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Jan 26, 2025
This show frustrates me because I've given shows 4/10s before (spoilers for my score if you just wanna read that and react accordingly, I guess) but it's usually because it's bad but generally tolerable enough not to actively piss me off
DarliFra is not that way. This show has some low, low, DIRE points but idk, I can't say I hated it when I was sobbing by the end?
I guess I'll start with what the show starts with: This is the most aggressively hetero show to hetero
I obviously have no problem with shows being hetero but this is built around the premise that a boy needs
...
a girl and a girl needs a boy. It's clearly shown that a same sex duo can't pilot a Franxx (what the mechs are called in this), there's a lot of talk about a bird that needs its opposite sex partner to fly otherwise it's worthless, there's a lesbian character in the show that doesn't really get to do much and is shrugged off by her love interest (I can't really talk about her more without getting into spoilers but yeah, poor girl), even the "parents" of the pilots are set up so the male is the emotionless leader and the female is the emotional caretaker.
It is AGGRESSIVELY, obnoxiously hetero. If you're gay or asexual or even just an incel, you might as well kick rocks in this show.
Speaking of which, the first 9 episodes are absolutely godawful. If I had more respect for my own time and had less of an aversion to dropping shows, I straight up would not have finished this. I thought Zero Two was the nastiest waifu ever, factory designed to be gooner bait (which... is probably still true but at least she has enough substance to be interesting), I hated her. The whole pouring honey on everything she eats, calling Hiro darling like she is Lum, licking people, catching a fish in her mouth while naked, it was a physically repulsive show for the first stretch. It was like an artificial carnivore girl designed so any imperfections were conveniently forgotten.
Not to mention the back to back beach episode and then 50s sitcom-ass "erm, you saw us naked, we're gonna split the house in half" and WaCkY sHeNaNiGaNs ensue.
To be quite honest, I probably should give this a "Not Recommended" because I wouldn't ever ask anyone to sit through the first 9 episodes.
But then one of the pilots sneaks off and learns more about the world in E10... and it actually starts to become interesting.
I guess I should talk about the pilots first.
I feel like a lot of them are just kinda... there. Goro is such a cuck, dude. Hiro already has his perfect waifu and Ichigo is just jumping at his feet like a puppy, begging for scraps, and Goro's more than fine letting Ichigo trample all over him for the first, like, 23 episodes. I hated Ichigo, total drag.
The Pink Franxx Duo... I mean... they're there, I guess? They did not really add or detract to my experience.
Mitsuru (who for most of the show, my brain INSISTED his name was Natsume, idk why) was cool but I felt like he had an unforced error regarding his character late in the show. It wasn't a bad twist or whatever at the time, but it never really gets resolved so what started as a natural character development then somehow loops into "why would he choose to do this". Again, I can't go further into it for spoilers but yeah.
Also, what the hell was up with Futoshi? Bro was only there for 2 things: to whine about [EVENT THAT HAPPENS IN EPISODE 11] and to be fat. Seriously. Like 90% of his lines are related to food or being fat. The gang visits someone in the hospital and I joked that Futoshi was going to take the food for himself since the patient didn't want to eat... AND THEN HE ACTUALLY DID IT. He ends up getting an eating disorder but Pink Franxx Guy just tells him to eat and then he does and it never really comes back up. I mean, it was an interesting plot point but it ends up just coming and going.
They also introduce an Elite group of Franxx pilots who work for Da Big Man called the Nines and these dudes barely matter. They narc on the protags like once, one rides with Hiro for one mission, they try to take Zero Two back occasionally, but for a group that could have easily been the main antagonists or something, they don't really do much.
Eventually, the protagonists end up doing some cool stuff talking about the world and letting the kids discover more about it and becoming more independent and rebelling against the system. I heard this show gets crazy around E15 and I mean it wasn't that- [EPISODE 20]
Wait, what was that?
[EPISODE 20]
What do you MEAN, DarliFra, you can't just do [that twist], you've got 4 episodes left?
I was actually gobsmacked, floored, suckerpunched by the twist in E20. It isn't the worst twist in the world... if this was, like, E12. But with 4 episodes left, it just introduces new characters that you don't give a shit about.
Really, it starts speedrunning even before that to cram everything it wanted to say in.
So the finale ends up being some Giant Space War against an antagonistic force you don't care about when mech battles have never been their strong suit.
Speaking of, the mech battles. I'll admit here, I never got around to watching Gundam and TTGL is still on my to-watch list so maybe I'm just not a mecha guy, I enjoyed Evangelion but if you asked me to name what I liked about it, I don't know if the mecha battles would hit the top 3. It's not really what I think of when I think Eva.
So take this with a grain of salt: I was bored by the mecha battles. Part of the problem to me was the klaxosaurs looked like generic enemies you'd fight in a DarliFra live service looter shooter or something, there are obviously more unique enemies but even they have the uniform black and blue design. I mentioned E1-9 was kind of repulsive but it was also pretty boring. Maybe I was spoiled by Trigger making Kill la Kill and Edgerunners, but DarliFra did not live up to those 2 shows by any imagination.
