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This is exactly how you destroy a manga that was already mediocre.

I stopped writing reviews over a year ago because I didn't have the time, but this manga brought me out of my cave to write what was the biggest disappointment of all the stories I followed, and some minor spoilers are going to run all over the place.

Time travel is always a topic that needs to be treated with love, patience and dedication. If you don’t have none of them, you can’t write a story and expect it to be good. This is the case. The main character, Takemichi, is our guy. He, ... a man close to his thirties, starts his adventure by finding out that his ex-girlfriend from high school died. Due to a couple of things that are not worth mentioning, he travels to the past and returns to be a fourteen years old teen delinquent in order to save that girl he didn’t even remember. The thing is that he is a twenty-six years old man in a teen body, while this girl, Hina, is just fourteen by then, and he kind of fall in love with her all over again. I’m not here to discuss this weird fact, though.

He gets to remember how weak he used to be, and what a sad adolescence he lived, being bullied by other little gangs. Decided to make things different, he tries to strengthen himself by going all stupidly brave. Due to his lack of common sense and all the unnecessary fights he gets into, he attracts the attention of the leader of the biggest gang in the area, and befriends with him. As the story progresses, he starts to discover little things related to that big gang that will guide him to know how to prevent Hina’s death in the future. He travels as he likes from time to time to the future, to see how the situation has changed since the last time, in order to decide if he’s going in the right direction and acquiring new information. That’s it, in short.

In terms of characters, if by the middle of the story we didn’t have a lot of development, by the end we have almost none.

Almost, except for our big hero, Takemichi. He is the man that no one can hate. Every side character, every antagonist, every human being felt respect for him. He touched so many lives, because he has such a good heart. Okay, I got it the first time. Can we move on now?

At the beginning, he is kinda funny, interesting. He is the archetype of a shounen main character, but denser. He regrets the decisions he took during his adolescence, so he tries not to be the boy he was in the past. He tries to be the better version of himself. He escapes cowardice and affronts every problem, and that’s nice. The thing is that, as the story progresses, this situation gets so blatantly repeated that loses its scent. Every single time he gets into a fight and loses (as ALWAYS), he comes back from the dead to say that he’s not giving up, that he can’t be the coward he used to be. That he has experienced loneliness and that he will protect his people at all coast. All. The. Time. That speech is so burned out that can easily tire the reader. However, it causes a totally different effect on the enemies, since they develop a big admiration for him, saying how different he is. Of course, you don’t see a person so willing to take unnecessary punches so often. Apparently, that was his way of showing resistance. Because we all know resistance is a lot more important than being a little bit smart and not getting into fights that will destroy you for sure.

He takes the most stupid decisions most of the time, and okay, I can take that, but he cries and regrets right after that. Until the third arc, that’s all he does. He has a big lot of information to prevent murders to happen, and can’t prevent most of them. It gets tiring after he makes a big lot of mistakes and cries. I don’t have a problem with crybaby characters, I love them. Nevertheless, Takemichi cries after making the same old mistake that ever does. Cries and cries as if he couldn’t have prevented those events. Blames himself and goes to do the same thing again. It feels like he never learns anything, or that he can’t ever get a little smarter nor astute. Frustrating. By the very end he gets to do some intelligent takes, but did it take you 250 chapters to think that through?

The rest of the characters can’t say much since their development turned to zero. Although, there are some cool bonds during the story, there is a good environment of friendship, there are interesting character developments. Not impressing and not big, but there are. However, who I want to mention now is Mikey. Look how they massacred my boy. The most enigmatic person in that manga resulted the shallowest thing in the world. This is an honorable mention to a character whose entire development and complexity was synthetized to a lack of love and some kind of supernatural stuff.

If I had to enumerate the big amount of plot holes and plot devices in this work, I should need more characters than MAL is allowed to give me. Takemichi gets brutally punched a lot of times because he doesn’t know how to fight, and he actually never learns not in 278 chapters. He gets so hurt in occasions, that a human would not be able to stand, nor be conscious. But our big hero is always there, defying the laws of nature and biology. Not only biology, but our author’s logic. While Takemichi can support any kind and amount of damage, the other characters can faint with just one kick. Amazing. There are victories that exist just because the author lighted a candle and decided so while he laughed. There are victories that exist just because of the power of friendship. There are victories that exist because of hidden powers or abilities that not only are humanly impossible, but that have no precedent in the story. There are characters that were never shown, but that suddenly were the most important of the story, and that were always there, waiting their 200 chapters to shine. There are actions that are done just because the plot needed it, such a coincidence. There are unnecessary deaths, and very avoidable deaths.

The convenience itself was Tokyo Revengers’ fall and biggest enemy. Not only ruined the story little by little, but it killed the end of the story. I don’t hate happy endings. I hate endings that try too hard. This one tried too hard to make the fanboys like it. Actually, the story could have ended in the third arc, that was about the chapter 194, that ending would have been a lot better than the one we got. However, the need of violently lengthen the story was a result of the pressure that a successful adaptation generates on a mangaka, alongside the fanboys’ wish for a happy ending of a Disney’s caliber.

The ending not only was forcedly happy, but it destroyed all the characters’ history, all the poor logic that the story built, and magically transformed everything into sugar, spice and everything nice. Every tragic past, with a flick of the wrist disappeared. Suddenly, every mentally ill character does not need to go to therapy. Suddenly, every violent psycho in the story becomes a human being and doesn’t kill people, doesn’t break bones. The little man that pursued Hina for not liking him back, suddenly does not care about her anymore and can respectfully take a no. They even prevented a fire that was part of a character’s past, because even his scars disappear. God knows how, since they were little kids when that happened. Remember that guy that abused his family? Well, he doesn’t anymore. Why? Because the holy spirit told him not to. My guess, though.

A bittersweet ending is never a bad option if it has a reason, if it’s necessary. You can’t expect everyone (literally, everyone) to be happily ever after in a manga that was severely pierced by death and tragedy. It’s forced and anticlimactic. However, a sweet ending that forgets and denies the last 277 chapters, is always a bad option.

In conclusion, it is a disappointment. If you only care about people being happy, read this, or go read a fanfic. It’s the same. If you care about a good writing, outstanding character development, or at least an attractive art, don’t bother yourself with almost 300 chapters.

I had a big affection for Tokyo Revengers even knowing all its big flaws during the first three arcs, but the last one was so ridiculous, that love’s gone behind.

Well, well, well, what do we have here? The anime that I thought that would be the next Naruto in terms of length, already got to an end.

Black Clover is an anime that I started watching right after I ended watching Naruto, so you may understand my confusion when, back in 2017, I started this anime with a friend after school and I asked him “why is this so much similar to Naruto?”. It was like my tenth anime, so I was actually and purely confused. However, we promised that we would watch it together in my house, but then college happened and we had ... to drop it. This year I retook it by myself, by the 15th episode, I think? And it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

The premise is as classic as a premise shounen tends to be. Asta is a young boy that wants to become the next magic emperor, but he doesn’t have mana nor magic powers; his adoptive brother (let’s say) and rival, Yuno, is a prodigy boy that is the mangaka’s favourite one. When they go through a ceremony where they can see whether they can or not be magicians (by receiving a magical grimoire), the mangaka’s favourite gets the best grimoire ever that only the chosen ones can have, so you can’t forget Yuno is way better than Asta, and even than you. Asta, on the other hand, is the poor little thing that ends up having some sort of evil grimoire. From that moment, they decide they will be magic knights in order to be the next magic emperor. They have always declared each other their rival, but from that moment they actually become rivals.

As the story continues, we get to see how Asta screams all day and says the same stuff about not giving up and that he will marry a nun once he become the emperor. At first it is unbearable, but you eventually get used to ears pain. Meanwhile, we get to see how every person in that kingdom falls for Yuno and how indredibly he is and how Asta is a loser, and of course, when they have to be chosen for a captain from an organization (there are like 12) during the the exam to become magic knights, every captain asks for Yuno as some sort of The X Factor move when everybody press the buttom for the same guy and he gets to decide which one he wants to join. He, obviously, accepts the offer of the biggest organization’s captain; Asta, at the same time, is not chosen by any captain, except for the poorest one, at last moment. After this they start their lives separate and they start this adventure.

As the viewer can appreciate, Black Clover falls in every possible cliche. The beginning is completely predictable and doesn’t make any effort to try to add new nuances to such a classical shounen story formula. It’s a beginning made for beginners. If you watch Black Clover as one of your first animes it is fun, but if you watch it after that you have seen a lot of shows, this starting is rather boring and insurmountably generical. As I always state, I’m not against generical animes, but please, at least try to change a personality, a motive, a rivalry. Anything would have add anything to this, but it didn’t happen. Even talking about characters presentation are poor. Asta screams and shouts and claims he’ll be the next Hokage, Yuno doesn’t talk at all and has a resting face all day, but he is perfect and has whatever he wants and you are not (in case you didn’t notice). It does not only falls in story’s cliche but in characters. Most of them are a walking stereotype: the incestuous unbearable character that is disgustingly obssessed with his little sister, the shy one, the womanizer, the glutton that only fights when there’s food in the middle, the tsundere one that falls in love with the main character because he treats her as a person, and the lazy leader (captain) that is a bastard.

