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Kabaneri is fun, messy, and overall quite enjoyable, but missing the special something that could have made it a classic.

The art and music are the same people who did Shingeki no Kyojin, and they brought their A-game. This alone is enough reason to watch.

Steampunk+zombies is a really fun combination, and the titular kabane are a really interesting take on zombies. In general, the setting just oozes with promise, but ultimately the 12 episode are barely enough to scratch the surface. I was left unsatisfied, but if there were a sequel I would watch the shit out of it.

The characters are not typical tropes, and the ... villain is a real son of a bitch, but the characterization is basically average.
The story is where the whole thing falls apart. Ideas are not given enough time to develop, the ending is a disaster, and there are several deus ex machina plot points throughout.

That said, the animation and music are beautiful, the world is great fun to explore, and there are some legitimately amazing action sequences. It's only 12 episodes, so absolutely worth a watch.

Defense Devil was a huge disappointment for me. It starts out strong, but you can almost see the point where the authors just stopped caring and started blatantly trolling the readers. It doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the manga duo's earlier work Shin Angyo Onshi, although from there it's hard to go anywhere but down.

The art is probably the best part of the manga. The artist half of the combo, Kyung-Il Yang is pretty much a master at his craft, delivering atmospheric landscapes, great character designs, badass fight scenes and beautiful titties.

The characters are not bad, but there are ... too many to flesh them out properly. Some standouts were the protagonist, his sidekick, and the baddie who fights by using physics calculations to trigger complex domino effects in the environment.

The concept itself is a little weird, but there have been weirder. It could have been a good story. It could have been, but it wasn't. I had written it off as an enjoyable time-waster even before the last 20 chapters or so, where it takes a serious dive in quality. I was literally laughing at how bad some of the twists and developments towards the end were. Final verdict: skippable. Go read their previous work if you haven't and hope that they'll find where they dropped their mojo for the next manga.

The story is ok, the characters are fun, and the soundtrack is amazingly unique and celtic-inspired.

However, the art and animation are so awful it completely ruins my enjoyment of what would otherwise be a solid 7. Animation quality throughout runs about the same quality as a Bleach or Naruto filler episode. The characters are flat and lifeless, stock animations are reused for special moves, the action is stiff and wooden. It's clear that they aren't putting much effort into this.

Save yourself some time and just read the manga instead.

Overall an anime with great animation, style, and a deep interesting plot. Unfortunately it got about half the episodes it needed, making it little more than a 12-episode trailer for the manga.

The story deals with some very interesting themes and has many surprising twists that keep you asking questions. However, the ending cuts off about half of the ongoing plot threads, leaving many questions unanswered. They even start new arcs in the second-to-last episode that never get resolved. There was honestly huge opportunity for an epic ending that would put FMA to shame here, but it was pissed away.

The animation and art is high-quality, the ... music and voice acting are also top-notch thanks to the incredible folks at Manglobe.

The characters are varied and interesting, but never get enough screen-time or development because of the rushed nature of the show. You have badass incarnate who's afraid of girls, a psycho monk who's trying to free people from the material world of suffering, and a sweet-loving albino girl in a bodysuit who hides a dark secret.

If you're looking for a fast-paced action anime to pass the time, this is a solid choice, but it doesn't stand on its own as an anime, so you'll be forced to read the manga when it's over.

I think that for some reason I'm not like most people who go wild for Urusawa's work. I feel the same way about 20CB that I did about Monster, too long, average art, average characters. So I'm not trying to offend anybody, this is just a review from a different perspective.

Story: First of all just like Monster, the story is far too long for its own good. There are 2 or 3 points where it could have been ended satisfactorily, but it lurched back to its feet and kept plodding along for many more volumes.

The contents of the story are very simple. Man ... is trying to destroy the world, people try to stop man from destroying the world. To be fair, the fact that I read all the way to the end tells you that Urusawa keeps you wondering what happens next, but god it's such a waste of time. You keep anticipating something mind-blowing, but the only really interesting revelation in the whole story is Friend's identity.

Basically, what we have here is and endlessly drug-out story like Bleach or Naruto without any of the flashy bits or fanservice that make them popular. The moments that make you stand up in your chair and go "hell yeah!" are few and far between. The second half in particular is very blatantly milking it for all it's worth.

Art: Urusawa's art style is unique, but it's not for everybody. Personally I find it very bland and uninteresting. He is particularly good at drawing facial expressions, and he really conveys they characters' emotions well, but as far as manga artists go, he's pretty mediocre.

Character: A symptom of the story being too long, there are too many characters. Because of Urusawa's semi-realistic art style, some of them end up looking really similar and it becomes very confusing by the end. Since there are so many, their personalities are somewhat shallow. The main cast is fairly solid and there are a few likeable characters in there, but I feel like the story would have been served better by a smaller, more interesting cast.

Enjoyment/Overall: I was disappointed, considering how highly-rated this series is. If you're looking for something to kill time, you could do much worse, but I wouldn't recommend putting this very high on your priority list.

Monster is a reasonably good anime with a lot of flaws. I found that it did everything right, but still managed fail as entertainment. Not to say that Monster is a bad anime, but it was a sore disappointment to me after all the hype. I'm going to take a somewhat critical view of it in this review, but it has many positive qualities too. If you want to know what these are, you can look above me at all the people who rated it 9 and 10.

Story: If one thing can be said about the story, it's deep. It deals with a lot of ... moral and ethical questions and explores psychology. One thing it isn't is entertaining. There are a few cool plot twists here and there, but they don't manage to overcome the fact that this anime is *slow*. The plot is well-written, but could have been told a lot better if the series had 48 fewer episodes. The story itself is good, but not mind-blowing. It also fails at creating horror and suspense.

Art: The art is very unique. It aspires to be more realistic than other anime and along the way falls into the same trap so many first-person shooters succumb to: it just isn't nice to look at. The art makes everything feel drab and lifeless, like you're looking at a cardboard cutout. The color pallette is limited to muted tones and browns. Some may say it fits with the series, I agree. It's boring and not something I want to watch for 74 episodes.

Sound: The music for the show is fairly good. Not rush-to-download good, but reasonably fitting to the scenes, with a few tunes (particularly the show's main theme) that stand out and really add emotional impact. The two EDs are some of the most unpleasant music I've ever heard, although I suppose that could be by design too.

Character: The characters in monster are similar to the rest of the show, boring. OK, I'll admit I liked Runge a lot. Other than that, they really didn't do much to grab me, they're just too...normal. You also really don't get to see them react to that many different situations, so don't really know them that well. There are way too many characters on top of that. Of the 100+ character cast, only Tenma, Anna, Johan, and Runge recieve any real development, and the show continues to throw more and more characters at you right up until the very end, none of which you can really care about.

Enjoyment: As you can probably tell by now, I didn't really enjoy this anime. I rate it a 7 because objectively, it's a pretty good piece of work. I had to quit watching twice for long periods of time to get through all 74 episodes. It just didn't grab me. I didn't want to watch it. I kepy waiting for "the good part", but it never came. The last 5 episodes are fairly entertaining however. Overall, a decent anime, but not worth the 37 hours of your life required to watch it.