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- BirthdayMar 21, 1988
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Feb 4, 2024
Outstanding visually and musically, as you'd expect from a SAO movie. However the story feels very lacking. Where Aria of a Starless Night felt like an amazing retelling of the first two episodes of SAO, only greatly expanded and from Asuna's point of view that leaves you anticipating more, this story feels like a letdown of filler that doesn't seem to have any real attachment to the main series. The stakes don't feel dangerous at all in the primary plot, and the much more interesting secondary plot of the movie feels like just a little teaser to keep you interested for what MIGHT come
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in the next movie.
The look and feel of Aincrad is definitely there and has never looked better with the boss fights being especially fun to watch, but there isn't much in the way of new world building in this movie compared to the last one, again except in regard to the secondary plot of the movie. We get to know a tiny bit more about the crafting system of the world but that's about all.
All in all, this movie feels like it's setting us up for what could be some fantastic SAO movies later down the line, with bigger conflicts, more characters and higher stakes, but for right now this feels like a tepid purgatory where you get very little of new substance and just 2 hours of gorgeous filler. A nice watch, but not much to write home about.
6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 5, 2023
I'm glad it's over.
I haven't liked Shingeki no Kyojin's story ever since the big reveal at the end of Season 3. I felt that direction was a massive letdown from where the story was taking us at that point; and even though yes all of the hints were there, I felt that taking the show in the direction it went stripped it of a lot of the best things that made it what it was in the early goings of the series. Going in the direction that the show went turned most of the themes it was trying to discuss into repeats of themes
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I had already explored elsewhere in other mecha anime. The story beats became predictable, and the conclusion of the story became a long, messy, and drawn out slog that kept trying to justify its own length unsuccessfully.
And yet, despite how much I wasn't enjoying the story for the last couple seasons, I cannot help but give the series as a whole a solid grade because of how quality the animation and sound design is. Attack on Titan will set the bar for many years to come. just like Evangelion did before it, for how far you can push this medium in terms of grand and epic stories, and what you can make them look and sound like.
I may not have ended up liking Attack on Titan's story at the end of the journey, but I am thankful for the journey I was able to go on with it anyway. It was a huge part of my getting back into anime back in 2013, and it has my full endorsement as a modern classic that every fan should eventually see. It doesn't mean every fan will enjoy it to the same extent, but every fan should at least be able to appreciate it for what it is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 24, 2023
This season feels like a colossal waste of time. Did we really need to spend an entire 12 episode season on this little detour arc? This feels like something that could have been handled a lot better in a 3-4 episode OVA series.
There are a few good episodes that feel like they are advancing the main story from Season 1 along a little bit, but a vast majority of this season just feels like a massive detour, and it's frustrating because I'd much rather have spent this much time and detail on the adventures that were happening in the Demon Continent from Season 1.
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But instead, that portion of the story mostly gets skimmed over while we have 12 whole episodes devoted to this arc and it just doesn't feel like a satisfying use of time at all.
There better be some major payoff to all of the minor side stories within this season to make it all feel worth it further down the line, because as of right now it just doesn't seem that way at all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 29, 2023
Clever, meta black comedy humor, surprisingly stellar world building, cool and interesting animation especially regarding the fights. Emminence in Shadow isn't going to click for everyone but it's definitely a fun ride for people who are fans of Isekai anime or enjoy a good genre subversion.
Emminence in Shadow reminds me a lot of both One Punch Man and Konosuba in that they are both satirical takes on the "formula" of their respective genres while staying true to the general look and feel of those genres without missing a beat.
The first thing that needs to be understood about this series is the main character. The
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main character Cid/Shadow is a joke. He is a joke character, that is never to be taken seriously. This makes it a little difficult to get into at the start because you only ever see the world from his perspective but as more and more characters get added that have more serious and grounded outlooks on the world it starts to make sense why Cid is written the way he is. Cid is Saitama. He's in his own little world, completely detached from everything around him, but is so ridiculously overpowered that everything he does has massive repercussions throughout the entire story, repercussions he doesn't care about and leaves to other characters to untangle.
