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I think Lee Yone's work is very good. "The Makeup Remover," coincidentally, was my first exposure to it. To be clear, I am writing this review after re-reading the manhwa for the first time. Consequently, my opinion of it is a bit more critical and grounded.

I often see people say that what "The Makeup Remover" is represents exactly what "True Beauty" should have been and I fully agree with this statement. Unlike "True Beauty," "The Makeup Remover" sticks to its one goal through and through: increasing its audience's knowledge/understanding of makeup, as well as discussing makeup's strengths, weaknesses, and overall impact on society - both ... existing and potential. It does not get sidetracked and portrays makeup in a legitimately interesting and innovative fashion (it may also be worth noting that the author explicitly credits a real makeup artist for giving them consultations).

I will also say that many of the makeup looks - not just the main duo's, and not just the unconventional ones - are legitimately stunning, creative, thought-provoking, or all three. One of the CEO characters in the manhwa mentions using the makeup looks to sell products to their audience, and heck, I gotta say, this is just a manhwa, but I sure felt inspired by a lot of the looks and felt regretful I hadn't the skills to reproduce them myself. My favorite face-off was definitely Nuri's and Heewon's: not only are both results fantastic in their own ways, but they also do one of the best jobs in the manhwa conveying the entire point of the story.

Speaking of Nuri and Heewon: the character writing here is excellent. Everyone - and I do mean *everyone* - feels like a real person, even the characters who only appear for a chapter or two at most. The manhwa takes the high road here and avoids the cheap trap of demonizing some characters because they have less gracious intentions or backstories and uplifting and canonizing others because they have "better" intentions. All the characters have something "good" AND "bad" to them to at least some extent. A vast majority of the characters are also given the chance to change and grow over time and it's done in a wonderful way (some of my favorite examples are, of course, Heewon, but ALSO Minyeong - and her growth, as proven via her final look, is fantastic). As a whole, it's very refreshing.

It goes without saying that both Yeseul and Yuseong are lovely and extremely interesting characters. I won't wax poetic about them because restating the obvious would be a waste of time, but they do make an incredible duo and are certainly no Mary Sues themselves.

Aside from all I've mentioned above, this manhwa does a great job discussing an entire plethora of other topics: healthy dynamics in relationships, staying true to yourself, the value of nuance, beauty standards (naturally!), the impacts of and considerations regarding age, online behavior, age gaps, society's treatment of men v.s. women, fashion, life outlooks, expectations placed on different demographics of people, plastic surgery, "reality" TV... seriously, I feel anyone can get a lot of enjoyment and material for personal growth from this manhwa just because it covers so many topics. To me, it's very thoughtful and complex.

That being said, I will say there were some elements that I liked less. I felt that at some points, the manhwa did get a bit "preachy" or seemed to get lost in its message somewhat (there was a moment or two during which it would uplift one group but sort of drop the ball with its treatment of the opposing group). Maybe I'm just being a contrarian but there were moments where I felt that the "makeup can be dangerous" argument could have been swapped out with the "it's okay to enjoy makeup, too" perspective as sometimes the overall point of the manhwa seemed unbalanced in that regard. I'm a bit tired of people arguing the former all the time is all; I agree and I also want to see a fresher perspective sometimes.

Additionally, some people said that this manhwa was marked with the "romance" tag and they felt led on by it. I admit that the manhwa does focus on romance to some degree via Seungwoo and Yeseul and some of the other makeup duos, but beyond that... yeah, that tag looks a little shaky. I wish there had been more resolution given to Yeseul, Yuseong, and (possibly) Heewon in that regard. As for Minjae and Minyeong... that's probably just wishful thinking on my part haha. While I do think romance doesn't have to be in everything, I still do see validity in this specific critique of the tags: I mean, imagine if a manhwa was tagged as sci-fi but had barely any of that genre covered in it!

And some minor gripes: wish we got to see the adult version of Yuseong in full without his makeup (I know that the lack of this reveal was likely intentional, but it was left as an unresolved mystery and that made me feel a bit iffy). I did some thinking and felt that in addition to sating my curiosity, in some ways that would have strengthened some of the manhwa's core arguments. On an unrelated note, I will also admit I was a bit underwhelmed by Yeseul and Yuseong's entry for the wedding theme. The idea was good but in my opinion it focused more on the message as a whole rather than the idea and message as conveyed via makeup - with the latter of the two being the entire focus of the manhwa!

Though I took two points off for the issues I mentioned towards the end of my review since they did impact my reading experience, as a whole I still feel this manhwa is fantastic and worth one's time. It is complex, nuanced, and, above all, very human. Thus, my final rating is an 8.

This wasn't bad at all!

I read this in just a day and I would say I enjoyed it. The artwork has a soft quality to it that contrasts all the more sharply with the disturbing nature of the story. Admittedly some of the panels intended to be scary were actually kind of funny, but that didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the story.

The premise of the story itself is good and leaves a lot to the imagination, and the author's use of shifts in perspective adds a lot to the intrigue. Though I'm not 100% sold on the resolution of the plot, I did ... find it disturbing and as such enjoyed it properly.

