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+This is a spoiler-free review+

Solanin is a manga by Inio Asano, who is widely known for his work in Oyasumi Punpun, so if you have already read that one you can have an idea of what to expect. Solanin is not a happy story, yet is not entirely depressing. I cried, yes, but I laughed as well. Just as life. On its basis, it tells a story about a young couple. They love each other, yet they feel heavily the pressure of what they are going to do with their lives. The manga revolves around them, their dramas, their friends and their families.

The story is ... as good as it gets. It’s not a complex story, you won’t have any trouble keeping up with all the events. This doesn’t mean it’s not well written, rather that the story is told with enough elegance to keep it deep yet concise. As I already said, the story follows a young couple trying to survive. While it begins with their daily lives, the story starts quickly unfolding about what the future stores for them. The universe is believable and fleshed out, giving the story a nice realistic and relatable feel. Whether is laughing or crying, the storytelling won’t let you go. The manga is only 28 chapters long, so you can easily read it in a day.

The characters are perfectly fleshed out, each one with their own personality and unique characteristics. In general, the cast is really charismatic so you won’t have trouble feeling attached to them, even when some of their decisions can get to the point of being irritating. This helps to the general feeling of the manga and creates lovable yet flawed characters. I can’t elaborate that much because a big part of the enjoyment is getting to know these people at your own pace, but trust me about the quality of the writing here.

Asano uses here his trademark style, a semi-realistic style that mixes well with the story. It’s a pleasure to see, especially the stunning backgrounds. The drawings are also incredibly clean, the panels are never too overcrowded or overcharged. The structure is also really neat, allowing a with-the-flow reading experience. The expressions also stood out to me, which play a big role in transmitting the emotions in the more sentimental scenes. Whether is a carefree smile during a meeting with your friends or a sharp cry of grief in the light of the moon, the expressions do an excellent job in telling you exactly what everyone is feeling. I swear to god that in one of the sadder scenes the expressions alone were enough to make me sweep.

In general, the story is really enjoyable. Sad, yes, but in a good way. The comedy is well played and the pacing is enough to keep you interested but never too heavy. There’s never a dull moment or an overcharged one, the first chapter settles a tone and a rhythm and it sticks with it. It might even steal some tears from you, but my point here is that the manga is never a torture. It gets extremely emotional but never depressing, which is my favorite thing about the whole work.

In overall, it’s hard for me not to give it a 10. The art, story, characters and general feel of the manga are just flawless. These aspects are not game changers that break from the barriers of the medium because the manga knows itself and strives for perfection in a simple way. There’s nothing that is not properly executed and so one earning a 10. Is a definitively recommended read. Just in case, I must clarify that the +18 etiquette is important. There’s nothing heavy about it, maybe a few swears and nudity like, one time. But the themes are designed to resonate with someone who’s of that age or more. The anxiety of a new life as an adult is masterfully presented and you’re probably not going to like the manga as much if you have never felt that.

(NOTE: If you´re looking for a unique aesthetic and an unconventional, more realistic or sort of, story in an anime, then you might want to just skip this review and watch The Tatami Galaxy. The show can really talk to you and become an instant favorite even with its flaws. In another hand, if you´re insecure about what you´re looking for then you might want to read this review before going ahead)

The Tatami Galaxy is an interesting show. The art style might ring some bells if you have seen Ping Pong the Animation or Kaiba, both from the same director Yuasa Masaaki. It´s based on ... a novel from Tomihiko Morimi, which I’m yet to read, but it shows that the story is wasn´t designed for an anime and the series storytelling must go to unconventional places in order to deliver the story correctly. The show follows our nameless main protagonist during his college days. He joins a club and his hopes for the perfect student life are crushed by the circumstances. While I don´t want to spoil anything, it’s important to remark the main mechanic of the show. The show kicks off with the protagonist joining a club in the first year and dealing with this choice until his third year. When we begin the next one, he decides for a different club in the first year and a different story unfolds. This might not sound that realistic as I claimed at the beginning, but bear with me. The storytelling changes further into the series, nonetheless knowing this mechanic is better to not be caught off-guard in the beginning. That is all that there is to say regarding the plot, apart from celebrating the ending as it's probably my favorite part of the show.

From now on, the story keeps developing with a number of recurrent cast members. The stories often sound like that might actually have some truth in them, but with a narrator that is obviously exaggerating what is happening for the sake of comedy. The way on how these unrealistic stories occur in a college context give the series some kind of realistic feel, it´s the kind of tale you would hear from a dizzy classmate while resting in campus. While the character development is almost inexistent apart from the main protagonist, this is not a bad thing. The characters don´t evolve, the audience just learns more about them and their past actions take a different light. This is a really cool concept and one of the strongest points in Tatami Galaxy. The art is also really striking and one of the main reasons why I started reading about the show. And it doesn´t disappoint, it stays true to its unique style until the end, even mixing it up with photography at some points to create an even more interesting atmosphere. The connection between art/plot it´s also really clever, hard to realize to some extent but really cool to discuss. The OP and ED also live up to the rest of the quality of the show, both gorgeous in audio, visuals and meaning.

