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I think Tower of God is simply not compatible with an anime adaptation. I'm not criticizing the animation (which is decent), the music (which is actually pretty good), or the voice acting (which I can't comment on yet). In the end, like in season 1, the story and dialogue cuts for the sake of pacing are simply too damaging to the story and characters to be worth it. In my opinion, almost every single line of dialogue from the first arc of Chapter 2 is essential, whether it be for developing characters, enhancing world-building, or simply providing more context for the rules of the game. ... Cutting out these lines of dialogue makes characters like Wagnan and Goseng, and even Love more shallow and less interesting. However, I can't think of a way to solve this issue and still keep a regular anime season's pacing for the show. Thus I have concluded that the two formats are simply incompatible. It's probably why the Hell Train arc could never be adapted in a million years, there is simply too much shit going on and not enough time to animate it all. When you begin to think about it that way, you are way less disappointed in how things turned out.

I'm giving this a "mixed feelings" rating in the end because while this manga does tackle various issues regarding gender social norms and the problems they bring, I still get feelings of gender essentialism. I don't mind necessarily Hinase having to choose a sex to counteract the "hormone imbalance" or whatever causing mental issues, because in the end sex is not tangentially related to gender or presentation. This is also one of the few manga to discuss the idea of love for a specific person transcending their gender. However, I am disappointed in the fact that Hinase starts conforming to gender norms and identity ... once their sex is chosen in both ending timelines. A person who has been essentially living as a nonbinary person for their entire adolescent life does not even consider nonbinary identification once their sex is chosen. Not only that, their clothes, hair, and all forms of presentation move towards feminine when they become female, and masculine when they become male. This left me sort of confused in the end on what exactly the final message of this manga was supposed to be. Why critique social norms that the protagonist ultimately fails to break free from? Maybe the author never had that intention in the first place, but despite all the good things that come from this manga I'm still left with mixed feelings. Big "Wandering Son" vibes I guess.

This is my completely honest and subjective feelings on the matter: the type of love that this manga is trying to describe, one that ignores all boundaries, deeper than platonic friendship, less than romantic, but not familial nor based on some kind of mentorship, is not possible to have between the two characters in their specific type of relationship. Perhaps if you met someone as a kid and then met them again when you were say, 60 and they were 24. That *pure love* is then possible because A: you haven't seen this kid grow up for a majority of their life, B: that person's ... initial impression of you isn't in the form of a guardian/mentor figure, and C: that younger person is a fully mature adult and should be capable of making mature decisions. Of course, relationships change throughout the years, a famous example being Hellen Keller and her friend Anne Sullivan, who continued to be Keller's companion long after she became an adult. But there are two key differences between these relationships. First, Sullivan immediately established herself as Keller's teacher, cementing the dynamic of the relationship between them and allowing for its natural evolution. Second, that deeper kind of love fomented itself when Keller was an adult, and this manga ends with the male character Mashuu still in high school.

In Watashi no Shonen, the mentor relationship is not confirmed, which not only seems incredibly unrealistic to me but there is absolutely no reason for the main character Satoko to feel this way. In one of the last chapters she describes how she is "scared of love" which is why she doesn't want to establish boundaries around her relationship by categorizing it and instead leaves it vague, but then I remembered she was feeling this apprehension for most of the story towards a 14 to 16 YEAR OLD BOY. This entire relationship started because he had no supportive parental figure! Almost every interaction she had with him where he made her happy was when she was mentoring and caring for him! It was not vague what she was feeling! The relationship dynamics were clearly established! Even when she feels happy when Mashuu was showing concern for her can be explained by this dynamic, because guardians/mentors (doesn't have to be a parent) feel happy when children show empathy and concern for them!

The only reason this vagueness has to happen is so there can be a possibility of Staoko being in love with Mashuu romantically, which obviously is a big controversial move. As long as the possibility is only teased, the whole time the reader can be going "oooooo is she trying to become his mother? oooooo is this a *forbidden love?!* (adult grooming a child)." It's a good way of keeping your reader engaged, after all, how would the conflict arise if things could be cleaned up so easily? The story ends by the characters saying "Where we are is currently fine, but who knows what happen in the future? *wink wink*" This is so the author can please all of her fans: the age gap romance fans will say "They totally got together!" people not into age gap will say "Things totally stayed platonic." I can only see this as a coward's move, appeasing everybody while ultimately trying to say something about love that just doesn't fit the story.

I don't know what kind of life the author has had, but they try to ignore a very basic fact, which is that adults are adults, and children are children. I'm not a trad guy or a believer in some strict hierarchy of who you should associate with, but you can not have that kind of equal relationship with a child as a person over 30 years old. They are not mature enough, they have not lived enough, and adults acting immature and childish sometimes does not equalize this fact no matter how you try to look at it, because when an adult acts childish it is despite all that they have learned, not because they haven't gotten to learn it yet.