The characters are for the most part complex and some are actually quite sympathetic (I adore Eunju and especially Hyeontae). The author handles writing both the good-natured and the... less well-natured characters well and, in the event that it is relevant to the story, gives the character in question a good, solid backstory.

Personally I kind of like that this manhwa is short. It wraps up its loose ends properly and is aware of what it's doing and where it's going with it. Though the topics it touches on are dark and sensitive, I feel that the way it does so gives a lot of food for thought. As a whole, this may not be the scariest manhwa out there but I'd say it's definitely worth a read especially since it's rather short in the grand scheme of things.

I'm going to be honest... this was kind of disappointing. I feel like I've heard a lot of talk about "Tomie", but now that I've actually read it, I feel sort of misled. I may reread it to ensure I didn't miss any crucial details. As a first-time reader though I'll say this story isn't for everyone.

There's a lot of body horror involved and I found that to be pretty interesting. Otherwise, I have several issues with how this story was presented. The first is that it's episodic. Normally, I wouldn't really make such a big deal out of this, but unlike "Uzumaki", I feel ... like "Tomie" actually needs a concrete line of narrative in order to be more comprehensible and enjoyable. As it is, the different "episodes" feel very disconnected, and because they all tend to follow a similar plotline, they also become repetitive. It's a shame because I feel like "Tomie" would have had a lot of potential as a more fleshed-out story, but I guess that's not really to be.

I also want to make note of the fact that the quality of art changes a lot throughout the series. The earlier chapters especially are rather rough around the edges; for example, there's a panel in the first chapter that isn't even colored in.

Another problem I had with the narrative was that almost every character was unlikeable - especially Tomie. I wish we'd been given more of a backstory to get to know who - or what - she is and what her life has been like. I don't think in the slightest that she deserved being treated the way she was, but it's not like she was presented in a light that easily lended to the creation of sympathy. She takes advantage of old people and children and I find that hard to defend when I know so little about her. I suppose one could draw all sorts of conclusions about victim-blaming and such from this (I believe I have heard "Tomie"-related discussion on this topic before). However, I think that those kinds of messages don't have to be obscured to the degree they are in "Tomie" - with some exceptions, thankfully. If you've seen the movie "Jennifer's Body", then perhaps you'll know what I mean when I say that it executes the concept of "Tomie" better than "Tomie" itself does. In fact, I think that movie is a great example of what a world of difference a proper backstory and characterization can do. Could I defend Jennifer's actions? No, but at the very least I knew enough about Jennifer and her story to know WHY she was doing what she was doing. And unlike with "Tomie", the subtle messaging about victim-blaming (among other themes) was both more creative and better-connected to the narrative. As a whole, this series has a lot of moments where it sets up characters and plotlines only to never really use them to their full potential. That was frustrating to me.

Finally, I want to point out that, in tandem with a lack of backstory for Tomie, there's a lack of explanation of who or what she is and how her "powers" even work. And I think this is a problem because it creates inconsistencies and confusion in the narrative that makes piecing together what's going on even more difficult. I felt at several points that Junji Ito was just kind of... making things up as he went, and in my mind that is not the kind of impression you want to give your readers. For example, at some point there are rumors spread about a whole horde of Tomies living in a lake (which is true), and yet when the villagers go to investigate, they find no one there. But then, later in the chapter, all the Tomies emerge from the water. Maybe I'm just stupid but I find moments like these to be annoying, especially because simple questions like "Where did all the Tomies go?" could have been easily resolved with one or two cutaway panels.

As a whole, this isn't a bad work but it's definitely not my most favorite thing I've read. It's good to read if you want to make a small commitment to something short, but otherwise I wouldn't get my hopes up much. Maybe you'll find some sort of meaning in it that I missed.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I went into this manga, but now I'm very glad I chose to read it at this point in my life.

From what I've heard, "Uzumaki" is Junji Itou's most famous work, and now that I've read it, I can see why. In my opinion, "Uzumaki" isn't a horror manga in the classic way; instead, I would describe the kind of horror it deals with as "artistic" horror. I'm not really certain how to explain it, but that's genuinely what reading the manga felt like for me. And in my opinion, this kind of horror is sometimes far more ... interesting than classic horror (if you asked me whether I'd rather reread "Uzumaki" or something like "Signal 100", I'd pick "Uzumaki" every time). The way I see it, Junji Ito executes his chosen horror concepts with a unique kind of flair. Instead of shoving in your face that the concepts presented are scary, I think "Uzumaki" lets you experience the concepts for yourself in a non-pretentious way. Obviously, you may think differently after reading the story, so I'll just restate again that this is just my own personal experience.

