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*** WARNING: CRITICAL THINKING, MEDIA LITERACY, AND NOT LOW STANDARDS ***

I already wrote a review for the anime in which it was a creatively bankrupt disenchanting experience with the flattest characters ever. Somehow, in a new medium, this description has gotten worse for Quintessential Quintuplets.

For those who echo the same ideas such as: "it was fine until the ending" or "ending ruined the story!!!" or the dreaded "i loved all of it until he rushed the ending!!!!!!" a huge news flash. This manga is terrible from chapter 30. Despite my pretentious warning, I like to think I am pretty reasonable and fair especially when ... concerning media. I do not expect a lot from a manga if it does not promise me a lot. Why would I expect a lot from a flat manga like sakamoto days or jujutsu kaisen you know? With that being said, Quintessential Quintuplets is the laziest manga ever. Just look at the premise. 5 women are supposed to be on 1 dude. You would expect that the women in question would have their own separate reasons for liking this dude. Right? Wrong. This manga thinks that having completely nebulous and asinine reasons why girls like dudes is a great idea!! Makes your characters look completely realistic and human!!! Definitely not ragingly autistic with zero tact. Closely examine why each woman likes Uesugi and you only fine arbitrary reasons why I wouldnt even buy my co-worker lunch. Miku likes him because he talked about sengoku old dead warriors? Ichika likes him because he talked to her about movies? Nino likes him because.... the author said so? The justification for this thing happening is so bizarre. The fact is, if the girls had a more competent main character to bounce off of this would not feel so utterly contrived. If our protagonist was not a blank piece of cardboard with zero defining traits then I could actually buy women, let alone people, liking him. There is a fundamental issue resulting in story failing to connect the characters to the premise. If Uesgui was more charismatic or likable or not completely on the spectrum, the girls could naturally like him. The girls would not need a "uhhh i think hes nice" attitude to justify why they love this guy. So all of this was to say, the ending did not ruin anything. If the foundation of your story has more holes than a bucket of straws, it is clear to see that the bullet that pierced the skull of this manga only shot a reanimated corpse.

So we established that the reasons why the women like dude is completely unnatural at worst and contrived at most. Now we can dive in and crack open the skull of these "character arcs" that people like to praise. Quintessential Quintuplets does have character development. The characters go through things that change them and they come out the other side as better people. Is what I want to say. The "character development" and "character arcs" of Quintessential Quintuplets are development in a denotative sense only. A REAL character arc is properly establishing a characters flaws, their needs and desires, then executing characterization through intention and obstacle.
In a conventional sense this is how the best character arcs are made. You cannot get a Zuko from the half-baked nonsense in Quintessential Quintuplets. What this manga opts for is telling us the characters are changing after the constructing the laziest event in which we can explore one or two characters. The best example I can think of is when Nino was staying at a hotel and Itsuki at Uesgui's house. People can say, "hey thats when she starts developing feelings for the dude and starts opening up" but here is no deep character exploration or revelation to draw readers in. It essentially ends with "bitches be trippin but its aight". It is the most trite and lazy way to explore characters. What are nino's flaws? What are her fears? What does she learn? How does she grow? These answers, if there are any, are uninspiring and mediocre at best. In my book, this manga severely lacks development. I am not going to give out participation awards just because Quintessential Quintuplets tried. Hell no.

The characters are so bad because of one simple reason that I am not going to daunt over, the manga's structure. You would expect a manga with 6 main characters that is also a slice of life set in the real world with no other characters to really worry about would be character-driven. Right? Dead Wrong. This manga seems to pride itself on a mystery element concerning Rena (which we will tackle later) and slowly dropping hints and tidbits toward the revelation. This decision was utterly terrible and an irredeemable skid mark on the manga's integrity. This is because the addition of Rena to the manga fundamentally changes this story to an entirely plot-driven narrative. It is revealed that Ichika had not lied and she was actually the woman from 5 years ago? SIKEEEEE it was actually Yotsuba. Yotsuba was the real culprit while Ichika just had talked to him a few times. Such effective misdirection, I just wish the characters were not all boring flat pieces of cardboard. The story keeps rubber-banding back to this Rena thread instead of actually giving some quality character work. I truly do not understand why this author said "yea lets go for a huge harem romance but instead of like a cool mc getting girls, lets make it around this mystery. oh yeah thats fire". Who wants a mystery with flat characters, especially, in the genre of romance where your characters are literally everything??? Uesgui, on the bus ride to the festival, literally has a narrator text box alluding to the failure of the first day of the festival. The characters can never breathe in a controlled environment because Rena is like an arsonist to their character writing. It is the typical width > depth that One Piece fans are so accustomed to. Unlike the biohazardous serialization vs episodic storytelling debate, this manga would have been objectively better in a more episodic approach to flesh out the characters and make them 3D. The author choosing to air ball the character writing and rely on his 5'8 center named Rena to get each rebound is a dastardly decision that further spits on the rotting corpse of Quintessential Quintuplets.