However, the interaction between them has also its pros and contras. The rivalry between Yuno and Asta is forced, lacks of interest and depth, and comes off as a bad use of a cliche: they want the same thing, and clearly Yuno is the blessed one that has more chances to win. They appear, they say “I’m going to beat him and become the magic emperor!” and that’s it. The rivalry is weak because their both motivations are weak. Asta’s motivation is to marry the nun and to demonstrate that he can win without magic powers. Yuno doesn’t have motivations because he doesn’t have any development. You see Yuno and you can’t tell if his face is because he is sad, because he is motivated, because he is happy, or because he is just hungry. He is just too overpowered to care for anything.

On the other hand, what I do like about their interactions is how the partnership is handled. The Black Bulls are not good characters as such, but their friendship and union is managed with subtlety, is gradual and is pretty natural. After 100 episodes, when you see them support each other, it becomes touching because trust was slowly built and is something the mangaka succeeds in. Maybe I’m such a crybaby and that’s it. I liked the Black Bulls, and I liked to watch them grow. I like the way Vanessa becomes a elemental character; I enjoyed the background of Finral; I liked the way the incestuous guy opened up to his comrades. I like the annoying thing between Luck and Magna, and I liked the way they helped Noelle to grow as well.

One thing that I like about series like this, is that its world has a big amount of characters to know and care. Although, at the same time, in a world like this where everytime there’s war and figths, this big lot of characters must be reduced. That’s how it is. In Game of Thrones you have more than one hundred characters, and when you make a list of your favourites you just have to enlist thirty of them at least, but eventually they die like some sort of ant that is crushed by the author, and that’s how is supposed to be. If we have a lot of magic knights, most of them will have to die since they have to fight all the time and not everytime they are going to win, won’t they? A lot of battles in Black Clover don’t have useful conclusions. A fight can endure eight episodes, and by the end of it, no one is going to die and the enemy is going to retrieve “haha, I’ll see you soon” (This Licht guy does that like three times). I don’t say that the author have to kill them indiscriminately, but he shouldn’t be afraid to kill some of them either. That’s a problem to me. Even in the hardest situation, at least in the first half of the anime, all of them survive, most of the times and battles, and that’s a plot armor that I dislike, not only because it becomes a bothersome, but because every fight comes off as irrelevant. The enemies don’t die, but the main cast don’t either; the enemies don’t win, but the main cast don’t either. If there are going to be arcs with fights that involve ten episodes (or more), at least make it juicy and with important consequences. Captains injured to death survived in ways that it shouldn’t be possible; also the enemies, even the secondaries. Please, dude, killing Fuegoleon in that first fight would have been a good impact, but no. An author must not be afraid of killing his characters in good moments, and that’s essential.

Villains leave much to be desired. Villains without substance that are just full of hate. They don’t have ideals, they just want revenge and to exterminate. The same speech is repeated a lot of times. We get it, the elves hate humanity. We get it, we saw that flashbacks a lot of times.

Female characters are... well, average. They are not that bad, since they are, at least, useful. Nevertheless, what is, actually their weight on the work? How much do they add to this, more than being in love with the two male leads? Noelle is a character that I personally like a lot, I don’t know why, I just have affection for her, but the 80% of her character is being in love with Asta and chasing after him, and being jealous and tsundere type. An exaggerated tsundere type, I must admit. However, she gets a gradual development that is clearly notorious, and is not forced. She starts being the clumsy magician that gets bullied by her siblings because she belongs to royalty and it’s the weakest of the family, and ends up being an interesting character that has a noticeable development as a magician and as a piece in this work; she demonstrates that she can be a lot more than Asta’s fangirl.

Mimosa is like Noelle (is funny because they are cousins) but worse. She is way dumber and is a lot more undeveloped. She falls in love with Asta because of a fight and his great abs. She starts to blush and that’s all she does. She has a protective abilitie, but that’s all she does, again. I like her though.

Charlotte is a captain that I thought would be different, but at the end of the day is a woman that is in love with Yami, Asta’s captain, and that behaves almost the same way as Noelle, synthesizing her personality around her romantic attitudes.

The same goes for every woman in this anime that meets Asta. Two words and they fall for him. Almost the same case with Yuno, but he doesn’t need to speak at all, since he is perfect as Sasuke. Sasuke misstreats a woman and she swears etern loyalty to him. Yuno doesn’t misstreat them, but he sees them as the same way he can see a tree. Everything applies for every woman in this anime, except for Mereoleona, and maybe Vanessa. Mereoleona, however, THAT IS A HELL OF A WOMAN: interesting backstory, explosive personality, imponent, strong. My favourite, by far; she may be the stereotypical overpowered, but she is so charismatic that I could hear her scream all day and I wouldn’t mind.

The comedy in Black Clover is really poor; is VERY repetitive. When I say VERY, I mean it. Jokes about Charlotte correcting her subordinate is repeated like 10 times per episode every time they appear. When some sort of sensei to Asta appears, they make jokes about him being naked like… I’m sorry, I can’t recall how many times they did it. You could even see it coming. Yami threatening Asta by pressing his head is another thing that you get to see too many times. Jokes about Noelle and Charlotte acting extremely tsundere are on another level of repetition. Nonetheless, when you have watched like 70 episodes, you just get used to it and pretend to laugh when they repeat the same joke for the 3rd time in the episode, but that’s how they are; if you like the characters, those jokes won’t be a bothersome for you, like it was in my case. The humor is mediocre? It is. Did I have a good time laughing at it? Well, of course.

At the same time, Black Clover is not only full of filler episodes, but it’s also full of plot armors and incoherences that complexed the story without apparent reason. I’m talking about all the entire White Eye arc and its elf-revenge stuff, with reincarnations and pasts lifes and so; some things made sense, at least a little bit, and some things were just too much convenient for them to actually bother. Some evangelisms were forced, like Finral’s brother, like half of the guys that Asta touches. That true reason behind Nozel’s contempt towards Noelle was so ridiculous. I like Nozel because he is a stoic character, but I would have preferred him as a cold brother, rather than the “I wanted to protect you” brother. Ruining your sister’s self esteem because you wanted to protect her is not allowed in this house.

As I said in other reviews, I hate studios Pierrot. After I watched Akudama Drive I thought “definitely, Pierrot improved a lot”, but then I returned to Black Clover and I knew why I hated them. Fights’ animations are lousy, character’s movements are inconsistent and in one frame you have Noelle and in the next frame you have N0ell3. In a moment you see Yami and in the next moment you see Yami without eyebrows and with his muscles like made of paperboard. There are animes that make bad frames in the middle of a fight because that way those can sleep by unseen; however, Black Clover has those stinky frames even when they are talking about the weather. There are a couple of fight that nobody knows what they wanted to do, like Asta vs Ladros. That coreography is so terrible that the viewer doesn’t have a clue of what’s going on. It seemed like a Devilman Crybaby fight that didn’t go well.

In conclusion, I’m not going to lie: my friend also retook it and we both had good laughs talking about this anime, we both shared fun experiences while watching this and we never suffered it. Black Clover is an anime full of flaws, filler episodes, not the best characters ever, and with a lousy animation and some things more that make it an average shounen, but if you like simple things without paying attention to mistakes and cliches, or if you aren’t tired of shounens, you should watch it. Besides that, I want to add that the second half is a lot better than the first one. Generical mediocre shounen or not, I don’t regret watching this.

What is wrong with a generic shounen anime?

I firmly hold the idea that, nowadays, originality is something almost impossible, because every new anime you see will remind you of x anime you had seen before. No matter how hard you try not to compare, the floating idea is always there "oh, this is exactly the same premise as x anime". Nevertheless, does a show need to be only original to be great? No! Of course, if it has originality it is something to congratulate, but if it doesn't, there's a lot of ways to tell a story and pass over that. It can have ... a big potential and develop it very well, with a good soundtrack and an amazing animation. It can have a bunch of likeable characters that, even though they are typical shounen main cast, can be really good and memorable. It's like reading a lot of books from the same author; even though you have an idea of which path the book is going to take, since you know how the writer works, that doesn't mean that you are going to despise every book the author writes after you read a pair of them just because it looks like his previous work. And if you do, please, grow up, grab a few books from the same author or movies from the same director and take a seat and, for once, enjoy life. If you have good reasons and a lot of arguments against a work, do it, hate it, and do it with all your strength! But hating just because, is stupid. Hating on generic or hyped animes assuming it is mediocre or repetitive because it belongs to certain genre doesn't make you look cool, get over it.

That is Jujutsu Kaisen, a shounen anime that has a lot of things you have seen before, and a lot that you haven't. It has a simple premise: a guy eats a cursed finger and gets some sort of Kyuubi to lodge ins his body and becomes a magician so he can control that beast. The only thing is that the guy that starts existing inside him, instead of being the strongest bijouu, is the strongest curse. Instead of being the one with the major quantity of tails, he is the one with the major quiantity of lost cursed fingers all over the place. The adorable guy that ate that finger is called Yuuji Itadori, and the entity that lives inside him is called Sukuna, the king of curses, a strong as hell dude that can use Yuuji’s body to his own benefit and possess it whenever he felt like it. Oh, yes, and he can create a second mouth on his container friend’s face so he could talk to the rest and to not be excluded of the conversation. And to laugh at Yuuji, of course.

