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I don't usually write serious reviews but i feel like Hajime No Ippo deserves one. I have never enjoyed an anime as much as I have enjoyed Hajime No Ippo, it's a second to Neon Genesis Evangelion in my eyes although they are worlds apart interns of depth, story, etc. Hajime No Ippo is in my eyes, the pinnacle of sports anime/manga, in addition, every Otaku should at least read or watch Hajime No Ippo.

The story is about a High Schooler named Ippo who was bullied by a few thugs, lucky for him a pro-boxer (who turns out to be one of the protagonists ... throughout the story) discovers this and decides to train Ippo if he qualified in his eyes. Surely enough, he does, and through a coach, his friends from the Boxing School, and his mother's acceptance, Ippo journeys into the Pro-Boxing world as his love for Boxing begins. It seems generic, but throughout the story the clichéness quickly fades away and the story turns into something unique, very endearing.

The art style is actually very graphic once the fights get serious, blood gets spat out, noses get crushed, ribs get broken, etc. The art and animation comes from Madhouse which always brings something spectacular in that regard, so expect fascinating art that captures the Boxing ring and atmosphere. One thing I find that people don't appreciate as much is the lighting during the matches, the lighting in these matches is a key part to the atmosphere of the fights, and I found it absolutely phenomenal.

The characters are the highlight of the show. Ippo is by far the most loveable protagonist I have ever seen in Otaku history, he's comedic in an unintentional fashion, but he's also cunning, observant, generous, and most of all very selfless. Takamaru is also very comedic but can be very shallow and intolerant at times, which what makes him my favourite character of the show personally. Every "villain" or opponent that Ippo has fought in the show has their own backstory and go through character development faster than a few Shonen protagonists and antagonists as well. The character development overall in this show is fantastic, and very well thought-out and brought to life.

The soundtrack however is a bit lacking, there is a main theme in battle that happens once the fight happens to turnover to one-side's favour, and it seems as if the same few tracks are the overall soundtrack, however I never took a listen to the full soundtrack myself so I cannot speak much for this regard.

Overall, out of my whole anime list, Hajime No Ippo is the main anime that I have enjoyed the most and has reached the Magna Opus in terms of enjoyment in my own personal anime list. It is very comedic at times, but can also turn dark, twisted, and at some moments even frightful. The overall drive of the show itself is the unpredictability of a few outcomes of matches, especially around the mid twenties, and late fifties/early sixties of this show, you may almost never know what comes next in these tournaments.

9/10

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica is a poorly developed "deep" Magical Girls anime. Madoka Magica is also pretentious, overrated, and boring. This review is going to be unstructured and i'm just going to say whatever is off my mind.

Madoka Magica is revolves around Madoka and magical girls. These magical girls are granted a single wish in exchange to be sent fighting against witches and stuff.

Madoka herself is a horrible and disinteresting protagonist. She's an indecisive eighth grade schoolgirl which I apparently heard it took her 12 episodes for her to figure out if she actually wants to be a magical girl or whatever. Eh, I ... dropped this bullshit at episode 10 anyways. There are tons of themes and messages that are just thrown in there and not developed at all, such as the one in episode 8 in which you can go see for yourself. There's also this one girl that is attached to some disabled boy and we have no reason whatsoever on why she is so attached to him, it's as if the creator of this godawful show just said "ey, throw in some emotional scene with that disabled kid and his violin and make sure that one chick likes him or something."

Kyubey is the meaning of "oh this thing is cute OH FUCK WHAT THE HELL THIS IS DARK AND SCARY!"

That is basically why this anime is rated so high, because of the fact that it successfully made something that is childish and targeted for pre-teen girls into an anime that is accessible to older people with the fact that they are trying to make this dark and full of meaning. However it's not even near close to well thought it compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion. To this day there are still many theories as to why so many things happened to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and other such things. NGE gets the viewers thinking, the ending of the original anime and the EoE movie has clearly distribituted to the viewer a masterpiece of philosophical and deep content, something that Madoka Magica fails to do.

The only ratings I can give to this anime is to Art and Sound, however, this score will not be an average and Madoka well merits a 1/10.

Alright, so I was in the mood to review something, so why not review something I dropped a while back. Angel Beats.

Lets go.

Story: Angel Beats basically takes place in some high school for people that have "died", they need to learn to give up what they left off in their previous life to pass. In this afterlife, they can feel pain or injury, and they can die again and again but they awaken with no injuries, so basically something akin to limbo from Inception. The story follows some guy named Otonashi who loses his memories after death, he meets Lesbian (ha), a girl who invites ... him to join some guild called the Organization Battlefront, to fight against God itself for the fates that these guys suffered in there previous lives because apparently they suffered some horrible shit.

How in the hell is this a slice of life?

To go on, there is some four girl band in the guild that play music, and their enemy is some thing named Angel. The Battlefront fight against Angel.

Again, what?