It is a funny and nuanced look at the "Overpowered Main Character" trope that has become so popular in isekai anime over the last few years.
But aside from Cid, the rest of the world is actually VERY interesting and very detailed, with a deep "secret conspiracy" theme that drives the main story along and takes it to some really interesting places. I'd very much love to see just a regular fantasy series taking place in this world without all of Cid's shenanigans causing mayhem everywhere.
The show's action is well paced and well animated, the score is pretty average with very little memorability, the humor very similar to a Marvel movie keeps the tone of the show light despite all of the blood and violence and the numerous characters give you a lot of different fun character designs to follow along with.
It's a fun series with plenty to offer and while it's not as pioneering as the titles I compared it to, it is enjoyable in a very similar way that they are.
7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 16, 2023
A feast for the eyes, that reminds me of the old Dragonball movies that just throw fight after fight at you, but leaves you knowing that it was all a bit pointless since none of it makes any sense next to the canon series. It is more or less exactly what you should be expecting of a Black Clover non-canon anime movie.
It's definitely a spectacle of high production Black Clover which is awesome to see since Black Clover has a great and colorful art style that was just begging for this kind of movie treatment, and the movie doesn't slack off in giving you almost
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two hours of nonstop action scenes.
It gets to a point where it actually feels like it's too much because the fights just keep going to ridiculous lengths to prolong themselves as power spike after power spike keeps the action going until the credits roll. You get all kinds of the team ups that you've grown to love from Black Clover, including a few you might not expect, as well as all of the ones you knew going into the movie you were going to get.
The story is very shallow, and the movie does not spend a lot of time trying to develop it, or explain it. If you're up to date on the anime's story you know that there's no way any of this makes any sense knowing where all of the characters are in the timeline. This complete detachment makes it seem like all of the stakes the movie tries to make feel important, are all a sham because you know at the end of the day the events in this movie can't ever have happened and nothing serious can actually happen because we have to return to the status quo by the end of the movie because the anime is still ongoing and we have another season to get to eventually. Again, it just reminds me a lot of the way the old Dragonball movies used to be.
Overall, the movie itself is nice visually, if a bit too long considering how shallow it is. But it does give you some fun reasons to be hyped for a new season of Black Clover whenever Pierrot decides to start adapting more of the manga. If this is what Black Clover can look like when it goes all out then we can just hope that we will see something close to this when it has more of the manga to back it up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 21, 2023
Dr. Stone has an insanely charming premise, that just gets totally derailed and thrown off by the messy action and mishandled plot, to a point where I think the premise would genuinely work better as an Isekai anime. What do I mean by that? Well let me explain.
At its core we have a protagonist that is a charismatic lover of science that gets thrown into a stone age world where his knowledge of science helps him overcome obstacles and challenges that are more physically imposing. It's a great combination, and the focus on science and brains over brawn, with a plethora of montages to boot
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make for a lot of fun viewing as we get to see Senkuu's Kingdom of Science get started from literally nothing and develop into a thriving community over time.
That's the fun part. What throws the show completely off is the background plot that thrusts our characters into the stone age in the first place. The idea of some random beam of green light turning everyone into stone, already requires a lot of suspension of disbelief but the show tries to make this bit of magic the big mystery that practical science can eventually solve. So you think to yourself ok, let's get beyond the magic green beam of light, the rest of the science has to at least make sense right? Well... almost. I was onboard with most of the insane jumps in logic the show goes through like petrification literally preserving people for thousands of years. But it all IMMEDIATELY falls apart when we meet the village of people descended from astronauts that survived the initial petrification. These villagers formed a small village of only a couple of people, that over the course of THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS still only has 40 people in it living in a still stone age lifestyle.
