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The animation quality is kinda so-so, but the voice acting is actually pretty good and the natural interactions between the characters make up for any lacking in the animation. A relatable/believable story stands on its own merits as far as i'm concerned.

What i find appealing about this show is how it deviates from the Disney-esque fairy tale "helpless female protag falls in love with persistent man" narrative that saturates the market these days where being manly is synonymous with sexual predation. The kind of narrative that has the potential to teach a generation of boys really bad social habits.

In the first episode the MC is ... shown to be just that, a boy pest that can't take a hint, although a few minutes in and we observe him having an epiphany where he realises that actually he is in fact impacting upon another persons life. Without being spiteful the male protag proceeds to healthily keep his distance whilst keeping busy with other "things". Although for the first half of the show the male protag does exhibit signs of "friend zoning", it isn't really explored as a social concept before the proper character development kicks in.

Unrealistically, those "things" do unfortunately happen to be the low brow act of developing friendly relationships with key female figures in the school body that are all designated within the narrative as high school sweet hearts. Though the show never really does anything other than playfully tease the harem (because all the girls seem swooned by his social competence, despite being a certified stalker), it is at least not actually a harem show.

In short the interactions between the characters are all quite believable so it was just nice to watch things unfold. It's just a shame the show felt "luke warm" throughout most of it with no real highs or lows, mostly just 12 episodes of "romantic" tension. But it was nice to see a show that demonstrated/illustrated that it's best to let relationships develop naturally and meaningfully.

This show is basically what you get if you rip off the opening sequence of Mushoku Tensei and follow it up with the universe lore of Shield Hero, but whilst both of those anime are arguably two of the most loved shows of the Isekai genre and this sounds like a recipe for success this show almost completely misses the mark on what makes an engaging story.

After the standard prologue showing us how the MC is a loser before embarking on a journey of self-redemption, the MC is immediately provided with a means to "cheese" progress (a gaming term common to RPG's used to describe ... exploiting a method of grinding out XP/stats unnaturally quickly and safely) which allows him to achieve powerful skills with basically no effort; as well as inheriting a stash of maxed out equipment. All of which he can transfer between his original world and the "other" world. 12-24 prospective episodes of character development and world building are effectively skipped in order to fast track the MC into the big fights.

Despite the show seeming to take itself quite seriously, the real world is cartoonishly biased against the MC as a shallow method of providing him with an abundance of scenarios in which to show off his new found god-like abilities. Needless to say it is difficult to maintain ones suspension of disbelief whilst the show is struggling to figure out whether it wants to be a serious fantasy action show with actual meaningful takes on the nuance of friendship and politics or just another bottom of the barrel harem where everybody loves him because "he's nice". A 50 year old Disney-esque notion of a hero prince that is nice to fantasise about, but not actually relatable to anyone who has graduated growing their first pube.

About 6 episodes in and the show does take a step in a better direction. The show seems to get some level of self-awareness now with the humour particularly becoming meta in respects to the MC and his immediate entourage being a ridiculous set of "characters". Ironically, at this stage, it's actually the side characters who become the most relatable and enjoyable to watch because they actually behave like normal humans.

In the closing episodes we start to see foreshadowing of what kind of (real) challenges come with being an actual OP individual with legitimate god-like powers. Such as how to form and maintain genuine bonds of friendship and not just scaring everyone you meet. It's just a shame that the first nuanced and deep piece of story telling is simply teased at the end.

The highlight of the show, considering its lack of intellectual content, is probably the art. The characters are largely hyper attractive which is reflective of the source material, Korean Manwha. It's a shame then that the 2D action animation has been side lined for CGI. As if the initial impression of the show wasn't bad enough already, it commits the ultimate taboo in animation standards. Fortunately, the CGI becomes increasingly absent as the show progresses, but it's just one more wrench in the works for a show that could have been so much more than an ego service. I don't blame anyone for dropping this show after 2-3 episodes, though it did sort of redeem itself later with its humour and side characters. I mostly watched it through because there's not a lot else happening in this Spring season of anime.