I must admit it. I saw the first episode by accident, it wasn't at my radar at all. And even more, I dropped it by the middle of it because I found it unattractive. After that, the anime got to CR and its publicity all over the platform kind of convinced me to give it another chance. And I don't regret it. When I finished that first episode, I liked it. It didn't seem to me the perfect first episode, because it's nothing really special, but it was fine. After that, every episode was getting better, and that's another point that I give to it. It's way better a show that improves every minute than one that starts with all the cards and loses the game by the middle of the show.

The humour in this show is, in my opinion, well done and in good measure. The dark atmosphere is successfully handled with some scenes that show you how crude that reality is. From the go, curses are nothing but a humanity’s creation. Curses are born from hate, resentment, pain and so, and that says a lot since the more pain it collects, the more powerful it is, and there’s a lot of fucked up curses. And even letting aside that fact, this reality is harsh since people is too. We saw it with Nobara’s backstory, with Junpei, with Megumi’s family. Darkness and a sad aura is all over the place. The world, then, is decent constructed; is not perfect, but it does justice to the show. I can say there are some plot armour on it, based on how powerful Sukuna is and how he can manipulate some stuff in the way he desires without thinking it too much, or based on the dark energy and its scope, because Gojou, for example, is sooooo buffed that the world kind of fails to demonstrate his power’s limits. He protect, he attack, but most importantly he FLY. However, I won’t be focusing on that since this plot armors or exaggerations are lowkey subtle. At least, it is not the only weapon they have.

It has the typical main character that is pretty cheerful, charismatic, energic and that respects the dead. Personally, I loved him; if he was real, I would adopt him. His personality doesn't seem forced, he plays the fool without abusing of it, and most important, he isn't in love with his sidekick but with Jennifer Lawrence. Something that I really liked about him and the beginning of this series is how, since the first moment, his grandfather dies and throws him his last words. I mean, you start the show and you already know what motivates him to play the hero part. And that's nice. I 'm not saying is mythical, but is well made and gives him a little depth that is going to carry with him for the rest of the story, rather as a weight than as a lesson or a choice, almost forcing him to be a good person or to do a good for the others before he dies. Another thing, related to this, that I can save from him is that he doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to be the best. He just wants to read mangas and keep doing stuff with his friends at the occultism club. He doesn’t have that typical MC complex of trying to be the strongest just because he wants people to respect them nor a dream of being the highest in a hierarchy. The only reason he is becoming a magician is because he is taking responsibility for his acts, and later on because he wants to be strong enough to control Sukuna in order not to hurt his partners.

Itadori is a simple person who likes simple things, that is relatable, sensitive and funny. He is so simple that that makes him a human, and as such, you can understand him, and his fears and his suffer. He doesn’t cry because his sensei died nor anything so dramatic, he cries because he loses his friends. He doesn’t behave as some sort of powerful guy, but he openly admits that he is scared of dying. He is so likeable that every person he mets, likes him. Even when he is insistent, he makes his way through them and gets to develop a good relationship with them, just like he did with Junpei, and I just can’t believe how much I ended up empathizing with both of them and their relationship and the natural way it was handled. Nothing from other world, just two guys discussing about gore movies. Junpei himself is a really well-made character that achieved his goal of getting us all sentimental with his tragic and detailed background and story. Not gonna lie, his entire arc broke my heart, with just a bunch of episodes I could totally feel him. As a lot of people said, Junpei wasn’t a victim of curses, but a victim of humanity. Just when you think that JJK is starting to get slow, this arc comes in, breaks your window and slaps you in the face.

Going back to the characters, I have to say that I’m a person who gets attached easily to them, as long as they give me something to like them. I don't usually like “cold” characters, but Megumi is a guy that I like a lot. Typical emo of the group, but at least he has a good background and doesn't mistreat the MC all the time, he even constructs a valuable relationship with him. In the first episodes you already get a glance of his past and after some events the viewer starts to witness his first perspective changes and how Yuuji’s personality start to take root within him.

Nobara is a character that I also love very much, because she doesn’t exactly fit in the stereotype of the useless female character that is in love with the emo, and another interesting quality that differences her a little is that she is shown as strong girl who appears with a clear objective in her mind. Since the first moment, she is a character with a part to achieve, an objective of starting a new life on her own and to chase after someone of her past in order to make peace with her and herself, and that’s pretty good. She fights a lot with Itadori in a comedic way and it’s a humour I personally enjoy because it’s well settled and the anime doesn’t abuse of it, she doesn’t get to the point of being unbearable, not even close. Yes, they argue all the time because they like to annoy the other one, especially her, but at the same time they develop an estimable partnership. Overall, I liked her since her first moment, and even more after seeing how confident she is even though her mistakes and her debilities, and how she doesn’t think of the main characters’ dicks. And the way she wanted to beat Mai just because she ruined her clothes cracked me up.

“I love to look pretty as much as I love being strong”. That’s the woman I needed. More characters like Nobara, and even more like Maki, please.
The other students are pretty interesting, every one of them: Maki, PANDA, Mechamaru. However, braindead muscles guys are my weakness, I’m not going to lie. Toudou is one of the best things of this show. He is one of those that are insanely strong and that enjoy having a good fight and that even enjoy losing if their opponent was better than them. He is an idol’s fan and takes every oportunity to demonstrate he is straight, considering a man’s taste in women as a matter of life and death. This guy can’t be taken seriously but damn, he made me laugh a lot, and really impressed me with his skills. His clean-punch fight against Itadori is AMAZING. No power-ups, no abilities getting out of nowhere, just two guys throwing fists and taking advantage of their surroundings. Excellent animation, choreography, feelings and the little talk. That fight is just so well done. And, of course, my favourite thing about that episode was his evangelism. He doesn’t become Itadori’s friend because Itadori told him his tragic backstory and told him “we are the same”. No, Toudou become’s Yuuji’s friend because they share opinions in their perfect type of woman, and their favourite butt: Jennifer Lawrence. You guys should just break the tension by opening a Jennifer’s fan club. I’m joining, you know.

If you just tell me that “these are characters with nothing special and that you will eventually forget them”, well then, I’m sorry about your memory and how bad it is to not remember these guys. If you stick to that argument, then you just didn’t want you to like them.

Now, about animation and sound I have nothing to say. MAPPA nailed it. No complaints, I love this studio and didn’t disappoint me here. And the sound, what can I say? Everybody talks about Lost in Paradise. I mean, it’s an awesome ending, not only because of the song, but the art on it. The OP is decent too, and beyond it, the OST along the episodes is noticeable too. And what I enjoyed a LOT were the seiyuus. My god, I love Nakamura Yuichi and Suwabe Junichi. Having both of them in this series were a gift to me, specially Junichi, who voiced Sukuna and did a very memorable job.

In conclusion, Jujutsu Kaisen is the generic shounen anime that has its unique things that makes it a very good anime and even better than a lot of its predecessors. This show proves my point that you don’t need a perfect originality to make an excellent work done with lovable characters and a pretty well world building. From an idea to an execution there is a whole world and it depends on a show how it deals with it. This anime did it in a great way.

In my experience, none of its defects stopped me from enjoying this piece, and I hope I made myself clear that If you are looking for a great show, to have a good time and have some laughs with an excellent animation, this is for you. If you hate generic shounen because you are a superior human being that thinks that a person that enjoys a shounen is unable to understand Evangelion, then pass it and miss it, for the health of the community.

Beastars is an anime that I watched in a whole rainy night before the pandemic appeared. At first sight, I ended it and I thought that it was nothing out of the world, but as soon as time passed, I started to rewatch parts of it and I gradually started to think how a delight of a piece it was. And now that I have this second season, I just reafirm it.

If you refuse to watch this just because you don’t want to be called a furry, you are just a reprimed anime watcher that is afraid to like something because of a category; ... and if you have watched it and use the furry stuff to diminish the show’s quality, you didn’t understand anything of this great anime.

Beastars is a work that reaches an even deeper and darker story every time it advances. It is a story about animals except that has nothing to do with animals but a lot more beyond that. It successfully handles a suspense atmosphere and the thrilling moments once again. Mixing aesthetic with an agressive enviroment is something they are good at, and that achieves its goal of letting the mysterious intact and making it very catching as well. This started in its first season being a school drama with a great and deep background about a splitted society, and ended up being a turbulent drama that went even deeper, delving into trafficking, black market and hervibores survival in the outside world.

Between Legoshi and Louis I couldn’t be able to pick one of them. Louis is a king with every letter of the word, whose intelligence and ambition can’t reach any limit, being the real representation of “I don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it”, and this is the season where we get to know his weaknesses more precisely, more natural. He loses that confident facade to show the vulnerable hervibore that, even 13 years later, only tries to survive and that, at the same time, wishes to leave it all behind. His relationship with Legoshi is more intense than ever before, and that’s great, that’s subtle, and what I love about them is how they are not friends and they are not enemies either; they just respect and admire each other, and it’s represented very clear. They barely see each other during the season, but when they do, I can’t help but watch it while I feel it.