Does this show not understand just how utterly insane that is? 3700 years is a LONG time, we're talking going back to the Pyramids of Egypt long time. How is it possible that their population hasnt grown to at least the hundreds, thousands or even millions by now assuming the first generation wasn't wiped out by disease before it ever got to create a second or even third generation? It makes absolutely ZERO sense, and this forced continuity of making the village related to Senkuu and still remembering word for word the words of his father after 3700 years is laughably impossible. Again, I cannot stress enough, at almost 4000 years you are basically asking me to believe this tiny village of 40 people has survived since Ancient Egypt remembering EXACT words not changing the story or developing at all in all of that time. It's completely ridiculous and totally throws out any semblance of believability in the rest of the world, which by the way just keeps throwing more and more ridiculous stuff at you.
We have the "villain" of the series, an impossibly strong "high schooler" who decides he's going to create his own society that shuns technological development in a bid to have humanity be closer to nature. I'm not even going to get into why this whole conflict completely doesn't fit with the rest of the tone of the story, because it just doesn't, but let's just say that every time the show starts to focus on the "war" aspect between this character and Senkuu the show just is a LOT less enjoyable to watch. The action isn't done well, there never feels like there are real stakes attached and everything is so rushed that it really seems like the anime knows it sucks and is just trying to get through it as fast as possible.
These two main problems makes me think that this show would work better if our main character was a lost time traveler or something. Get rid of the background apocolypse that you can't bother to explain right, make the actual conflict seem more realistic by pitting him against actual stone age people instead of psychopath high schoolers you awoke from the dead. Allow us to better enjoy the fun parts of the story without continuing to come back to this mess of an overarching plot that just does not work, no matter how many jumps in logic you try and make.
In the end, I found myself thoroughly disappointed with Dr. Stone. It starts off SO strong and so quickly devolves into something that is just bleeding away its potential to be something better. I've reached till the end of Season 2 and the special episode and I do not think I will pick up season 3 for a long time if I do at all. It's a shame, the makings of something great were all right there for the taking, but the chemistry just wasn't right and we ended up with a dud instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 17, 2022
Really close to 50/50 on this one. There are some things I liked, some things I didn't but mostly pretty in the middle on all of it. The premise is really cool, the art style is hit and miss, the characters are hit and miss, the story is hit and miss, the action is VERY hit and miss ranging from actually amazing to lazy slideshows that go way over the top to the point of stupidity.
In the end I wanted to end up giving this about a 6. I did enjoy it more than I didn't, but after completing it I felt like the story
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didn't live up to the potential that the premise sets up. The second half of the anime just blitzes through and feels unrewarding for the characters since we skip through a massive stage of development for the two leads.
Also the whole "cyber psychosis" thing is left massively vague on purpose I think, but the reality for the viewer was that it just felt like a hamfisted deus ex machina of "it's gonna happen when it's needed for the plot and not before or after."
Come to think of it, I think a 6 might be generous. For every instance of cool entertainment I had to take a step back and and wonder if the frustratingly vague and messy storytelling was doing the things it was doing on purpose or just because the whole thing was rushed and not thought out clearly. I don't know.
Anyway yea, it's a mixed bag this show. Cool mixed in with not cool. It looks pretty at times though.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 3, 2022
I gotta be honest. I don't think I'm enjoying this anime anymore and it's not because it's not objectively good from a production standpoint, this anime continues to be gorgeous and the sound design continues to be absolutely fantastic. This anime is a true treat to the eyes and ears and represents the best of what an epic dramatic action anime can look and sound like.
I'm no longer enjoying this anime because of the way it is telling its story. There's no spoilers in this review.
Attack on Titan has from the beginning always relied heavily on the week to week cliffhanger to keep audiences gripped
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but 5 seasons in and I'm just over how far they go to create convoluted tangeants that distract from the story. Amidst this gigantic epic story we spend so much time grounded in these constant conversations about morality, conviction, and what it even means to be human and these constant flashes to these micro moments are CONSTANTLY placed into the plot at just the right moment so that they cut up what should be movement in the greater plot.