However, I ended up enjoying Hiro and Zero Two's relationship, I thought a certain other duo had a cute relationship even if [event] kind of spoiled it, there were a lot of nice moments that made this show worth watching for me.
I just think, as a whole, it's too uneven, it has a lot of bad events happening to spoil the anime, the mecha battles weren't that great, there are so many characters that are wasted, and it just overall has too much negatives for me to consider it a GOOD anime.
If you're a Trigger fan, a mecha fan, or a Zero Two gooner, you'll probably enjoy this show. Anyone else, I can't really recommend it because you have to wade through 9 episodes of crap to even maybe get a show you'll sometimes enjoy. I don't regret watching it but I dunno, it's probably the most uneven show I've seen. Watch with caution.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 23, 2025
Around the halfway point (actually, I can tell you the exact last episode I watched before temporarily shelving it, it was the Nanami cowbell episode), I dropped it because I was bored and lowkey dreading watching more. But I felt bad because it was ~Utena~ and maybe it gets better-
No. I was 100% in the right to drop it, my opinion of it went from like a 6 to a 3 when I picked it back up.
I guess I'll start with Utena x Anthy because it being one of the, if not the, most iconic yuri anime was one of my driving factors to
...
watch it. I guess I'll state here that I'm a man and I've never been one to, like, seek out yuri. Yuri's fine but it's not something I'd go out of my way to watch a show for, right (ignore what I just said in the same paragraph)?
I dunno, it was fine? To be quite honest, my read of Utena's sexuality was bi with a MALE lean. I've heard of "oh, I've gotta keep myself pure for my prince/future husband" or whatever as the backdrop to yuri anime before so I get that aspect but to me, she seemed more enthusiastic when she met guys she thought would be her prince than with Anthy.
If this is one of the defining yuri couples of anime, it's not because of the quality of the relationship, at least imo. And maybe this is how much they could get away with at the time but yeah.
Really, all of the relationships in this show kind of sucked. Kozue in particularly soured my mood just seeing her on screen.
Honestly, and maybe this is showing my cards on the table a little bit, but the relationship in the whole show I was most interested in was Mikage's with Mamiya.
One of my main problems with this show is it isn't gay enough.
You cannot IMAGINE my disappointment when they were like "oh, yeah, Mikage? Totally straight, he was chasing Mamiya's older sister" and like sure, dude, awesome.
Honestly, the Black Rose Duelist arc as a whole leads me to another huge problem: there is so much padding and filler in this show.
I've heard this was pretty low budget and, like, it looks fine but it relies a lot on stock footage. The "prince blah blah blah princess" monologue, Utena walking to the Dueling Arena, pulling the sword out of Anthy's chest, there's a lot of filler footage in each episode you can skip around.
Not to mention the entire EPISODES dedicated to Nanami dicking around that has no consequence to the story. Which, like, based, honestly the best episodes in the series, but why did you do this to us? There's even a RECAP episode for NANAMI'S COMEDIC FILLER SHENANIGANS
Oh yeah, there's recap episodes too.
It's also just a really repetitive show? There are so many episodes which feel like "Utena meets someone, look at them! Oh, what? They're gonna duel now?" and it happens over and over.
The Student Council arc, I was willing to forgive it because yeah, sure, whatever, they've gotta introduce us to the main cast.
And then it happens again but with D-list jackasses tangentially related to the Student Council in the Black Rose Duelist arc. There's, like, one Black Rose Duelist who I enjoyed. I liked Mikage, one of my favorite characters (and my favorite of the 3 "main antagonists" of their respective arcs although that's not saying much considering the other 2 weren't good), but he doesn't really get much to do since he just "corrupts" these flunkies into being Black Rose Duelists.
It happens more after the Black Rose Duelist arc but I wanna talk more about the duels themselves.
I've said this before about certain shows but if you don't have the budget and/or interest to write a battle shonen, then don't write one. Nobody's putting a gun to your head making Utena have, like, 20 duels or whatever the actual number is. The padding to get to the actual duels is about the same time as the duels themselves and they're just high school-tier fencing matches. I could have probably blocked some of these duels in my high school production of Hamlet.
To be honest, the comedic characters like Chu-Chu and Nanami were my favorite, any character I had to actually take seriously were kinda mid at best. I liked Juri fine enough, I guess?
Honestly, by the end, I just wanted to see what the shadow puppet girls were up to. While Utena was busy having Days of our Lives over in the light, the drama club was having a fucking ball and they seemed a lot more fun to hang out with.
I'm sure the ending means something really cool but *shrug*. I'm fine with weird surrealist endings, I think Evangelion's TV ending was better than the movie but I was audibly actually laughing at the ending.
I'm sure this show has great themes but if you don't make an entertaining show, I don't care.
I did like some of the aesthetics and I like the IDEA of Revolutionary Girl Utena and it was kinda funny and I thought some of the characters were okay, good even.