I watched the first season for a challenge so I was half interested in the second season and decided to check it out, but I can't take this anymore. If you remember that show "The Great Pretender," despite the main character being initially a bit of a clutz, all the other side characters were already 4D chess-playing, 150 IQ geniuses that could see 20 moves ahead. It may have been silly sometimes, but it gave the impression that the main character had joined an elite team of professionals. In High Card, every single one of the agents in the team the main character joins, besides ... the old man, is incompetent to an embarrassing degree, to the point it makes you wonder why make a setting with secret agents at all.

Only once does it ever feel like they plan something out, cleverly use their abilities, or just not come off as a complete burden to the team and their mission. In this season, they know one of their targets has an ability that grants him super speed, so the main character's plan turns out to be: to chase him on foot without a strategy like a complete amateur with no backup (this guy btw, is a veteran agent). Do you want to know how they catch this guy? By sheer dumb fucking luck, a building collapses, the speedster helps save the civilians, and they just grab him when he lets his guard down. The head of the agency gets captured by the main bad guys and the group just, sits around on their asses doing nothing, despite having no other boss telling them to do so. One of the members has an ability that is a completely uncontrollable wildcard that can be dangerous to themselves, and yet she just pulls it out willy-nilly at the first sign of trouble (which usually ends up as a problem for the rest of the team). It makes the tone of this show outright baffling.

I feel like I'm watching Power Rangers but with cards and "secret agents" instead of cool martial arts and superheroes. But Power Rangers knows what it's going for and has fun with it, meanwhile, High Card is constantly trying to fall back into a serious tone with tragic heroes/villains, murder of civilians and police, and a grand vast magic conspiracy involving the royal family. And it just doesn't work. If you want me to take your show and plot seriously, then perhaps try treating your characters seriously instead of making them a group of fools that manage to stay alive through sheer dumb luck. Whoever the lead writer for this series is, try picking a concept, and STAYING consistent.

Yakitate!! Japan is one of those series where I can not even begin to guess what was going on in the author's mind as the series progressed. It's obvious that the initial pitch was a comedy food manga that was equally interested in using food science in creative and interesting ways while also being a bit of a screwball comedy. The "reactions," as they become to be labeled, are initially pretty tame, relying on puns and visual metaphors to hyperbolize things. The initial battles are pretty simple, and the manga seems to be shaping up to be a pretty standard comedy battle shonen involving bread ... instead of physical fighting. But then we get to the international competition.
Where once this was a comedy manga *somewhat* grounded in reality, it's clear that the author was trying to find a way to spice things up and stand out. Suddenly we have a circus clown that can do Naruto shadow clones, a French team that is basically a PG body horror monster, a guy in a Pyramid that can dig under the entire Pacific Ocean. What was once a moderately tame shonen comedy was now a Looney Tunes adventure of death defiance and reality-shaping foods. But the biggest thing that really separates Yakitate from its contemporaries is how every single gag is not a one-time thing. A bread causes a person to transform? They are like that for several more chapters, possibly even the rest of the manga. A bread causes a person to time travel? That has permanent consequence on the story's world. A bread causes someone to do something to another character, that can shape how they interact for the rest of the story. The author repeatedly points out how ridiculous it is that the manga has evolved to this point, but it's clear he can't stop, he won't stop, not until he makes it so bread changes the entire world as we know it.

I think it's the author's unapologetic attitude towards this shift in absurdity, as well as the genuine quality of the gags themselves, that endears this change to me rather than alienating me instead. It also helps that by now I've read enough manga and watched enough anime that also portray insane nonsense such as this that I've grown accustomed to it. Just look into if you enjoyed Saiki K or Gintama (the nonserious archs).

I think there are quite a few mangas that portray the middle-aged salaryman having a mid-life crisis, but perhaps not one quite like this. Perhaps that is because, for all the talk about pursuing dreams, the main character is not a very admirable man that you would expect from these kinds of stories. Rather, he is a self-absorbed slacker and all-around loser, with a passion that fades as quickly as it burns. The other main characters are equally amounts pitiful, chasing happiness that almost seems unattainable. There is a very dark comedy to these aspects of the story, as well as a general melancholy that ... follows every character. In some ways, that makes the story feel more "real," but it also makes it feel like you're just reading a story about hopelessness. That's why when the story itself chooses to end on a more obvious hopeful note, I am not sure if that was the correct decision. Perhaps it would have been better to keep the implications subtle, but that I just a personal opinion on my part.

I have a massive dislike for the ecchi genre. Partly because it doesn't excite me, partly nude anime girls are a dime a dozen and I mean at some point I'd rather just watch hentai. But the other part is because usually aside from the comedy centered around naked girls, the stories don't have anything going for them. Not only that, the jokes centered around naked girls are usually not very funny. Yuusha ga Shinda manages to overcome that seemingly insurmountable hurdle and has both a genuinely compelling story and, at times, is genuinely funny. I'm not going to say that this is a masterpiece ... of comedy, in fact, the manga still has many genuinely uninteresting "kyaaaaa!" moments that I just kinda gloss over. But what matters is that when the manga is at its best, it really got something out of me, whether that be a laugh or otherwise. This is especially prevalent towards the end, where the author manages to keep upping himself by taking the several running jokes he had developed at the beginning and ramping them up to their most absurd endpoints. This incredible development is what manages to completely drown out its boring parts, which is why despite everything, my score is still pretty high. If you are not usually a fan of the ecchi genre like me, I suggest giving this one a chance.

