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Mar 20, 2014
TL;DR
+ cute story/characters
+ heart-warming
- dragged ending
- short
Story
Revolves around girl called Inari and a god Uka. One day Inari wishes at shrine to become someone else, good-willed Uka wants to help her, so she transforms her. Inari soon regrets this, Uka feels guilty, magic happens and now Inari can transform to anyone she wants. This is main story in nutshell, with cute little romance growing in the background. Not amazing, but still decent.
It is worth mentioning that ending warries a bit from manga, in a sense that it felt dragged out.
...
Art
Characters and vistas pretty average overall, animation maybe little above but still nothing to drool over. Bonus point for nice design though.
Sound
While opening and ending songs were nothing special, soundtract itself is nice and pleasant to listen to. Pretty good job.
Character
All characters are good. Even when someone is bad for 5 minutes, they apologize and become best friends. Inari is one of those too-good kind of character, Uka just wants to play games with friends, Inari's brother is tsundere.
Anime is pretty short and relationships between characters develop fairly quickly, as Inari makes friends easily. Personally I'd love to see more development between Inari's bro and Uka, but guess I'll have to read manga for that.
Enjoyment
This may be a little biased. I realy like japanese mythology, therefore I enjoyed watching this a lot. Also Inari's way of dealing with problems kept pleasing my heart. Only things I didn't like were Uka's brother and slightly dragged ending. (which sounds weird considering it was pretty short anime)
Overall
Great show if you like japanese mythology and heart-warming and relaxing story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 1, 2014
TL;DR
+ story variety
+ surprisingly enjoyable
- "is this really from 2009?" visuals
- some annoying stereotypic characters
- ass-pulls
Story
Story is about 3 middle schoolers telling or experiencing some classic japanese horror stories. Each episode is split in 3 parts, something that happens to them, something they tell and 1-2 minute short. When you see horror tag in anime, it usually means a lot of blood or human torture. Your classic horror movies often rely on on jump scares - woman walks down the dark halway of her house with only flashlight, nothing but her footsteps are heard, suddenly killer appears behind her with loud "bang" ambience and you
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get scared just for that moment. I'm glad these stories are different - they build up tension just to leave you creeped out at the end.
Few problems I had - to me they often felt unfinished, like they tried to squeeze as much as possible into their allocated time. Also, I was surprised how often were authors bringing up the concept of death, since this is basically kids series. And because this is kids show, none of the characters died despite being really close to it, thanks to some randomness that occured. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to see them die, but it was killing the tension - whenever someone was about to die, you just knew he'll be fine.
Art
Probably the weakest point. Animation was pretty weak, backgrounds and character design simplistic, those ghosts/monsters more often than not, uninteresting.
Sound
Ending was ok, no opening. Surprising right? How dares a japanese show to not have an opening theme! Actually it had something similar - shows you as guest going to thriller restaurant, where ghosts and monsters present you menu with some "creepy" foods, while playing "classy mansion" ambience in the background. Was supposed to serve slight comedic purpose - didn't work on me, as those food names sounded incredibly cheesy. Left me with "what the hell are you trying to do with this" feeling every time.
Background sounds were nice and atmospheric, except for one or two which sounded awfuly generic. (can't exactly remember)
Character
Character development is close to 0. This isn't surprising as each episode is a standalone set of stories. As main you have this trio of kids - scaredy cat, who likes stories, tsundere girl who doesn't believe in ghosts but always tags along because "it can't be helped" and a blondie boy, who usually saves the day. There are few more of their classmates, but they don't always play a role in episode.
So I didn't like 2 out of this main trio. The tsundere girl - she always has evidence right in front of her yet still refused to believe in ghosts. It's like she knew she's in anime or something. Also her "high class" image was annoying 9.9 out of 10 times. The blondie guy was mostly the story teller and life saver. This is literally how few stories went:
girlX: "Nice weather today."
blondie: "That reminds me of this story I read the other day..." *story begins*
Yeah he's that kind of guy. And his saves seemed way too random and pulled out of nowhere.
Enjoyment
Despite the bad stuff I mentioned, show is surprisingly enjoyable. Each story is unique and will leave you little bit creeped out. Therefore was fun to watch (except for occasional annoyance from few characters).
Overall
Do you like horror stories? How about classic japanese horror stories? Then please don't get put off by "kids" tag, as it shouldn't stop you from enjoying this little piece of work.
Although, I can't help but think how much better this could be, would they drop the kiddy aspect and made it more like Yami Shibai but animated, or Aoi Bungaku Series but episodic.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 28, 2014
TL;DR
+ new story for Blood series fans
+ swordfights
- too much gore*
- direction
- cheap looking visuals
*possibly a + if... you know... you like it
Story
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New story in the Blood series! Indeed, Saya is back. For the better or worse, the only unchanged thing from old Saya is probably her name, hair color and fighting style, to the point where you can't be sure whether she's the old Saya or not... Story is completely new and unrelated to Blood+ series so you can watch them in either order, although Blood+ does provide a lot more background story.
