near instantaneous popularity and the memes were just part of some Viral phenomenon…
And after watching, and suffering through its dull, dry exposition and lethargic pacing, its dreadfully boring dialogue and disjointed, directionless storytelling through an excruciating 28 episodes- I can now say my original suspicions have been confirmed with absolute certainty. Watching Frieren the whole way through has been one of the most disappointing, the most baffling, most frustrating viewing experiences of my entire
...
life.
It doesn’t even have any redeeming qualities that I could try and point out as a counterbalance to everything that’s wrong with the show- it’s just a painfully dull, boring, unoriginal -and I mean completely derivative- pile of cliches that any viewer of anime, or fantasy, or even Hollywood movies- has seen in any random title hundreds of times before- even Rings of Power does the same character archetypes better than this and at least has visuals far outpacing this show a million times over. This isn’t even good to LOOK AT with the sound off- it looks the exact same as every other generic D&D Fantasy that’s been done in anime since the beginning of time and does absolutely NOTHING different, or better.
Tell me how many archetypes: The Dwarf Warrior. The Healer. The Mage. The Priest. A Demon King. Dragons. Magic. Grimoires.
They aren’t even unique takes on any of these- apart from the slightly puffy round faces like Frieren herself has- and she isn’t even cute or pretty or intriguing to look at in any way- there’s nothing I can say about her character design other than that it’s as frumpy and unimaginative as the show she’s in. The dwarf is by far the worst- looking like a paper cutout most of the time.
But watching this thing- my God- it’s like watching grass grow. Really boring grass. A typical episode has our Heroes slowly walking on paths through the greenery, on their way to nowhere in particular, calmly talking in monotone voices. Not talking about anything interesting, it’s usually Fern just asking Frieren, why does she like this kind of magic? Or why doesn’t she like to eat peanuts or why does everyone in this town walk funny or something… none of the dialogue is captivating. None of it is interesting, informative, stimulating, or necessary. But they talk CONSTANTLY. Entire episodes are literally just that- these characters, slowly walking, and talking endlessly about some relationship or other with a person in her past.
Flashbacks are a well-worn trope that anime loves to use and abuse- and they are most notorious in the Shonen genre- where they can be thrown at the viewer in the middle of an exciting fight- either the protagonist or antagonist is remembering some inspirational thing said to them, or some awful letdown- before scoring a winning blow on the enemy….
But here- flashbacks are literally the entire story.
Look, here’s the problem: A flashback is often used to show a dramatic memory in a character’s past that motivates them (or relates their fear) to make the next move in the plot. When they’re done really well- they actually show scenes that we’ve already experienced a previous episode- in a way to give those words (or that insult) extra meaning by reinforcing it. When used well, and sparingly- flashbacks can really add emotional weight to the story.
But when the story itself never actually began- when you just introduce us to a handful of characters, proclaim that they’ve already won the honors (defeated the Demon King we never saw) and are just standing around talking- YOU CAN’T JUST FLASH BACK TO MORE STANDING AROUND AND TALKING. It doesn’t work!!! It builds no dramatic tension. It just feels tedious.
Like so many new anime these days, this show is in one specific way exactly the same as all those generic isekai’s: it does no setup of its world, and does not introduce the protagonist of the story at the start of their struggle- it just skips over everything.
It doesn’t show us an interesting world, or a battle, or the ruins of a town or city at the end of one. It shows a bunch of archetype characters, skips giving any background, and then just fast forwards into the future- and tries to use flashbacks to relate bits and pieces of the story it never told in the first place. Something is missing- you say to yourself if you’re paying any attention at all- as you watch this show- and the same thing is missing in EVERY EPISODE. Why don’t I care about these characters? Who are they? Why are they? Where’s the moment one of them saved the other’s life? Where’s the pivotal moment???
There isn’t one. It’s post modern is what it is- it’s “deconstructed” storytelling and decided to try just isolate the individual components and show them to you backwards, without proper context- so that the viewing experience is very dry and without meaning. Meaning is something that comes out of CONFLICT and STRUGGLE, followed by understanding. This show decides those three things can be isolated components which it can then just deliver to you individually in reverse- and no, it can’t.
Sosou No Frieren is a masterful failure at storytelling like nothing I have ever seen. And the reason I’m so angry and so frustrated with it is beyond how bad it is. In truth, this show is really not bad on the level of something poorly made (it isn’t), the most frustrating thing about it is the absolutely undeserved praise it has from millions of people who can not POSSIBLY have watched the same show I have! The avalanche of praise this gets, from people who would call a nearly identical anime boring if it had a different title- is maddening.
When the next viral phenomenon shows up- and it will- Frieren will be forgotten in a FLASH. No, nobody 25 years from now (or even 5) will be amazed by this, or feel like it’s essential viewing. It will be forgotten- because it’s too long and it’s not very entertaining. The world and the concept has been done a thousand times before, the characters aren’t very pretty or very interesting, the dialogue is dull, the music is flat, the action is sparse, and the magic system is inconsistent and poorly defined. There is nothing- not character design, nor soundtrack, nor fighting, nor artwork, nor dialogue that I could say was memorable.
The next time a viral sensation like this spreads, the next time an anime shoots to #1 on MAL in just a few weeks- I am trusting my instincts and skipping it. You can have this show. And its boring premise and its dull dialogue- congratulations, it’s yours. I wasn’t impressed. Now I want the 13 HOURS of my life back that I wasted on it!!!
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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