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tl;dr: A sequel season that focuses less on battles of wits and more on long term plot and character development, for better or worse.

The third season of Classroom of the Elite follows follows Ayanokouji through to the end of his first year at Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School. In the same way that Ryuen was the focus of the second season, this season is focused on Sakayanagi, the leader of Class A. However, she’s very different from Ryuen in that she’s someone that has history with Ayanokouji and is fully aware of what he is capable of, and wants to challenge him head on ... without any pretenses. That only occurs near the end of the season though, so the majority of this season is her simply messing around with Ayanokouji’s class without trying all that hard.

This season continues down the direction that the second season started going down in that the focus on games and tricks is pretty much gone completely. There’s still strategies and planning involved, but they’re more just something happening on the side rather than the core of each arc. There aren’t really any epic twists where Ayanokouji turns things around and subverts expectations or anything like that. Thus, there simply isn’t as much room for Ayanokouji to shine. Furthermore, while Ayanokouji is still manipulative, his machinations are much more on the nice side as compared to previous seasons. For example, there’s nothing on the level of what he pulled when trying to take control of Karuizawa. As such, Ayanokouji has a much softer and less edgy presence as compared to previous seasons. To be frank, I’m not much a fan of that.

The focus of this season is Ayanokouji initiated character development. The majority of what Ayanokouji does this season is simply listen to people’s backgrounds and then respond to them. Ichinose and Hirata’s background comes into focus and they overcome their traumas. Meanwhile, Ryuen manages to pick himself up and come back better than ever. And Karuizawa continues along the path of increasingly becoming Ayanokouji’s loyal pawn. Though the biggest highlight was probably Horikita growing out of her brother’s shadow. Most of the character growth wasn’t all that deep, but it all being intermingled and happening in parallel with everything else going on worked well.

In addition to that, there was also a lot of setup regarding the general state of the academy and where things are going to go from here. I feel that the author, Kinugasa Shougo’s, bad habits are starting to shine through in this regard. In his other works, it feels that a lot of the time he had no idea where he’s going with his stories. He’s great at writing things in the moment and is a master at building intrigue through foreshadowing, but a lot of this build up and foreshadowing goes absolutely nowhere. This has begun to manifest this season. A lot of what was set up in previous seasons has been thrown away in favor of new stuff. And the new stuff is really cool as well. But I’m not sure how much I can trust that this new stuff won’t be thrown away either.

The art and animation are pretty similar to the previous season so there’s not really anything much more to say about them. The OP and EDs are decent enough in terms of the song and visuals. The soundtrack was more intense than previous seasons and I felt that worked better.

tl;dr: A more character focused sequel that channels the strengths of the first season in a new direction.

The second season of Classroom of the Elite is quite a bit different from the first season. This primarily comes down to how the focus is less on winning the ‘games’ individually, and more on the circumstances surrounding them and the long term impacts on the characters involved in them. The first and third arc this season still have special exams and there are still tricks used to win those special exams, but this takes a backseat to other matters and just in general isn’t as impressive as ... the climaxes of the arcs in the first season. The second arc is about the sports festival and though Class D is ultimately the victim of Class C’s schemes, they don’t really execute any major scheme of their own in response.

So rather than focusing on the special exam’s themselves, there are instead two interconnected overarching plot threads at the forefront this season. The first is is the existence of a traitor within Class D willing to sell them out to the other classes. This culminates in the third arc with a focus on Horikita putting a stop to them. The plan is decent enough, but nothing too special. The second plot thread is Class C being much more aggressive in trying to take down Class D as a result of their loss at the end of the first season. More specifically, Ryuuen is on the hunt for the true mastermind behind the class. This culminates in the final arc which is focused solely on this without any other sort of major events as a basis. While Ayanokouji is still the mastermind pulling the strings behind everything throughout this season, compared to the last season there aren’t as many moments where he genuinely surprises the viewer. However, the fourth arc does in a pretty unexpected way and thus hits as hard as the finale to the first season did.

Additionally, there’s a much larger emphasis on fleshing out characters and showing their growth. This season shows off quite a bit more about Ayanokouji. If you read between the lines you learn pretty much his entire background and why he is the way he is. Horikita who was clearly the main heroine of the first season has less of a role this season, though she is still the focus of the second and third arc. In the first season despite her efforts, she was ultimately just an extension of Ayanokouji. This season has her developing as her own distinct character. Karuizawa unexpectedly takes the role of main heroine this season. She has more to her than it appears, but ultimately, not that much more. So all she is is Ayanokouji’s pawn similar to how Horikita was previously. What makes her interesting is that unlike Horikita, she doesn’t really want to be anything more than that. Her character ‘growth’ is simply her becoming more of a pawn. This season also has a larger emphasis on fleshing out characters as villains. Ryuuen shines on that front, though the traitor was also pretty well developed. Beyond that, there are various developments with the rest of the cast, but nothing too major. It’s mostly just hints and things being set up for the future.