Anyway, Saya is back to murdering stuff. And she does so in peaceful village, where she lives with her father in a shrine. She lives happily, helps cleaning shrine, drinks coffee, sings a song in the morning, goes to school, has lunch with friends, doing pretty much everything a japanese anime high school girl does. Problems occur when weird evil monsters threatening village appear. As a good shrine maiden, just like her mother she's sworn to slay them all with her trusty katana and protect the village. Smells fishy? For a good reason too, you'll have to see for yourself.
What I didn't like about the story was probably it's pacing. The overall idea is nice, but they turned it into episodic monster kill with gore as its main element. Felt like whole thing could be summed up in 2 episodes.
Art
Has some nice rural vistas, animation was ok at first but seemed pretty shitty (and sometimes hilarious) towards the end. The feeling I got from watching could be described as "cheap".
Saya's new character design is not too bad but god damn does she have hair. Where did it all come from should be a movie by itself. Other characters are not really memorable or special in any way (maybe just the cute twins). This anime being designed by CLAMP, you can expect to see tall characters with long limbs and males with triangular faces.
Sound
I don't like to talk too much about music, since it depends on opinion way too much. I'll just say the it was mostly fitting the situation. Voice acting was nothing special, it did convey the character types as they intended to, so I guess it's ok.
Character
Tough to say something without spoiling, but I'll try. Characters include Saya, her father, her coffee maker and few of her classmates. Interactions between them are pretty much on level of any generic slice of life anime. With a twist. Not spoiling.
Every other villager is there for the sole purpose of being eaten or ripped to pieces by one of the monsters.
Enjoyment
Was hyped at start, getting progressively less excited throughout the series, then little more excited again at the end. That being said, I didn't enjoy most of it, mainly because of the "episodic monsters". They were completely pointless and didn't lead anywhere.
Overall
It is no secret that a lot of people die in this anime. It's pretty bloody! What bothers me is that I didn't feel anything watching most of them die, simply because it was overdone. Those people played no role in the story, you didn't know them, they didn't know you. Their death was pointless yet creators still decided to put a lot of emphasis on it, because it has "blood" in a title so there has to be a lot of it. As fan of CLAMP's works this anime felt like betrayal. Could've been a lot better have they made a movie - just like they did with sequel, which I suggest you watch if you liked this one at least a bit.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 28, 2014
TL;DR
+ some OP and ED songs
+ short-living cool moments
- fillers and flashbacks
- visuals, all of them
- overused sound assets
- pacing and episode direction
Story
Story continues where previous Naruto series left off with few years time-skip. If you haven't seen previous series, don't worry. Story this time is full of flashbacks and fillers in case you missed anything from last season. Dialogues are dull, fillers are there just to drag the series (they serve 0 importance and events are instantly forgotten in the first normal episode), pacing is incredibly slow, characters are dumb, fights are predictable.
Story in short, Naruto looks for his lost best buddy who is
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blinded by revenge against pretty much everyone and gets slowly consumed by darkness. One thing lead to another and now Naruto's trying to save the world. Main themes: friendship and determination.
Art
Animation is almost non-existant. Most episodes consist of still images with slight mouth or limb movements, this makes them all look awfully stiff. It's painfully obvious that they'd rather change a scene than do proper animation. Even in fights, you can see a lot of changes from one still image to another, because the "characters move so fast"... Right.
Background images could be split into 3 types - trees, village, cave. None of these are eye candies really.
Sound
Personally, more often than not I enjoyed opening and ending songs. What's worse though are background sounds. Don't get me wrong, they're not terrible, but they were nice to listen to the first million times. They've become something like a trademark now and watching the episodes muted wouldn't wouldn't make any difference as you can easily guess what'll play.
Voice acting has been ok at best. Naruto is still voiced by a lady.
Character
Characters didn't change at all at start, except they grew bigger and stronger. A lot later there's some development going on, but only between 2 main characters. It's still very refreshing to see though.
So basically, Naruto is still gutsy dude who wants to be the very best and Sasuke is still darkness. That's about it.
Enjoyment
I enjoyed few nice battles or moments. Unfortunately, most of these were partially or completely destroyed by horrible pacing and animation. Most of the rest can be easily skipped.
Overall
Started off as "ok", but for a long time now, this show has been a mass produced garbage made just to milk more money from fans. The only way an episode can keep my attention is if I triple the playback speed.
I suggest you watch this ONLY if you haven't seen the previous season and stop as soon as you start getting bored, because trust me, it will only get worse. Whether we like it or not, Naruto is a big piece of anime history and it shold be experienced by all fans (at least a bit).
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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