“The reason I’m strong isn’t because I want to be happy” is a phrase that hit me in the middle of my forehead. It just makes a huge emphasis on what Legoshi’s feelings are. His constant crisis about him being a carnivore is more present than ever, and that’s amazing. It is just supported with a great and gradual development where he trains his spirit, so by the middle of it he has to choose between his mind and his body. It’s another step to know Legoshi, to his own self-knowledge, and to realize how much he grew up from the first episode of the series. He started as a coward that couldn’t resist his own instincts, a guy that didn’t know who he was nor what he wanted, finally puts his foot down to know and to say what he really wanted. He becomes a character with determination, but he doesn’t lose his common sense either. He knows when he can’t fight, and he knows when he has to speak. Legoshi is a character that I loved from the beginning, but right now, he is great. His growth is so reasonable, according to his personality, according to his own desires, fears and insecurities; is subtle and happens without losing his essence, without leaving behind his natural charisma and graciousness.

The rest of the cast just function as the background of every scene, as they did the previous season. Jack is still a cinnamon roll, a snake appears to be used as a trigger for Legoshi and disappears, and the bully girls drama disappears entirely, thankfully. The only one of the secondaries I want to remark is Bill. That guy was a pain the previous season, but this one I really liked him. He just has some minor changes, but it is more likeable this time. Kudos, Bill. Haru decides what she wants to do and her true affection for Legoshi takes place. Ibuki and Pina are two secondaries that play in the background and craft the story so it could lead both Louis and Legoshi to the place they have to go. Even though they are not developed as the rest, they have a lot of weight in this work, and they are good characters. Ibuki was my favourite, without a doubt.

This season is, in my opinion, a lot better than the first one, and here’s why: it focuses on what the viewer wanted. They took Haru out of the focus to become a real secondary; Juno took the place as the female lead of the season and approached to Louis, developing a relationship that was born as a defiant one. She constantly confronted Louis because of his attitude, but when in this season she knew who he turned into, their relationship changed, and that’s subtle and another piece that helped constructing Louis’ personality. Not only made me like the characters more, but it gave what the viewer expected from this second season: answers. Tem’s killer is devealed and, even though I felt offended because of who it was, it shocked me when I knew the explanation behind it. I’m not a person that rewatches things that I’ve recently watched, but that scene where Tem dies really moved me. It is not good to feel bad for the killer, but that really caught me off guard. The way the killer is fleshed out is amazing too, valuating the prize of life and the different kind of lives. I wanted answers, but when I got them, I didn’t want to know them anymore. It not only embraces more boundaries between carnivores and hervibores, but it also uses very well and in repeated situations with its according explanations.

This OST is probably one of the best this season. The opening is excellent from every point of view, makes justice to this dark season and is pretty intense as it should be. The ending is no different, it just contributes to the melancholy aura. The only CGI I can actually enjoy, once again. It also never fails in terms of direction to demonstrate the fear in hervibores; the frames and the restrained art style just contributes to the amazing atmosphere that is always there.

A marvelous sequel to a good series, where the tension, the drama and the violence reach its peak. I'm thankful for giving it a chance, and I wish I could talk a lot more without spoiling, because it surpassed my expectations by far. Definitely, worth watching.

Did you want another fantasy with a main character that is perfect, and with a comedy that relies on people screaming and getting hit all the time and girls falling in love with this MC in two seconds? Well, my friend, this is your chance! If you didn’t, run away.

Tatoeba Last Dungeon Mae no Mura no Shounen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu Youna Monogatari (yes, I had to copy-paste the name because I don’t even know it, lmao, why do they make names like these) is a fantasy anime that is mediocre and poor, but not THAT bad. The story is the same fantasy ... trope: a guy, called Lloyd, who comes from a little town that wants to be its pride and joy by entering the hero academy. He makes a lot of friends on his way because of how nice and innocently pure he is, and the most important is that he is strong as hell and he didn’t even realize that, even being insecure about his own strength and power. The repetitive joke that goes around all the time is that he is soooo strong that everybody gets surprised when they see his huge power. Just another character whose creator is in love with him.

The story starts with a pacing that is chill. It is acelerated, but is not so rushed. Later on, by the third episode, it just explodes. The pacing gets real rushed and you don’t have a clue of what’s going on. A lot of characters, suddenly, change their personalities and they reveal their real personalities, and the funny part is that they are just dumbasses that start to behave differently. That was taken out of nowhere. One witch suddenly is a lost princess, one of the army (that is a potus for the first episodes) suddenly becomes some kind of traitor (or mister culprit, as they call him). And from one moment to another they are invading a castle and having a fight against a Demon Lord that has possessed the king. Wait a minute… what? Am I watching the same story that I was watching the last week?

Things like that happens all the time. One episode they are doing one thing, and in the next one they are in a total new stuff, and this is not episodic, this is just a bad work. Characters with no charism nor meaning appear like that and don’t contribute anything to the plot. They can’t stop over-joking, and in the next minute you are supposed to take them very seriously.

In terms of characters, what I want to center the most is how this work’s author don't have a clue. Not even one single woman in this anime is well writen, they are not even close to be decent characters! I want to start with the one I hated with my entire heart. Selen is the typical drooling dog that only cares about main character’s dick. She is the most freaking annoying, disgusting, shallow and pathetic character I’ve seen in a while. All she does is to talk about Lloyd, to follow him, to blush around him, to be useless and to do her favourite task: to keep away, to threaten and to act like a cringe yandere to every woman that wants to talk to Lloyd. It is so vomitive that I wanted her to disappear from the show. The worst part is that a big part of the comedy in this show is about her being disgustingly nosy, and meddling in Lloyd’s interaction with every human being. If you still think that this kind of jelausy jokes are funny instead of painful, I admire you. Selene was a princess who was known as the “belt princess” because she had a belt wrapped on her head that couldn’t be unwrapped, and she seemed to be an interesting character the first twenty seconds, until she meets Lloyd an he unties the belt and lets her free. She takes that as a sign of fate and decides that he is the love of her life. After that, she just becomes Yuno Gasai but without the killing, just the cringe part. What is it Yuno without her killing and her dark aspects? Well, nothing. That “nothing” is what Selene is.

At first I thought that those jokes about her being unbearable wouldn’t take a great part on the story, so I letted pass, but when I was about fourth episode and I knew it wouldn’t stop, I knew this was going to be really lame. When she knows the witch that lives with him, she totally freaks out and cries and makes a whole unnecessary drama. Even after that moment, they start to deal with serious matters, and she is just like “then… are you his wife?” and cries. STOP, THE JOKE SHOULD HAVE ENDED A LOT AGO. I want to think it as a joke; otherwise I will be the one crying.

The other females are a thieve that has not even one interesting feature but she is reckless and a hot mercenary. That’s all. Later we have the witch I mentioned Lloyd lives with: she is so clumsy and stupid that all the jokes that revolve around her are about her being beaten, her screaming, her insulting her boss (and everytime she does that, her boss appears and makes fun of her. All. The. Time), her tripping. For those minutes that I spent watching those scenes I thought I was watching an Adam Sandler’s movie. Only the fart jokes were missing.

The last female is the witch’s boss that has her relevance but that is only a loli that can’t be taken serious and that all she does is to praise Lloyd and to annoy the witch because she has nothing else to do. Amazing female characters, I’m so proud. Letting them aside, the other problem here is the dear MC, Lloyd. He is so perfect that it really kicks me in the masculine genitals that I lack. He is not interesting at all. He is just so good that everyone loves him for no reason. I just... I can’t say no more because this main character is almost non-existent.

The visual art is mediocre, is colorful just like a fantasy is, and soft; animation is nothing to save.

In conclusion, this anime doesn’t have anything good to rescue. It’s bad written, is disorganized, has terrible characters, lousy pacing and has like no story. Don’t watch it, not even if you love fantasies.

What happens when you put something as wholesome as Cells at Work with addictions and bad habits in a blender? Well, Cells at Work Black is what you get.

Cells at Work Black is an anime that I refused to watch in a beginning. I thought it was going to be a blunder. When I first saw it would come out, I thought that it was going to be the same but with reversed roles. How wrong I was! If some people disliked Cells at Work because of the lack of characters as such, with this one there shouldn’t be many complaints.

The story is Cells at ... Work but with a body of an stressed adult that smokes, drinks a lot and doesn’t have not one good habit. In consequence, everything is destroyed: the blood vessels are a mess, the defenses are pretty mediocre and the body is exposed to a big lot of germs and toxins, the white cells can’t have a break and let’s not get started with the red blood cells, that are so few that they have to double they job in order to survive in that hell of a world. They are exploted day by day, they are misstreated and don’t understand anything about their surroundings, and what’s most important, they are aware of themselves. They learn that they are disposable and that if they don’t work, they all will die. They are exposed to danger all the time and the main character sees a lot of fellows perish. And all this, my friend, is what you do to your cells when you get drunk and smoke like a chimney.

What I love the most about this is how realistic this anime is. Not only because that’s how the body really reacts when the person has very bad habits and don’t care about themself, but because of the red blood cell that is our main character. He is the bare representation of the baby chick that gets out of the nest just to find out how rotten the world is. All the red blood cells madurate in the bone marrow and are educated in how they are going to work once they graduate. They show them tutorial videos, they give them guides in order to teach them that work is above everything, and these little red blood cells just want to get out as soon as posible so they could work and know that world that everybody is painting for them. But as soon as they do that, they realize that nothing is like the pictures, nothing in life can be solved with a written guide, and that even the people that appears in those videotypes are not what they seemed to be. They start working and waits for their superiors to teach them, but they just go like “you have to work, I have no time for you” and they are just left by their own. That’s what real world is once you grow up and you get to know the fact that you are on your own, and that there is no advice that can solve all your problems, and that school doesn’t prepare you to anything that comes beyond. A child dreams of growing up and living at their expectations, but when they are adults they realize that nothing is like they dreamed, and that sometimes, living to the expectations is a lot harder than imagined. That’s why Cells at Work Black finds a way of connecting two things that are as real as the day you live: the biology nature of the humans, and the dark nature of the humans.