I spoke on the structure of this manga but the plot is simply garbage. Not a single waste of time let me tell you, the plot to this manga makes me want to vomit. We see 5 girls that are so damn stupid they get 100 on a test combined. But we get a flashback to right before this event in which 4 of the sisters passed their test and did not get expelled? How are you able to pass the final test but when this dude tells you "pass this test and im out of your hair" you completely bomb that mf like yoshikage kira?! I wish I could suspend my disbelief but that literally makes no sense. Because the premise involves studying and romance, you would naturally assume, the better grades the girls get would be parallel to how their relationship with Uesgui develops. Right?...... Studying is only the contrived way to get all these characters together. There is never any meaningful progress or symbolism behind the women passing their tests in the future. Complete swing and a miss. Other plot points are either extremely contrived or extremely unnatural and jarring. It is like the author only has 2 modes: nonsense mystery or nonsense everything else. The sisters' dad bans Uesgui from their house so what do they do? They buy a fucking house. Think about that. This dude they knew for a couple months is apparently important enough for this underage autistic band of sisters to completely abandon their rich livelihood? Try again with someone with zero standards. Absolute Bullshit. Next, Ichika can no longer join the tutor group because of her career so what do they do? They buy a fucking movie about tutoring. This author only cares about the Rena mystery because his brain literally cannot create something that makes sense for his life. The sisters' mother had her husband walk away from her. You would naturally expect for this to either never appear or be extremely important if it does but this manga chooses neither. This manga would rather have the dad comeback for a chapter or 2, shit on Itsuki (the best sister), then get disrespected by a couple teenagers and never ever appear ever again. Such a satisfying resolution.

Finally. We have finally made it to the larger Rena discussion. I have talked about how Rena fundamentally ruins the story from foundation up but larger than that, how does Rena tie in to the story. Foreshadowed early on, Rena is presented to the audience as a woman that changed Uesgui's life. The story builds this up as omega important. As in, it is the entire reason why Uesgui is the man he is today and that he will not even let people see the picture of him and Rena. When we actually see this flashback with Rena.... lord have mercy. This dude Uesgui changed up his entire life and dedicates his mind body and soul to Rena because she gave him a fake motivational speech. Are you serious? I am sure we have all been moved to action before but worshiping this person as a someone who saved you? Bad business. The big problem is, you have to suspend your disbelief to believe that this little girl can completely change this dudes life. If a girl who is also poor tells me "hey i wanna get supa smart so i can not be a burden and take care of my family", wouldnt I (person who is also poor with family to take care of) at least THINK of that fucking idea? Look at monogatari's love interest, Hitagi falls in love with Koyomi because she was so distressed she could have fallen in love with anyone at the time. That, accidentally, seems like what happened with Yotsuba and Uesgui. They fell in love at 12 years old because they had a bit of fun then shared their grander ambitious resulting from being poor? Do you see this? In what way is this a satisfying reveal or well done plot point. Completely asinine at best and story-breaking at worst. Let me iterate once again, the problem is the fact that it is completely unbelievable. Just like those women buying a house for a dude they met 3 months ago. Completely asinine at best and breaking the story at worst.

Quintessential Quintuplets is what happens when popularity meets mediocrity, introduced by incompetent media literacy. The only good thing about this manga is that there are 5 women with slightly big breasts and its kind of funny 4% of the time. Believe it or not I was trying to minimize my issues and criticisms. I could ramble for hours how the Uesugui family are all incompetent weirdos who shouldve been deleted or how all the characters are flanderized versions of themsevles by chapter 30 but there is no point. This manga is an interesting premise stabbed and plagued by bad idea after bad idea.