Yofukashi no Uta has a lot going for it, it feels like a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. First off the sound/music is atypical for most anime, incorporating hip-hop as its choice of music, but it's very tastefully done and gives the show a very modern feel which resonates with the theme of the show mainly happening during the cities night life. Also the voice acting is insanely good and the characters really come to life and feel like actual people instead of just dolls being forced to interact as can be the case with some poorly written anime where ... the characters are overly polite, shallow and almost vacant.

The art is also somewhat unique aesthetically and often transitions seamlessly between standard and expected levels of detail to short, moody high definition scenes at key moments. The sound and art have clearly been directed very well because the overall execution feels extremely satisfying throughout. It's extremely consistent. The show does not rely on many of the usual tried and true tropes found in anime that elevate bad anime into being more widely and easily consumed, it stands on its own merit. Which is always a pleasure to discover as it hints to actual writing being done rather than just a series of set pieces (panty/bedroom exposure intro, MC perversion redemption episode, beach episode, etc, etc).

The fantasy lore element of the show is somewhat surface level where it comes to concepts like vampires, but appears to be that way intentionally because the real juicy element of the narrative is the slice-of-life-esque exploration of what it means to fall in love, what it means to be human, what it means to be happy, what it means to be a friend, what it means to be mortal, what it means to be true to yourself and other existential themes. So whilst the show does revolve around a 14 year old middle schooler getting caught up in soft-core ecchi moments with an overtly attractive vampire, the themes are more intellectual and philosophical.

The show definitely feels like it needs a second season as there is so much more room to explore the side characters. The show doesn't exactly end on a cliff hanger, but it is open ended and the surface level exploration of the vampire lore leaves plenty of room for depth going forwards. The strongest part of the season are the middle episodes, the final 2-3 are more about exposing the fantasy aspects of the narrative (IE the vampires) and setting up what happens next/later; so it will be a shame if there's no follow up.

So in summary this is a very tidy and respectable watch overall in spite of the ecchi content which supplements the story rather than service being the central theme. The music is refreshing, the voice acting is amazing, the writing is original/authentic and the characters are extremely likeable and relatable. The show is also very funny, but sometimes the comedy comes at the expense or suspension of disbelief and makes most the characters seem uncharacteristically or arbitrarily aloof for almost no reason when it comes to them making certain choices. But that's pretty much my only substantial criticism.

At first glance this show looks like your run of the mill generic isekai, it certainly has the MC character design and art aesthetic to go with the territory, but there are actually a number of things that set this isekai apart from others which i wish to highlight should this interest anyone.

The foundation of the MC's motivation(s) stems from a betrayal from the ones he trusted most in his original life. Despite being an honest and decent person who had loyally served his feudal lord, he was later betrayed by those he was allied with because they feared his strength/power and it being turned ... against them if he didn't feel like continuing to tow the faction line. For this isekai, the reincarnation is not the traditional "from a modern world to a fantasy one", but one from a more medieval world of "super natural powers" into a world of "classical fantasy magic". So he has some minor advantage in worldly knowledge, but nothing particular regarding "technology".

Being born into this new world using his own ability he doesn't appear to have inherited this new world's power, but it doesn't matter because he's retained his old abilities and summoned familiar's contracts which serve him just as well, if not better. Whilst he wishes to hide his true nature as one of the strongest individuals alive when it comes to beyond human powers, he doesn't want to take a back seat entirely as a nobody; he still wants to flex himself, but to hide behind someone else more powerful than him as a kind of decoy or mask so that he doesn't attract so much attention that he gets killed off again.

His first challenge is to overcome family politics to ensure his position within an academy of advanced learning for which he must compete against his 2 other brothers despite multiple handi-caps due to a lack of magical aptitude. The second is to set the stage to be able to hide behind a key individual. As this is occurring, some of this worlds politics start to make themselves known and this upsets him enough to cause him to start gradually taking action against it. The suspension here is that the MC is once again walking down a route that would result in the same ending he wished to avoid; because he refused to allow injustice and would expose himself trying to expose it.

By the final act of the season several twists become apparent. Some genuinely interesting political and ethical dilemma's become apparent and the tropes of what an isekai protagonist is and does become truly flipped on their head and i don't wish to spoil it any further than beyond the fact the last 3 episodes really deviate from the norm into some partly original anti-hero type writing.