When we talk about dark or Black, I mean it. Different from the original Cells at Work, Black can give you just one or two laughs per episode, but a lot of sadness to carry during the episode. Letting the red blood cells aside, the rest of the cast is shookingly different from the original. The macrophagues are sick of killing in an infested body, raving and mumbering to themselves; Platelets, that are often the best and most cheerful part of Cells at Work, in Black are grumpy, sad and dull, frustrated by the state of the blood vessels that are full of shit and that are more and more unstable. In the first episode, in the first day and with his first colleague, the main character gets traumatized by his crudes words about “you just have to pretend you are okay and supress your emotions. That’s the only way to go on”, and then his death. Amazing. I cried a lot because I’m a pussy but that’s another story. The main character carries those words and his legacy for the rest of the series, getting him more and more frustrated. His emotions eat him alive, so he progressevely starts to supress his emotions and to live a shitty life. Just like that, a lot of other cells come to his life, leaves him some words and story to remember, and they disappear like that, making him more and more damaged and scared.
Another realistic thing about it is how akin it is to some workers that are really exploted and that don’t have another options. It’s an anime that glorifies its name, because it’s all about the dark side of work; monotony, envy, workaholics. Everything represented in the same main cast, and treated with a subtlety that I enjoyed a lot. Their changes and growing are slow, are delicate, and so real. Is just great.

In terms of visuals, this anime deserves a congratulation. Is a cheap art with low budget, but exactly that is what makes it so good, because it fits with the dark atmosphere, and is so loose and poor that envolves you even more in that world where everything crumbles. It’s a good example of a good use of what you have. And about sound… I hated the ending but now I just have it inside my head.

In conclusion, I’m thankful for this anime. I needed this Code Black for Hataraku Saibou, and even if you don’t understand anything of biology, you need it too. It’s a crude anime in disguise, that will make you wonder why you make your cells suffer like that when you get stressed. Don’t be selfish, take care of them.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

I've read comments about this being the ultimate masterpiece; that if you disliked this is because you belong to the crystal generation of sensitive onions. Or that “this show is not for normies”. I rather be a normie than a person that praises this. But my question is how can you even feel comfortable while watching this?

The plot couldn’t be more simple since it is almost a hentai. Hentai don’t need a plot, but this one tried very hard to have one. It’s supposed to be a “dark fantasy”, but instead of being that, it is more like a “your hentai ... fantasy”, about a healer guy that gets violented and abused by Flare, a princess. When he gets the chance to remake his life with some powers, he chooses to get revenge instead of looking for a better life this time. No, he prepares himself for years so he could live all over again and survive her abuses and confront her (I’m sorry, I meant ‘rape her’) in order to achieve his revenge.

What is the problem with the sexual assaults and the plot? Well, let me explain it if you are still not getting it by yourself. A series/anime/movie/book can have rapes and so, because yes, we as a viewer can’t delete that from the media world since it is part of the world’s cruelty. Nevertheless, here’s the problem. For example, when you read Lolita from Vladimir Nabokov (I had to bring it up since it was my recent good read), the pedophile thing is always as polemic as rape, and here it is not normalized and is well settled because that’s the main plot. It is a story told from the nauseous point of view of the pedophile that narrates his sickest fantasies involving a 12 yo. The difference is that Lolita can be enjoyed by normies and by pervs. It is a disturbing plot with some abuse, not an abuse with some plot. It is not made to make the main character look cool nor to make the audience feel satisfied; on the other hand, our beloved Redo anime does pretend that. I can’t recall how many comments I’ve read that said stupid things like “yea, I wish I could rape her too”. Please, ask for help and don’t approach any woman ever.

If there’s a phrase that really gets on my nerves is the dumb one that this guys use to everything as their safe passage. “It is fiction, why do you care?” Yes, it is fiction, thankfully, of course. Nonetheless, does that solve anything to you? Again, I repeat my question: how can you feel comfortable while watching this? It is fiction, yes, but are you actually enjoying that? If you do, you better go watch a hentai that has the guts to accept it is a hentai, because no one is going to attack that one. I could mention like three literary examples more but we are talking about anime, so I’ll take a chill pill and go on with this. A rape scene is not supposed to be automatically canceled and deleted, because a tragic story can have one and be a piece of art (let’s say, Berserk). While it can’t be easy to watch for sensitive people (or people that have actually suffered an assault), it still can fit in the story in a good way and can contribute to the story or a character’s background and can enrich the plot. Although, can you unironically afirm this anime does that? Of course not. What Redo of Healer does is to disminish this subject and treat it frivolously, it’s like it actually wants to justify violations. Flare was a trashcan, yes. It is reasonable if the main character wanted to take revenge, yes. Would it have been a little bit more logical if the rape scene had been just implied, or a little more subtle (I mean, without those frames where you can see Flare’s fingers from inside her… you know)? In my opinion, yes, specially if they were going to repeat it so many times. But, oh, no, of course introducing a sensitive theme like a rape must be executed in a 10 minutes scene. Of course they are not trying to disminish the problem with a scene of Flare begging for a dick and touching herself while the guy threatens her to stick her up with a poker! I’m sorry, I’m so boring I just couldn’t enjoy those ten minutes with the delightly sound of her screaming and crying in pain while a macho man is laughing over her. For ten explicit minutes.

That only prooves my point that all that scene was to capture the virgin audience’s attention. Even a friend of mine admited he was watching this anime just because of sex scenes. And what’s even worse, even when he erases her entire memories, he keeps her as her kind of sex slave/companion. What does that contribute to his revenge? She doesn’t remember anything from her life, nor what she did to him in the past, nor the rape. Then, WAS IT NECESSARY AN EXPLICIT RAPE SCENE? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. When she wakes up with her memories erased, he convinces her that she was some sort of lover to him. After that she just believes in him and they have sex. Why. Why. Why. What does it add to the plot? Nothing at all. And when she believes in him and has sex with him, he smiles like “haha, I’m so enjoying this revenge”. What revenge? She doesn’t remember anything, she even enjoys having sex with him and feels safe with him. How can it be a revenge when she doesn’t suffer (thankfully) what he is doing to her? This guy was always hot for Flare and all this was a poor excuse, that’s the only reason I found, I’m sorry.

Even letting all that aside. We knew this guy was made a drug addict by Flare, we understood it very clear, but was it still necessary to decorate that fact with a scene with her making him lick her down there in order to make him take the drug, or the one with the guy sucking his own dick? Not only it is pretty redundant, but it remarks once again what they aim for with this poor thing that doesn’t have the title of hentai. We even have the full package! The lesbian kink wouldn’t be out either. Was it necessary the scene with that crazy girl licking this guy’s tongue so she could feel Flare’s flavor while she literally masturbates upon him? Was it necessary to explicit show how he was raped by the guards and Flare’s partners? The healer is sexually abused IN FLASHBACKS like three times by three different persons in episode three. Again, redundant and with obvious intentions, with the first episode it got clear, now can we go on, or are you still going to persist on unnecessary sex stuff? It is a lot worse than those animes that have an excessive amount of blood in order to attract people. You don’t need to show tits and sex scenes every two minutes to demonstrate a person’s suffer and abuse, and that’s how you can tell this anime was never supposed to be taken as anything more than a dirty hentai with some sort of very bad-made “story”.

I’m not saying this shouldn’t have sex scenes at all, but when most of the half of an episode is a sex scene, then you can see where this is going. Sex and abuse are meant to be a tool to give context, not to be the entire plot. If the revenge was supposed to be taken seriously, a lot of more aspects could have been explored, since a trauma is not as simple as “they raped me, then I’m going to rape them”. And also, it could have embraced a wider gamma of tortures beyond fisical abuse. If they wanted to represent his ‘deep’ resentment, he could have improved his plans a lot more so he could deploy an actual vengeance with real consequences, but they didn’t have the guts to do that. Because they don’t care about a real revenge nor to represent a compelling damaged person, they just wanted to “take advantage of the bug” and to exploit the sexual side until it reached a disgusting point. Good or not, it accomplished its mision of getting people’s attention.

Even if we discuss terms of characters, it is still really poor. All we know about Flare is that she was a petty shrew, and that’s it. The same goes for the rest of the rape-team; oh, the only difference I forgot, is that Flare turned into a potato that goes all the time “Keyaruga-samaaa” and that praises him all day. What do we know about the main character (Keyaruga-samaaa)? Well, he is supposed to be different from other fantasies protagonists since he is more an anti-hero, but he also fails loudly at that. He was abused (in case you didn’t notice) and constantly drugged (in case you didn’t notice. If you didn’t, let me put you another scene of him getting kicked on the floor before he is violated. Again) and he went back in time and got some sort of Geass that he uses in order to achieve his vengeance and to rape Flare. Again. He is pretty buffed like every fantasy main character and is very shallow and disgustingly confident; he sees himself as some sort of god when he is a loser that can’t even do an actual revenge with a logical development. However, can we blame him when 99% of his development is about him being raped in very very very long scenes? Oh, and right now also appeared a furry girl that was used by the anime to give some sort of depth to this guy, because she was a slave and he bought her because “he saw himself reflected on her when he looked her in the eye, that thirst for revenge, and the she will only be satisfied once they kill them”. Yea, nice try. Next season we’ll have the furry girl raping the enslavers as the main premise. I’m looking forward to seeing this, you know.

