Back to TehGoldenGuard's Profile TehGoldenGuard's Profile

Thanks to a good friend of mine, she convinced me to try out the Ace Attorney series again after not finishing it for years. AA is a great series altogether, even with some hiccups here and there. And of course, much like with most video games, there's bound to be an anime adaptation to follow. I've already discussed my distain with the Persona 5 anime last year, so I guess you could day that my expectations for this one wasn't very high. With that said, while I don't think this is a better alternative to the games, I do think this is a pretty decent ... adaptation, albeit with some caveats along the way.

Story: A straightforward plot based on the games, but Ace Attorney focuses on defense attorney Phoenix Wright who became a defense lawyer to protect those who were wrongfully accused. During these trials though, he bites off more than he can chew when he realizes the courtroom is much more than just a guess who scenario. There's tons of reveals and secrets that I do not want to spoil here since it's heavily required to play the games to understand what I am talking about. Besides that, it's mostly fine for what it is. Obviously, there are cuts to shorten the episodes, but I don't find it as irritating here especially when it comes between the fluff that the games have at times. One of the biggest examples is...*sigh* Big Top Turnabout. While I do not like this case, I thought it wasn't as obnoxious here than in the games because of how fast it went, only clocking in around 3 parts (thank God) and getting rid of some annoying sub plots. Overall, a decent adapted plot, but not anything mind blowing. 6/10

Characters: Again, as an adaptation from the games. the characters mostly remains the same way as they were. None of them were untouched or shifted in terms of personality. With that said, if we're going based off of the games, most of these characters are great. And in the anime, they do try their best to give these characters more depth. It's good. 7/10

Art: Now THIS is where the anime really shines. It's animation. I heard horror stories about how poorly animated the show was. What's crazy is that it was done by the same studio behind Fairy Tale and Kaguya-sama: Love is War. So I have to ask, what happened here? It's NOT as bad as others point it out to be, but I won't lie when I say that the HD sprites in the PW: AA trilogy looked better than this. And I don't even like the HD sprites all that much. In close to the characters, the animation looks fine. But when they're far away, it's so funny to look at. Especially with the eyes. Not that good in my opinion. 5/10

Sound: The soundtrack is mostly just renditions of the original soundtrack. I love the game's soundtrack. It's so good. and the anime does the games justice with these good tracks. The English dub is fine for what it is. I seriously thought it was Sam Riegel who was playing Phoenix only to find out that it wasn't. But still Eric Vale did a good job playing as the main character. 7/10

Enjoyment and Verdict: In contrast to the Persona 5 anime, this adaptation is fine for what it is. I personally prefer you play the games over watching the anime any time of the week, but the anime isn't bad. I don't think every AA fan will love this anime, but it does a decent job of following the footsteps of the games, even if there are some sacrifices (though some of them are DEFINITELY necessary). It's fine. 6/10

For this review I'm going to do something a bit different. It's really hard for me to breakdown the important details of this anime when its based on a video game, let alone based on a game with so much plot and character growth alongside with 100+ hours of gameplay.

I love Persona 5. It's one of my all time favorites. And an anime adaptation was bound to be heading towards us as a substitute for people who couldn't play the game. However even judging it without playing the game and just viewing it as an anime, Persona 5 The Animation feels so rushed. Only ... clocking in at around 26 episodes (28 if you want to count the 1 hour specials), it's a difficult task to accompany that length to a game that took me 100+ hours to finish. But I might as well. I didn't finish it the first time I watched it in 2018, but now I did and let's say I wish I hadn't.

Story + Characters: 6/10 (Story) | 5/10 (Characters)

Ren Amamiya is a transfer student who got arrested for defending the honor of a woman who was about to be sexually assaulted. He is then under probation and put under the hands of Sojiro Sakura and is sent over to Shujin Academy. He meets his newly found friends Ryuji, Ann, Makoto, Haru, and even others such as, Yusuke from Kosei High School, and Futaba Sakura, Sojiro's adopted daughter. He even meets friends with a talking cat named Morgana. All of them are part of a group called The Phantom Thieves and their main goal is to put an end to the corrupted people in Shibuya by stealing their distorted hearts and making them confess their sins.