It's not a total wash and if you're looking for yuri anime, I kind of feel obligated to recommend it to you even if I didn't like it or even thought it was all that good as a yuri anime
But, like, I don't know man, I didn't enjoy it.
To be honest, this song popping up in my head while watching the show brought me the most joy out of anything during the anime and when your highlight is the Spin Doctors, you probably weren't very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsdy_rct6uo
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jan 18, 2025
I am torn.
This was an AMAZING arc tainted by animation (at least when they're actually playing soccer) that usually looked like shit
They spend like 9 of the 14 episodes on one game of soccer and yet it goes by so quick. It's a very entertaining game, even in its current form, to watch.
While some familiar favorites get screen time, I think my favorite character was one I was a little cold on in the first season. Rin stepped the hell up and became one of my favorite characters in the show. He's still... Rin, but his rivalry with Sae felt real here and the moments
...
where Rin went against Sae were big.
Each goal felt like a big deal and at least to me, I got caught up on if Blue Lock would survive or not, it was a really exciting match.
Probably my biggest criticism of the season (aside from the animation) is how I felt the new characters were mostly underutilized. Other than Shidou and Oliver, I felt the newbies, both on Blue Lock and U-20's sides, just kinda felt undercooked. I liked Yukimiya but that's because I liked his design and general nature, not because he was a particularly deep character or anything.
The animation... yeah...
When they're not playing soccer, it's fine, par for the course, but as someone who saw S1 not too long ago, it stuck out HARD. Especially during the tryouts when I wasn't used to the animation yet, it was rough.
It felt like if you were watching a S1 match through Discord gifs posted 1 by 1. There were lots of shots with characters surrounded by "aura" standing in a pose while they internally monologued, shots with "impact lines" covering like 2/3rds of the screen, and a lot of poor CGI. Like, it looked like if they were trying to advertise "Blue Lock: Global Strikers" or some other Google Play mobile game.
I think as a story, this is the best Blue Lock we've gotten. If I were reading the manga, this would be my favorite part so far. However, "U-20" must've meant under-20 percent of the budget because the animation has taken a severe downturn.
If you really liked Blue Lock S1, you'll probably be able to find a lot of enjoyment in this season. Otherwise, the animation might turn you off.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 15, 2025
While crawling through seasons to scavenge shows that look interesting, I tend to wade through a lot of crap. I won't name names or even genres but... there are a lot of shows that don't even get a second glance out of me because just the title makes me shrivel up and blow away in the dust.
But I've always been one for weird trash.
I will never knock this show for a lack of trying.
First, the thing that sticks out the most. If you know this anime, you can probably guess what I'm about to talk about.
This anime is more or less entirely rotoscoped. It gives
...
it a very... offputting look. I'm sure if you were following the manga, to see it come out with such a weird art style would piss you off. And I'll admit that it doesn't not fit the vast majority of series. This is not something you'd use on, like, Fruits Basket or One Piece or Frieren or *insert most shows here*. But honestly? I think it works here.
Flowers of Evil is an unsettling show. I think it's one of the best horror anime out there for just how unsettling it can be. It can spend 6 minutes in a row showing 2 characters walking and it's more captivating than entire shows I've seen. There are uncomfortable scenes abound, it's such an expertly directed show. Maybe it's because of the unorthodox way it's already animated combined with the offputting ED but I thought the VAs did a killer job here. I'm not usually one to give Japanese VAs praise (not because I dislike subs or anything, I watch all my shows in sub, but as someone who can only speak English, I don't feel qualified to comment on it one way or another most of the time) but I FELT that shit.
In my opinion, I think rotoscoping it helped preserve its place in anime history. If this was "traditionally" animated, it likely would've still swung out at one season and you know how many people would be talking about it? Probably not as many as they are now.
Considering the "to hell with everyone" attitude Kasuga and especially Nakamura display, I think this is a punk rock way to adapt a manga.
Speaking of which, let's talk about the characters!
There's only 3 worth mentioning. The main protagonist, Takao Kasuga, the female deuteragonist, Sawa Nakamura, and the main protagonist's love interest, Nanako Saeki.
Usually when I say this, that's in a derogatory manner, "oh, x character is so unmemorable, I won't even mention them" but, like, that's pretty much genuinely it in this show. Sure, other characters EXIST, but it's really these 3.
I think Kasuga is the one I have the least to say about. He served his purpose well, I liked him. He's kind of a hipster, I guess? He's all like "oh, I read BAUDELAIRE, nobody would ever ~understand~ me" and then he gets hit with peak fiction (which I'll touch on in a second) and then he goes for the ride of his life until the last third which kind of lost me but how about those other 2 characters?
First, peak fiction, Sawa Nakamura. Looking at some pictures of her from the manga, she's cute, I guess. Not really anything special, but maybe my opinion on her manga design would change if I read it. However, I actually LOVE how she looks in the anime. Something about the way she looks and her sheer ~energy~ just radiates emotionally disturbed. This girl is NOT healthy, she is a sicko, a creep, and a weirdo. And her and Kasuga kind of have a cute relationship, in a twisted way. IMO I think Nakamura just wants a friend and of course she'd pick Kasuga, see above. Even the classmates in the show kind of ship them and I think they'd go good together. Tbh, the best moments of this show are when Kasuga and Nakamura are together.