Something that I really like about "Uzumaki" is that much of its horror is tied to body horror. To me, body horror is a very overlooked subgenre, which is a shame because it holds an incredible amount of potential. Many of us take for granted that our bodies will behave the way we want them to, and I think that exploiting that expectation to generate fear and discomfort is brilliant. And the way Junji Ito toys with that is pretty enjoyable, especially because his applications of body horror range from something as seemingly mundane as finding out fingerprints have spirals to something as horrific as bodies melting and twisting together into what resembles a giant ball of worms.

Speaking of spirals: I'm glad that "Uzumaki" was my first work for two reasons. The first is that, contrary to my expectations, it is not a collection of 20 individual short stories. Instead, it's a somewhat-episodic recount of what occurred in the small seaside town Kurouzu-Cho as seen through the eyes of Kirie, our protagonist. That was a pleasant surprise as it allowed me to really settle into the story. The second reason is the theme of spirals, which branches into two thoughts I must discuss. The first is that I was impressed how consistently Junji Ito was able to reference spirals throughout the entire work. Wart-like growths, drilling, whirlpools, dust devils, snails, hurricanes - over and over, I was reminded that this town is cursed with spirals. To me, the dedication to this one, seemingly-simple pattern was quite admirable. In fact, it kind of led me to rethink my perceptions of the shape! This is also what leads me to comment that this is why I think Junji Ito's work is so artistic: it is incredibly creative. If I'm going to be honest, this creativity was most of the driving force behind my desire to finish reading the work.

The second reason I must discuss spirals is because of how I felt while reading "Uzumaki". On page 20 of Chapter 1, Shuichi Saito's father says the following to Kirie's father: "'Mr. Goshima, I find the spiral to be very mystical. It fills me with a deep fascination… like nothing else in nature… no other shape… I’m sure you will understand how wonderful the spiral is!! It is perfect, the most sublime art!'" I find it to be almost genius how Junji Ito uses the concept of the spiral to quite literally illustrate the process of spiraling into madness. Furthermore, this spiral is referred to as mesmerizing both by Shuichi's father and by other characters. As I was reading this work, I began to also feel drawn into the mystery, into the rabbit hole of this town. Effectively, I was hypnotized by the story of Kurouzu-Cho, and now I find myself thinking constantly about what Junji Ito work I would like to read next.

I'll conclude this review by saying that, once again, this isn't classic horror. For that reason, if you go in expecting that, you may not enjoy it. In fact, at certain points it is more tragic and depressing than frightening. However, to me, this work is very rereadable and I do expect I will revisit it in the future.

I read this manga series a long while ago several times, and even now, I find myself thinking about it on occasion. It's no masterpiece; the main character can be what some would call "annoying" every now and then and there are some cliche elements, but I find that the way it approaches romance is very touching and very real. Somehow, whenever I return to this series and read it, my heart is filled with nostalgia and happiness, and I find myself cheering for our heroine who fell in love with the boy who plays the taiko.

I appreciate the realness and lack of excessive frill ... of the series, and when I reflect upon it, I find that the way it discusses love is quite respectable, too; it doesn't sugarcoat the difficulties that come with feelings for someone, and yet it does not demonize such complex and difficult feelings. And it makes me so happy to see how the author touched on the complexity that can arise between two people like Asuka and Masami. I think we all like to think that we have what it takes to be truly understanding and compassionate, but reality tends to be quite different, I find.

In any case, the series is so short that you wouldn't miss out on much by giving it a shot. I'm quite fond of it and genuinely recommend.

January 2024 edit: I can now safely credit this manga as the initial catalyst for my interest in taiko. Several years have passed and I now play for my school's taiko team. Crazy how life works, is it not?

It took me almost two years to finish watching this series 'cause life got in the way, but I can say for sure that over the course of that time, my feelings towards "Cowboy Bebop" have not changed. I still love it. A lot.

I have seen a lot of people say that this series pays homage to many elements of past pop culture, and while I can't name them all, that much does become obvious when you're watching it. My favorite parts, however, were the audiovisual elements - the animation especially is wonderful for its nostalgia factor - and the themes that were touched on ... in the series. I don't know how to explain it, but when I was watching this series, I felt it to be a pretty profound commentary on life - both for people like the crew of the Bebop and for regular people like us. It feels complex, like the characters who are at the same time vague and undefined due to the lack of clarity in relation to their pasts, and I can't put it into words. This series doesn't follow an extremely obvious plotline, but its essence is still very valuable. I am still so glad I watched this; Spike will always be one of my number ones.

Story: 6 Art: 10 Sound: 10 Character: 10 Enjoyment: 8 Overall: 9

Watching this anime felt like floating along in a dream. At first, I thought it would be nothing special, but before I knew it, I'd already been sucked in. There's no way to describe it with words, so I'll keep it short.

The music was haunting and beautifully accented the themes presented, as well as the situations depicted. The soundtrack that played every time the Lunarians appeared was, in the words of another viewer, nothing ... short of "haunting". Everything fit just right and was truly spectacular. Speaking of themes: this show did an incredible job at balancing serious moments with more humorous ones; though at its core, "Houseki no Kuni" deals with a serious topic (the struggle of the gems with the Lunarians), it still felt light and digestible. I guess that because of that, when the series occasionally took a turn for the darker, the contrast made it hit all the harder.

