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Altered Carbon: Resleeved is an anime that you can dive into without seeing the live action drama series of Netflix. It is a pretty well made cyberpunk anime with tons and tons of action sequences (all of which are well made), a lot of blood, just a little bit of nudity in the beginning (that too of background characters), and a good pick for a nice time-pass.

Right from the beginning you can see some clear influence of Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell's environment. Now I know the cyberpunk as a genre has some predefined setting for a world, but not necessarily all of ... them has to follow the same visuals. For example, the Deus Ex game franchise is one of the best known entries in the cyberpunk world, and its visuals have very little common element with the well known Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell franchises. For some reason, whenever we see a new cyberpunk story, the world seems to be eerily familiar with the later two. The upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game also has that issue. Now this is not a bad thing, but it would've been better if different cyberpunk stories have unique world setting of their own.
Ok, back to the point. Without mentioning the name of this anime, one look at the world portrayed in it and you might think it is from Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. Even the music played during some parts sounds a lot like Kenji Kawai's soundtracks for GitS. If it works for you, it's good. If not, then it won't be a problem since its not exactly a strong suit of this anime.

The characters can be divided into two types: mains who rarely get hurt, and fill-up side characters who are there to die. No it's not a spoiler, I'm not saying everyone of the main characters survives till the end. It's just that you probably even forget the faces of the side characters once they are dead. As for the main ones, there is not much character development to be found here. Actually now that I think about it, no character gets a development except for one (or if you really look into it, two may be).

The story is not its strong point either. There are a few twists which made the story to be "ok". However, the strong part of this anime is its amazing animation and some freaking good action sequences. This is CGI done right. With breathtaking visuals and good direction of actions scenes (which takes a big part of the anime, but not enough to make it irritating), this anime is a treat for the eye.

Take this as just a time-pass anime with enjoyable elements, and not much brain-works needed while watching it. I would love to see more similar series or movie of this franchise in the future.

This remake of Nagai Go's controversial and one of his earliest works 'Maou Dante' is supposed to be a completed story, since the original was not only incomplete, but stopped right before the final climax of the story. So two questions would arise here - how good is this as a remake, and did this version do justice to the original one with its ending?

As a remake, it is a lot better than the original in my opinion. If you have read the original one (which I recommend you do before starting this one), one key aspect you'll notice is that the "twist" that was ... revealed there quite late in the story, is actually what this remake version starts with. The very first few chapters show us the concept of demons and gods in this side of Nagai Go's Devilman universe. Now this technically means all the surprises are gone and what we go through is a linear story. This is not bad, and actually works good for this story. The "truth" which is revealed early in the story gives us a better understanding of certain characters, which is much needed since only a few characters get good buildup here, and the rest of the casts which are not central get ignored most of the time.

The story is one of the most controversial one Nagai Go has ever written, and for readers who are religiously highly sensitive, might find it hurtful to their beliefs. The concept of gods, demons, devils, good and evil - everything is controversial here. As a revenge story, you might feel conflicted on the matter of who to support. But this IS a Nagai Go story, so you should know what you're getting into. If you intend this to be your first entry into Nagai Go universe, I'll suggest don't start with this. 'Go' with Go's well-known titles first.

Controversial or not, one thing is certain — Nagai Go knows how to make a story enjoyable. Like his other manga, you can see lines and lines of dialogues, and then suddenly get bombarded with pages of just battles, bereft of a single word. This change in pace gives the reader a sort of refreshing feeling and not get bored. His artwork also got a lot better in this version than the original one, and some of the two page panels feel like another page from Berserk manga.

Now, this version is supposed to answer all unanswered questions and give us a perfect end to the story. So, did it keep its promise?

Well, there really weren't that much unanswered questions left to begin with. But whatever was left, it cleared out all, so that's good. The ending did give the story a completion, but I'll say don't get too much hyped out about it. It's not exactly a tremendously good one, but at least it's satisfying.

This is going to be a spoiler free review, and one without any sort of hatred or fanboying. I will try to write this review from a neutral point of view, focusing on all the good and bad stuffs, and the mediocre ones.

