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Wish Voyage is a short music video released from the fictional idol group IDOLISH7. It’s nothing ground-breaking, earth shattering or anything of the like, however, I thought I’d pause to write a review about this AMV.

I am not really one for fictional groups as a whole - I find most of them are tacky, looking to profit off of specific crazes, with limited budget for animation and etc that just makes them have a strange vibe or look, or try to allow the hot anime characters to distract from the poor music, and similar.

This one, however, I found I heavily enjoyed. It was ... snappy and uplifting, the singing was done quite well, and the animation didn’t have any strange edges to it. It was a very pleasant surprise and start of the IDOLISH franchise for me, and it made me smile. I managed to have a little dance around when watching the video and listening to it, and it’s something I actually would enjoy listening and watching again. I may even include it in my playlist.

Most will have the opinion that if you don’t like the franchise, you won’t really enjoy the MV, but I would recommend, IDOLISH fan or not, to give this a go. There is something strangely special about this that gives you a little spark. It’s a fun song, it’s an enjoyable video, and definitely something I would consider a “gem” in the land of AMVs.

Yowamushi Pedal: Special Ride is one of those OVAs where you expect it to be pure ridiculous boring filler for the OVA - and, to a degree, this would be correct. It's a filler of Onoda and Makishima bonding - on Makishima’s decision. It leads to Onoda’s otaku ways almost turning Makishima off of him entirely and wanting to leave, only for the OVA to take us on a new journey across the bike training path.

For an OVA, there isn’t really anything special about it - it’s the same basic premise. Some filler, some laughs, nothing that really aids the plot - it’s essentially ... fanservice of more screen time for the anime. However, Special Ride does so in a way that does not really let the fans down. It’s funny, it’s true to our characters, it’s a giggle, and it’s enjoyable. It’s nice little tidbits to add on to what the characters are like.

I really enjoyed this OVA. It was refreshing in the anime world where it focuses on churning out more and more content for money grabs. This works in the world of YowaPeda and gives so much more depth to some of the characters with nothing more than including some out of plot add ons. It’s funny, I laughed a bit too much, (and, as a Makishima fan, it was great to see more of him, as a main character in this OVA than a side character to the rest of the team).

If you aren’t a fan, there may not be much here for you - there isn’t much introduction to the main theme of Yowa nor the characters but it could be a good place to start and introduce yourself to the universe. If you are a fan and debating watching Special Ride, I would say go for it. It’s got a bit of charm, it’s funny, and it has a decent premise and it’s super sweet to see the way things go out of tournaments and training.

It's a little hard to rate AkaKill! Theater due to the varying nature of each one minute short, however, I can say, I really did not enjoy this.

Whilst crude humour is normally found throughout a lot of these different shorts, and whilst I'm not normally one to mark a show down for the odd joke here and there - AkaKill! Theater has the script writing of a bored author opening a book of terrible crude jokes, picking 18, laying out a story line for them and then having a small handful of actually good content in between.

I think there was maybe four or ... five episodes I enjoyed throughout this entire thing, coming from someone who adored AkaKill! as a whole, concept and the theme of the show. This felt like a massive let down compared to what the original series is - I'm not one to complain about lighthearted humour as part of an add on, but this was just a run down mess of the original characters. Seriously, a good 40% of this series is just jokes about Leone's breasts and then 30% stalker level behaviour from Esdeath.

It got boring quickly, with the first third of the show being the same jokes recycled into different forms of 'storylines'. The four or five standout episodes would have done well to be the entire series with a length of 5-6 minutes per episode.

If you're a fan of AkaKill!, Theater will either be a loved humourous add on to the series, or something to screw your face up seeing what has become of the characters.

I, unfortantely, was the latter. If you're not into crude jokes, probably give this a miss; if that's your comedy style, you'll probably wanna hop in on this.

For 24 minutes... This felt like it took fifty to watch through everything and get to the end of this "fun addition". Just a sad thing to see considering how amazing the original series was.

Look, Midori is not going to be for everyone - or barely anyone in the long run of all anime fans out there. It's an ero-guro, chilling shock-horror of a film/manga. Most people are aware of this anime only due to the fact it was banned a while back in Japan. I watched this as, for some reason, it's a MAL Badges unlockable and I decided to give it a shot.

And frankly, this pales a lot in comparison to the cult whispering legends about this film. It's pretty weak; it relies almost entirely on the shock horror aspect of the source material, with abuse and ... such being the forefront of the entire material. Whilst we focus heavily on Midori, we only seem to focus in quick snippets about the way her new life is going - which, usually, is not in a good format.
This could have been a strange cult classic, one of those that's so bad it's hard to watch but does so in such a delicate way it's almost required watching, but instead, it's a boring trope fest of abuse, ableism and more. Understandable, to a degree with the era it's from, but disappointing and deflating. It isn't even enough to - if you can stomach the themes of the film - to make you feel melancholy and unsettled - it's just bloody, assault, abuse and weird psychic powers that make for some stunning visuals for a brief three minutes before it ends.