Anyway, leaving all that aside, even animation is pretty lousy. Character’s design is nothing new and the visual art is mediocre at best. But hey! We got boobs every episode, so who is going to pay attention to the visual art anyway?

“You don’t have to take anime that seriously”. There’s a noticeable line between what can be taken seriously and what cannot. If I want to enjoy something without taking it seriously, I go watch a sitcom; If I wanted to watch actual porn, I would go watch it. But making a mix between an abusive hentai and a main character that is supposed to look cool is not something that must function.

I gave it a try, and even though I don’t usually drop things, I’m in hard times of study, so I’m not spending my few spare hours on something like this. If by episode 12 it ends up being watchable, I may give it a shot again. Nevertheless, right now, I rather have more sleep hours than watch this.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

My god, not even my first break-up when I was a teenie disappointed me like this anime did. I think that the comparisson is pretty accurate. Desilusion, a bad time, the feeling of “why did I keep on with this, when it was such a waste of time?”, and the consequent response of “I wanted to know how this was going to end, or if this can be saved”. All those things are in common.

Munou na Nana is an anime that began strongly and that had a huge potential but, as you can expect from my rating, this ended up being the ... whole opposite. The story takes place in an island for special kids (and I’m not only talking about their abilities) that are supposed to protect the earth from the “enemies of humanity”, where there is a school that is a sort of Boku no Hero Academy. And actually, that’s your first impression. Nanao, the human that it’s called the ‘protagonist’, is a talentless guy in a talents school. Later on, is revealed that Nanao is not talentless as such, but a guy with the talent to nullify the other’s talents. At the same time, while you’re told his story and how he suffers because no one knew his secret ability and everybody bullied him because of that (I’m sure the CIA told him to kept it secret in order not to control the world), the new girl in the class makes her apparition and gets along with him, a cheerful annoying girl whose talent is to read minds. I was yawning the entire episode until I watched the end of it, when the thing got spicy. I was amazed and thought that it was a great idea that I made it through the end of it, because my expectations grew after that exact moment when, in the final minutes, Nanao gets apparently killed by the new girl, Nana, letting you know that she is sent by the government in order to destroy and eliminate every enemy of humanity. The interesting part of it, is that the enemies of humanity are, indeed, the students that are caught up in that island and, of course, that place is not to educate them, but to have them separated from the rest of the world so they could be killed in mysterious ways. Excellent way of cheering up the party with this finale and that revelation, isn’t it?

I waited up for the next episode to release, and I was so excited, but then it declined a little bit. I didn’t lose hope and tried to see the positive out of it, and it kept for the next two episodes. I even wrote and published a preliminary review saying this was going to be great! After the fifth episode, I had to delete it because, at that moment, I didn’t feel any of the positive things I said before.

The plot continues with Nana killing another classmates, breaking that mask of cute girl from time to time to show her real behavior, having dark thoughts and openly expressing her hate for the other students, of course, when she’s alone. Another thing that was revealed previously is that she has no talent. She can’t read minds, she’s just instructed in body language and is careful enough to understand what’s going on in her surrounding. Suddenly, as more classmates keep disappearing, a solitary cold guy from her class starts to suspects her and they begin an interesting and indirect war, where both of them try to develope the other’s intentions. At that point, I thought it was still good. But as it progresses and she starts killing indiscriminately, you realize how it gets even stupidier with every episode. Every person dies when she’s with them, and every times she excuses hemself with her fake cutie attitude, by saying that they were attacked by an enemy of humanity (what they believe that are monsters). And that’s it, her sacred word is never doubted, so no one suspects her and no one investigates, and I’m not only talking about Nana, but the school itself, everything is so weird, the professors don’t care at all for their students and neven hear them, and the students don’t even suspect a thing. Sometimes there’s even people that almost witnesses the crime and that, if they had two functional neurons making sinapsis, could easily deduce she was the serial killer. Of course, they don’t. I mean, she kills a stupid guy and, when she’s right next to his body, a stupid girl comes in and asks what happened. This stupid guy that was killed had the ability of premonitions and could keep them as photographs. The stupid girl, while examinating his body, finds out a picture of Nana killing Nanao, and she doesn’t even doubt of her. She just asks “Nana, what’s this?”.

And this foolishness is repeated every episode. Her classmates never do anything except for Kyouya, the only guy that suspects her and follows her anywhere, and everytime tries to accuse her. He demonstrates in the first episodes that he is smart enough to play the game along with her, but suddenly, after ten episodes and actually knowing she tried to kill him, he still thinks that she can read minds and even gets dazed by her manipulations. Amazing. And that point is important because that makes me real mad because of how nonsensically convenient it is. A lot of times she makes huge mistakes in her ‘minds reading’ and ALWAYS puts the same excuse “haha, I’m sorry, I’m tired and I can’t focus”, and everybody says haha that’s ok. Sometimes, she even says things, by deduction, that every person with those acclaimed neurons could realize by themself, and everybody just gets surprised and reasure she can read minds. I’ve seen secondary characters that are shameful, cringey, ridiculous or naive, but these are all those adjectives together but multiplied by 2000. It gets to a point where the stupidity of those characters and how blind they are (that, of course, is a plot convenience) is shooking, illogical, and that you, as a viewer, actually wonder if the human being who made this story is trolling you or just thinking you are as braindead as them. After a little time you even feel insulted. Mangaka-sama, I’m not asking you to write those characters with an IQ of 160, nor to make them capable of beating her in that wit game, I’m just asking for them to, at least, suspect her or to lose trust on her. Nevermind, I’m not even asking for that, I’m begging you to give them a brain. Amen.

Another poor thing about this anime is how they abuse of cliffhangers. Cliffhangers are great, are surprising, catches your attention and so, but when you use it A LOT, it looses its taste and you already expect it. Every episode is stupid and you are there, knowing that Nana is going to kill twenty students more and no one will ever notice, and you are already waiting for the cliffhanger. And you already know that the next episode, when the cliffhanger is solved, Nana will end up being free and innocent to everybody. Is not only that they abuse of this resource, but they actually never maintain what happens on that cliffhanger, since in the next episode, everything will return back to normal as if the cliffhanger never existed. Why did they make it for, then? Is obvious that they are doing that because they are desperate. Some episodes were boring and, just when you get something interesting, boom! Cliffhanger. After six episodes, they should already know that people are not falling for that anymore. Oh, yeah, I forgot, they think the audience is incredibly stupid.

After a bunch of episodes of this one-dimensional pseudo yandere simulator and her mental deficient classmates with no personality, you get to know her past and her real personality. She likes mental games, she adores chess and Shogi, she’s a manga reader and her parents were killed, apparently, by an enemy of humanity that climbed up her window when she escaped from home to go get the last volume of her favourite manga at almost midnight. Relatable. When she knew what happened she felt guilty. Nevertheless, she reveals to her only friend in the academy (The stupidiest of them all, a cutie cringey girl whose voice is annoying and that’s the one that defends Nana to death) that, after all those years, she doesn’t even feel sad about it, she doesn’t feel guilt, nor hate, nor regrets. And when I thought that this could be an interesting detail of this character, she starts to think about that incident all the time. Until then she was a cold ass killer that never thought about her parents, and hastily she can’t stop thinking about it and, even though she said two mintes earlier that she doesn’t feel anything for that, she totally contradicts her statement in order for us to feel empathy for her, or that at least we think for one second and in the last two episodes, that she is not plain and hasn’t a poor writing. A lame resource, but it’s not that I was expecting anything from this show right now.

The rest of the cast… I don’t want to keep defenestrating them since they are poor little humans betrayed by biology itself, who forgot to make a brain for them. Although, I have to make a summary. Kyouya, who I mentioned before, is a guy (with no development at all, of course) who at first hides his talent, but that later demonstrates that his ability is to be inmortal. This is the one who actually had a big potential since he was the only one whose neurons weren’t on a hunger strike at the beginning, but that didn’t last long, because episodes later he started with a nonsensical behavior. The idea was that he wanted to confuse Nana and make her think he trusted her, but it seems that the one that he confuses is, in fact, the viewer. Let’s see: he, at first, suspects her and almost spits that out to her face, and prooves he is not THAT stupid and that he could be at her level. Further on, he starts to make things like trying to be friends with her for no apparent reason. Okay. If we could understand him just by his actions, yes, it’s logical if we are confused (or if we don’t understand his reasons) since we don’t know what he’s planning to do or if it’s all just an acting to keep an eye on her. But no, the anime shows us his thoughts and his reasoning, and that’s where we see that he is actually not planning anything and he is just dumb enough to not realize obvious things. He just behaves like that because of the relief comedy of him not knowing how to make friends and so. And even when he does approaches Nana to investigate her, he gets fooled by her and her “psychic powers”. At the beginning, I thought he was just pretending to be fooled by her, but no, when they show you his thoughts, you really know that he doesn’t have a clue about Nana not having any talent. And is contradictory! By moments he unfolds an entire intelligent deduction, and by moments he is an idiot who doesn’t know where he is standing. Then, what is the point of this? Kyouya is a wasted character who wanted to be a smartass and forgot the first five letters of the word.