The art and animation are solid enough, pretty much the same as the first season. There weren’t really any new character designs that stood out. The soundtrack also worked well enough, but didn’t really stand out. The OP and ED are solid in terms of the song and visuals, and I like ED2 better than ED1, though I prefer OP1. I do miss how the OP/ED in the first season changed over time though, as that doesn’t happen this season.

This manga is about a high school teacher who is also secretly a sorcerer taking on a gyaru student of his as an apprentice. The plot is mostly just random nonsense without any sense of flow to it and is full of plot holes and contradictions. The world building is incredibly generic with the a hodgepodge of a bunch of common tropes and concepts. The cast is also incredibly shallow with character development that doesn’t make much sense and relationships that go nowhere. I could go into more detail, but that probably isn’t a good use of anyone’s time. After all, I don’t think anyone ... actually expects a manga like this to have good writing.

The bigger problem is that the ecchi and comedy in this are barely passable. The ecchi suffers from the art in general not being very good. But even beyond that the framing used doesn’t show things off all that well and the ecchi situations just aren’t all that interesting. The comedy is rarely funny and is very repetitive. As a result of all this, the cast isn’t really likable or worthy of getting invested in either. Thus there’s nothing about it that’s particularly awful so its better than nothing, but there’s just not that much value here.

tl;dr: An ecchi-comedy manga with pretty mediocre ecchi and comedy.

tl;dr: Another iteration of the Shinkai formula, that has significantly messier writing but just as fantastic visuals and music.

Suzume is the newest film from acclaimed director Shinkai Makoto. The background to the story is that there’s a great evil worm sealed in the great beyond, but there are various doors throughout Japan through which the evil can escape. The evil escaping triggers a natural disaster in the surrounding vicinity. There are two gods that act as keystones to keep these doors sealed, and a line of people known as the Closer are tasked with ensuring the seal remains intact and the doors remains shut.

However, a ... high school girl named Suzume accidentally releases one of the keystones, thus allowing the evil to escape from doors all across Japan. Furthermore, said keystone turns into a cat and curses this generation’s Closer, Souta, by putting his soul into a chair Suzume has had from when she was a child. Thus, Suzume and Souta journey across Japan trying to recapture the keystone god and have him recreate the seal, while also closing any doors the evil is escaping through that they come across.

This film is very similar to Shinkai’s previous films Your Name and Weathering with You. It has a larger than life supernatural premise rooted in Japanese mythology but is still primarily focused on the bond between two individuals as they deal with it. It follows a similar trajectory, where the first half is pretty light hearted but things get much more intense in the second. There’s once again a focus on natural disaster’s, in this case Earthquakes, and how humanity deals with them. And once again there’s a single central motif rooted in a simple every day emotion, in this case the feeling of locking the door behind you. At this point, I think its pretty clear that Shinkai has a formula that he’s sticking to. And I certainly don’t think that that’s a bad thing.

However, I would have to say that compared to his previous two films, this is definitely a weaker execution of the formula. The biggest issue is that this film lacks a strong emotional core. This film explores Suzume’s relationship with her aunt who took her in after her mother died, and the guilt that Suzume feels for taking up so much of her life. It also deals with Suzume having lingering trauma from how abruptly she lost her mother and her coming to terms with that and moving past it. There’s also a romance between Suzume and Souta with Suzume’s feeling for Souta being one of her primary driving factors during the latter half of the film.

There’s a lot that the film is trying to do. But ultimately it doesn’t really feel like it did any of these all that well. Nothing really comes together properly. There isn’t really any single primary focus to the film, and as a result it doesn’t feel like anything was focused on enough. The film is still able to hit some strong emotional moments due to how great it is at portraying characters and their emotions. However, its not able to really resonate and get to the deeper level of emotional impact that Shinkai’s previous films have. And thus the final impression the film leaves is much weaker, resulting in a film that is far less satisfying and memorable.

The production values for the film are still unquestionably excellent as with previous Shinkai films. The art and animation are amazing and the film uses them for both incredibly large scale spectacles that bedazzle and smaller scale moments where more subtle elements come across incredibly well. The soundtrack is also still great, though I would put it below Your Name and Weathering with You.

tl;dr: A thriller that is not smart at all, but is still pretty fun.

