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I am going to preface this review by saying this light novel is meant to be read after Chainsaw Man (up to the end of Vol. 11 anyway). Some of the stories spoil quite a bit of the series – including the ending!! – so wait to read this novel until you've finished the manga!

Secondly, I feel I should say that this light novel is best enjoyed by those who read Chainsaw Man and loved it. If you read Chainsaw Man and were neutral on it, or weren't the biggest fan of it, I would not recommend reading this light novel. It's nothing revolutionary and ... it's not gonna change your feelings on the manga.

Now with that in mind, and as a fan of Chainsaw Man myself, I'll give my thoughts on it to other fans.

This light novel is 4 short stories that feature different characters. The scenarios, apparently laid out by the author of the manga, are quite in line with the manga. None of them felt like they were out of place. Some of the stories were better than others, however it's nothing drastic. They all range somewhere from "average" to "pretty good". I don't think any of them are exceptional, but none of them are awful either so it evens out.

Each of the stories has a single full-page illustration to accompany it. Loved the art. However, I question why certain scenes were chosen to be depicted over others... I believe certain scenes would have made for a better illustration in some of the stories. Not a big deal but I did find one of them in particular disappointing. (Again, not the art itself! but rather the choice of scene.)

Now, my actual complaint with this light novel is that the prose is *very* short and direct. I can see the appeal of this style of writing but I found the detail was just too bare-bones at times. I found this was a lot more noticeable in certain stories compared to others. The lighter, "fluffier" stories worked with this style of writing a lot better than the stories focusing on heavier content did. I think if another handful of pages could have been added to those heavier stories it would have given them the opportunity to build up more impact. This is totally subjective though! You might prefer the quick pacing yourself but yeah, I did not.

Overall, in my opinion this light novel is good stories hampered by mediocre writing. I suppose that should warrant a lower score, but it was a silly, fun read and honestly I didn't expect much more than that. Just don't expect anything profound and you'll probably enjoy it too. (Think of it as official fanfiction.)

Not a lot to say about "What's Michael? 2". This sequel to "What's Michael?" is just more of the same. I was hoping to see improvement from the first OVA and so I was pretty disheartened to find absolutely nothing had changed. If this second OVA had dropped the cat abuse I would give it a slightly higher score just for that, but it's still there so...

There's no overarching story between the first and second OVA, so if you watched the first OVA you're not missing anything by not going on to watch this. If you didn't like the first OVA, I would strongly encourage ... you not to bother watching this.

"What's Michael?" is a collection of 3-4 minute shorts about cats. The concept sounds quite cute, I enjoy older animation (when it's done well), and I like cats, so I thought it might be a decent watch.

But nahhh. The art and animation is mostly fine, so no complaints there. The problem is that it's not funny. Almost every short in "What's Michael?" is either unfunny or uncomfortable, sometimes both. Didn't really wanna see cats being slapped / punched, didn't really wanna see an adult cat be inappropriate towards a kitten. Just felt gross.

I'm not sure who the target demographic for this is. If you like ... cats, you don't want to see them hurt... If you hate cats, you don't want to watch an hour-long OVA about cats... Baffling.

Among the many bad shorts, there's a couple that were fine, but that being said I wouldn't recommend "What's Michael?" to anyone. It's not worth suffering through all the bad shorts for the one or two that you might find funny. There's many, many better uses of your time.

A beautiful MV for an amazing song, not much needs to be said. To hit the word count, I'll elaborate.

Sand Planet is not my favourite Vocaloid song but I genuinely don't believe it deserves anything below a 10. Music is mostly too subjective for me to lower the score of this MV because it's not my favourite genre of music. The song is pretty catchy, and definitely earned a spot on my playlist regardless. Miku is tuned pretty nicely here and I really adore Hachi / Kenshi Yonezu's guitar; it has a distinct sound to it.

The lyrics of the song are quite thoughtful too. I ... enjoyed noticing the references to other Vocaloid songs, and referring to NicoNico as a desolate waste made me laugh. (He's not wrong.)

Music aside, the video is very nice. I love the colour palette, and Miku's design is very unique. It's distinctly Miku but still stands out. The masked background characters are quite interesting too. More than just the art, the animation is nice. Both the characters and the environment move believably.

Overall, of the Vocaloid MVs that are listed on MAL at the time of writing this, Sand Planet is the one of the best MVs. Although it clearly gets its message across, at the end of the MV I'm left wanting to see just a bit more of the universe that it built!

(minor spoilers)

As there aren’t many good things about this anime, I’ll start with the few things which it did alright. The animation was surprisingly good, and the fight scenes were smooth (but sadly the animation couldn’t compensate for the content at all). Overall the voice acting was fine, except for the Suke who unfortunately talked a lot. Everything else in this is bad, and not even bad in an enjoyable way.

The music isn’t awful, but it rarely suited the scene at all, and this is coming from someone who rarely notices music in shows. The main issue with the OVA isn’t the music though.

Having not ... read the manga at all, nearly all characters in this are unlikeable. Suke is horny; that’s his entire personality. He doesn’t do anything in the OVA except be horny. The rest of the small cast isn’t much better. What little of the plot is covered in this seems rushed, so if you’re interested in plot in the slightest the manga is definitely the better option.

This OVA is NOT cheesy good, so if you’re into shows that are so bad they’re good, watch something else. I watched this so you don’t have to.

Also, the humour is bad. I have no issue with crude humour but farting in a someone’s face to defeat them is just awful.