The season ends relatively tidily, without a major cliff hanger, but does leave room for a sequel which i hope does come because the story has genuinely become interesting and unique at this point. In summary the sound and art design is neither here nor there, but the writing starts off mediocre and grows exponentially in depth. A second season has the potential to have a strong narrative if it actually continues to pursue the nuances of ethical and social dilemma's that the MC has started to be presented with. What it means to let a person truly grow for themselves by allowing them to experience adversity instead of resolving it all for them, what it means to trust a person who might be a potential threat in the future, what it means to sacrifice the few for the needs of the many. Etc.

I think the first thing that people will notice about this show is its absolutely superb animation quality, followed by its equally fantastic sound design. It's not very often you here a chorus of people applauding a show for literally sending shivers up their spines at multiple points throughout. I don't really think you can fault either of these elements of the show, but if there's anything negative to take from this it's that this is where most of the shows clout resides. The writing/narrative is a tad less impressive.

To get one thing out of the way, yes, the show is an isekai, which is ... neither here nor there, jokes abound regarding isekai shows even amongst isekai watchers and it's not particularly clever to go after a show simply because it belongs to a genre that has a poor reputation.

The show revolves around our protagonist Cid Kagenou, an individual that trained his body to the limits and apparently exceeding those limits so spectacularly, that by the age of 16 he could go toe to toe with mercenaries with years of government, military training and experience (because apparently that's possible when you use your judo to brawl with biker gangs). But what's the point of an isekai if we don't get to have a little arbitrary power trip. Cid Kagenou becomes bored of our universe and commits quasi-suicide because he couldn't handle the fact that no matter how much he trained his body he could always die from an atomic explosion. This is a tad loopy so maybe the show was right to portray him as batshit insane when he turned to self-harm because he wished so desperately for the existence of magic, before eventually having his fateful encounter with truck-kun.

The next stage of the show follows a series of 4th wall breaking meta jokes about what has just happened and how silly our protagonist is, including him making up a story about a secret shadow organisation to form the basis of an antagonist that turns out to actually exist. Whilst not outright saying it, Cid Kagenou has a serious case of Chuunibyou which is enabled further by his childish fantasies inadvertently coming true and propelling the joke forwards episode to episode. It is made apparent that Cid was initially aware that he was "playing around" until it turns out his made up enemy is real and he decides to double down and follow through with the ruse. But this is where things start to fray at the edges and the show loses cohesion.

Kagenou expresses a point when his own organisation is also eventually revealed to the authorities, along with "his" antagonists, that he's neither on the side of good or evil; and will shoulder the world's blame/sins to achieve his ultimate goal. We're not told what this goal is, but it's left to us to assume this must mean "defeating" the infamous "Cult of Diablos", our initially designated antagonists. Making Kagenou an anti-hero in this way is a clever dodge from certifying him as actually another cliché hero after all, but this just seems to be a cop-out to explain away Kagenou's seemingly increasingly arbitrary decisions. Kagenou's main drive is having fun and challenging his martial prowess whilst making loose attempts to help his "harem" of make shift assassins overcome their own collective demons. Despite essentially making it up as he goes along, it doesn't make sense that he would also intentionally sit his organisation between the good and bad factions like there was no incentive to cooperate with the innocent strata of law and order where ever they operate, rather than antagonising everyone wholesale. Even though his plan to develop his persona relative to manga clichés is vague and general, there should still be some basic logic applied here, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason and the show starts to become increasingly discordant.

Initially much the Chaos and destruction is caused by other factions besides our protagonist's and we have the application of Shakespearean Dramatic Irony to know that Cid isn't malevolent because his goal isn't to actively go out and hurt anyone innocent. But his unwillingness to step in when seemingly innocent individuals become corrupted or manipulated just so that he can later fight them "for a challenge" shows us that maybe he's not so benign after all and maybe the anti-hero tag we assigned him was on the generous side as far as titles go. This also becomes apparent when a family member of one of his organisations members approaches both his ego and alter-ego and he feigns ignorance about their relationship with little to no explanation as to why other than "he felt like not doing that". But it's so subtle that it's an open question whether it's intended that we think Cid is actually not a very nice person at all.