The CGI was so fluid that at times I forgot that I was watching something that wasn't actually animated in the traditional sense, and I really have nothing to complain about there. The camera shots, though dynamic mostly only during fight scenes, were fresh and interesting from angle to angle and did a wonderful job at helping convey the message of each scene. Speaking of the fight scenes: wow. The "camerawork" there was excellent and complex. That's all I'll say. The background choices as well were very well made. The world of the gems came across as almost idyllic, but still dangerous. Every backdrop was a feast for the eyes.

The character designs were all very unique and carefully constructed, even though not all of them were exactly to my taste. I appreciated them, nonetheless.

Also, when it comes to the characters: I don't even know what to say. First of all, Phos' character development, in my opinion, despite coming with its benefits, was ultimately tragic (but in a good way). However, it was well-thought-out, and I appreciate that. The other characters were also very lovable and unique in their own ways, and I enjoyed getting to know them through the screen. I loved every one of them, but I guess that, if I had to pick a few favorites, I would go with Cinnabar, Antarctictite, Padparadscha, and Phos, of course. Antarctictite though... man, that hurt.

Even though the anime didn't follow a direct storyline - it was more centered around Phos and their character development rather than events that catalyzed said development, if that makes sense - it was still a pleasure to watch. The only reason why I gave the story a 6 is because it ends on such a massive cliffhanger.

Anyway, I hope this review is helpful. As upset as I am at the ending, I think I made a good choice in watching this.

Story: 4 Art: 5 Sound: 8 Character: 3 Enjoyment: 2 Overall: 2

Before MAL cuts me off, I will make two things clear: I would not recommend this anime to anyone in general, and if you have PTSD or are triggered by topics such as pedophilia/grooming, rape, child/general abuse, murder and mild gore, sexual assault, gaslighting/manipulation, and alcohol abuse, do yourself a favor and sit this one out. I wouldn't call myself traumatized and I still ended up getting triggered while watching this show.

Now that I've ... gotten this out of the way, let's get into the review. I'll try to keep this as short as possible because I just want to go back to pretending that this series does not exist asap.

I think it's very easy to say in response to criticism of this sort of anime stuff like "oh, you're just unappreciative of psychological horror" or "you're too sensitive" or "the way you're looking at this is shallow", but sometimes you have to step back and really think about why you feel compelled to say that. Personally, I find the fact that so many people are willing to defend this... this series and its objectively morally bankrupt characters disturbing. It's genuinely and truly disturbing. I'm not familiar with the mangaka's works (i.e. I've never actually read any of them), but just looking at the covers I can tell that that's for the better. What this series looks like to me is like a grown man's attempt at projecting his fantasies or weird thoughts onto fictional characters without actually trying to give the story any deeper meaning.

And to me, that's what is the most wrong about this show (and I assume the source material as well).

When I think of actually good psychological horror, I think of stories that leave you devastated and almost broken, but at the same time, make you want to change the world for the better. On the other hand, poor examples of psychological horror are anime like these: anime where very real sorts of trauma and serious themes are confronted, only for the confrontation to do a 180 and deliver no lesson. No lesson, no payoff, no nothing. As I watched the anime, I felt dead. Now, I feel even deader. This sort of emptiness is not the sort of thing you should try and make your viewer feel.

I won't even touch on how disturbing and edgy some aspects of the anime were. The first two episodes were insane and really set something up, but then... by the end, again. I was barely feeling anything. This anime wasn't keeping me on my toes; yes, I was hoping for something good to happen, but the problem with that is that this hope was fully unfounded; if this series really were as good as so many people claim it to be (I saw one person actually try and compare it with Shakespeare), it would've dangled said hope before my eyes, torturing me with it, or it would've given me tiny snatches of relief and happiness only to crush them later. The latter happened just once in the series with Shouko. For the rest... I'd say that the reason why it dubbed itself "psychological" was to have an excuse to be as edgy as possible.

When it comes to the characters and the way certain concepts are expressed through them, all of that isn't done very well. Satou, an objectively delusional and repulsive individual who also happens to be the main character, is an empty waste of space. I don't really know how else to put it and I don't want to waste another word on her. She had no character development, and I was happy to see that what happened to her at the end happen. Or as happy as I could be while still feeling dead inside. Why she grew attached to Shio was never explained, either.

Also, her character design, while okay, doesn't make any sense within the context of the series and suffers acutely from "main character so colorful eyes and hair and quirky hairstyle" syndrome. Literally two other people in the whole series have somewhat abnormal hair colors (I'm assuming that Taiyou's hair was dyed, so he barely even counts), and I didn't notice any of the background characters (like the passersby) look in any way distinguishable from one another.