I'm lumping both the story and characters together this time because they both easily share the same flaw this anime has. There's no room for development at all for both of them due to how rushed the anime is. Characters don't get their time to shine all that much with Ren and when they do it's pretty brief. What usually takes growing connections and relatable and heartwarming moments, alongside with unlocking new abilities through skill links, ends up being nothing more than a bunch of filler. I understand cutting down in order to make the anime flow better, but it doesn't even do that right. Some scenes just show up and end out of nowhere for a brief second not adding amount to anything. It feels so awkward and ruins the moments. With that said, the story remains the same as it was before. It's still entertaining but not by much with the problems addressed before. And the character which ended up being some of the most relatable characters, ended up just being one noted and with no special bonds with the characters during Ren's off time, they really don't play an important factor all that much. They still stay true to themselves so I guess that's a redeeming quality I guess.

I think Ren got the worst of it. During his time in the anime he's mostly silent, only spewing out generic lines such as "We're the Phantom Thieves" and "We'll stop you!" It almost feels like the writers just saw the dialogue options in the game, found the best one, and just put them in the script.

Art: 5/10

And while we're on the topic of rushed. Jeez this animation. The game's anime cutscenes were by Production I.G. and Domerica. This time, however, the animation was done by CloverWorks. And it was here I questioned why exactly they couldn't get Production I.G. to do the anime. Even if the cutscenes weren't great, they were miles better than how CloverWorks ended up doing it. While it stays true to the style of the games, the actions scenes are so painful to watch due to how lifeless it is. Even the all out attacks look uninspiring. I assume CloverWorks and Atlus have a strong relationship since they've done the Persona 4 anime plus the Persona 3 movies as well. But if this anime's animation didn't convince me, I'm not looking forward to those either in terms of art style.

Sound: 7/10

I think the sound design might be the best thing about this anime. Though that's because all of the music is from the games themselves. Don't get me wrong, the soundtrack is excellent in game and the dubbing is too. I personally find the english cast to do a great job as their respective characters. With that said, I feel sad for Xander Mobus who plays as Joker and only has to read 2 or 3 lines every 3 minutes. He deserves much better.

Enjoyment and Verdict:

Coming from someone who loved the game, this isn't a good adaptation. I can only recommend this anime to anyone who doesn't feel like playing the game for so long. But even then it has a lasting appeal. Up until the end, the anime just ends up being nothing more than a shadow of the game it was adapted from. And it's better off just playing the game instead. Heck, watching a let's play of the game is a better option to be honest.

5/10

~~Spoilers for Yu-Yu-Hakusho~~

For years and years I have always heard plenty of positive things about Yu-Yu-Hakusho and there is no denying the acclaim the anime gets. From its inception back in the early 90s to now, this anime remains as a classic for all. And I'm glad to say that I, too, fit it inside the category.

Story: The anime centers around a 14 year old, rude and snotty boy named Yusuke Urameshi who died during a car accident while trying to save a child's life. Because of this, he is tasked on becoming a spirit detective and must take on cases to stop demons from ... destroying the world. As traditional for any anime that has over 100+ episodes, the show has arcs. And I could classify all of them to be near perfect. Ranging from Yusuke first becoming a spirit detective, to Yusuke training his powers, the Dark Tournament arc, the Chapter Black arc and finally the Three Kong's arc. All of them are brilliant in their own right and does a fantastic job focusing on character development and plot points. There were some questionable moments (I.e. Genki, Yusuke's master, coming back after her death in the tournament arc), but those are some minor issues and even then don't necessarily ruin the plot at all. I'm tied between calling the Dark Tournament arc and the Chapter Black arc being my favorite in the series. They're both so good in writing and action that it's so hard to decide.
10/10

Characters: The main character Yusuke Urameshi first starts out as this rebellious punk who doesn't care about anyone at all, though with his living condition and lack of family bond, you can't blame the kid at the same time. Throughout the anime, he always has a smart mouth that gets him into trouble. However as the anime progresses, he does tend to have a kind heart and soul, even if he does mouth off his friends pretty badly. Yusuke's team mates, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei are well developed as well. Kuwabara is a bumbling idiot who doesn't think before he acts, but much like Yusuke, has a big heart as a person. Kurama is kind and well caring, but in battle can be deadly and serious. And Hiei serves as being more mean spirited, but tends to help out his teammates when he can, even if he does insult them after. All the other characters are well developed as the show goes on too. I absolutely loved all the characters in the series, even the villains.
10/10

Animation: Since we're talking about an anime that first premiered in the early 90's, expect the animation to be kind of rough at times. But I will admit, the animation in the show is actually really good. The fight scenes are easily without a doubt my favorite. Even if they recycle some scenes sometimes to save money, I can't lie and say that I enjoyed how the fight scenes were animated. Expect a glow up too in the art style as the anime goes on.
9/10