In the end, Tatami Galaxy comes out as a puzzle. It´s hard to grasp at the begging, but in the end everything (from the plot to the art) combines into a coherent big image. This is probably the main reason of why the show became so popular, the episodic format tends to be weak in coherence and this show uses that to its advantage. But, of course, there are also bad things.

The first thing is a detail, but it can be a relevant one, especially if you are reading the subtitles/listening in any other language other than your mother tongue. The talking and monologs get fast, like real fast, and it´s really easy to get lost in track and miss precious information. The pause button is going to be your friend in these situations, so don´t be afraid to use it. Of course, this is a circumstantial detail, but still important. Then there´s the middle chapters. It would be cruel to call them bad because they maintain quality, but the storytelling just fails in these ones. We start with an episodic format and end with a coherent big image, so it´s no surprise that the middle ended up suffering. The pace is slow, the stories are not that interesting until later on and the characters fail to use all of their potential as characters. The finale makes up for this joining the stories, but the middle was sad to watch for me. I would have given the series a solid 10 if it weren´t for these episodes, but it´s also true that the show just wouldn´t have worked without them. It´s also true that the experiences in these stories just didn´t get me as much as the other, so it´s highly probably that you might feel some kind of connection with them and thus enjoying them much more. There´s also the fact that the man in a dress “joke” is thrown away a few times, yet it´s not played for laughs. It´s more of a part of the plot than a transphobic joke. It might bother you anyways, so watch out.

So yeah, it´s a good show. It has superb art, truly multifaceted characters and a finale that wraps up the plot in a brilliant way. With storytelling flaws at the middle and some unnecessary details, but still worth the watch.

Dir en Grey has some good and artistic MVs, but this wasn't one of them.
This video was just a mix of gore and sexual images without a clear meaning (maybe rape, I think), nothing else.

I was really uncomfortable the first time I watched this, especially the sexual attack to the little girl. Maybe if you like gore you can find this enjoyable, but I can't find the amusement in seeing a mild aged man almost rape a child.

The animation was alright, the style good. There wasn't an attempt of a story
The song wasn't my favourite of the band, but that's my personal opinion.

JoJo´s Bizarre Adventure (JJBA, for short) is a manga series by Hirohiko Araki, spawned in 1986 in the shonen jump and still being publicized in the ultra jump. With more of 25 years of history, it has maintained popularity and quality during all of the run. It only had a short series of OVAs around the year 1993 and it never got a proper series until 2012.

The show follows the adventures of the Joestar dynasty, a family that is constantly caught in epic fights for their lives and their worlds. There have been 8 protagonists already, all whom share the JoJo nickname, and their stories ... have last for more than 200 years already. Thus, the story is separated in 8 arcs, one by each protagonist and interconnected with some recurrent characters, plot lines, and concepts. The anime has already 3 seasons (with a fourth in the horizon), covering the first 3 parts, but here we are talking about the first one.

This show bursts in imagination. The story follows in the first half Jonathan Joestar against his evil stepbrother Dio Brando and later Jonathan´s grandson Joseph Joestar against a group of old gods who are responsible for the supernatural events of the first half. While the concepts are mostly common and uninteresting when heard (vampires, a power mixing martial arts with respiration and sunlight, resurrected Aztec gods, etc…) the show handles them in unexpected and really engaging ways, keeping a fast pace. The aesthetic is a really important aspect, almost destroying the natural structure and colors of the characters and backgrounds for the sake of aesthetics. Similar even to Spanish painter El Greco works (1541), where the emotion of the situation is showed with unnatural images filled with an emotional energy that transmits directly to the viewer. The author, Araki, it´s closely inspired by the renaissance and pre-impressionism, which results in really artistic results in the most iconic shots. 80s music and fashion are also a big inspiration, which shows in the extravagant clothes of every character and the regular musical references in the names. The animation follows the manga closely, which is always good and rare in today´s industry.

Overall, is a pretty solid series. It worked as a gateway to the manga for us (which in our opinion, reaches a much higher quality around the 6th and 5th arcs), but it´s enjoyable as a standalone piece. It has a transphobic joke around the middle of the second half, sympathetic Nazis (this in the context of pre-World War II) and the next season can be disappointing if you expect the speed of the first season or respectable female characters (that the first season does quite good for the times when it was written), but it’s still a fantastic series as long as you´re aware of these problems. It´s a wild ride and you can enjoy it.