Shio was a mostly static character. She didn't seem like a real person to me. All she ever did was run around and smile and laugh and occasionally have mental breakdowns due to trauma, which is understandable. She's a heavily traumatized grade schooler, after all. She has a moment where she suddenly experiences some sort of... "awakening", I guess (I wouldn't necessarily call it character growth), but what depressed me was that this awakening didn't last. I will say that Shio's mental state was put into perspective very well during the last episode, but it's disappointing that that was done in a "tell, not show" way. Whatever, though. At least the anime did something. I don't know how to explain it, but when it came to the rest of Shio's backstory, even though I was conscious of the horrific nature of it, I felt nothing.

Taiyou is definitely a... yeah, he's a character. I don't even know if he's worse or better than Satou from any standpoint. Like literally every other character in the show, he experienced no character growth (he did have a moment where he tried, but then he failed and never tried to improve after that - terrible writing strikes again), and as one reviewer correctly pointed out, was abandoned at the end of the series. This left a weird taste in my mouth because for all the series' emphasis that rape happens not just to women, it didn't even attempt to resolve Taiyou's story. It threw him away simply because he wasn't the protagonist and considering that he's just as vile and zealous in his pedophilic and obsessive tendencies as Satou is, that makes me feel intensely uncomfortable. Not because he's a pure "soft boi" who deserves the world or anything (he does not - he deserves therapy and maybe a hit by a bus), but because, in spite of the series trying to assert that even girls can exhibit pedophilic tendencies, it punishes only the guy (you'll see what I mean by that if you go against my advice and actually watch this). The subtle message that this ends up (hopefully, and sadly) unintentionally sending is that as long as you're a girl and a pedophile, you're less "bad" than if you're a guy and into similarly repulsive stuff. That is NOT a message you want to send and seeing as this is a shounen anime, tagged as GL, and is deceptively "cute" on the surface, I can 10000% guarantee that at least some of its watchers interpreted Shio and Satou's relationship as a positive one. If you did that, take a step back and consider booking an appointment with a psychiatrist just in case.

The aunt was gross and I hated her. She was also poorly written and the epitome of "adult bad" syndrome.

Speaking of "adult bad" syndrome and the aforementioned Taiyou (as well as the other characters that do not trust adults): I find it hard to believe that Taiyou's mom has never seen the inside of his room and doesn't have questions about his mental state (he's very clearly unstable), and I also think it's weird that the only teacher at Satou's school that we're introduced to is the masochist pedophile. The fact that the series has no genuinely kind or respectable adults is another weak point of the plot, and it's hard to believe that this was done deliberately to convey some deep message about how abuse isolates or something like that.

The only two characters that I actually liked were Asahi and Shouko, with Shouko being the most sane character out of the entire cast. She deserved a much better life than the one she was given. I'm not sure about how I feel about her and Asahi in relation to each other because I was unable to verify Asahi's age, so I won't discuss that.

Asahi seemed to have weirdly obsessive feelings towards Shio, but this was never really directly explored. It was explained why he was so bent on finding her, but some of the other things he does seem to indicate something a lot darker lurking below the surface. I'll just chalk that up to bad writing because this show has absolutely killed me.

In other words, as I said earlier: this show hurls trauma and dark topics at its viewers over and over, but it doesn't explain or finish explaining those decisions very well, which is an issue. Thus, it seems to be acting edgy only for the sake of being called that. Moving on.

The art of this anime is pretty mediocre. It does reflect the deceptive cutesiness that is the theme of the show - sweet delusion - but not clearly enough to remind SOME people that THIS IS NOT A TRAGIC LOVE STORY. Jesus Christ. The opening animation sequence is pretty good though and sets the stage well. For some reason, though, the closing theme's animation sequence doesn't do the same and I find that to be very strange.

Speaking of the opening and closing, the sole saving grace of this anime was the sound and music. The voice acting seemed pretty good to me, and the music (with the exception of the ending theme, which was pleasing to the ear but pretty forgettable) was nice as well. I find it to be pretty pathetic, though, that those were the only parts of the anime that I genuinely liked.

I did cry, however, when watching this. Once when the aftermath of Taiyou getting assaulted and raped for a second time was shown when he calls Asahi. I will say that that evoked genuine emotion in me. (Though I will add that this rape seems inconsistent with the nature of the character who is the cause of it, but whatever.) The second time was when the anime circled back to the scene that was shown at the beginning of episode one. And the last was two minutes after once the true ending and aftermath was revealed (specifically, what happened to Shio). Shio deserved so much better and this series treated her like garbage. That's all I'll say.

Anyway, I'm sick of talking about this. Sorry for making my review so long; that was not my intention. Bottom line is this: don't take what other positive reviewers have to say at face value and actually CONSIDER if you want to expose yourself to this sort of material.

Thank you for reading and I hope this was helpful.

Story: 3 Art: 3 Sound: 7 Character: 4 Enjoyment: 3 Overall: 4

"Mirai Nikki" is a series that had lots of potential but ended up falling through completely due to terrible writing. My praise for the anime is minimal: the concept was actually pretty cool. That's it. Anyway, I've never read the source material - the manga - but I refuse to believe that an anime adaptation can be this awful without there being something wrong with said source material. This anime has so many issues ... that I find it hard to accept that all of it was caused by the producers alone.