She's just... fascinating to watch. An absolute delinquent who has no regard for social norms or even the law. Sis will straight up pull your pants down in front of your crush in the pouring rain because it amuses her. She leaves such a strong impact that it's a hard sell to sell anyone else with Kasuga unless you just don't like Nakamura.
The last character is another entrant into what I am calling "the crybaby jabroni Hall of Fame", I'm sorry, Saeki sucks. She's supposed to be this popular girl who everyone likes but her self-esteem is apparently utter crap because... uh... what the fuck is her problem, actually? Not that popular people can't have problems, especially considering the shenanigans that happen to her in the season, but Nakamura is a loner freak who people don't like, what exactly is Saeki's excuse? She's canonically pretty (unfortunately, she's about the only character I see why rotoscoping wouldn't work for her, it makes Nakamura look a hell of a lot more deranged than she would have but for a character who's supposed to be Kasuga's MUSE, his VENUS, yeah...), she's popular, she's smart, she has a good home life from what we see, I don't really get what her deal is so I didn't connect with her.
And it'd be one thing if I didn't connect with her but she spends the back half whining and moaning and bitching about how she doesn't ~understand~ Kasuga and how Kasuga's so close to Nakamura and how she's a pebble and Kasuga made her a JEWEL (her source is she made it the fuck up).
And maybe we'd expand on her mindset in Season 2 but-
Oh.
Let's talk about that, huh?
The last episode is one of the most confounding endings I've ever seen in anime. I got more out of the Evangelion TV show ending than this one.
It relies on Season 2 existing because it wastes most of its time either flashing back to previous events or, in a move that SHOCKED me, flashing FORWARD to events that would've been in Season 2. It's almost like a manga in Weekly Shonen Jump that got canceled that's trying to speedrun the events it would've shown had it not been axed. Had I not used my stupid spoiler goblin brain to read the manga ending summary (which sounds kind of ass but this isn't the manga so that's not relevant), I would've been so confused. I was still confused but, like... I respect the absolute balls to piss off the fanbase by rotoscoping the whole anime and then making the anime rely this hard on a S2 coming out but wow, that did not pan out, did it?
It'll be 12 years this April and there's no sign of a S2 so unless you're willing to headcanon your own ending or switch over to the manga, there's no good ending here.
It's not "I mean, yeah, it didn't FINISH finish but I can live with this", no, you've either got to write your own or switch over. It's blatantly unfinished and baiting for a sequel that'll likely never come.
Would I recommend this show?
I can't in proper good faith recommend it to everyone.
It's blatantly unfinished story-wise, it's kind of a "trashy" show (which is perfectly fine for me, I tend to give those shows high marks tbqh), the art style is weird and offputting, the 2 main girls are both emotionally disturbed...
But I can't hate it. I'd rather live in a world where anime like this are the normal. Anime which take big risks, anime which I may never stop thinking about.
I can't promise you'll like this show but I'd be shocked if you forgot about it after watching.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 13, 2025
My feelings on this are a bit mixed but overall, I would recommend this show.
I'll be upfront and say I do not play soccer, I do not watch soccer, I am not a soccer guy. There's a lot of talk about "egos" and "being willing to step on corpses" and how you've gotta be selfish and egoistic and soccer is a striker's game so that may be very true in the real world of soccer, I wouldn't know and so I'm more analyzing it from a general standpoint.
It (and the concept of Blue Lock itself, where it's sold as "300 go in, 1 comes out
...
as the world's best striker and the other 299 are discarded, never to touch the nationals", which I'll get to in a second) makes the series feel a little... impersonal? For example, the MC and Meguru is one of my favorite dynamics in the series but at the end of the day, one of the two is presumably going to have to push each other into the dirt and fuck over their soccer dreams forever. Same for, say, Kunigami and Chigiri.
I think it's very good at building interpersonal dynamics and having a strong cast, I'm sure it's very good for a certain other type of BL on certain websites (speaking of which, outside of family members, there's only one girl and she serves as basically Ego's caretaker/assistant. I know enough about sports anime to see this coming a mile away but if you don't, there you go). To be honest, if the whole show was based around Team Z, I would've been perfectly fine with that, most of the team have solid personalities that could have carried a show of similar length.
Which brings me to my first problem, after the first selection, Team Z is immediately smashed into pieces and multiple team members are never seen again (outside of the Additional Time segments). Which I am not immediately opposed to, there are a few (like Iemon the goalie, Naruhaya, and Imamura) which I wouldn't have cared if they disappeared into the void and they do mix in some other characters to keep things fresh and flesh out teams and stuff, which I was glad to see. Barou in particular gets some good attention in the second selection when he could have easily been "the one striker from Team X just to differentiate them".