As the episodes go on and we're witness to Kagenou's ever increasing display of power (tripping), the choices our MC makes as Kagenou are selfish even by the standards of an anti-social parasocial, which makes him ever more difficult to relate to; and his choices as Shadow to "not care" about appearances or collateral at any level also breaks our suspended disbelief because it makes the narrative feel "wishy washy" and undefined.

Ultimately the show misses proper character development from the side characters that would provide so much content and context for the rest of the show. Since i haven't read the source material it's hard to tell with this is just a case of important content getting unfortunately cut in the translation from one medium to another, which is just a conceded thing that happens in the industry. The show is worth recommending on its production value alone, especially if you like swords and magic themed action. The story is... far fetched but cool when it gets going before trailing off with a cliff hanger. Although we got the long awaited battle between the MC and the teased "strongest fighter in the country", which was fantastically animated, it was not exactly satisfying as far as conclusions go; and whilst i enjoyed it because it ticked some basic boxes for me, i have mixed feelings recommending it to others unless they also share an interest in those same specific low brow boxes.

Kumo Desu ga' starts off with a refreshing shonen protagonist in respects to the fact that they're female. It's tasteful in the sense that this isn't thrown in your face throughout the whole thing, though you'd often forget that "it" is female on account of being an androgynous monster for 99% of the show. This kind of sets the tone for the whole affair as having a lot of potential to hit a lot of boxes we don't often see in an isekai; and marking the tick just slightly outside of each. With its only redeeming feature being a plot twist towards the end.

Whilst the ... protagonist is a charming enough character that guides us through the show with a laid back comedic attitude, this sits in stark contrast to the original persona of said character before getting isekai'd. This glossed over fact kind of haunts you through the entire show and for some reason the show keeps making a point to remind us that the original female lead was actually someone remarkably dull and a victim of bullying despite not actually elaborating on why the current MC has different character traits. You'd be forgiven for thinking these were two completely different people. I haven't read the LN/Manga so i'm not aware if this info was mistakenly omitted in the translation into animation, but at least if it was elaborated that the MC in fact had a joyous alter-ego they kept for online or a hidden Chuunibyou syndrome or something, you wouldn't constantly ask, "but who the hell is this person i'm watching right here".

The progression feels nice because it's non-linear, but the fights are consistently the same recipe of fighting a tougher opponent only to win through some arbitrary mechanic beyond raw stat padding; and exploiting a level up mechanic that basically allows you to recklessly damage yourself because you get a "new" body each time you progress a level. Allowing the writers to give a false sense of danger when ever our hero gets hurt, only to explicably recover to the point of re-growing entire lost limbs (this happens a lot).

The last bug bear is "the other half" of the show which follows the lives of the MC's classmates who were also isekai'd along with her, but managed to spawn outside of the labyrinth our MC is stuck inside. This does a fantastic job of expanding on the world building that would otherwise be stuck exclusively in innumerous ambiguous looking dark caves. But as the show goes on it becomes increasingly disparate as we eventually come to understand that these two sides of the same story are actually occurring at different times, ~15 years apart. Making the second half of the series incredibly confusing and frustrating to follow.

The best and more original part of the show is the part where we see the MC interacting with people and towns as a monster once outside of the labyrinth, but this is short lived.

All in all, the show manages to just provide the barest minimum to keep you going only to end what feels like right before the best bit, where everything is about to be explained before the stakes are raised, presumably, once more.

Oh yeah, and at the risk of being "that guy", the CGI is god awful.

The premise of "a NEET MC being manipulated by a conventionally attractive female antagonist into playing a VR game in order to use them to get revenge on someone she confessed to and were rejected by" seems to be a story that's been done half a dozen times already and I started watching this show to see if it was in fact one i had already watched years ago so i could tick off the title on here, but it turns out this is actually a relatively recent release (spring of last year as of the date of writing this).

Whilst i really did not enjoy ... the opening episodes of the show because of how utterly unrelatable the MC is, (We're talking Shinji from Evangelion levels of insufferable here) there were a number of redeeming features worth mentioning. The supporting characters were well designed and the meta level humour is also well executed so it's almost a shame that you have to basically tolerate the main character to consume the rest of the decent content.