The rest of the cast is even lamer. Inukai Michiru is the most adorable and stupid of them all, an hypocrite who swears that wants to help and save all the people she can, but that blindly denies that Nana is the one hurting and killing everybody. If she really wanted to make a good, she would, at least, wonder why Nana is always when the assassination takes place, why Nana never lets her heal nor inspect the victims’ bodies, why Kyouya steady accuses Nana, why she found a pic of Nana killing Nanao, if she was that sacred deer she believes she is? Is ridiculous. However, by the last episodes, we also see Michiru’s past and how she and Nana are becoming besties, using Michiru as the moral trigger that pulls Nana over the threads and makes her wonder if she’s doing a good deed in name of humanity, or if she’s just being used and deceived by the government. Of course, despite she’s a smartass that can cheat an entire bunch of obtuse students, she’s slow enough to question her actioning after twelve episodes and several cold kills, but nevermind. We, the audience, are even slower, we’re not gonna notice that flamsy construction, aren’t we?

After those that I mentioned, I had a headache, so I’m not gonna extend more on this. The rest of the characters are the same and worse. You got a fire guy that is the enemy of an ice guy, you have the bullies, and so. All of them respectfully adore Nana and follow her anywhere. The persons she killed, died because of their non-base-confidence and because of that adoration for her leader (who was chosen as their leader because ‘why not?’). I mean, how can you be so confident when there is a serial killer in the island where you are trapped, and when every classmate of yours is disappearing? Not even one character is compelling nor act in a logical way, in order to ease the task to Nana and to make her look like a great unbeatable character. It’s like feeling strong when you’re winning an arm-wrestling against a one-handed person. Another plot convenience that insults you in the face.

In terms of animation and sound I don’t have complaints, but I don’t have compliments either. Everything is common and nothing I would recall. Some VA are annoying and some characters design are likeable since they are very different from each other. The uniform is nice, too. They also abuse of the resource of the darkened face when Nana is in a hurry, and abuse even more of the red and blue background, like some sort of cheap Death Note. At first that one was interesting though, but when they use it all the time to leave the Nana’s voice-off, it loses its effect, and it’s worse when they try so hard to make Kyouya fit the blue side, as if he could be a real opponent for Nana. Guess what? He’s not.

In conclusion, this is a regular animated show with no praising audiovisual work, with flat, awfully silly and absurd characters that will get to your nerves, with a story that started with a really good premise and that ended up in just a “wannabe” with a lot of ridiculous plot armors and the over-use of repetitive resources that were not used as they should. One undeniable thing is that if we need to pass through twelve episodes to say this is worth it, it is definitely not. A plot twist can be good, but there’s no plot twist THAT good to save a whole disaster as big as Munou na Nana. Normally, I try to make a closure that equals bad and good points, but in this anime there’s nothing I can save, so… Don’t. Don’t watch it. Unless you’re as stupid as the public they are aiming with this show, of course, but that’s up to you.

Akudama Drive is a dystopian anime that, at simple site, is a bunch of edgy characters with a simple story with a lot of blood and chaos on it. And that concept is pretty close to what it is yet, at the same time, it’s a little bit more than that. I wouldn’t call it “a hidden gem” because is not hidden and less is a gem, but certainly an interesting anime to take account.

You are told a story in an original way (I mean, what can be better than having puppets as narrators) about the current state of the city in Akudama Drive and ... how a war turned it into what they show. Kansai and Kanto are the main cities here. Kanto is the one that won the war, and Kansai is where the story takes place. Kansai responds to Kanto and obeys it, and the difference between both of them is the level of life. For what they say, Kanto is a marvelous city where things are perfect and is clearly superior, while Kansai is the dependant city where regular people coexists with the criminals, better known as Akudamas, who are increasing in number. The dependance of Kansai to Kanto is well managed, showing off how everything is ordered by Kanto and how even the big associations responds to them. The regular people of Kansai live controled by technology, frightened of the violence that surrounds them and resigned to the life they got to take because of the war’s resaults, and they are persistenly brainwashed by the puppets that are presented in big screens all over the city, and that perform like a childlish sketch to make them (and us) understand in a few words why they have the lives they have and why you don’t mess with Kanto, making them see that city as their dreamland, even teaching them to praise the train that comunicates both places as a god itself, as a ticket to their wonderland. That was a nice detail. Although, of course, Kansai is not easy to handle, and since they live between regulars and criminals, and since the city is progressively more troubled because of the delincuency, people hate Akudamas, and when the things get crazy, so do the people and they get plunged into turmoil and starts a rebelion. In consequence, later on, as a vulgar display of power, the Akudama’s Executioners, who are the law in the city, decrete every rebel or disturber is an Akudama, which couldn’t be more accurate to our reality and, possibly, the future itself. So, Akudama Drive, more than a story about edgy criminals, embraces a concept that is wider: the rebelion of the marginates and the underdogs.

The story has a clear beginning, development and end. Even though at first the story is a little bit confusing since you don’t completely understand what’s going on, but then it grews in a master plan that only the highest Akudama-rank criminals could make, and it’s still intriguing as no one explains why nor who is commanding that extremely dangerous mission. However, once it gets on the road, you get involved and it gets really interesting as the mission advances.

All Akudamas are reunited by a message that offers them a great reward if they get to save Cutthroat, another Akudama-rank criminal, in the place of the execution itself. Because yes, that’s how the law prevents people from becoming a criminal, showing off the executions online, like some sort of deep web site, as a way of saying “that’s what awaits for you if you missbehave”. Anyway, people enjoys it as though they were watching a football game. When they get there, the main character appears there too because she’s chasing a cat in order to protect that damn animal, risking her life just for that. After that, the party begins and when they archieve the goal they’re paid and forced to complete another mission, that consists in retrieving a capsule that is going to be sent to Kanto by the Shinkansen (the beloved train I mentioned before). After a lot of trouble, blood, laughs and fights, they get to the capsule and when they open it they realize that their actual goal was to save two kids inside it. Of course, the main character becomes the big mamma and kinda adopts them. She couldn’t let a cat alone, why would she let two children by their own? However, as these kids are pretty important to Kanto city, the real explotion begins. The story is original, indeed, but it didn’t blow my mind.

I just wanna make a pause right here to say that every episode is named after a famous movie, and that’s GREAT. The first one is called Se7en, referencing to the movie about the seven deadly sins, and the Akudama gang is conformed for seven members lmAO. Another good detail.

My only BIG problem with Akudama relies on the characters. Something I appreciate in a show, regardless of the story, is the character development. I don’t need an evangelism, but at at least give me SOMETHING I can get attached to: a past, a reason. That’s where it has terrible lacks. Let’s start by the fact that they don’t even have a name. Not one of them. They are Cutthroat, Courier, Swindler, Doctor, and so on. Even the rest of the characters that don’t even form part of the main gang, they all are “executioner”, “Onii-san”. I’m not gonna lie, that really surprised me and it seemed an original concept to me, but as it progresses, you realize that that only marks a line of distance between the viewer and those characters. You don’t have a name, don’t have a background, don’t have the less idea about what they are doing there nor why. When one of them dies, it doesn’t matter if it’s a main or a secondary, you don’t feel moved at all, because you don’t connect with them since they are total strangers. Of course, they’re likeable though, I really had fun with Brawler, specially. He’s a personage that is the stereotype of a brainless strong fighter, but I emphatized with him even though he is shabby and plain. The rest of the group is similar, flat, edgy and generic (And as I always state, “generic” is not a bad perception to me, as long as I can connect with them or actually like them, or as long as they have a background or growing. This is not the case). Cutthroat is the typical sanguinary guy whose only ability is to kill, he doesn’t even know how to speak as a normal person. Doctor is really similar to him, just an egocentric and violent milf, whose only purpose is to accomplish a bunch of fetishes: doctor clothes, lencery, glasses, oppai and milf. Courier is a cold super-edgy guy that only cares about his job. Hacker, even though he is the most useful out of them, is just that, a nerdy hacker that doesn’t care for anything else. He is just a person who needs a huge challenge to make his life worth. And Hoodlum is the one I kinda connected. He’s the weakest of them all and is a weepy and fearful guy. At the beginning he is unbearable since all he does is to scream and hide, and is easily manipulable, but as it advances, I realize that he’s the only one realistic in that group and he even has a little development. Also, I really had fun with his relationship with Brawler, and actually felt them as bros. Is not a great character, but is the one that I can save in this mediocrity of personages.