(spoiler free but also didn’t proofread bc this anime doesnt deserve anymore of my time me thinks)

as an anime this fails on virtually every front. the music is absolutely horrendus, the visuals are so anime uwu kawaii it has no texture to it, and camera work is the worst offender. often resulting in dead pans, the camera works as a sitcom with people talking while sitting with the camera just staring at them. so creatively bankrupt. the characters are extremely bland. they feel like a flanderized version of themselves by episode 2 its insane. theres 6 characters but it genuinely feels like theres 2 characters ... and 4 clones. the world is so hollow and un lived in. ofc this is a slice of life not an epic fantasy but dude theres barely ANY hints of larger problems within families, communities, and domestic social issues. the anime ends with literally zero pay off to anything. theres no answers to any naturally asked questions, theres no rewarding scenes, theres no real character work. i could ignore all the poor story telling if this anime had something to say with its production. editing, storyboards, animation, color, sound design, its genuinely all so bad. the budget for this anime mustve been 30 dollars dude

(miku my goat tho)

Haikyuu as a manga sits in a very strange place of having strong messages and ideas that one can resonate with and being a corny nick jr manga that offers nothing in most story elements.

Let it never be known that I am disrespecting Haikyuu. I think most matches are incredibly tense and have a lot of feel good moments from our developing cast. Some matches during the latter end of the manga have moments that genuinely left me speechless. Haikyuu also has some of the best presentation and composition I have ever seen in manga. It is up there with Berserk, Vagabond, and Bleach. ... Hinata, as a main character, is extremely enjoyable and evokes a good feeling with the audience like "yeah thats our guy, dont look down on him!" I especially like how the author sets things up quietly. The author will foreshadow something in the same volume with just a small glance or action; that is super cool and plays into the presentation praise I gave earlier.

Despite all this, in my opinion, Haikyuu is horrendously bad at character writing. Unless you dive into the very shallow framework of the series and extrapolate the most benign ideas, this series has almost 0 QUALITY characters. I would not want to use massive names for comparisons but look at any other shonen, hxh, csm, even jjk have a cast of captivating characters. Kurapika's needs and desires or Gojo's intention and obstacle. The cast of Haikyuu, if you can stomach engaging with them for so long, fundamentally lack the charisma and modern writing behind them to actually bode well with. I am not a volleyball person like 99% of Haikyuu's readers. I have not played the sport outside of a P.E. class. I can verify if any technique or any rule said in Haikyuu is legit but I do know that any piece of media is suppose to respond to their target audience. I am not going to make a political mystery thriller with high tech machinery and weapons framed on a national sport for children (unless its cars 2).

Despite being depicted for younger male audiences, Haikyuu's character interactions and overall dialogue is GARBAGE. The author panders so far to literal children that when a character says "ass" there is a full page dedicated to character reacting as if the person just said a slur. So many character say the same thing that get so old so fast it is insane. If you took a shot every time the word monster was said during the 300s, you would not wake up tomorrow. I get hyping up characters and obstacles respectively, but Haikyu throws in the word "scary" or "frightening" or "horrifying" at every single turn.

I still rate Haikyuu a 7 because despite it's flaws I think it is a really well done manga for what it excels at. I was more critical in this review but that is a given; while the depth of flaws to praise favors the latter, the width prefers the former.

Fullmetal Alchemist is a weird one.

FMA is regarded as one of the best anime/manga and receives constant praise. I truly wonder why. FMA has one of the strongest thematic frameworks ive ever seen however this doesnt really matter because its world and characters dont reflect the same quality.
FMA's structuring is decently weird, it banks everything on its ending but its ending isnt good??? Some work like aot or haikyu dont need their endings to be good. If FMA has a bad ending it rips apart the "quality" and expectation that was set. Im comparing the endings of these other shonen to say that ... FMA's structure works against itself.

Look at the characters in FMA, theyre all pretty bad. Every antagonist follows the same formula of: get hyped and excited for them, they do something in the main plot, they get X'd out in the most unsatisfying way ever, then the story treats it like it was something good. Pride, kimblee, father, envy, all of these character fall into this exact formula of consistently undermining the integrity of the antagonistic force. Do we remember zuko or obito where theyre "broken heros" with good in them that just got corrupted? We see zuko grow into a mature person and redeem himself and give himself his honor back. We see obito sacrifice himself and do the right thing in life of doing wrong. Our antagonist who do wrong are able to redeem themselves and have a satisfying arc but scar is the exact opposite. Scar straight up murders people on screen and after talking for a little bit for like 5 minutes he's treated like a good guy. What type of antagonist like that doesnt have a redemption arc AND gets a happy ending? You see that? FMA sacrifices satisfying moments and good character writing for themes and thematic portrayal.