Since i thought this show was a different one to what it actually was, i went and looked up some info about it and made some rather surprising and interesting discoveries. This anime was produced by studio ENGI, an otherwise unremarkable, small studio; except for the fact that they also made the anime Hataage! Kemono Michi. A story written by the same author of none other than Kono-fucking-Suba. Whilst this was a surprise because the character designs/animation were more reminiscent of other more renowned studios, especially when compared to the more recent shows under ENGI's belt, like Otome Game Sekai wa Mob ni Kibishii Sekai desu that were just... objectively bad in both animation and how 1 dimensional the show was.

Studio ENGI definitely seems to have "a type", though. As the majority of shows under their belt seem to fit the theme of comedic subversions on the Isekai genre. Certainly Kyuukyoku Shinka fits that bill starting on the same tone as the infamous title Re:Zero and to a lesser extent, SAO. In that being transferred to another (fantasy) world, digital or otherwise, does not necessarily provide special privileges as a matter of course; and that the replacement world is just as likely to be as challenging to live in as the current one and the player will basically be the same unambiguous nobody as they were in real life.

I'm 5 episodes in and the story is finally starting to progress, that's a little slow in my opinion as you really want to break the viewer in by episode 3. If you don't like comedy, that's really the lynch pin to this otherwise psychological show that follows no consistent rules. The show sometimes gets away with "lamp shading", a literary trick of waving away nonsense logic to sustain suspension of disbelief by intentionally raising awareness of it being ridiculous and making a joke out of it. It fits, mostly, because the show is a comedy after all. But it's not very clever about it.

At the risk of spoiling the story too much, in summary, the main character is not very relatable, being downright insufferable at times, being there exclusively as a punching bag for jokes about never making assumptions. The female antagonist isn't far off that mark either, being the unreasonable cause of the MC's woes. It's a shaky foundation upon which stands a perfectly unassuming house. Episode 6 is next for me now and if it turns out the character progress over the last 2 episodes was a feint (as it often is in comedy type shows like this), i'll probably drop this.

The first thing I have to say about Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru (My Dress Up Darling) was how refreshing it was to watch a show that wasn't coy about handling mature content in its fullest. As someone who has enjoyed dozens of Slice of Life and other genres with romance in them one of my major/frequent criticisms has always been about how childish they have been in their representation of people expressing themselves romantically or sexually. In this respect, MDUD was a breath of fresh air and even incredibly nostalgic for myself looking back on those years behind me because the scenes ... depicted are absolutely relatable and not the cliché binary of either full blown male fantasy service or lame and only ever implied romance that never manifests "because holding hands is lewd".

MDUD manages to show an awful lot without ever actually treading into tasteless ecchi territory, nothing explicitly happens at any point outside of one accidental moment of being in each others personal space. I would say that you can thank good writing for this; and why this makes for such a good slice of life. Though you would also have to somewhat be in on the whole nerd/otaku culture to appreciate some of the cosplay references since this is also the plot point that brings our protagonists together, the show is not even remotely cliché.

Another nod towards the fact that we have decent writing is the almost complete lack of anime tropes. The story stands up on its own merit without having to serve us junk content piece meal. Whilst there is an episode that includes a beach and an episode that includes a firework festival, they are not strictly "beach episode"/"festival episode" since they do not follow the standardised formula's for those scenario's. They are written in naturally and are believable how they play out. Plus, whilst we do see underwear multiple times, it's not the scripted sequences we've come to know so well; like the "accidental bathroom walk-in" and "girl falls over and exposes panties" scenes.

The only thing that's a bit out of place (because it's never really directly addressed within the narrative outside of one off-hand comment by the female lead about how she chooses her friends carefully) is how someone as popular and attractive as Marin's character isn't swamped with attention. Her character in this respect feels a little far fetched that whilst she does have her (girl)friends and it is acknowledged that she's popular, very little of their school life is presented, so we don't get to see Marin's social life compared to Gojo's, which we already know to be basically non-existent on account of being a recluse since his fascination with dolls has made him a social pariah of gender norms. So this does feel like a rather convenient romance story. I suspect that this level of depth may have been omitted to condense the story, but it feels like the show would have been better off with it because it feels like we're currently only being presented with a snippet/bubble of these peoples (particularly Marin's) lives which detracts from the Slice of Life element. Though we do eventually get to discover a little about Marin's family situation in the final episode. A retrospective about Marin's life in season 2 would definitely remedy that.