Going on with this, the main character is the one I disliked the most. Swindler is the only one of the group that is not actually a criminal, she’s there just because she got caught up in that mess, and pretends to be an Akudama-rank criminal to survive, choosing the name of Swindler. I dare to say she is the most boring main character of the season. She is the stereotype of the good girl, and all you can say about her is that she is SO GOOD, and that’s really all you can say. She doesn’t have another atribute. You, unlike me, can really love her and empathize with her if you feel so, but one undeniable thing is that she’s a good unmarkable person and nothing else. She is kind to everyone, she’s caring, she meddles in the gang’s plans since she doesn’t want anybody to get killed or hurted, and that’s a pain in the ass to me. As I’m not going to get any character development or depth, I enjoyed Akudama Drive because of the action and the art, and if there’s a gang of bad guys, it’s annoying that this girl intervenes every time the sauce begins just because she doesn’t want people to die. I thought that the fact of her being the only Akudama that is a regular person was going to mean that she would be the only one with a backstory or something like that, or that she would be the bare representation of how hard it is to be a Kansai citizen, but I ended up with my hands empty. Although, she has some growing during the series, even though is really predictable, is, at least, something that actually made me like her better.

The only characters that got a background are the sibilings that appear later in the series, and they’re children. Is easy to feel pity for them, but still, none of them has a feature that will get to you; they’re like both robots (pretty close though, lol). And the worst character, beyond my tastes, is the real villain, the traitor of the Akudama group. Since the beginning this character doesn’t have no depth at all, no background, no anything, as the rest of the gang, but when the betrayal is devealed and this person starts to be an antagonist, is an awful one. This personage’s reason to become a traitor and a despicable human being, is that wants to be released of the “Akudama” name to adquire the title of a regular person, in order to kill freely without the consequences, and you know why? Just because this person desires to control life itself, enjoying the assassination because of the exciting feeling of killing people, deciding how long they live and how and when they die, like some sort of god complex. And that’s IT. That’s the only info they give you about the new enemy, and don’t expect another development or redention, because you won’t have any. Is an objectiveless antagonist with no personality as such. My only thought was “k, when are you going to die? Shut up”

Then, I didn’t want, but I have to. I have to talk about the Akudama’s Executioner association. My god, what a SHAMEFUL affiliation. This consist in, as its name indicates, a huge group that dedicates to exterminate the Akudamas. But they fail loudly, all the time. They function as the main enemies of the Akudama gang, of course, but they don’t accomplish anything. I had the impression that they were there just to make the main gang look cooler, since all they do is to loose battles against them and to say stupid things like “I will kill every Akudama!!!” when they can’t even harm them. Just one of them is kinda respectable, the first one, but also he ends up ashamed. His kouhai, a beginner, is even worse. Is the typical useless female character who is just a burden for her superior, and she is specially arrogant, constantly defying the gang as if she could fight with one of them without fainting in the process. Disgusting. They alll are pitiful and their boss is EVEN WORSE, a woman who obeys the highest commands and whose only line is “Why did it have to happen when I’m the boss?” or “I will kill every Akudama!!!”.

After ranting the characters, I continue. The animation surprised me entirely. I hate Studios Pierrot, so I was rather relunctant to watch this when I saw it was a work from that studio. Nevertheless, is surprised me in a good way. It was decent, fights seemed nice for me to watch, I positively enjoyed them. The art is very striking, with its nuances and bright presentation. Considering this is a Sci-Fi, they are at the correct standars, because is really futuristic and the edgy characters’ design is adequate too. To me, specially coming from the hideous Pierrot, it is memorable. The sound is pretty good too. Music gets you hyped and the seiyuus do a great job, specially with the first Executioner and Cutthroat, who was actually spooky.

In conclusion, Akudama Drive is a show that I don’t regret watched, actually, I enjoyed it a lot and it wasn’t boring to me in no moment, even though its big flaws. Even if I disliked the characters, that didn't restrain me from having a good time with it. If you’re looking for a sci-fi anime, audiovisually good, that is full of action and a lot of violence with interesting fights and revolution, this is definitely for you, and please enjoy. If you’re looking for an awesome writting or top-tier in depth-developed characters you can love and care, or personages that can blow your mind, this is not for you.

Even when you think that there’s nothing worth it during a season, you find animes like Yuukoku no Moriarty to contradict you.

Class differences. A concept that is old but that does not stop being an instaured matter nowadays; less harsher today, but still present. Despite this idea is a classic one, I really enjoy watching this controversial topic, and even more when is well managed. And what I like even more about Yuukoku no Moriarty is the way the main characters are not politically correct. They are not the perfect elite guys that sow justice and that fight for the poverty’s rights. No, they take ... justice by hand in order to change the corrupt world. That premise isn’t that original either, is it? That doesn’t matter, because I think is well handled in this episodic anime that is quite catchy and that gives it a profound view.

As I was saying, the topic that I mentioned, even if in the first episode is not displayed as such, is always there. The series starts with William Moriarty, the protagonist, living a rich life and behaving as some sort of Sherlock Holmes (I know, he’s his enemy, but that’s your first thought when you see this high class guy that, by reading a newspaper, can develop a serial killer’s case in the confort of this mansion). Conforming it advances, he investigates and, of course, effortless, he gets to a conclusion. And his only response to his resaults is to kidnap the guilty and to let the victim father’s take revenge. When I first watched this episode I thought it was going to be an anime with no depth nor development, just with the concept of this show being a serie of individual cases for each episode, but no, William becomes a crime counselor. and the next episodes give it the depth it deserved, decorating it with a pretty interesting background for the main cast, and a well managed detailed one, because it doesn’t just focus on William but also his two brothers’ ideals and surroundings; not perfect, but very very decent and gives the show other nuances. Some people can say this bg was longer than neccessary, but I personally loved that.

The world has, in my opinion, an excellent construction, because it’s what they focus the most. I mean, it is not like every shounen where you need an almost entirely new world and its scopes to clarify, since it’s England, but the context is very well settled. The world is rotten and so are the rich people, yes, we know, but I felt it very crude and realistic. And also, relatable. Is according to the epoch it takes place. Currently, in real life, a lot of situations shown in the anime, of course, doesn’t happen like that, but the escence and the perspective of the class gap is clear and adequate adapted. Retaking what I said earlier, it doesn’t matter that this is an episodic anime, because everything is carefully connected and, as it advances, the cases of each episode go more cruel, violent and realistic, and you get it clear: the important thing is not the case itself, but its impact and how the main concept of the breach is being pulished episode by episode, sometimes in a subtle way, and sometimes it hits you in the face.

The first case is a little bit exaggerated, consisting in a morbid man that chased after his servant’s children in order to torture them, just for fun, so my first impression was “this is just supposed to be a gore anime?”, but the air suddenly changed with the following cases, going from a woman who had his son dead because no doctor would attend him since they were poor, to a man who was separated from the woman he was in love because of social stratum. Yuukoku no Moriarty demonstrates then that can handle a very dark atmosphere and a tragic sad one at the same time.

William Moriarty is actually likeable. Math teacher by day and a criminal by night, he is a leader by nature, charismatic and humble. Is a smartass with an IQ of 3000, the typical main character that never looses an argument or a lead. However, what I really appreciate of him is how determined he is and how his ideals take a lot of place since the beginning, showing a man with a debatable moral that, without a Death Note, is resolute to construct a new world with no evil rich, giving the least benefited people the opportunity to accompany him with a steady hand, at the same time evaluating them and testing at what point are they going to go to achieve their vengeances or to actually change their situations. As I said earlier, this is not something new and I’m not saying he IS A HERO, I just state that, in my opinion, his ideology is clear and according to what he has shown. It’s like viewing the story from the villain’s point of view. That’s kinda interesting as well.

Anyway, even though his brothers started as a strong presence by his side, as it progresses, they begin to be even more secondary than they already are, and when Sherlock Holmes makes his entrance, they just vanish like disposable characters. By the end of the show, I just saw them as William’s dogs and nothing more.

On the other hand, we got the magnificent Sherlock Holmes. In my library I have a beautiful collection of Conan Doyle’s work, and I dare to say that I’m not a fan of Sherlock as a character himself, so when he first appeared I thought the show was going to decline, but it wasn’t the case. Even though I preferred the story told by Moriarty’s POV, the Sherlock that is shown in the anime is quite different from the literary one, since he’s more human and, in consequence, imperfect. I enjoyed that way of portraying him. Sherlock making mistakes, having moral messes, feeling defied by Moriarty, being a lazy, eccentric, frivolous man. That is good. Nevertheless, what’s even better about him is how they work on his rivalry with Moriarty, making every encounter between them something really bright and subtly tense. William likes to test him, and Sherlock respects him a lot, suspecting him since the first moment he witnessed a crime William masterminded. By the end of the anime, the real chess begins.

Speaking of animation, I can’t say much. Is pretty decent and the character’s design is also good. It’s a Production Ig’s work, so I don’t have much to claim about it. It was visually pleasurable to me; although, some times there were moments when I though the facial expressions didn’t make justice to the thrilling scene. However, something I didn’t like was the sound. Personally, I thought the OST wasn’t suitable for the story. In another kind of series this could have been interesting (Thinking, idk, in Akudama Drive, for example), but in this one, I really felt out of place when an electro music appeared. I mean, I can’t see a carriage and then bang my head with that modern techno. Besides that, the voice actors did a decent job. Nothing I would recall, but it was fine.

I had no faith on this since I didn’t like so much any of this season’s animes, but it turned out to be greater than what I was expecting. Not the best you’re gonna see, but certainly worth the shot. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing the second season.