I dont think FMA is bad and I also think the isbal war is genuinely genius. I just hate to see FMA fall so ass backwards flat. Such an interesting premise with good art and fight scenes absolutely ruined by poor execution. I dont recommend FMA to those with something else on their watch list. Read aot, pandora hearts, alice in borderland, tokyo ghoul, just anything else tbh.

Umineko continues to showcase its utter fraudulence in the face of storytelling. Tell me, if everything the characters do is the result of Beatrice's game, does any of the characters have meaning? If I am watching a Family Guy episode and Peter makes the decision to save his wife instead of his kids but then we find out that the situation itself was staged, would it not make the "character writing" null and void?

The contrivances and nonsense that take place in this episode have peaked past a point of return. Kanon, who has no prior experience fighting, can keep up with an Angel of Death ... using his magical zanpakuto he manifested because of his dick and balls. After Kanon wins his fight, he promptly gets jumped by the rest of the Angels of Death. Kanon is in a dire situation to which Shanon summons a magical danku barrier and saves Kanon's life. How one looks at these FURNITATURE servants use magic and think "this is good" is beyond delusion.

The entire episode is centered on Beatrice's actions and her relationship with Battler-kun. With absolutely no pretense, Battler and Beatrice have a defined rival type of relationship. This notion is completely unfounded because the audience has literally seen Battler stripped buck naked because he cannot win against Beatrice. What type of rivalry results in one party consistently getting out-paced and losing? The type of nonsense logic Umineko absolutely loves to throw in the audience's face. The red herring of "smart" sounding phrases such as "Devil's Proof" and "Hempel's Raven" only serve to implicate the story has more wits to it.

The garbage worldbuilding within episodes 1-3 only serves to promote more contrivances. Apparently, without any setup, Beatrice can use her red command to destroy a witch that is objectively stronger than her. On some JJK shit, Eva Beatrice forgot to "put up a curtain" that will make her magic items impervious to real-life things such as guns and whatnot. Meaning, regular degular humans such as Kyire and Rudolf can fight and win against these trained Angels of Death. Imagine I'm a 16-year-old boy and I'm supposed to fight against Mike Tyson, but, luckily, Mike Tyson forgot to drink water the day of the fight and now I can beat him. It does not make any damn sense. Just because the Angels of Death can be touched, it does NOT mean these regular humans should be able to beat them in a 1v1.

Furthermore, the action in this manga is straight-up terrible. If anyone in their life has read a battle shonen before, it is EXTREMELY easy to see how Umineko shits itself in this department. The action has zero choreography often resulting in thick lines moving across the screen. The dialogue is so unnecessarily corny and cringe, it is like asking your nephew to write what he thinks is cool. Rudolf fighting this 13-year-old-looking Angel of Death and consistently flirting with her while fighting? Heat bro gas fire raw. Kyrie having a "jealously-off" with an Angel of Death whose powers directly come from being jealous? GOAT RAW KINO!!!!!!

In addition to the plot, I would love to touch upon the bigger picture things in episode 3 like how apparently Beatrice was lying to Battler virtually the entire episode. Or how the other witch is manipulating Beatrice but I feel that is above my pay grade for now. Overall, goated manga of course. Either turn off your brain or tune into therapy because there is no way anyone with standards could consider this good.

Kaguya-sama Love is War is a sad devolution of storytelling that only shoves the worst elements of its story in your face like cake to a birthday boy.

Love is War's intimal premise is more deceptive than what people give it credit for. While being primarily romance and character-driven, Love is War is a complete package of a manga. Its witty humor, engaging mental battles, and emotionally charged character moments are the fuel and foundation of the story. Kaguya's character arc of becoming more of a "normal" girl is exceptional while Ishigami's development is hard to NOT get behind. Love is War seems to excel ... at everything they promise within the story. Surely... Surely Aka Akasaka, the genius behind Love is War, won't make a complete 180 as soon as he reaches chapter 240 right???

What Love is War so flawlessly does is shoot itself in the foot to get an honorable discharge but miserably fails just to get itself killed in the line of duty. So many cracks in the story make themselves visible right before chapter 240. I mean we learned the Shinoyima family is the reason why Shirogane is broke? Can we expand on that, it seems pretty big? Nope. Shirogane is catastrophically underwritten! We learn that he works so hard because of his mother and his abandonment issues and that his dream after working so hard is to buy his father's company back. There is so much depth here but it goes absolutely nowhere. Love is War builds up Shirogane calling Kaguya by her first name but then in a couple chapters they just refer to each other on a first-name basis??? What was the point in building it up as something special if its just said and done in the most uninspiring way ever? Kaguya, the goddamn goddess of knowledge and intellect, presses the floor number of where Shirogane's apartment is when she's supposed to be feigning ignorance because his sister is present. How the hell do you build your manga on the foundation of your main character being smart but making such an obvious rookie mistake and NEVER acknowledge the mistake being made. These problems themselves aren't very big and one could easily pass them off as "nitpicks". However, I think it's extremely important to understand how Love is War had multiple problems BEFORE chapter 240, it's only the consistency and delivery of the story was infinitely better then than now.