So apparently this thing is supposed to be a feels fest which is probably why everyone is giving this a 8 or a 9 out of 10. All these characters suffer some sad backstory or something that makes them against God, but you are supposed to be spoonfed feels, basically every single person from the Strawhat Crew suffering some sort of tragic event as well. I absolutely despise this, at least Guts from Berserk actually goes through these in a sense that he doesn't give an absolute fuck and goes on. All these guys just cry and cry about how their lives were or was miserable (not like they do in One Piece, however, since they don't), by the way this anime is barely able to keep my attention so I have no idea if half the shit i'm saying is right or not.

I didn't give a shit about the "sad ending" because I dropped this anime before I even reached that point and I read the rest online. All in all giving ratings because of feels is absolutely trash and despicable.

Also, I can't call any of this slice of life.

Art:
Definitely one of the top parts about this but sadly didn't do enough to captivate me or save me from this trash.

Sound:
Also as good as art.

Character:
I don't give a fuck about anybody in this story. Screw Otonashi.

Enjoyment:
Barely kept my attention.

Overall: 3,5/10

not an average.

Potential Spoilers:


After finishing Stein;s Gate, Berserk, and Fate/Zero, I thought that it was time to begin watching Claymore. It did not disappoint compared to the other three series. I'm a fan of Berserk, as well as Shingeki No Kyojin, so watching a show similar to their types of style and genre was a good appetite.

The story starts with a boy who lost his family from demonic predators called Yoma, as they feast on humans and are able to blend in with humans with their type of appearance manipulation. To face against such demons, an organization created a hybrid of female humans and Yoma warriors ... known as the Claymore, which brings us to our main protagonist, Clare. Claymores are detested by society for the fact that they still hold Yoma flesh in their veins, and as Raki, the young boy, realizes that Clare shows similar qualities with himself, they bond. Now, Clare's determined to protect Raki, as well as holding a strong ambition to defeat the main antagonist that terrorized the days of her youth.

Now, this is a special story. I cannot compare this to SnK as it was made afterwards, and Berserk is kind of different in regards to its plot as well. So in terms of story in the shounen/18+ mix, Claymore excels.

Moving on to the art, the character designs are kind of repetitive as almost every Claymore have silver/blonde/white tinted hair, silver eyes, etc. The thing is though, that is their character. My rating of art, however, comes from the design of the Awakened Beings and the Yoma themselves. The kaiju have unique designs, symbolic, or religious. The aesthetic deigns almost remind me of Berserk as well, pardon me for comparing the two so much but both are fantastic fantasy series. However, to argue against my rating for the art, the animation is sometimes lackluster as characters lack faces as the scenes zoom out, although it might also be the quality of the episodes (i'm not watching this in 720p). The demons actually look like demons though, and sometimes do appear quite frightening. Horns, spikes, wings, the demonic designs in Claymore are unique.

The sound is mediocre from what i've heard so far. The soundtrack is nice and all but sometimes the voice acting suddenly downgrades in quality mid sentence, although again this might be from the source that I watched this from and might not be from the creators of the anime themselves. Although, I won't really put sound as something in the overall grade in the first place, so this doesn't weigh as much as the others, if not at all.

The characters are kind of a weak point here, as a lot of the Claymores you see in the series die. Although, Clare, Raki, Priscilla, and Teresa are each the better characters of the series. Clare especially, as you see her suffer through the death of her comrades countlessly just like Guts from Berserk, or Eren from SnK to compare the suffering each characters have lost in their own respective series. Clare is one of the better female protagonists in all of Shounen/Seinen, viewers and readers might see why as they read or watch the source material. Raki has appeared annoying at first for me, but he's generally the voice of reason or the "pussy" character, but at the same time you'll see that in his own way he grows semi-interesting, but depends on the person. Personally I still dislike him. In terms of Teresa and Priscilla, I will not spoil them for the reader of this review so go watch/read this.

Overall I did enjoy Claymore a lot. Did I enjoy it as much as Berserk, however? No. Berserk still remains the pinnacle quintessential king of Seinen/Fantasy in manga history, although Claymore is definitely an amazing follow-up. is it better than Shingeki No Kyojin? In my humble opinion, I view Claymore as the better series, yes. However, this doesn't mean that SnK isn't a good series, it just means that some artists/studios are doing a better job handling the fantasy elements of their own respective shows. Claymore is a series never to forget in terms of fantasy shows/anime, however there are existing flaws and cliches that appear often, especially the ending, but most series have their own bits and stuff as well.

Overall, Claymore is a 7.8/10 series, however due to MAL's system of only using whole numbers, I shall round it up to an 8/10 that it deserves, instead of a 7.

"It is not the fault of the product. It depends on the human who uses it. That is always the problem."

This is the primordial theme of this wonder work of brilliance. The story starts with a giant squid from space who randomly appears in Tokyo, Japan. For some reason it is up to our hero female artificially produced from a group of strange individuals. One of which are in love with our male protagonist for no apparent reason.

The state of the art art, is up to 2014 standards. Brilliant technology that exceeds even the work of Aniplex, and sometimes even Toei productions. Legendary brilliance. ... Do not even get me started on phenomenal sound, this lip sync is just done phenomenally well. You can hear word by japanese word the words coming out of these peoples mouth.

Now for the legendary characters. I'll just leave this here. "Commander, how long can I live?"

You will enjoy this thoroughly, as for this is a comedy film meant for comedy.