I'm not really sure what else to add about the show other than that the art, which is for the most part brilliant, is occasionally erratic in quality. When it comes to the female close-ups and the presentation of attire, the art is fantastic, but also some scenes seem to have a derpy frame rate and the male characters often seem boring/rushed and presented without care. I expect this may have something to do with the shows focus/target audience, but when the show transitions between a high resolution/FPS shot of Marin pulling an expression to a low resolution, choppy shot of Gojo looking dumb founded, it did frequently make me think of that scene in Family Guy where they joke about the animation budget being cut (I hope most people understand this reference).

Generally speaking though, the show was an absolute pleasure to watch. Especially for its mature and largely realistic depiction of the development of teenage relationships.

I'm not entirely sure what Rail Wars is supposed to be or what it set out to do and that's the first of many red flags you'll begin to notice as the show "progresses". I highlight "progress" because the show has no direction so it doesn't technically progress anywhere except through time itself.

First off let me just say that the art is superb. It's not an ugly anime by any stretch of the imagination, but unfortunately that is this shows only redeeming feature. I continued to watch the show primarily because I was labouring (and it was something of a labour to watch this) under ... the impression that a show that is this unique that is also this pretty must have something behind it. That was a misnomer.

The show is a service to/for train watcher's, as well as Japan's world famous national rail system overall, it's also an action quasi-police/detective show, but it's also got an underlying harem plot, it has characters with cookie cutter backgrounds and traits that it tries to make life-like with half-baked incomplete back stories which it stops elaborating on half way through to force some ecchi down your throat. It's an absolute cluster-fuck of ideas all of which all fall short or make absolutely no sense contextually. Why are we suddenly seeing full blown oppai complete with uncensored nipples over and over again by episode 10? I don't know, I thought this was a show about trains; and yet here we are.

The show *tries* with a narrative, we follow some recruits trying to find employment within the national rail service system. Each character has a different goal in mind, one wants to be security, another a driver, one is just following the protagonist as a child hood love interest and another is a child-hood friend working in the system as a waitress (even though she's quite clearly got a career as a sound engineer). By the end of the show we have 4 trainees with a couple weeks experience under their belt helping old ladies find their way through train stations escorting royalty which are being hunted by assassins. At this point you have to wonder whether the show was really developed for the memes. Because it's completely off-the-rails.

It's a certifiable train wreck.

Do you see it? Do you see what I did there?

*sigh* Someone help me.

I think the primary thing that holds this story back is how elementary it is in its execution. Psychological thrillers of this nature are usually quite complex and sophisticated in their writing; and whilst this show manages to pull a Madoka on us by setting up the story using various tropes/aesthetics and turning the show on its head by subverting our expectations of how those tropes will play out (trying not to spoil the opening episodes so i'm intentionally being vague here), the actual show plays out fairly reductively.

The show is fairly shallow, leaving a lot to the imagination/assumed and whilst there are some interesting ... plays based on the character abilities, I feel like the show uses those interesting abilities as a crutch in lieu of better writing. In short, there are tons of holes in the plot that go largely unaddressed, as well as there just being a whacky hard to believe premise that zero effort is made to help us suspend our disbelief over. Whether or not that potential reduction in sophistication has happened as a result of condensing and converting the paper medium to animation (which I appreciate happens a lot) I cannot say as I did not read the novel/manga, but in the end I have to judge the show as-is, rather than the potential of the original story. Since that is what we're watching here.

Because a lot is left to be assumed regarding why characters act in certain ways or do things that aren't exactly efficient or relatable, Nana specifically becomes a rather insufferable character as it feels like she's getting away with a lot more than she should, or made to appear way smarter than the story makes her, but also so are most of the other characters who behave in weird an unrelatable ways (although this may just be an issue with the genre as it's not exactly uncommon for people to question how dumb a certain character has to be to wind up dying in a certain way).

Given that the main reason I didn't like this show was its dodgy foundations, ie its premise and bad characters/writing, there's not much else worth picking apart any further. The show isn't as clever as it makes itself out to be, but the actual animation is fine so the artists did well enough.