God of Highschool is a manga that's going, you're along for the ride and it's REALLY going. And then it keeps going. And going. And going. And going And going And going And going And going And goingAndgoingAndgoingAndgoingAndgoingAndgoing... until you're not sure why anything is happening in the first place. The final battle puts Lone Wolf and Cub to shame in terms of sheer length, the villain's backstory basically boils down to that meme from the Trolls movie. It gets so tedious that I kept thinking as I read each chapter that the story should have ended 50 chapters ago. Yet until that point, it ... was a pretty good read, so it really comes down to your personal taste on extended fight scenes. You may stop caring at some point, but god damn they look beautiful. The art never drops in quality even once. Overall, a mixed bag.

Excluding the rushed ending, excluding the pointless University arc, excluding the many character issues left unresolved, I will only say this.

Japanese authors discussing LGBTQ issues love this kind of debate between morality and personal feelings. They love arguing about the rights of others to have negative views against LGBTQ people because attacking them "won't change anything" or something along those lines. This argument can never be presented in good faith as long as these authors ignore the current state of the legal rights Japan has guaranteed LGBTQ couples. Whether or not the attitude in Japan towards LGBTQ people is outright discriminatory, negative attitudes help to ... continue to fuel arguments against pushing for legislative action that would give couples equal legal benefits as heterosexual marriages. Ignoring this issue, while at the same time wanting to discuss Japan's views toward queer people is cowardly and infuriating.

Blue Flag isn't the only manga to do this, and I have seen worse attempts at discussing this issue done in much worse faith by certain authors. *Cough cough* "Platinum End" *Cough cough.* But the argument toward the end of the manga, its conclusion, and Masuimi's character arch as a whole put a bad taste in my mouth and leaves this manga as a sour spot in my heart. Manga that primarily focuses on LGBT issues are better reads than this, I recommend Shimanami Tasogare.

With the fan translation of this manga finally complete, I can write a full review of this series with my complete thoughts on the manga as a whole.

Story: 10.

The story of Akira Satou's assignment to leave his assassin ways behind him takes us through several dark and dangerous situations passed on as completely mundane annoyances or inconveniences. Conflicts are constantly born out of the simple desires of the antagonists, who treat their actions with careful planning and calm cruelty. The story works because of this. The seeming banal response of the characters and even the story itself to what is normally considered tense and suspenseful ... in any other manga draws you in, buttering you up with its black but lighthearted comedy. Then the story will slowly transition to an actual tense and thrilling climax, as both the protagonists and antagonists meet to duke it out. This plays out multiple times, and yet each time a new twist or subversion is added, preventing the arc from becoming stale.

Art: 9.

This manga is incredibly detailed, most likely using a lot of sketching over actual photographs for its backgrounds. But unlike a manga like Dr. Stone, where the backgrounds feel more like a compressed and photoshopped image, the backgrounds in The Fable look like they were drawn manually. I have no understanding of digital art, so I have no clue how this was done, but it is impressive all the same. Meanwhile, the characters are drawn very realistically, with every detail in their face and clothing in view at all times. Because of this, there are very few times where the characters themselves emote or express themselves in a unique way, but when they do it's meant for comedic effect, and it always lands. However, there is sometimes a lack of variety in both panel composition and layout. Sometimes the panels can start to blend together and get a bit samey. This is a dialogue-driven series, so other than the full page and double spreads, don't expect a whole lot of creative shots or interesting angles.

Characters: 10

The seeming mundanity of fighting and killing can only be expressed when the characters themselves treat it as such. But there needs to be a way to express a difference between emotionless and cold-blooded killers, and assassins who have adapted to and understand their way of life. This is what makes Satou, Youko and many of the other assassins such good characters. They have been raised in their ways since they were young, and while characters like Youko have not completely separated themselves from their humanity, characters like Satou have in a way that has not made them callous or sociopathic. It is this that gravitates these characters above edgy overpowered Saitama-esque jokes into well rounded, and very complex characters. Meanwhile, the more normal characters, such as the lowly yakuza henchmen, Misaki, or Satou's new boss, are both incredibly funny and genuine at heart, which helps display Satou's growing humanity in a subtle yet beautiful way.

Enjoyment/Overall: 10

The Fable manages to do all which it seeks to accomplish. When it tried to be funny I laughed, when it tried to be tense I was worried, and when it tried to be grounded and sad I felt the pit in my stomach sink ever so slightly. There is nothing quite like this manga, both in style and substance, and it's probably in my top 10 manga of all time. So if you got the hours to put away pick up this manga, it's a long ride but it is well worth it.