Overall, extremely disappointing with the whisperings about this film, and nothing special to the ero-guro genre other than it's infamacy from being banned.

After finishing High-Rise Invasion, I have a lot of mixed feelings.

The plot itself is actually pretty good and I found myself extremely intrigued by it. The Masks were all stunning, with most of them based on horror tropes that were pretty easily identifiable, and I enjoyed the aspect of it. The idea of the dystopian world was intriguing and, for me, brand new and I really enjoyed it. I found a majority of the characters relatable in a way and found myself binge watching it with ease. The psychological horror was very apt, and although it pulled from some overused tropes, it was still enjoyable. ...

Now, usually, that would be enough for me to turn around and easily give it a 9/10, maybe an 8.

But I cannot get past the fan service. I can't. The series is absolutely diluted with it, making your cup of juice taste like water with a single drop of flavoring and making your brain shudder at the mixed signals coming through.

The plot was strong enough. The characters were strong enough. The concept as a whole is intriguing and curious. The fan service was not needed.

And, unfortunately, it came off to me in the way that the creators didn't trust their anime, or trust the fanbase of a relatively popular series, to actually enjoy the show. They had to pull on countless unnecessary panty shots in hopes to pull in more viewers and to be honest, that worsened the anime. If it was kept to be a psychological, dystopian horror, this would be amazing.

But the fan service has left a bad taste in my mouth.

People will say welcome to anime, but oh, I am no stranger to anime. I'm well versed with fan service and the amount in this just takes the mick. It was doing well and it wasn't needed and it just got to the point it actively limited my enjoyment quite massively.

If you can get past the fan service, then this one is for you. If you can't then you're probably better off skimming the horror section for something else.

Chargeman Ken.... Oh, Chargeman Ken. Probably one of the few anime everyone can cohesively say is the worst anime ever made. But oh, that's the charm of the entire anime.

I first discovered Chargeman Ken by this video by Kenny Lauderdale that a friend sent to me — https://youtu.be/uczvIKDcnS4 (this is not sponsored in any way) — and I watched this in disbelief. Surely there can't be an anime as bad as Kenny's saying. It can't be as lazy, thrown together and hash tag as anyone is saying in the comments. It just couldn't be.

So I went with a few episodes Kenny highlighted in the video ... and I ended up on a full binge of Chargeman Ken.

Look : everything about this anime is lazy and the definition of cutting corners.

There's literally no sound effects. There's a scene where a giant statue steps around and the ground shakes but all we have is... Silence as this ground shattering stepping occurs. The only sound effects we do get is a recurring fire sound when something burns, the odd sound of footsteps when Ken runs (and even the, It a 60/40 chance you're going to get them) and the same overused sounds of laser beams as Ken takes down the Juralians.

The script is... Remarkable. I don't know how any of it got to be accepted. One of my most favourite lines of this anime is "and then we'll hold all the children from Earth known as Earth's children hostage". Writer was trying to make it to a word count. Then we have an entire episode where the Juralians have a bunch of school kids eat 'poison mushrooms', can't do their school work because they're so focused on eating them again and - what? That's right, there's an entire episode of the aliens getting an entire young teenage class addicted to essentially magic mushrooms. How about the episode a kid sets an entire building on fire and gets told not to do it again and he says sorry and that's it. With no explanation as to how the people in the apartment blocks are after heavy insinuation people are trapped in there.

There's also the fact these episodes are about 5:27 in length cutting the credits time and there's an entire episode full of filler of Ken practicing fighting with his robot companion for 2 and a half of this minutes for.... For filler.

The script writers went for filler when the plot of each episode is so cohesively away with the fairies that I couldn't tell you what the hell this anime is about without sounding like I'm explaining it to a young child — all I have is "aliens keep invading and the superhero beats them up" because that's all the plot is.

That is the only plot this anime has. At all. It's glorious.

There are frames missing from some episodes with real life notes flashing at the viewer like some strange subliminal targeted messaging. When they make earthquakes or something happens to cause the characters to shake, they literally just have an extended frame and shake the drawing up and down, there's no animation here — calling Chargeman Ken an animation is something I feel is wrong because so much of each episode is just static. It doesn't feel right on the tongue to call this anime anything that involves movement because there's so little of the anime that just does not move.

I also need to know how any of these kids have education, their out of school educationary activities or anything of the sort. The amount that occurs within classes — including the Juralians trying to suffocate an entire class in an underwater aquarium during a field trip for biology, and someone being brainwashed to kill someone during a casual piano class — all of these kids are failing their exams.