Audio: The music in the anime is really good too, but does tend to get a bit repetitive when it starts to get used a lot. But the music itself is composed super well. The voice acting is more of a preference. I mostly watched this english dubbed, which is done well by Funimation. The Japanese dub is also good too. Like I said, it's a preference thing, but I enjoyed both dubs regardless.
9/10

Enjoyment & Verdict: This is a fantastic anime and I'm glad I watched it. I strongly recommend you give this a watch because from start to finish. I was absolutely enjoying everything this anime had to offer. It remains fresh as the anime goes on, not getting itself boring and always manages on keeping me engaged to my tv screen. It's not perfect, since nothing is, but it comes close to it. The last episode really hit me hard because of my connections I had with the characters. I'm willing on giving this another re watch in the future.

10/10

Let’s take a trip back to the mid to late 2000’s. Young Stan wasn’t big in terms of anime compared to now. True he knew what it was, but he didn’t fully grabbed the right mindset of what anime is as a whole. So consider him amazed at how much he loved Naruto back when it premiered in America in 2005. In fact he knew about Naruto back when he played one of the games on the GameCube years ago. And to that day he was super obsessed with the anime.

I bring this up because I’ve been put off of Naruto for years. In fact ... I think I stopped caring about Naruto up when Shippuden came out. But yet my mind has been wanting me to re-watch it again after all these years. It’s something that’s been taunting me for a while now so I guess you could say it was curiosity. And you know what they say about curiosity. So how is 23 year old Stan with Naruto compared to 11 year old Stan? Well let’s get started.

Story: As the title of the anime suggests, the story is centered around a hot headed young ninja named Naruto Uzumaki who is widely known for being despised by everyone around the world because of being sealed with the Nine Tail Fox inside of him after the Fox was sealed away by the Fourth Hokage. This gets dropped shortly after though as now all of a sudden people start to get used to him, even if they call him out on his stunts. The series does tend to have its own arcs. It starts with Naruto becoming a ninja, to him joining his teammates and master on a mission to escort a bridge builder while taking out rogue ninjas, to taking the Chunin exam (that also sort of went nowhere later down the road), to the invasion of the Leaf Village, to finding the fifth hokage, and finally getting his old teammate back. The anime does have its own arc too, but they’re practically filler. It’s something many people have been pointing out, and if you’ve read the mangas, then you might understand why. In fact they were just created so the manga can continue with its own story. Regardless, the story at it’s best isn’t that good. Even if you do take out the filler aspect, the anime just tends to loses its momentum as the show goes on. As I brought up before, the Chunin exam arc. The anime just hypes it up as it focuses and wonders whether or not the Genins will progress to be Chunin level. But it gets tossed aside for a completely different story arc out of nowhere with the main villain attacking the Leaf Village. It feels so out of place and it has the anime run itself off the tracks in terms of story. There are some positives to the story though. It does do a good job at explaining the backstory of the characters so it does that correctly, but it only goes so far when your main story just ends up being a jumbled mess in terms of plot points.
4/10

Characters: The characters are also regarded to be the major drawback for the anime. Especially the main character. The first thing we see with Naruto is him vandalizing the four hokage’s statue faces. Why? Because he wants to prove to everyone that he is better than how people are treating him. He tends to be really unlikeable at the beginning. As the show goes on, he sort of gets better but not by much. While he tends to be more caring with his friends, he still comes off as a jerk and his personality just comes off as typical for him. As for everyone else, there is no room for character development. You’d figured with 220 episodes under the belt that there COULD be some room, but I guess not. I’d be here all day if I explained it, but the only character that gets some room for development is Naruto, and even then it’s very little. It’s a shame really because some of the characters had that potential. Characters like Sakura, Sasuke, and many more had it but they never did anything with it, making it a let down. The other character I can think of that did sort of get some development is Shikamaru when he becomes a Chunin, but that’s really about it. Even with the characters backstories, it’s really hard to consider them passable.
4/10

Art: Though the art does tend to get a bit rough around the earlier episodes, the animation and art improves greatly as the show goes on. And even for the standards of the time, it definitely holds up well, though some shots can be kind of funny. Shoutout to the scene where they zoom out of Rock Lee in the hospital with Lady Tsunade and Might Guy talking. But back to what I was saying, the fight scenes are also good too. They’re fluid and nice to look at. Especially with the environments around it.
7/10

