Back to drewdrawdrawn's Profile drewdrawdrawn's Profile

I love Mu. This grumpy shiba makes me very happy. The art is great. Mu gets a lot of funny panels of just being a cute, silly dog. Plus there are tons of other cute silly dogs.
I really like the human characters too, especially Kori, our protag. Kori has some great lines and the way Mu and her bounce off each other is really really fun. Plus the other owners with their dogs are also super fun, with their own lovable quirks.
This has been a very feel-good story so far and just makes me smile.
Enjoyability gets full marks, 10/10

A classic for a reason.

Openly carrying swords is illegal. The world is leaving behind the samurai. But those samurai still stand, trying to find peace a decade after living through war. Himura Kenshin the Rurouni is attempting to distance himself from Himura Battosai, the man he once was who made blood rain. But the past cannot be outrun so easily. Not from those he's affected nor the clashing in his mind. Simple but compelling.

Touting a pretty well-rounded ensemble cast, Rurouni Kenshin manages to pack itself full of dynamic action scenes that kept me engaged in not only the life-or-death stakes but also the conflicting morals ... between the two opponents. Since Kenshin himself avoids combat and has a strict no killing policy, this means most fights are started out of necessity; the need to protect. This makes Kenshin an easy to root for protagonist. Usually defeated in a domination of their incorrect path in life or morals. What I found myself loving the most about the combat would be in the explanations of weapons during this era. Shown through easy-to-follow explanations of weapon types, stances, and their pros and weaknesses, we get to see the clashing of the previous era with the modern one.

The politics were much more profound than I remembered on this reading. Heavy emphasis on corruption in both the yakuza and government. Many revolutionaries whose stories are rewritten into those of terrorists to fit the politics of the time. There's an overall conversation of justice and the means in which it can or should be achieved.

This is a male focused story first and foremost, so if you're hoping for the women to have their time to shine in fights, you'll be sorely disappointed. For the most part the female cast is well-written but are intended to be sidelined for their paired male character to shine instead. The ten-year-old gets three fights to himself (at minimum) while the dojo instructor doesn't get one. Again, this is not to say these characters are poorly written, but instead heavily underutilized.

Most of my other complaints are personal preferences like thinking Enishi's powers are stupid or wishing for more character death to hammer in how meaningful life is.

Good manga. Great art. I do recommend it.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
This show could have been something interesting if they didn't go in a nasty, pedophilic direction. It could have explored the discrepancy between what adults want and what children need, but instead it was disgusting. The entire time I watched this show I was hoping that the relationship between the two main leads would be about the two teaching each other how a family is supposed to work and heal from it, but it turned into a love story. This would not be an issue if the love were not glorified. But through and through we see this idea that the love ... between the two main characters is fine because they had each other.
Abuse created more abusers. That's already a gross moral, but I can't get over how much this glorifies pedophilia. The only good thing about this anime is the art.