With minimal foreshadowing but definitely an established tone mixed with some foreboding, we reach chapter 240. The Shinomiya Political Nonsense Salad. This garbage of an arc starts off being overly mysterious when we learn later, that it was completely unnecessary and used to build an atmosphere it was not at all consistent with. Kaguya is being used as a political marriage hostage?? I think the idea of an overly serious conflict such as that coming into a comedy series with zero setup is beyond insane. One day we're trying to help Ishigami not get held back a year and the next day we're trying to stop a political marriage concerning a billionaire conglomerate from happening. The blatant tear-baiting of Kaguya breaking up with Shirogane, Shirogane winning over Kaguya's dad in 10 seconds, Haysaka and Chika getting ganged up in and backed into a corner, there are so many contrivances and useless sections in this arc it is impossible to fully take it seriously. The Shinomiya family are AWFUL "antagonists". Their designs make them blend into a wall, they aren't fleshed out at all, and they are adults fighting children?! The absolute nonsense in this arc comes out of the logic of its resolution. Seiryu Shinomiya (a central antagonist of the arc) gets into a confrontation with Fujiwara in which he says an off-hand line about how women derive happiness from children, marriage, and cooking. Fujiwara, a seventeen-year-old woman who has never dated, instantly challenges this notion and says that women dont like Mr. Seiryu Shinomiya. Apparently, this SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl did some "digging" and found out Seiryu is very sexually active and talked to his sexual partners to confess to what he has done to them. Chika is threatening to expose Seiryu and how he has "pervy fetishes" and abandoned these women when they got pregnant. The heir to a billionaire conglomerate is getting threatened, and even worse, outsmarted by a 17-year-old girl? These are the antagonists of the arc? Are you serious bro? So beyond suspension of disbelief its insane. The entire reason we are in this arc is because Shinomiya is a political hostage. The Shinomiya bros think she is the answer to the incoming war with the Shijo family. Do you know how this gets resolved? 17-year-old Kaguya says "trust me bro" and these grown adults say "aight bruh, ima let you cook real quick G"??????? Are you serious? Shirogane sweet-talks Kaguya's dad in 10 seconds, Kaguya gets his will, and then the rest of the family just says "do yo thang boo"?? Most unserious shit ever. But we haven't had Shirogane do some corny nonsense yet so one of the brothers' crew chases down Kaguya (for no reason) for Kaguya to be at the edge of a cliff and jump off for, you guessed it, Shirogane to catch her. The guy who didn't want to spend money on a cab, rented a helicopter to make a theatrical entrance with Kaguya. The funniest part is 3 people were chasing Kaguya and when she got to the edge of the cliff there was only 1 left and they were out of breath so realistically, Kaguya could just outrun them. LOL.

After that abysmal arc, Asa Akasaka decides he doesn't want to write anymore and resolves some threads in the worst way ever. Shirogane is leaving for America soon? Let's have a gag chapter where rich girl Kaguya oversleeps his departure and flies to America to have their own little goodbye. Shirogane being gone was built up for a very long time guys we even had an entire chapter dedicated to his final messages to everyone. Nah let's have him in America but on a big monitor so he still interacts with the main cast effectively making the plot point redundant and void. Ishigami and Iino had their relationship built up for chapters on chapters, surely...... Surely..... Surely Akasaka will make sure to resolve it in a very cathartic and satisfying way right? Wrong. Akasaka decides to make Iino the student council president and have Ishigami join the student council again just for HALF A YEAR TO GO BY. After half a year goes by, in the most flaccid uninspiring way possible, the narrator says "Ishigami and IIno inherited a lot from the previous student council and they will continue to write their own story." what.

Love is War is the biggest think piece on "they had us in the first half ngl". With its pathetic writing attempts, laughable resolutions, and garbage ideas, Akasaka has done enough damage to Love is War. Tokyo Revengers, Code Geass, Wano Kuni levels of bad.