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ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka P.S. or ACCA 13-Territory Inspection Dept P.S is a spinoff from the original ACCA 13-Territory Inspection Dept manga. It mainly focuses on the 5 Chief Officers who were present in the original and some of the Branch Supervisors and how their story ties into the overarching story.

This series is effectively a prequel but it also contains stories that run parallel to the original and also expands upon the original's ending, mostly with respect to the ACCA Inspection Department members and the ACCA itself.

I would highly recommend reading this after you've read the original. It not only fleshes out a few characters, mainly ... the Chief Officers but also the Chairman. It also gives a bit of background to Warbler and Canarii and their stories in Suitsu and Furawau.

If you really like the original I highly recommend reading this. 8/10.

Astro Boy is a historically important manga/anime, if only because its success helped in no small part to establish the Japanese animation industry and helped familiarize Western audiences with Japanese media (although it would still be a few decades until it got really popular).

While this is by no means an outright terrible series, its not that good either. Keep in mind that most of the series was drawn with small boys in mind as its intended audience and it shows very clearly. Not to mention that it was released almost 70 years ago, meaning that various parts of the manga have not aged very well.

The ... art is pretty good but the stories are very simple. While they do often address serious issues like intolerance and violence, the stories they feature in are very simple with predictable resolutions and very little depth. Most of the stories are episodic, which means that the quality of the manga changes with every chapter (although some of them are actually good) and continuity isn't something that's regarded seriously. The characters are flat and boring, if not completely unlikable. The supporting characters have little to no development from their initial introduction and the villains are mostly just there to serve as punching bags.
Astro Boy himself is fine but there's nothing really remarkable about him.

Unfortunately, its historical significance is the only reason I would recommend anyone to read this.

Reading the synopsis for this show, I wasn't really sure how good this show would be. The whole "5-girls try to achieve their goals" part seemed really generic to me and I was really afraid that this was gonna be another bland "cute anime girls doing whatever" slice-of-life anime.

This show however, surprised me and disappointed me. It was surprising because for the most part, it spends more time focusing in the actual processes behind creating an anime and all the effort that goes behind it, which to me, was very interesting. Some the show's best moments for me revolve around the parts where they are ... focused on the anime production.

The shop disappointed me by proving me right when it came to the characters.The main five girls, the characters who we are supposed to be invested in, aren't well developed beyond the basic character templates they are given. The show primarily focuses on two out of the five, with the other three showing up sporadically to remind us that this is a show about the five of them.

The side characters are bland and only seemed to exist to show how an anime is produced. Some of the characters are given arcs that are resolved in the most cliche way. Other characters exist for the sole purpose of making sure that everything goes wrong. Every conflict the characters have is solved through just the right bit of perseverance and hard-work, which is fine, except the conflicts themselves aren't even that engaging. The characters do have their entertaining moments but this wasn't the character driven show that I thought it would be.

I liked this show a lot and would've given it a higher rating if the characters hadn't been so mediocre.

If would you like to learn more about how an anime is made and if you don't hate the slice of life genre, I would recommend this to you. It is entertaining enough but its definitely not an exceptional insight into the industry or the people who work there.

(Contains mild spoilers for Steins;Gate(2011) )


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The entire reason this show exists is to provide context for one scene in the original Steins;Gate show.
...
One scene.

That's it. That's the whole premise of the show. It takes 23 episodes for Steins;Gate 0 to achieve this and in my opinion, that is just too goddamn long.

The show meanders on episode after episode bringing in plot elements and characters that are irrelevant to the story and expanding on them in the most boring ways possible.



The most insulting part is that the main crux of the show,i.e, showing us how Okabe came up with the plan to save Kirisu, is shunted off to the side in order make space for an incredibly boring and borderline irritating story-line where we instead find out why exactly Mayuri told Okabe to go back( Even though what she did in the original is much more consistent with her character). The plan to save Kirisu and to enter Steins;Gate isn't even developed in this show, being hastily bolted onto the final 10 minutes, like the writers finally remembered the reason this show existed in the first place.

The new characters aren't very interesting or well developed, the villains aren't even worth mentioning and the show goes on for far too long for the amount of things it needs to do.

Not to say that the series isn't mildly entertaining, but if you watch this after Steins;Gate, you'll quickly realize that this show has nowhere near the quality that the original displayed.

All in all, this a mediocre addition to the series, mildly entertaining at its best and downright boring at its worst. Everyone keeps saying how essential this is to 'watch order' for the Steins;Gate series but honestly ? Just watching the original in its entirety would be just as, if not more satisfying solely due to the fact that you didn't have to watch this show.