However, some of the characters SUCK. I thought Rin was fine (even if some of his lines were poorly written cringe from someone trying to write an edgy, cool, unfeeling character, see "Read a book on how human eyes work and learn something, you piece of trash" or whatever the line was) but his Top Three teammates were Different for the sake of being Different and just came across as annoying. If they were cannon fodder for one of the first selection teams, fine, but we see more of them than is just.
The last character I want to bring up is Nagi because, well, he got his own movie so I figured I'd bring him up. I enjoyed him. I don't think he's the kind of character I'd watch a whole spin-off about but for what he was in the main series, I liked him and his dynamic with Reo.
So, how's the soccer?
I'm sure if you're a purist who needs your soccer to be realistic and replicated on a real soccer field and blah blah blah, you won't like this show, but as someone who didn't even bother to check it out during the Olympics, I thought it was very fun here. They put a lot of budget and style behind it so even if you aren't a soccer fan, I'm sure you'll probably be entertained.
There's a lot of talk about "evolving" and "devouring" so they're always trying to 1-up themselves and use strategy to figure out "chemical reactions" and stuff so it's a lot like a battle shonen but in a sports form instead.
I think it's one of the better if not best shows I've personally seen at making characters seem like they'll actually lose. At some point, you just kind of assume the main character will win because like come on, they're not letting the MC die against Jobber #52. But other than situations where they literally couldn't lose or else they'd all have to leave Blue Lock, I thought there was decent suspense as to if they'd win, at least I felt there was. It made even getting a DRAW seem like a victory.
I did talk about the concept of Blue Lock and I'm confused at the ending (and mad because they took out one of my favorite characters but that's neither here nor there)? So, the concept is "1 becomes best striker, the other 299 can kick rocks, never to touch the nationals" and I get that. But then he's like "oh yeah, you're playing the Japanese national Under-20 team and if you win, you get to 'hijack' the U20 team". I'm sorry? You mean the team of 11 people? Last time I checked, that's 10 more people getting to play for a national team (I guess assuming Team Blue Lock wins) than was promised.
Another thing that is a little weird to me is how prison-like it is. You're telling me 300 sets of parents (roughly speaking, but you get what I mean) went "yeah, take my kid to this weird facility where I won't see them for an undetermined amount of time and if they lose, all our investment in soccer goes down the drain"? Like, I get if you score enough goals, you can get your cell phone back or even get a "day out of Blue Lock" pass but this is almost Pokemon-level negligence of your kids.
That being said, Blue Lock is a great show with (for the most part) strong characters and really solid, tense battles/soccer games. I do have my gripes with it but if you have any interest in the sports anime genre, I'd recommend checking it out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 9, 2025
Absolutely rotten show.
First, the relationships.
Basically the main thrust of this show is the concept of a human x "persocom" (personal computer, think a humanoid computer... so a robot) relationship. There are multiple couples that end up forming and they all have some sort of relation to the idea of humans and persocoms dating.
However, that kind of buries the lede because more than one are relationships where someone at least a decade their senior dates someone who is roughly 18. And it's not just an age gap, as icky as a 17-19 year old dating someone who is in their 30s is, the full-grown adults are
...
in positions of power over the high schoolers.
Not ONLY that but the men in these relationships do outright creepy things.
One of them holds a girl hostage in the mountains, browbeating her until she agrees to elope with him (I mean, this sounds kind of extreme but it's more or less what he does) and the other uses a persocom to track the girl's persocom so he can meet with her.
Even the main relationship is composed of someone who is canonically a virgin taking advantage of someone who canonically knows jack shit so he can finally score. Like, it's not that cynically told in-story but once we find out the MC is a virgin, there is a streak of a few episodes where he is TORCHED over it and he previously just magically found a cute girl in a pile of trash on the curb (tbh, I'm not particularly sure how she got there, one would think that [SPOILERS] would care more about her than to throw her naked ass out on the street). He's described as this nice guy who just CAN'T score so naturally, he manages to find a fleshlight who wouldn't ever disobey him like that.
There's also a consistent throughline of jokes about the MC having "yummies" and I'm sure you can guess it's not food. The girls are kind of cute but not particularly super attractive so the ecchi doesn't really work either.
And the girl has to be taught pretty much everything because she lost her data or whatever but somehow kept her learning software. So the MC is basically her daddy and has to teach her everything from words to concepts. I will say she was a pleasant character (I even got a good chuckle when she *checks notes* was almost prostituted out for a peep show because someone said it was a "good job" and the girl didn't have the mental capacity to figure out he was lying... anyway, I got a good chuckle when she poked someone in the eye during the peep show) but as a romantic interest of the person who is teaching her everything she knows? Idk, wasn't it for me.
Hell, even the MC's boss just hands him porn DVDs and is like "heh heh, from my personal collection, feel free to jerk off!" (although the high schooler daughter of said boss feels it necessary to make sure the MC knows she has E-cup tits so it must run in the family)
Don't just think this is getting a low score for the relationships, no, that's just the big glaring issue.