I just cannot put into words how much of an absolute disaster this show is. It's a 1/10 anime, the one out of ten rating was created specifically for Chargeman Ken, but it's a masterpiece. It's stunning. It's beautiful. It's grotesque. It's watching a car crash in slow motion.

I ended up giving it a 2/10 due to an extra point for enjoyment. Please watch this. Please grab your friends together and watch this. It's a gem. Treat yourselves.

I ended up stumbling upon this as a dare with some friends. From the generation who found it funny to prank and dare one another to watch Boku no Pico, it's pretty much no surprise that when we met up again, we ended up daring each other to watch yet more hentai.

There isn't really much to say about this series. It's exactly what it says on the tin. Rape gets legalized. As a hentai, I've seen quite a few around over the years and to be honest, it's pretty bland. It exists purely to fuel the ideal of rape fantasies with a terrible script, pretty ... bad animations, and frankly bored the hell out of me. It exists fundamentally for the few out there who's fantasy is this and as a hentai alone has zero stand out, doesn't have anything to withstand over time and again, who wrote the script. It was utter tripe.

If you're looking for a dare for your friends, I'd suggest pretty much anything else. If you're looking for an actual hentai, I'd suggest pretty much anything else.

Oh where, oh where do I begin with Yami Shibai season 8. I've been following this anime since I found it during season 6 and I've binged through it quite a few times and I'm just so disappointed.

The first 3 seasons are astounding, truly something that made me shiver and look over my shoulder and now.... Season 8 is the weak, heat tinted wind that blows through the garden on an extremely hot day and merely taunts you with the expectation of coolness whilst slowly cooking you faster.

I didn't expect too much from this season — since season 4, Yami Shibai has been slowly declining ... in quality on its horror, as to be expected from something that only allows four and a half minutes to actively terrify you. I expect a few bad episodes here and there, you can't provide ten out of ten levels of horror with every stab in the dark that you take, but season eight leaves the viewer horrified upon realising the episodes have ended with barely any context to what the episodes were about at all.

Yami Shibai had a good run of not revealing anything to the viewer whilst still scaring us via the art of hiding, making us realize things are much scarier in the dark — now, I merely turn the light on and can't figure out what was making that weird shadow, scratching my head in confusion as I stare around my room, lost, annoyed and confused. I lost count of how many episodes I spent praying to any deity there was an explanation in the comments of what had actually happened.

It's time to start letting Yami Shibai go; the eighth season is purely about quantity not quality, and the only way this show can now be saved is if the horror greats themselves wrote the episodes. It's painful to see what Yami Shibai has become, after it's long reign of terror, but now the horror lies in its screenwriting, unable to tell a story coherently enough for viewers to know what's occurring. Let the series rest, revive it in a few years perhaps when there's better ideas floating around, but for now, the show needs to rest on the back burner before further seasons tank even worse than what season eight did.

As a massive fan of Takashi Miike, I was surprised I hadn't ever heard of the manga for One Missed Call. Being one of my first Miike movies, I've always had a small soft spot for the franchise, so upon finding the manga series, I immediately rushed into it.

My average manga score was finally starting to increase and look better, sigh.

This was pretty much an insult to Takashi Miike's franchise. An insult is pretty much putting it nicely.

The artwork just seemed lazy with two of the characters in the second volume looking so similar you couldn't tell them apart. The story followed the film ... exactly with literally no differences. The second volume was so rushed, there was no telling what was going on even with knowledge from the film. Again, the artwork just looked simple and basic as though the artist didn't even care about what they were doing.

This was just an overall mess and I can't even describe how much of a mess it was. Watch the films, skip this and thank me for it later.

Line is a manga written by Yua Kotegawa and following school student Chiko as she finds a cellphone. Tormented by someone on the end of the line, Chiko is sent on a mission around her city to save people from committing suicide.

This is a really intriguing manga with a solid concept. It's unique and I've never stumbled across anything like this before. The story was executed perfectly across its four chapters and I'm glad that it was as short as it was. Extending this manga would have caused repetition throughout it and Kotegawa managed to toe the line between repetition and plot point perfectly. Everything ... that happened, happened for a solid reason. The story moved on its own and had me on the edge of my seat and holding my breath here and there - it creates a tension that is not easily shaken off until the ending scenes of chapter four.

I wish the characters had felt more developed than they were. There were a lot of moments in this that felt entirely unnecessary such as the lesbian focus on one of the characters that was dropped almost immediately after it mentioned. It felt out of place and didn't feel right at all. It was as though it was being used for filler which I don't particularly care for as an LGBT community member. If the characters had been calmer about it rather than making an object about it, I would have been fine with it, however, they did not and it was a little disappointing for a manga with such high quality content.

However, overall, this is a really good manga. It's the right length for what it is, it's unique and intriguing, horrifying to a degree and tense. Kotegawa has created a small gem in the jisatsu genre and I'm looking forward to reading more from them in the future.