Once upon a time in the early seasons, these micro conversations were about the mystery of the titans and that was cool because we wanted to know more about this crazy, scary world. But once the author makes the jump to basically just trying to create a metaphor for our own modern world it completely changes tone from cool and interesting to preachy and pedantic. It becomes tiring because these conversations are no longer advancing the greater story anymore, they're just idealogical debates that completely stop the plot dead in its tracks.
To the point where now both this season and to a lesser degree the season before it feel like actual slogs to get through. It's not fun anymore listening to 2/3rds of an episode of characters arguing their convictions and character motivations with each other only to see those motivations flipped two episodes later. The actual story that made me fall in love with Attack on Titan has ground to such a quagmire of this that I just want to fast forward through most of the episodes now. This wouldn't be so bad if this was a long running shounen that I could rely on watching every week season in and season out, but when there's only 12 episodes a year this sort of pacing is incredibly unsatisfying.
I find myself just watching because I want to know what happens next. I don't get the same enjoyment out of this show that I once did, and that breaks my heart because I really did love this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 26, 2022
Well this was a super charming Rom Com if I've ever seen one. It's VERY formulaic and straight forward across the board in terms of its plot, themes and story, but that's not a bad thing. Nothing says it's a crime to take something tried, true and even cliche and do it right with some badass animation and a nice little twist to make it relatable for a niche audience.
In summary that is what My Dress Up Darling is. It's a very by the book high school Rom Com, with a Cosplay twist, one that hits all of the familiar emotional beats, with familiar laughs
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and all the right feels.
So why exactly is THIS the show that has captivated so many fans this season? Well, that's due to the EXCEPTIONAL artwork and animation that is both credited to the original manga art as well as the insane level of effort that Cloverworks Studio put into this anime adaptationl. This anime is absolutely breathtaking in how gorgeous it is. That alone deserves significant praise, but the animation quality only goes to further benefit the other big thing that this anime has going for it.
The two lead characters are extremely memorable. Obviously Marin gets most of the praise and hype around this show and for good reason. She's funny, sexy, charming and real in a way that makes her feel truly unique. Gojo as well is memorable in his own right. With so many of these typical Rom Com stories revolving around a high school guy with some kind of anti-social personality Gojo manages to stand apart as someone you not only believe in but root for.
There are some other side characters that get some screentime over a couple episodes but the majority of the show is really just revolving around these two leads. And really, that's all that this show really is. The cosplay element is nice but it's not THAT important to the overall enjoyment of the series, it really just gives the series an excuse to put Marin in a bunch of different outfits and looks. You don't need to be a fan of cosplay to enjoy this at all.
The sound design is nice, but not memorable, and the plot and story as I've mentioned a few times already is predictable and follows the familiar beats of any decent anime high school rom com.
But. If you enjoy that genre, and you want to have some nice wholesome laughs while viewing truly spectacular visual artwork and animation then My Dress Up Darling might just be for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 14, 2022
I quite enjoyed this second season of this dumb little ecchi show.
While the first season was enjoyable in a very generic "guy gets ported to fantasy world, guy meets girls, guy is OP and girls swoon, story goes nowhere significant" which was fine and entertaining don't get me wrong, this second season actually builds on that story and gives me a central plot that I enjoyed following all the way through.
Of course to many it's too risque, or vulgar but this is season 2 so that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this point.
What appeals to me the most this time around is
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the action. Diablo goes from being so powerful that everything was pretty trivial to there being actual challenges that he has to face and even moments where he's sure to lose without the help of his waifus who actually manage to avail themselves a few times in significant ways. The action has weight, flash and style to it and the show is not afraid to show some absolute brutality at times too. The dungeon trek is hit or miss with parts that were just too over the top "anime" for me but the show handles it with self aware humor that I ended up at least being able to appreciate.
The extra world building widens the scope of the fantasy world and makes the viewer feel more at home in it. The central plot leaves us with more to think about and be excited about for a possible season 3 and the main things that drew you to the first season are all still there.
All in all, a fun time and at only 10 episodes long not a big ask if you've already seen the first season and enjoyed it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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