This is going to be pretty long. I hope you stick around until the end, though.

I'm not even going to recap what happens in the anime the way I usually do. I seriously don't want to waste more time than I need to on this. I saw another reviewer say that it's almost like the anime assumes that its viewers are stupid, and honestly, the longer I watched the series, the more I felt like my brain was turning to jelly. I should probably be angrier than I am right now, but all I feel is... disappointed.

When it comes to the aforementioned terrible writing, no aspect of the anime is left unscathed. Of course, the story itself is heavily affected, but so is the art and the characters, and even the SOUND is impacted. The plot itself filled with absurd abuse of plot devices, a total lack of transitions, and out-of-place and disturbing fanservice. I'll explain each as I go along.

I feel like one of the most notable examples of abuse of plot devices lies within the ending and the god character "Deus Ex Machina", but I won't elaborate too much on the former to avoid spoiling. All I'll say is that there's absolutely no build up towards the end, and the realization comes like a slap in the face. It's lazy and is dragged out for way too long, and that is frustrating. Deus Ex Machina, on the other hand, is himself one giant plot device. The anime tries to use him as a scapegoat for the reasoning behind why things happen, but because the god himself is so neglected in explanation and backstory, this comes off as cheap and uninspired. And knowing this anime, even if the god was explained, he would still be misused. Also, now that I think about it, the god's death makes no sense in the context of the ending of the series.

The part about a lack of transition is pretty self-explanatory. What I find to be absolutely INSANE is that Yukkii, the protagonist, will see one of his loved ones die before his very eyes at the end of an episode, and the next episode can take anywhere from 5 TO 10 MINUTES (excluding the opening) to circle back to what is supposed to be a devastating event. I still can't wrap my head around it. And while the anime takes its sweet time getting back to what is supposed to be an important part of the last episode, Yukkii is shown dallying around without any sign of an emotional impact having been left on him by the events of the last episode. It's so sad it's almost funny.

Oh, and speaking of sad things: the fanservice in this anime. Actually, it's not sad; it's flat-out disturbing. I will remind you all of one thing: the two main characters, as well as most of Yukkii's friends, are middle schoolers. Take that in for a minute. So why is it that I've seen literally every single girl that is part of that cast group without a shirt or underclothes on? It's simply UNBELIEVABLE. I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw it happening. Censorship can sometimes be silly (as in situations like "wow, look at how this water vapor or hair oh so conveniently obscures this!"), but it's still a necessary tool. Also, even though Yuno is never directly shown naked like the other girls are, the "camera" angles and situations she is put in make it no secret that she, a middle schooler, exists to be massive fanservice bait. The amount of times I've seen the camera linger too long on her butt or chest is obscene, I HATE the fact that there is an episode where it is directly stated that her swimsuit is "too small" for her and that she loses said swimsuit in a lazy river, and I am still disturbed by the fact that she is nearly r*ped. Speaking of r*pe: this idea is used numerous times throughout the series, which I personally find to be very... suspicious. Only once, in the latter half of the series, was it used in a way that left me disturbed for the RIGHT reasons. The other two times, it was used as a cheap "plot twist", and I find that to be very unsettling. Make of that what you will, I guess. I seriously can't deal with this anime.

Now, I'll talk about the characters, art, sound, and how the writing ruins them.

I'll start with sound since that'll take the least time to explain.

The opening and ending songs were okay, but not really that memorable (with the exception of the opening song in first half of the anime). I only really liked the ending songs, honestly. I was so desperate to get the anime over with, though, that I ended up skipping the opening and closing music most of the time. Even whatever good that they did there couldn't save this anime. Also, the voice acting is very good (I watched the anime subbed, so I can't speak for the dubbed version), but as one other person pointed out, there are only so many times that you can hear "yUkKii!1!11!" before you begin to wish that Yuno would permanently disappear off the screen. Another reviewer mentioned that the emotional music starts at the right moments, and I'll say that I agree. Even though mostly non-memorable, the soundtrack does its job. It's just that I feel absolutely no emotion when said music is playing.

I'll talk about the art next because I'm dreading having to discuss the characters.

The art at its core is okay. It's nothing stellar, but it does the job. What I have a problem with is how the story interacts with this art. (I'm not even going to talk about the fanservice and the weird "camera" angles because I think I've made my point clear there already.) To put it simply: the anime utilizes background (passerby characters and setting) so poorly that you could remove all of said background completely and that would not impact the story whatsoever. Not really, anyway. I'll give an example. In one of my most favorite scenes in the movie (precisely because of the total misuse of background), Yuno has a, what? Five-minute "conversation" with Yukkii (more like monologues, I guess) about how she loves him or something. The problem? It was established several minutes earlier that the two are surrounded by highly hostile and hypnotized followers of a priestess, who is standing with them in the shrine. These "hostile" followers just stand there and let Yuno, someone who's been smacking them around with a hatchet just moments ago, cry to Yukkii about how she loves him without even trying to intervene. They aren't even animated for the next several minutes. If Yuno had been saying this to Yukkii while fighting off the followers, I wouldn't've even noticed the brilliance of that, but I guess that now, the bare minimum is all it takes to make something genius.