• Story:
One of the weakest aspects of this series is its story, and when the story is broken, the whole thing suffers. Fate/Apocrypha started off with a twisting approach to the 'Fate' stories, where in a Holy Grail War we thought we will get 7 master-servant teams fighting against each other, but then it turned out the war this time will actually be ... a 7 vs 7 master-servant teams, with a Ruler class servant to act as a referee. Such an interesting approach, but it all breaks down before we even reach half-way through the story. As the war progress, we can see how heavy of an influence the "Fate" route of Fate/stay night has on this story. It was supposed to be a massive 7+7 vs 7+7 war, but midway through the first half of the series a character having a seriously weak character-buildup takes the spot of protagonist and completely ruins this story of huge potentials. The story then revolves around him, and suffers heavily. Whenever the plot shifts from this character and focuses on the servants, it gets better. But to be fair, the story starts to get better from the beginning of the second half. However, near the end the quality degrades so fast that it's almost painful to watch.

• Art and Animation:
I'm not going to bash the animation technique based on the studio who worked behind it, but I will criticize on what I actually get to see. The quality of the whole series can be divided into two categories:
1. Episode 22,
2. Every other episode.
It feels as if most of the budget behind this series was saved for episode 22, and it looks heavenly!!! Possibly one of the best looking episodes with mind blowing action sequences directed carefully and skillfully, in years. So, what about the other 24 episodes?
Sadly, the quality was poor. I will not judge the in-between key frames of a sequence, but even when a scene goes of for 4-5 seconds, the characters when shot from a distance looks like they are melting down. And this is not just from one episode. This can be seen in almost every single episode except for the 22nd one. These were not in-between frames, these were the main ones, which were onscreen for enough duration to burn the viewers' eyes.

This is just the character designs, how about the animation quality?
Again, really poor. The camera movement was out of the place. For an extremely fast paced action sequence, the best way to let the viewer enjoy it will be to actually let them see what's going on. Take for example the fight scenes in Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works. They were blindingly fast, yet the viewers can understand where the punches and strikes are coming from. In F/A, the camera constantly changes its position each few punches and shots. To clearly understand what's going on, the viewer doesn't have any option other than pausing the video after every second and figure out which character is in which corner of the screen. We get it, two super beings are fighting, but we are not present in the battleground and looking them from a distance trying to figure out what's going on! We are sitting in front of the screen, and we deserve to know actually who is landing a hit on the other one.

These problems aside, background arts and the environmental scenarios were the saving grace.

• Sound and Effects:
Background music is really good, but the same track is played in almost every single fight, and because of that it gets old for a viewer who is only 5 episodes in to the series. Different versions of that same track is used, which is understandable; but the same track for every single fight? It gets tiring pretty fast.

Oh but that's just the background music. The sound effect is atrocious! The sound director is a guy who actually did quite a lot of good works before, to the extent that he might be considered a top notch sound director. But his works in F/A was unbelievably horrible! The base of the sounds were so high that watching/hearing just one fight might make someone temporarily deaf. There are enough Youtube videos on it that focuses on the sound effects of this series, so I'll leave this topic saying just one word: unbearable.

The voice actors' performances were good. Some of the best known voice actors worked in this series, and their professionalism saved the non-fight sequences.

• Characters:
The weakest part of this series is its characters. While not all of them are bad, most of them won't put much of a scratch on the viewers' minds. We have 14+1 servants and their masters, and that's a huge cast for an entry in a franchise that deals heavily with ideology. In both F/Z and F/sn (all three routes), we can see how each and every single character reflects on their ideologies, be that masters or servants, or even the side characters that don't have a part in the war. In F/A, after about half of the series is done with, all we know about the characters are their names, and just a handful of their backgrounds and motivations behind their actions. Some of the characters even went out before we could even get to know them properly. Now, this thing can NOT be compared to F/sn's each of the routes. F/sn's characters's buildup were done not in a single route, but throughout all three of them. Those three routes makes one whole story, while F/A is a single story of its own. By the time the series is over, we get a glimpse of some of the servants' past before their final battles. That's poor character building.

But this is not the most offensive part, oh no no that's not even close to the main problem. The single most poisonous element is the character Sieg, who suddenly becomes the main protagonist and ruins everything. Without spoiling anything about him, all I can say is that he is the most genericly generic, boringly boring Gary Stu any anime has ever seen! Nothing about his story or buildup has any sort of charm, and him taking the main stage destroyed the story. Since he is the hero, and a genericly generic Gary Stu one, I don't even need to spoil anything about the ending of the series. You can already guess what happens with a character like him as the main hero.