I don't think it's very funny? There were a couple one-off jokes and I liked Sumomo but a lot of the jokes are unfunny ecchi, "MC talks to himself but OH NO, it's not just in his head and other people can hear him!", or this weird background where it is some colored lines and has words in the background. Let me elaborate with an example.
If there's some cute girls at the beach, he might get a nosebleed while some offscreen voice goes "ooh yeah" while the words "SUMMER VACATION" appears in the background.
Speaking of beach, there is a run of like 3 episodes where nothing of substance happens unless you already care for the Chobits Crew.
I was gobsmacked when back to back to back, they told some random creepy story and the MC was crashing out then they played Generic Fantasy MMORPG and then they just had a random beach episode.
Maybe it'd work if the characters were more engaging but, well, they aren't. If you aren't engaging, I'm not gonna wanna watch you play Baldur's Gate 3 or whatever.
The ending kind of blows too.
All of a sudden, someone who is mostly just kind of there as a side character becomes a huge part of the story, the female MC gets vague superpowers (what exactly they're supposed to be doing and why she has them, beats me), we meet some of the most worthless antagonists I've ever seen, and... well, I won't spoil how it actually ends, but trust me, it was an absolutely laughable ending.
I'll admit I'm watching this 23 years in the future so maybe people in 2002 did need their hands held like toddlers about the most basic online info but they seinensplain some of the most basic online principles like online handles, a forum, and what a REPLY is. You do realize this is technically a manga/anime for adult men, right?
I promise you, probably even in 2002, anyone going out of their way to watch CHOBITS knows what a reply is.
It didn't personally offend, piss me off, or bore me enough to be a 1 but this anime is pretty much devoid of enjoyment for me. It is hypothetically intriguing, especially in 2025 with the rise of AI chatbots and stuff, to cover a human falling for a robot. It can be funny very, very occasionally. I liked the OP (although Welcome to the NHK got a much, MUCH stronger offering from the same artist) and the second ED.
That's about all the positive stuff I have to say about the anime. Unless you're a CLAMP completionist or you just HAVE to see stories that cover this sort of ground, there's no real reason to watch it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 5, 2025
I have been known to enjoy a trashy show or two
I've previously given School Days and Mirai Nikki high scores and I stand by them because I think they are entertaining shows.
This isn't entertaining or good, it's just trash.
I'm not really offended by it or anything, there's quite an infamous scene and, like, whatever, man.
I think my main problem is most of the characters are either forgettable (genuinely, can you tell me what the name of "the assistant to the professor who hadn't taken a bath in a few days" is without looking it up) or suck.
There's exactly one character I can say without a
...
doubt that I liked and that's Nana. While she has moments that leads to one of my biggest issues, generally speaking, I liked her, sympathized with her, etc, etc. She isn't going to make it in my top characters of all time list but I was hoping she'd make it out of the series alive, which is more than I can say for a few others.
I kind of liked Bando too? I didn't like him when he first was introduced but after his fight with Lucy, he was kind of cool. Idk, I guess I just kind of like that kind of anti-hero or whatever.
Mayu and Kouta were okay.
Really, my problems are with Lucy, Yuka, and #35 (I think her name's Mariko iirc but who gives a fuck).
#35 is introduced as this all-powerful Diclonius and just eats shit repeatedly. They try to give her an emotional moment/backstory but tbh I would've preferred if they didn't? I liked Kurama's relationship with Nana and I don't think how they handle #35 and her parents is handled nearly as well since she's introduced in the last couple episodes and I guess just knows that [SPOILERS] is her bio parent? Like, I get some scientist mentioned it in a phone call that she could hear but what reason does she have to believe him? What reason would she have to care even IF [SPOILERS] was her bio parent. she clearly didn't care about the caretaker who had actually been taking care of her for the past few years.
They try to build a romantic relationship with Kouta and Yuka but it's mostly Yuka either being a tsundere or unnecessarily jealous in a really bitter way that just made me dislike seeing her on screen. Lucy's in her Nyu form quite often and it's really uncomfortable that Yuka thinks Kouta would take advantage of someone as... not all there as Nyu is. Like yeah, she's being irrational, but it just makes her look bitter and jealous in a way that just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Lucy... like sure, she's kind of cool when she's Lucy, but after her personality splits, we have to sit through Nyu Moments and it's not cute, it's annoying. IMO between Lucy, Nana, and #35, there's a trend of childifying the Diclonius which I guess they are kind of children but I don't want to see a bunch of children running around.
Since she's Nyu so often, I didn't really care to grow for LUCY (as Lucy) either, so any romance that's there didn't click with me. By the end of the series, I wasn't crying, I was just sitting there with my face in my hands waiting for the series to end.
I've seen Lucy in "best anime yanderes" lists and... I guess if you need list filler, sure, but we don't get enough of Lucy Yandere Moments for it to matter.
Speaking of which, convenient amnesia! They dance around plot developments by giving both Lucy and Kouta amnesia of sorts, presumably so Kouta doesn't go Shinji on her ass and choke her out on the beach. Maybe I'd be willing to overlook it in a better show but this is not A Better Show.