Sound: The music is good too. It definitely fits with the show with its Japanese ninja culture. And the OP’s are a rocker to listen to. The dub is fine, except for the title character. No disrespect to the actress who is playing as Naruto, but I couldn’t pick the right voice for him because holy hell his voice totally does not obnoxious in the slightest. Sorry, I forgot to turn off sarcasm mode. And the sound effects is fine too. Really nothing interesting to talk about.
6/10

Enjoyment and Verdict: I wasn’t fully enjoying my time watching Naruto again. I thought my opinions on the anime would remain the same, but sadly that isn’t the case. It isn’t bad. Far from it. But I also wondered why I decided to watch this over other animes at the time. True, the audio and animation are passable, but not enough to save itself from a mediocre story and poor character development, if there is any. I wouldn’t recommend this anime to everyone out there, but I guess if you don’t have anything else to watch then go ahead. But I would not go crazy about it.

5/10

It amazes me that I never got the time to watch mecha animes. I would be a sucker for those in a heartbeat. Considering this is coming from someone who grew up watching Power Rangers as a kid, I would have fallen in love with the genre to begin with.

SSSS. Gridman is actually a reboot of the original of Gridman since the people behind the Gridman series, Tsuburaya Productions collaborated with Kill La Kill and Darling of the Franxx studio Trigger.


Story - The shows prime focus is on Yuta and his friends Rikka and Utsumi. Yuta and his friends discovered a run down computer that ... has Gridman inside. Ultimately, Yuta and Gridman, alongside with the help of the Neon Genesis Junior High Students, decided to team up to stop giant monsters, also known as "Kaijus" from destroying the city. The person making the kaijus is Akane, who is also a classmate for the Gridman Alliance in school. She is also being manipulated by Alexis Kerib to create these monsters.

It's a very bare bones plot at first, but it does change things around at the last few episodes. Despite the fact that Yuta is Gridman himself, the anime doesn't focus a whole lot on him in terms of plot. He has important roles in the story, but the show focuses more on the other characters. More specifically Rikka and Akane and their relationship with each other. The ending was a great way to end off the series in my opinion.


Characters - The characters did take some time getting used to. Some of them I like but other ones didn't leave a huge impact on me. That's not to say they're bad by any means. They are developed as the show goes on and they do liven up the plot. Akane is honestly my favorite character simply because she stands out from the crowd by just being this evil mastermind who loves to live in her own fantasy world. To a certain degree, I also sort of relate to her. I too want to live in my own fantasy world where I can have as many friends as I want and do whatever I want to do (though I'm not going to send monsters out to destroy things. I'm not that evil.) I loved the chemistry between Rikka and Akane as well. Rikka knows that even with all of the terrible things Akane has done, she still refers to Akane as her friend. It's a touching moment that'll leave an impact on you.

Everyone else though I can't really say a lot about. I think my least favorite character has to be Yuta. I did like him at first but as the show goes on, he really doesn't contribute too much to the series besides becoming Gridman and having amnesia. I did like his chemistry with his friends though, much like with Rikka did to Akane. And he does have his moments with Akane as well, but besides that nothing too noteworthy.


Art & Sound - Since this is Trigger making it, you know what you're in for. The animation looks really damn good. The 3D fight scenes look fun and frantic and the 2D animation is bright and colorful too. I'm a huge sucker for those kind of animes and I will gush about them non stop if I could. And the music is also damn catchy. I do like the OP and the shows soundtrack. They utilize background music perfectly, fitting with the tone of the series. If they released the soundtrack, I would buy it in a heartbeat.


Verdict - I liked this anime. True it has faults but it more than makes it up for it by having a good plot, great animation, and a faithful source to the original Gridman series. If you loved the original Gridman, then you'll have a blast with this one. And even coming from an outsiders point of view, I still enjoyed it.

Score - 7/10

I've always been interested in Tokyo Ghoul. It's something that I've been hearing from my friend who is a huge fan of it, and for a while I've been thinking about giving it a shot. I picked up the first volume of the manga when I was at MomoCon last year, but never had the time to read it. I then picked up the first season last month after Christmas after seeing it on sale. A month later and here we are. So how is Tokyo Ghoul: The Anime? Apparently its been the talk of the town back in 2014 but forgotten after that. What ... happened?

Let's go to the beginning. I will admit, I was liking the anime at first. The action and story got me genuinely hooked into it. I was actually having a good time with it. True the characters didn't really click to me than I thought they would (minus Touka best goth gf don't @ me), but at least I was enjoying with it. Well...the first half at least.