And now... the characters. I've been dreading this so much. Oh boy.

Sometimes, when a story is hot flaming garbage, good characters are just enough to make it bearable. But here? No. These aren't characters; these are pixels masquerading as caricatures of how actual people behave. I can count off the characters that I genuinely liked and felt any emotion towards on one hand: 1) Minene Uryuu and 2) Aru Akise. Yeah, that's it. I guess that the whole thing with Minene and (especially) Aru could be criticized for the way it was executed, but it was 5a.m., I cried like a baby, and I will not be taking any constructive criticism on how I dealt with those developments in the story. But I digress. The other supporting characters (mostly Yukkii's friends because everyone else is just that forgettable with the exception of his mom who has literally one "good parent" moment and during the rest is just. weird.) were okay and I enjoyed seeing them on screen, but they weren't given nearly enough attention. And some of them *cough*MAO*cough* had some... unconventional hobbies, but I'll just pretend that they weren't actually like that and that the show just made those parts up. :) That aside, I find it incredible that these side characters, though they appear on-screen for maybe... 15% of the anime, get more character development than Yuno and Yukkii - who are, in case you don't remember, the main characters. Don't worry if you forgot. I forgot too. And calling what the side characters have "character development" is stretching it. Minene and Aru don't really get any in my opinion, but honestly, I'm fine with that, because after witnessing what the anime tries to pass off as actual, in-your-face "character development", I can say for sure that Minene and Aru don't deserve to be subjected to any of it.

I'll just come out and say it: I do not like Yuno. I hinted at it earlier in this review (a bit of an understatement, actually), but would you believe it? It's actually true. Why? Well, Yuno is about as three-dimensional as a drawing in a coloring book. All she ever thinks about is Yukkii (if the fact that 90% of the time she opens her mouth she does so only to say his name wasn't evidence enough). She is selfish and delusional, and her insanity and yandere identity is basically all the character that she has to her. When Yukkii tells her not to do something, she resists and stops. Yay! But then she goes and does something twice as bad, and subsequently cries when Yukkii gets angry with her. Her "character development" is restricted to her killing only on Yukkii's command (which only happens within the last few episodes, I think) and having a tragic backstory which I didn't give a damn about because she was so poorly written. I'm sick of talking about her, so I'll move on to everyone else and my overall opinion on how the anime approaches younger characters.

Murmur is also annoying and terribly written, and I'll leave it at that.

Yukkii, by far, is somehow one of the most inconsistent main characters I've ever had the misfortune of beholding. I guess he inherited that trait from his dad LOL. Anyway, the reviews weren't lying. I can confidently say, for the first time ever, that this guy did not change at all during the series. Well, he did, actually. He changed in many different directions but didn't stick with ANY of them. I guess he did have a brief moment in the second half of the series where he decided to actually deal with his circumstances, but all of that vanished once more within several episodes. So no, I do not count that as character development. In the end, all he ended up thinking and caring about was whether he loved Yuno or not. I'm not even going to get into how I think that she gaslit and manipulated him into it because with how I see it, this show is so badly written that there's no telling WHAT message it was trying to deliver.

But I digress for the second time.

Honestly, whenever I heard people trashing Yukkii, I always felt pity for him. Even though I hated him at several points during the series, I think that, in the end, you can only really feel sorry for him. The poor kid was put through something unimaginable, and to be fair, if I was a middle schooler in his shoes, I'd be having a mental breakdown every episode too. But the problem with Yukkii is that he never learns. As another viewer pointed out, he remains eternally gullible and displays this naïvety at the worst possible moments, and he continues to do this throughout the whole series. No matter how much his friends warn him about Yuno (and rightfully so considering what is revealed at the end of the series), he still chooses her time and time again over people that have proved to him over and over that they, unlike her, genuinely do care about his well-being and are capable of doing so without being invasive, hostile, and manipulative. It is so hard to watch and honestly, I don't think I want to talk about this anymore. It's just too depressing.

Before I wrap up this agonizing review, I would like to point out one of the biggest problems I have with the show: the way it treats its underaged characters. I've already mentioned the fanservice, but there's more to it than that. Where it really falls through is in its understanding of what middle school kids are like. It thrusts them into this batshit-crazy universe while ASSERTING AGGRESSIVELY that these kids are kids, then for some reason tries to treat them like adults???? What??? I don't even know how to explain it, but I think that if you remember what I said about the fanservice, that should be a hint enough at how I feel about this. Seriously, at that point, seeing as how the characters are unnaturally mature for their age in ways that are unsettling (yes, I'm aware that someone can be a mature individual and still be in middle school, but just. not the way it was done here), they should've just aged everyone up to high school at least and left it at that. I've grown sick of talking about this too, so I hope that if you do end up watching the show (I don't really think you should watch it, if you couldn't tell), you'll understand what I mean.