Maybe this is a hot take but I don't like Lilium. It just seemed pretentious and the cliche "ha ha, classical music during ultraviolence!". I don't normally skip OPs but Elfen Lied's was a skip every time after the first. Maybe it'd work better if it was just during the music box scenes and during the Lucy/Kouta convo in E13 but playing it for the OP spoiled it for me.
How about the violence?
It's cool... I guess. It's over 2 decades old now but there are some cool moments, I guess. If you just want ultraviolence and nothing else, there's probably better shows but you probably owe it to yourself to check this one out.
There is a certain moment in episode 8 that involves off-screen animal cruelty and I didn't like it per se but at that point, I didn't really care.
And that's the most damning thing to me about this series. For all the gore and boobs and edgy music, I just didn't care. I guess it was intriguing enough to see all the way through, but in a vague lukewarm step above ambivalence.
Leave this one back in 2004.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 27, 2024
imo this is actually the best Kakegurui gets
I think the first season of OG Kakegurui does some things better but Twin is overall a better product.
First, the protagonist.
Yumeko is... fine, but she feels more like a force of nature who loves ~gambling~. In a way, she feels like karmic justice in the form of a marketable waifu.
In Twin, our protagonist is a familiar face in Mary Saotome. This is a prequel (which I have mixed feelings on) so she's not 1:1 with her OG Kakegurui counterpart but she's still Mary Saotome and I just think she's a more dynamic and interesting character.
Speaking of which, she's
...
given two buddies who actually contribute to the plot more than "sit here and commentate". Watching these 3 dorks start up a gambling den to help Mary's rise to power is actually pretty cute and fun, I enjoyed it.
I think the cast is overall better. A lot of the more annoying or underutilized characters from OG Kakegurui are gone. Runa's there but she's only really there for one scene and she's not the main focus of it, I like Kaede but he's only namedropped (I also like Itsuki but she's not there either), and Yumemi is gone altogether. Really, the only member of the student council from the OG series that gets any notable screentime is Midari which, based.
She's only really there for foreshadowing, both for her future and a later battle, but she does get a whole gamble to be a part of, which is a significant part when there's, like, 6 games the whole season.
The new characters are pretty intriguing. While I have some gripes with Sachiko and Mikura, I did enjoy their part in this series and I think her dynamic as well as Aoi and Sakura's are pretty interesting concepts.
However, speaking of Sachiko, I don't think she's that engaging of an antagonistic force? I feel like she lives in the shadow of Kirari which goes doubly so when Kirari is literally in the series (albeit as a cameo/shadowy antagonist). She's a bit of a sadist who has an obsessive fascination with the main protagonist and is part of the student council who has a servant who is also obsessively in love with her... this is just Kirari with a less healthy relationship dynamic.
I mean, I guess I liked watching Sachiko and Mikura so it wasn't that big a deal but it's just Kirari and Sayaka again.
How about the games?
I thought they were for the most part good. I think the first and last were the best, the first gave me real good flashbacks to peak Kakegurui and the treasure hunt had a really cool solution.
However, I didn't like the coupling game. It had good psychology behind it but I couldn't get behind it when the looming threat was "are our protagonists gonna have to spread their legs for dudes they don't know, including one who is fat, haha, get it, he's fat, nobody wants to sleep with a fat guy".
On one hand, it's uncomfortable. On the other, it goes back to one of Kakegurui's biggest problems which is they never commit to any significant physical damages. I'm not ASKING for someone to be shot or have their finger cut off or be forced into prostitution but you're the one who keeps making gambles with shit like that on the line and you have lost all credibility with me that you'll carry any of this out.
I also think the ending wasn't very satisfying. I think Kakegurui Twin the manga goes on for, like, 17 volumes and obviously, 6 episodes wouldn't cover that unless they either skipped over a ton of stuff and/or went for like 3 hours each. But, like, no one told you you had to make this. Kakegurui S2 ended on an open note/cliffhanger too, did OG Kakegurui not have enough material to adapt into a season, even a 6 episode one?
I mean, it's not really as cliffhangery as Kakegurui S2 but it just kind of ends with a "and the story continues!" ending which... okay. Part of this is at least handwaved away by it being a prequel but that just raises more questions.
There are 5 or 6 new characters introduced with significant parts to a character who is in OG Kakegurui and they just vanished into thin air? Not to mention one of them is gagging for Mary calling her her prince and Mary's dedicated to helping her escape being a housepet but iirc in S1, we meet Mary using and abusing a housepet?
I'm sure it'll make more sense if I read the manga but just watching Twin and going back to OG Kakegurui S1, it doesn't exactly flow easily into each other.
I think Kakegurui Twin has some glaring problems (weak antagonist, the coupling game, unsatisfying ending) but Twin gets a lot right. The cast is great, the games are fun, and it gives us a more engaging protagonist. Honestly, I kind of wish Twin was the original anime, I'd rather follow Mary and her buddies in OG Kakegurui too.