• Enjoyment:
To be fair, this series has a lot of enjoyable factors. Any Fate series has some of the best fighting scenes we can see in an anime, and Fate/Apocrypha is no different. Yes, I've criticized the camera problem before, but even after that, they are quite entertaining. It is not an ideology heavy series like the other Fate stories, but it can be quite the time passing series to enjoy when you have nothing better to do. For a serious viewer, however, this series can be an eyesore. A lot of deal-breaking things happen here, and the finale was nothing memorable. The peak point of the series was episode 22, and it still ended in a b--lsh-t kind of way. Such a huge potential destroyed like that...

• Overall:
It could've been a good series, but the horrible character buildups, the atrocious animation and sound effects made an already mediocre story even more pathetic. It is not the worst thing ever, it not even can be considered the worst anime from 2017. However, it was the biggest disappointment after the reboot anime of Berserk that started in 2016.

In short, the second season of Reikenzan seems to be vastly different than the first one. The first season was more like the protagonist's journey to become a powerful disciple, and on his journey we get to know more about the friends he make, see his training arc etc. It was more happy-go-lucky in tone. The second season however feels a lot more darker. We get to see the protagonist coming back to his village and facing some issues there, and while trying to solve them we see how our hero has to play a lot of mind games, and even some big real battles! ... Heck, at one point we see a damn bloody battle that turns it into a horror show! Of course, the comedic tone is still present there, but it's much darker this time.

Story:
If we consider the story, it might fail to charm a big part of the viewers who enjoyed the first season, and that's understandable. The tone of the story shifted heavily, and that will cost dearly for some of the audience. I however enjoyed it. It is not anything spectacular, or might not be on par with the first season, still it felt enjoyable.

Art:
This might be another deal breaker for some, since the character designs changed a lot, sometimes to the point when some of the previously established characters felt unknown. The first season had the character designs in a, let's just say, pointy style. A lot of sharp angles were present as a facial feature, and it felt kind of unique. The second season's character designs are smooth, and instead of those pointy angles we see round edged broader faces. The same studio is behind both seasons, and the difference between the airing date of these two seasons is not even that much, just a year. Yet they feel so different. Still, they didn't look anything near being bad. The background environmental arts are beautiful!

Sound:
The BGMs are good, nothing special but doable. The opening and ending tracks are okay. The sound effects are, again, nothing special.

Character:
A very small part of the characters from the previous season returns this time, and the saddest thing is that the most fan favorite character Oubu has more like a cameo in this season. Ouriku, Rei and Bunhou were the main focus, along with two new and (almost) main characters (and I beg your pardon since I totally forgot their names, but you'll know the ones I'm talking about, nothing spoilery here). Ouriku-Rei-Bunhou's characters were already developed the previous season, so all we get to see is how they act this time. The only growth we see is that of Ouriku's. The two new characters that I mentioned were more to the comedic aspects of the story, and I enjoyed their onscreen presence. As for the others, they were merely there for the plot.

Enjoyment:
I will say it, I enjoyed it. The mind games that Ouriku play were interesting, and some of the actions he takes were pretty amazing if if they were brutal.

Overall, even if I won't say it is as good as the first season, it still gets close to it. Different, but enjoyable. Looking forward to a third season if it ever comes out.

First and foremost, this movie is technically a prequel to the whole Fate/kaleid liner storyline. Watching this before starting the other "kaleid liner" series won't create much problem, except for the fact that you won't recognize a lot of the characters and what were their motivations behind their actions. So it is suggested you complete the previous kaleid liner series before starting this film.

Story:
The story of Oath Under Snow is vastly different from other F/kl parts in both tone and style. This is an origin story of Miyu, and the story is shown from the perspective of Emiya Shirou from her world. It is a ... darker story in tone compared to the other F/kl entries, and it looks and feels a lot similar to the style of Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night.

Art:
The biggest problem with this movie is how the quality of animation decreases rapidly from the beginning of the second half. Considering this a movie, the fight sequences are some of the worst among all the Fate anime. Some moments look more dated than the 2006's Fate/stay night series done by Studio Deen. It's a shame since this story deserved at least a ufotable level of animation. As an adaptation from manga, some scenes were rushed, and the breathtaking action moments felt toned down. However, if you haven't read the manga, this movie will feel really interesting and the ending will leave you satisfied.

Sound:
The sound quality is amazing, I have to give it to the film. It's almost a given fact that any Fate anime will have fantastic background musics, and as everyone knows, any version of the track "EMIYA" is a beast! The sound effects are also done pretty good.