Well, that's it. This is my review of "Mirai Nikki". Sorry for making it so long; I hope that it was at least somewhat enjoyable to read. All I know is that writing it was less painful than watching the show. I hope it's helpful.

Story: 10 Art: 10 Sound: 10 Character: 10 Enjoyment: 10 Overall: 10

I don't typically feel compelled to leave reviews for highly-rated shows, but this donghua blew every other animated series I've ever seen completely out of the water. It is ABSOLUTELY incredible, and it's soul-crushing to see almost no one talking about it on the internet. So, without further ado, let's get into the review! This might be a bit long, so please bear with me.

A short summary first: Guang Lu and Xiaoshi Cheng run ... a photo development studio. Though that may seem like a very ordinary and maybe even boring job, the two actually share the ability to dive back into time via photos. Together, they complete odd time travel-related jobs that are brought to them by locals while staying true to three rules:
1. Xiaoshi and Guang can dive into each photo for a maximum of 12 hours.
2. Xiaoshi must follow Guang's every direction.
3. "Past or future... just let them be."

Now that I have the summary out of the way, I'll get into what I loved about this show.

What drew me in from the get-go was the art. Man, is it stunning. When I first laid my eyes on the promotional poster, I thought, "This looks so different from any other animated series I've watched thus far... no way such quality is maintained through the show." I was both right and wrong! I guessed correctly that the series is not Japanese (it is, in fact Chinese, and hence a donghua, not an anime), but the consistency of animation quality is where my hypothesis missed its mark. The animation style is true to the art style of the poster, and I was hypnotized by it immediately. It's beautifully executed and a pleasure to watch in action. Not to mention that the opening theme and animation sequence immediately flexes on the viewers with complex animation of hand movements... it's a feast for the eyes.

And speaking of the opening, the opening and ending themes are absolutely a pleasure to listen to. They starkly contrast and yet complement each other, and even though the subject explored by the opening theme is a bit on-the-nose, it's catchy and fun to listen to.

Now, the characters!

I CANNOT emphasize enough how much I love the characters in this donghua. I'm heavily biased towards Xiaoshi, but even the supporting characters are very likeable (with the exception of a few that I won't be mentioning for plot reasons) and well-written (yes, even the unlikeable ones). Guang and Xiaoshi make for a wonderfully dynamic duo; they work well together and complement each other's strengths and weaknesses very nicely, and as a whole, their friendship is natural and interesting to watch. Despite being nothing but arrangements of pixels with a connected identity moving across the screen, all of the characters feel like they could exist in real life. They're just... human.

Also, did I mention how nice it is to see two people working together with time travel? I feel like it's tempting to make just one insanely capable main character when it comes to the topic of changing the future and past, but the fact that "Link Click" instead has two people guiding each other and working together is something that I really appreciate. When dealing with something as complex as time and butterfly effects, I find it difficult to believe that just one person would be capable of handling it.

But I digress! The humanness is what I love about "Link Click" so much. Despite being primarily a drama and supernatural series, it tackles a variety of other genres: slice of life, romance, thriller... even sports! At its core, it is a series that discusses life as a whole and the human drama that, for us people, is its foundation. Every story in every episode feels real and emotional, and it hit me hard time and time again. I don't think I watched a single episode without shedding at least some tears.

What's even more impressive to me is the plot consistency, and again, human perspective in relation to time. For me, "Link Click" 's nuance comes from its approach to the concept of alternate realities. It is within human nature to be skeptical, especially when it comes to time travel. "Just one tiny change wouldn't hurt anyone, right?" That is a question that Xiaoshi struggles with throughout the series, and it's a question that many of us have probably asked ourselves in relation to time travel. It's an honest, human question that I cannot fault Xiaoshi for exploring. When you're shoved into someone else's body and forced to confront their daily struggles and choices, it can be hard to resist the temptation to make just one tiny change for the sake of a better future. Literally anyone put in the same situation would probably make the same mistake. And yet, at the same time... sometimes, small changes can also lead to a happier present and future. "Link Click" explores both the beauty and horror of time travel. On one hand, there's the positive "what if", as well optimism for the future (and the fulfilling of said beautiful future), and on the other hand, there's cruel reality. "Link Click" balances both incredibly well through the human experience and it's absolutely amazing. Coupled with the well-set-up cliffhangers at the end of every episode, the result is fantastic.

Long story short? Even if "Link Click" doesn't seem like it would be up your alley, I think it would be a MASSIVE shame to miss out on it. The characters are well-written, the plot fleshed out and detailed, and the whole concept of time travel explored with nuance. While watching, I never once thought to myself that something didn't make sense or was poorly executed, which made for a great experience.

(I guess that the one exception to the latter episode would be the ending of the half-episode, but it's a half-episode and "Link Click" does so well everywhere else that I ignore whatever disappointment I felt watching that episode whenever I think about the show.)

All in all, I hope this review was helpful and I can't wait for season two.