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*WARNING: This review was written for people who tried to give the anime a watch and left disappointed, and contains an ambiguous half-spoiler that will hopefully allow them to watch the series and wait it out until the series gets good*

When Ryukishi07 announced Gou, he said that he wanted to solve a long unsolved mystery about Hinamizawa. But IMO the true unsolved mystery was this: What happens to the characters of Higurashi after the story has ended? One of the original series morals was all about the unbreakable bonds of friendship, and what it takes to forge true friendship....but how do friendships stay the exact ... same when change is an inevitable force? What happens to friendship when friends each have their own different life goals? What potential conflicts can arise from this?

Gou answers just that, but before that it poorly rehashes the first 3 arcs of the original series. Iconic scenes are reenacted in ways that just can't hold a candle to the original scenes. The arcs play out differently in the end, but with bad changes (excluding a moment at the end of the 2nd arc), and many characters go insane with very little hints or build ups, and not all the actions the characters take feel true to how they were portrayed in the original series....or so you'd think, but some of these scene do make sense when the curtain finally begins to lift more than halfway through the series. Still though, it doesn't excuse having to sit through all that to get to whats good, but when you do? Well all I can say is I applaud Ryukishi07 for having the courage to take some of Higurashi's characters in a bold new direction. I just wish Ryukishi07 had found a way to skip through all the filler and just write something for returning fans, because this series does a very poor job of introducing new people to Higurashi.

It seems Dr. Stone is one of those anime's that you either love or hate. I believe this is because the thing that makes Dr. Stone so great is not that it has outstanding characters, nor a good story, it's that it fills a niche that was long waiting to be exploited.

I'd say the best way to describe Dr. Stone in a nutshell, is that it's pretty much the anime version of playing one of those Minecraft modpacks where you start off in a primitive world, make primitive tools,keep upgrading them and making contructs, and eventually after putting a lot of work in you get ... to a futuristic setting. If you love games like that, there's a damned good chance you'll love this anime. It also has a lot of elements that DIY makers, and maybe to a lesser extent, people into science would like too.

When I say lesser extent, I say that because when watching this show, one needs to remember that it's still a shounen jump title. It still has many of the dumb stuff you'd expect from shounen, and that's made very clear in the first couple episodes. We start the anime off with the main character in the past before the apocalypse happened. The main character is in science class and still has his dumb yugioh hair that you see in the promotional posters, and he also ridiculous science setup that in a realistic setting probably wouldn't be allowed at the school. Since this is a shounen series, naturally the main character is a super genius who has answers for damn near everything as long as it involves science. Going forward a bit, a green light envelops the earth, turning all humans and swallow birds to stone. Somehow, someway however, the main character stays conscious for all that time (partially petrified?) and counts the seconds for 1000+ god damned years, never changing as a person, nor going insane, until he unpetrifies a millennium later to find that the land around him has changed to a rather unrealistic extent, and almost all of mans constructs have rotted to non existence. His highschool friend also stays partially conscious as well because he really wanted to confess to his high school crush. Yeah, I wish I was making that up.

Fortunately, that's one of the weakest parts of Dr. Stone because once they wake up, the anime immediately shows off it's strength, and we get to watch the characters build primitive tools. This is because the main character wants to rebuild society from the ground up, and because he's a power fantasy Mary Sue, he has a shit load of knowledge and a good idea of how to accomplish that. This is the majority of what Dr. Stone is about. Getting to see the main character and his allies build cool stuff from what they have, and working up from there, and the cherry on top is that there is quite a bit of realism thrown into what they do, enough at least that the episodes have to put a disclaimer to not try the stuff they do without expertise in each episode. That being said, they kind of take liberties here and there, and while this series tries to be science fiction, it often delves into shounen and science fantasy. Especially with the antagonist of the series, so lets talk about him:

Because I guess every story needs an antagonist, their first mistake after learning how to revive petrified humans is reviving a man who against their goals, and wants to make a fascist new world that is governed by strength. His motivations are far from original, but it's the motivations you'd see from a teenager who doesn't fully understand how the world works. To top it off, he's 10 times stronger than the other characters, experienced in combat, and has unrealistic reflexes that you'd see from other shounen series. After he tries to kill the main character and unknowingly fails, a new goal is set for the main character of the story: Make a nation of science, and build weapons of science that can kill or dissuade the currently untouchable antagonist and his forming tribal nation ruled by physical domination.

If this sounds interesting to you, keep in mind that this is all the anime is. The characters themselves are decent at best, and the story is minimal. But this series knows what it wants to be, and if you are part of it's niche, you'll love it.

Giving you all some context, I used to love Naruto back in the day, but after the time skip, every thing just fell apart, and I stopped watching. A show about ninja's shouldn't try to be DBZ, and a story about a ninja boys coming of age story should at least allow the plot to give the boy some breathing room to develop. Instead we got the clusterfuck that was shippuden.