If you liked Kakegurui OG (particularly Mary) and want to see more, I think it's the best season of Kakegurui. If you didn't like Kakegurui, this probably won't change your mind.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 22, 2024
IMO this season just... wasn't interesting.
The games felt inferior and like half of them involved the threat of physical harm/death which they are too chickenshit to ever pull the trigger on so I wasn't really anticipating who'd win because, like, who cares?
That's really a big problem with the whole concept of this season anyway. This season, it's based around the student council president election and, like, I guess it's been established that that's very important, but it's up against one of the most forgettable groups of antagonists I've ever seen.
Some of the antagonists don't even get their own gamble, it's a struggle to remember their
...
names, they just aren't very interesting.
The only one I really liked was the last villain but even then, I wanted her to WIN because who else would win? Kirari, the sociopath who's already president? Yumeko, the agent of chaos who'd destroy the entire academy (which would presumably destabilize Japan because this academy is just SO important) because she was bored? Some other jackass from the branch families nobody cares about? ...I dunno, Mary?
They do try to work on humanizing the student council members to... varying effects. Itsuki grew on me a lot, here's to well wishes in her romantic endeavors. Yuriko, lmao, sorry if you wanted screen time. Midari is mostly a butt monkey because Yumeko doesn't like Midari which honestly just made me like Yumeko less and, again, you need me to like Yumeko for this series to work. Kaede gets something nice to work on, which I am happy to see. Runa... she's still very annoying but I liked when she ate the spicy macaron and suffered. Sayaka, the secretary, I thought her part was one of the best in the season, even if I hated the game and outcome.
...unfortunately, Yumemi gets another arc. I guess it wasn't the worst arc of the season but that's less of a positive for Yumemi and more a condemnation of the whole season considering the game was less interesting than S1's and Yumemi continues to be uninteresting at best.
So who wins the election?
Oh... I'm sorry... you'd like to know that, wouldn't you?
It doesn't say, we're still in the middle of the election when the season ends.
Did I mention Suzui, the token male?
No?
Yeah, he's not really important except for one gamble.
There are entire gambles where he's busy playing Fortnite or whatever while Yumeko's actually gambling and his presence wasn't really missed but it proves how much of an absolute nothing he is.
The OP was a huge upgrade (and the ED was pretty good too) musically and I liked how a couple of the student council members progressed, but it ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, it has way less interesting games, and the antagonists are kinda boring.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 19, 2024
I'm sorry, I'm not as enamored with this show as I feel the general vibes are.
It starts out decent but it quickly fizzles out.
What did I like about the show?
- Science Saru did their part. It's not, like, Devilman Crybaby amazing production, but for a TV anime, it looks good.
- There's a fight about 3/4ths in that was really inventive
- I initially liked the Okarun/Momo romance
- Episode 7. I'll admit that one part was very good.
...
However, the more I thought about the show, the more I realized... I don't really like this show?
First, the characters.
Okarun's fine. If I had to pick a "favorite", it'd be him. Okarun's alternate personality isn't funny though, although I like his design. Seiko (Momo's grandma) isn't good but she doesn't actively annoy me, so that's a plus.
The other 3?
Not so good.
Momo's fine on a conceptual level but (in the sub, can't speak to the English dub), she is SO annoying. It's one of my biggest issues with this series, it seems to think loudness = funny. By, like, episode 4, I was ready to stab out my eardrums because Momo's voice was grating on me.
Aira is probably the best of the three I'm mentioning here but idk, her delulu pure pretty pretty princess wasn't doing it for me. Part of it is that she was a total bitch in her introduction so I don't believe she's this uwu pretty Christian girl. Didn't pass the taste test imo. Even if that's supposed to be the point... okay, well, it didn't work for me, I didn't find her entertaining and her schtick kinda wore off.
Jiji, OH MY GOD, he was the absolute worst. He's only in the last couple episodes but I have no idea what they were going for but what it was giving was "obnoxious jackass". I at least get Momo and Aira but who finds this guy funny? He's okay when he's not doing his routine or when they're not talking about girls but, like, that's SO much of his character this season. There's probably, like, 10 minutes of "good" Jiji.
Speaking of Jiji, how about the comedy?
It's not funny.
I'm not going to be so bitter and jaded and cynical as to say it was never funny, but so much of it bombed, including entire characters. Jiji, the puncher mantis crab dude or whatever, gross. The time Momo had to put on some random impression, Okarun and Jiji poorly and loudly singing love songs, just no.
It's also kind of rapey? There are multiple scenes of groups of men holding down Momo, trying to rape her.
Not to mention the FuNnY scene of Okarun/Momo/Aira being almost nude because of plot and then everyone in class seeing and Aira being like "oh no, my perfect pure image!"
So, yeah.
It's not without its charms but it's an aggressively mediocre series because it has several fundamental issues. It's not even the best shonen anime involving romance from Shueisha in Fall 2024 that you can find on Netflix.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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