Then after that, the second half just takes a tumble out of nowhere and then the problems start to show. I've heard many people say that the problem with the anime is how they crammed all 60 chapters of the manga into a short 12 episode anime. And they're right sadly. This felt rather rushed with its story. Even coming from some who hasn't read a lot of the manga, it obviously shows. The pacing goes out of nowhere around the latter half of the show, making the flow of the plot feel out of focus. I think the real kicker is the final episode. Don't get me wrong, the episode had some gruesome but good moments as well. But once the episode ended, I literally said "That's it?" It's obvious its just set up for the sequel and it did a poor job at doing it.

The animation is good, I will give them that. From the dark and gloomy backgrounds to the design of the ghouls fit the tone pretty well. Tokyo Ghoul is a dark anime and it works well in this scenario. The soundtrack is possibly the best part of the show. Much like with others, I enjoyed the OP and credits song. But I also liked the shows score as well in the episodes. Much like with the animation, it fits the show well.

Characters though...eh. Minus Touka and I guess Juuzou, I didn't really care a whole lot for the characters. Including Kaneki. Either because we didn't get a lot of time to focus on them or I just lost interest due to how, well, rushed the character development were handled.

And that's the word to describe the first season of Tokyo Ghoul. It felt rushed. Like it had a deadline to get out so it can still maintain its hype. But hype can kill something as well. It's not a terrible anime, but it is rather disappointing to say the least. It's weak at certain points, but the action makes up for it. Sadly, it doesn't make up that much and all we got was a decent, but disappointing, anime. Will √A improve on the problems I had with this season? Only time will tell. And honestly, I'm probably going to enter it with some low expectations.

I have always felt interested to see what all the hubbub (do kids still say that word) was about with Hibike! Euphonium. Considering I'm both a weeb and a huge music nut, this should have been top priority for me.

Season one's story was good. It talks about the struggle of friendship, competition and the tension between the band. However I did feel like it felt a bit basic at points back in the first season. Season 2 though, handles it much better as it even tackles the loss of a person that is close to someone (no spoilers on who it exactly is). That ... someone had a job that was taken away. But rather than giving up, it encourages the person to fill in that hole and keep that career going.

I never really known a whole lot about the animation group called Kyoto Animation besides hearing people say about how well animated their shows were. And they're right. Hibike is one of the most beautifully and well animated animes I have ever seen. From the fluid character movement, to even small tiny details in animation that's nice to look at. I love it. The sound quality is also top notch. It's a no brainier that music plays an important key role here. And every time I hear the band play a tune, I always raise up the volume to get a better feel of it. The way I feel it, the animation also commentates for that when every time they play a tune, we get some wonderful animated shots of the blue skies, people walking down the street, and the peaceful mountains we see. This might not be the best depiction, but think of it like you're inside an art museum and you see a beautiful art piece while lovely music plays in the background. It fits the mood perfectly, and it shows the amount of effort that was put into this.

This might just be a review of Season 2, but I also want to condone the same thing for Season 1. The only gripe I had, as listed above of course, was the plot. It was good and had its moments, but never felt truly amazing. Besides that, my thoughts on the animation and sound from this season can also go to Season 1. Both of these Seasons did a fantastic job mixing art and sound together to give us a truly magical series. After watching this, I am interested to check out some of Kyoto Animations other works and see if they stack up to the same level as this one in both of those terms. As for Hibike!, this is something I recommend with a full heart as much care and effort was put into this.

I used to remember seeing an episode of this back when it was on Cartoon Network fifteen years ago. Never really known too much about the character back then, but it was one of the first animes I had the courtesy to watch. The story is simple to follow, despite a few filler episodes here and there. It's lighthearted but also dark to a certain degree. The animation looks pretty good and even beautiful at times and the sound design is top notch. I enjoy listening to the shows soundtrack so much, I might just buy the soundtrack for it if it's even a thing. ... I'm hoping it is.

I do feel like they do go a bit overboard with the dark tone though. While it is understandable due to the message its trying to conceive, they were really pushing the envelope with what they were trying to do. I wasn't TOO much of a huge fan on how they wrote Dr. Tenma as the main villain as that is pretty generic and sort of predictable in its own right.

Overall, it is the perfect anime for younger kids to watch which is pretty obvious from the get go. But there can be some enjoyment as well for the adults as well who want a fun story. It's not groundbreaking or compelling, but it does serve as a nice little distraction.