Boruto, while not perfect, gives you a story similar to what Naruto used to be. You could argue that Boruto is whiny and insufferable, but his attitude makes sense given his age and upbringing, and ... he doesn't take long to mostly conquer his daddy issues, which could be taken as a good thing or a bad thing. I honestly like how he's more laid back and a bit smarter than Naruto was. On the other hand, I don't like how they lazily made his motivation "I want to be like Sasuke!". Still, if it gives him some good moments between Sarada who DOES want to become the Hokage, I can roll with it. I also don't like how his eyes have to be some new hybrid variant that's super relevent to the plot. Hinata's eye trick was simple, cool, and it even gave her cool bulging eye veins. Would that not have been enough for Boruto? Sure, his teammate Sarada also has an eye trick, but they could have maybe found a way to explore th differences between the sharingan and byakugan and maybe allowed the two to work together and get around each others weaknesses.

Most of the other characters are a problem, and until they develop enough I'm going to label them as forgettable ripoffs. The first main villian was absolutely terrible, and the story so far has mainly put the focus on Boruto and Sarada. Sarada is to Sakura what Boruto is to Naruto, and while she is kind of a ripoff, she lacks some of the negative qualities Sakura had, and right off the bat she actually gets opportunities to fight, not only that, she's actually good at it. Let's hope she doesn't get shoved to the side like Sakura was.

The story has it's ups and downs so far, and also has inconsistencies. For example, I'm not sure I follow Naruto's train of thought when he was scolding his kid so hard. When Naruto was a kid he had a super powerful demon fox sealed inside him that he could rely on when shit hit the fan. He comes off as a hypocrite. I'm also not a fan of how Boruto is given a marking similar to how Sasuke got one. But hidden within the worse parts are nice little gems that made Naruto good back in the day. Sasuke's "loser" quote is a good example of this. The story is nothing special, but it does have a bit of charm.

There are also little things I enjoy. Boruto can actually make a rasengan without relying on a clone to help him. Remember how it was hinted that Naruto was supposed to learn that, but they never let him have that? Boruto also seems less rely less on the clone technique than Naruto did. Let's hope he can learn a bunch of new techniques instead of using the same ones over and over again like his father did. I'm also hoping his eyes don't give him a "super powered evil side" like Naruto's fox abilities. I'm also hoping that Boruto will be given the opportunity to raise up in the ranks like his father was supposed to.

Now for the final part: Would I recommend it? If you enjoyed Naruto back in the day but hate what it became, you might find a bit of enjoyment in this...for now. This story could just as easily go south like the original did, especially the first battle in Boruto is a sign of what's to come. If you're not looking for that nostalgia factor the original series did however, I'd have to say no. There are much better shounen stories out there. Here's hoping that Boruto learns from some of the mistakes it's predecessor had.

Oriko magica is a manga that you should only read if your a fan of Madoka Magica, and even then it's barely worth the read. The manga will only explain who the 3 new characters are, and relies on the readers knowledge of the events in the anime. This is all well and good, however whats below is not.

The first thing you'll probably notice when you read this is the bad art style the characters look often awkwardly drawn in. While it could be a lot worse, it could also be a lot better. While the style isn't as bad as the Meguca scenes ... from the anime, it comes a bit close in several instances, like where Sayaka has to duck. The new characters don't look very bad in this style except the small one, but the old characters didn't transition very well.

The story itself itself is alright, and it might keep you reading until the end, but its kind of weak. Oriko's motivations and grand scheme are a tad muddy, and for someone who supposedly has the power of understanding, she kind of sucks at it. Summed up, she's not a very good antagonist. In the end what made me bring the score down to 5 was the ending. No, I don't mean what happened to SPOILER , I mean the cliche afterlife bullshit that came right after it. I would settled for SPOILER, but combined with that? NO. There are almost quite a few things that could have been explained further, like if the antagonists wanted to save the world, why did they brutally involve Madoka's SPOILER in all of it? What took them so long to make their big move? What did Oriko think of her father after SPOILER?

As an extension to what I said below, the characters aren't the best. The old ones act similar enough to how they acted in the anime except maybe Kyouko, but the new characters aren't very good. You got Yuma, a traumatized and slightly sociopathic child who doesn't always have much of a personality.Then you have Kirika, the batshit crazy bipolar girl (or at least she became that way after her became a magical girl) who hated everything but for some half explained reason developed an attachment to the antagonist Oriko, and will do anything for Oriko to stay her friend. Honestly, if it weren't for those things and maybe her wish, she'd be another run of the mill crazy character, and almost is. Then you got the antagonist who often acts like a know-it-all who has a bit of a god complex who I mostly already explained. I'll admit Kirika was sort of likable, and Oriko had a few things going for her. But Yuma? No.

All in all. If you really REALLY like Madoka, I guess give this a read. But you'll probably be disappointed by the time your through reading this.