This manga is about a forensic portrait artist named Hakaru that ends up on the run with a girl named Hoshiko as both of them are being targeted by a killer known simply as This Man. ‘This Man’ is a real life urban legend about how people from all over the world dreamed about the same strange man despite never having actually seen the man. In actuality, it was a hoax intentionally created by an artist, but the myth persists. As far as this manga goes, the usage of This Man is ... basically just a quirky hook to pull in readers, and there’s no connection other than the face of the murderer being the same as the man in the legend. Rather, the story is more centered around Hakaru’s past and his group of childhood friends, all of whom end up connected to the truth behind the murders.

Overall, this is a braindead thriller. There’s more of a focus on twists and turns than in having a coherent and logical plot. The twists are either completely abrupt with little foreshadowing or build up, or incredibly predictable and not surprising in the least. Still, things move fast and there’s always something crazy happening. You’re constantly expecting twists so they’re never really all that shocking, but there’s enough variety to the twists that things are still exciting. One of the main themes in this manga is youtubers that feel justified in doing whatever they want as long as it’ll be entertaining and get them views. The manga doesn’t really do anything all that deep with it, but it was interesting to see this explored in the context of a thriller. The cast is also flat, but Hakaru and Hoshiko still come out as likable characters and that’s enough to get invested in them and the story. Ultimately, the manga is the type where you’re supposed to just turn off your brain and speed through. And in that context I thought it was an enjoyable read and I’m satisfied with it.

The art was good and the character designs are good within the context of the down to earth modern setting. The scanlation is good for most of the manga, but the translations in the second half of volume 4 and volume 5 unfortunately are so awkward that they’re hard to understand at times.

This manga is composed of a series of short stories, most only a single chapter, centered around soccer player Andou Sora. While all of them are at least loosely connected to Andou, he is only the main in the first chapter. Rather, they are from the point of view of people that he has an impact on. Each story is centered around the main character going through some sort of growth. Soccer is a major theme throughout these stories, but there are more stories that are only vaguely connected to soccer than stories where the specifics of soccer are focused on. And even when the ... specifics of soccer are focused on, it’s generally to use the specifics as a parallel to an issue or characteristic in the main character beyond the scope of soccer. It’s nothing like the standard sports shounen.

Throughout these stories, you get to see Andou in different points of his career as a soccer player, all the way from middle school to the end. There’s also a bit of a long-term romantic plot thread involving him that shows up in the stories of several characters that’s pretty cute. However, the stories are completely out of order chronologically. It jumps back and forth without any sort of overarching pattern. The reasoning I suppose was probably variety. The stories that are centered around the same chronological point are often pretty similar, and thus by jumping around that resulted in things feeling less repetitive.

Still, the end result is that there is very little sense of progression. Most characters only have one story and have little to no presence after that. Even Andou only really has a character development in the first chapter, and after that he’s pretty static for the rest of the manga. And with everyone else, as it has to fit their stories into a single chapter, pretty much every story was pretty simple in terms of themes and what it was trying to convey. As such, most of the time it feels less like reading a serialized manga and more like you’re just reading a series of oneshots.

That’s not inherently a bad thing, but it does prevent the manga from being more than the sum of its parts. The various stories in this manga are a mixed bag. Some are great. Some are mediocre. But most are just okay. Every manga has its ups and downs, but generally the stronger parts build investment in the reader that elevates the weaker parts. This manga doesn’t really benefit from anything like that. While the great stories are interesting and have a lot of emotional impact, that doesn’t make the weaker stories any less dull. And that really drags down the manga overall.

The art was also pretty boring and unremarkable. It conveys the story well enough, but I didn’t feel like it had much value beyond that. The fan translation starts out pretty bad. One of the scanlators, Sense, doesn’t know English all that well and thus their translation is often awkward and sometimes hard to understand. The other, Fall Syndicate, seem to not know Japanese very well, and thus their translation has lines that are very different and, in some cases, even completely opposite to the original Japanese, though in perfect English. Thankfully the scanlators that picked it up after them are better.

tl;dr: A character focused soccer manga composed of a mixed bag of short stories.

tl;dr: A manga with a semi-interesting concept but with awful writing.

This manga is about a healer named Lars who is only able to cast the basic Heal spell, but he does so in an overpowered fashion. It can ‘heal’ anything. Armor, weapons, and even buildings, his Heal spell can restore all of them. And not just that, but the healed versions generally come out much better than the originals. However, Lars grew up in a rural village in the middle of nowhere where no one really knew anything about magic or healing. Thus, he thinks all that is normal and he’s just an amateur healer ... without anything special to him. The plot of this manga follows him as he heads into the nearby city of Forton, where he and the friends he makes open a shop where they sell items that he’s restored through his Heal.