Character:
Since this is a story from a parallel world to those of Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night, it is quite interesting to see some of our known characters from those stories portrayed in a different scenario. For all the people who have been complaining how the character Emiya Shirou is "irritating" or "generic shounen protagonist", this movie has the chance to shut them down. The Emiya Shirou in this story is the best version out of all the depiction we have come across, and the steps he takes will improve the viewers' points of view about him. Miyu's characterization is also well done. As for every other characters, they didn't have much time onscreen, and as I've mentioned before, unless you have prior knowledge about them, their reasoning for their actions won't appeal much to you.

Enjoyment:
Now, this adaptation is not as good as its source material, and sudden decrease in the quality of animation might turn down your mood. Even considering that, the movie actually has good enjoyment values. There are some moments which will hit you emotionally. These moments combined with good background musics saved this movie for me, and took it up to a level of satisfaction.

So, if you are a Fate or Type-Moon fan, you will have good time watching it. If you are not one of the Fate fans yet love enjoying good anime, this can be worth your time only after you watch some other Fate stories before.

Before I start with the review, I’d like to say a few things about its source, Fate/Grand Order, the mobile game. It started off as a fun entry in the Type-Moon franchise. So it's understandable if you think the story at the beginning isn't impressive. But after the release of a few chapters the players realized Fate/Grand Order is becoming like the a conduit for the whole Fate series, that includes Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero, Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Strange Fake, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya etc. Suddenly F/GO turns out like the most canon story out of the whole franchise, with rewriting certain canon parts of it. It even ... is contributing towards the whole Nasuverse as well.

With that being said, this special episode, titled "Fate/Grand Order: First Order" is based on the prologue chapter of the game. As a prologue, you should limit your expectations and understand this is not even the beginning of the story. This is more like a setup episode, with certain parts of the game’s prologue rewritten by Nasu himself to make it more anime-friendly.

As a setup for the story, about half of the episode includes exposition contents. What is going on around, how this is happening, what to do, things like these. It’s almost as if they are trying to hold your hand and give you a tour of a museum and forcing you to read the descriptions. A lot of viewers might not like it, and I can understand that. However, all these are because it was the tutorial part of the game. I’m not telling you to like it or hate it, but asking you to understand why this is happening.

After most of the exposition is done, the 2nd half of the episode is solely based on the protagonist and his team’s first adventure in this world. A lot of anime original contents were added, which I believe was mostly necessary. See, the game at this point was only throwing waves after waves of enemies to teach you how to fight, none of them were worth mentioning. Only the final battle of the prologue (and may be one or two battles before that) was important. The anime version here featured some full length amazing battles between servants. The fights, for most of the part, were done greatly.

Animation: If we talk about the animation, I’m pretty sure most of the Type-Moon fans will be disappointed. And why not!? Previous most of the Type-Moon anime adaptations (Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works TV series) were done by ufotable, a studio extremely well known for their brilliance in visual department. They are known as one of the best studios considering great animation and visual effects. Fate/Grand Order: First Order, on the other hand, is done by Lay-duce, a studio which is very little known since they are relatively new in the anime industry with the only notable names done by them are Magi: Sinbad no Bouken and Classroom Crisis. If the viewer compare their works with ufotable’s, they are certain to get disappointed. However, if you ignore that, the animation isn’t bad. It is good most of the time, with the quality dropping only a few times when the characters are zoomed out.

Sound: The BGMs of this anime are probably its best part. Some freaking amazing OSTs, used beautifully with the events happening on the screen. The ending song is actually the opening song of the game, perhaps a bit of a remix version of the original, and I liked it

Character: Characterization is done well, and considering this as a setup for what’s to come, the introductions were done good.

Enjoyment: Before watching the series, I knew this was done by a lesser known studio, and the story is based on the weakest part of a mobile game. More precisely, it is just a prologue. That is why I limited my expectations. In that sense, they surpassed my expectations! 74 minutes of a prologue episode didn’t feel boring at all…… well, may be the first half an hour, but come on! Even the first episode of Fate/Zero was full of expositions one after another.

Overall, I’d like the viewers to take it easily and enjoy it. It’s not a god tier special episode, and it doesn’t need to be one. I know the ending of the story (or at least up to what is revealed in the game) is damn good. So I can understand if a sequel TV series is declared, or may be other special episodes, the quality will only rise from here.