I felt the concept of the manga was decent enough at its base level and that’s enough to make the first half of the manga decent enough. However, in terms of the finer details it quickly starts falling apart, and just on top of that the execution isn’t very good. Lars can turn literal trash he picks up from the dump into powerful items. Thus, his expenses are purely the overhead of running a store, such as staff costs. Despite that, he still has a hard time making money to the point he has to cut down on meals because he’s selling things at too high of a price. That doesn’t make sense. Even if his Heal skill always results in high level expensive items, there’s no reason he has to stick to selling them at that price. An explanation is provided that it would look suspicious if he did that and he’s trying to keep his skill a secret. I don’t think that explanation is all that satisfying considering he’s still selling a lot of high-level ultra rare items with no explanation of where they came from.

But even beyond that, there are situations such as Lars wanting to do a raffle of an item for marketing purposes but that getting shot down as being too expensive. On top of that, when desperate for money, they could just sell to other merchants as they did early on in the manga. However, that gets shot down because they’re worried, they’d get lowballed on price. But that doesn’t make sense either as they literally have an item that gives the market rate for all their items. And even if they are getting lowballed on price, that would still be better than suffering through flavorless meals. Especially considering they can literally just pick up more trash to heal without it costing them anything. Sorry to go on a rant, and I usually don’t have much of a problem with plot holes if the core of the story still comes across fine, but here it feels like the core of the story for the vast majority of the manga just fundamentally does not make sense.

The characters aren’t very good either. Lars is just the generic good guy that wants to help everyone. His defining trait is that he’s kind of an airheaded idiot. Other than his special skill he’s pretty useless. And furthermore, he’s dumb enough that he doesn’t even realize the value of his skill or how it truly works for most of the manga. His friends on the other hand very quickly do, but decide not to explain it to him because they think doing so would cause him to screw things up more, which is completely fair. Of his friends, there’s a girl named Minya that seems really cool in the immediate parts after she was introduced. The cool parts of her never really show up again though. Everyone else is pretty dull and not particularly remarkable. There’s a harem subtext in that the protagonist is male and all the main side characters are female, but there is absolutely no romance in this whatsoever. Ultimately, the cast overall isn’t very likable and thus very hard to get invested in.

This is an adaptation of a web novel series. As far as I know, there’s no light novel version either. The web novel version extends past the manga. The web novel has 59 chapters and the manga adapts 41 of them, so roughly two thirds of it. However, the web novel has a very abrupt ending. Even more abrupt than the manga, which at least tries to give some sort of closure. The web novel just stops. Based on the timing, I suspect that the author got an offer to turn the web novel into a manga but the publisher wanted the manga to be the main work and thus wanted him to stop writing the web novel, and he accepted and just immediately stopped writing. That’s purely just a guess though. Regardless, my main point is that this manga doesn’t have all that satisfying of an ending, nor does a satisfying ending to it exist in any other medium.

The art is pretty mediocre and not very good in terms of style or quality. The character designs were also pretty weak, other than maybe Minya’s various outfits.

tl;dr: A fantasy manga that’s purely comedy without anything more to it, though it is really good comedy.

This manga is a gag manga set in a world that used to be the standard heroes fighting demons fantasy but reached a new age of peace and prosperity thanks to the power of smartphones and the internet. The manga is primarily about a serious and earnest young man named Lucas who is doing his best to take care of his younger sister Monika but has a really hard time doing so. In no small part due to a sentient sword she picked up in the forest that ... became her best friend.

The manga is basically just a series of short stories about the various hijinks they get involved in. There’s not really any sort of overarching plot. The largest plot thread is the background of the sword, which has light hints throughout the series but is only really focused on in the ending. The smaller stories also aren’t all that interesting or deep either. As such, the plot doesn’t really matter.

As such, the focus of the manga is purely comedy, a constant and very dense stream of comedy. There’s a decent variety to the comedy too. There’s a decent amount of playing around with fantasy tropes centered around defying expectation. But there’s also a lot of manzai like comedy with Lucas acting as a straight man and throwing out retorts to all the absurd nonsense that’s going on around him. And there is quite a lot of absurdity. An absurd amount of absurdity.

What’s really interesting about the absurdity though is how the writing almost doesn’t actually treat a lot of absurdity like it’s absurd. Lots of crazy stuff happens that you would think is just a one-off joke with no real explanation that’ll never show up again. But then it’ll become a reoccurring thing for the rest of the manga and there’ll be some sort of logic to it established. There are a lot of running jokes that end up popping up in new and fresh ways and the nonsense builds upon itself to reach more nonsensical levels of nonsense. Despite there not being any overarching plot, there’s still a sort of progression to things and that prevents things from getting stale.

There’s also lot of variety to the bizarre traits of the reoccurring cast so by throwing different combinations of them together it results in a lot of interesting comedy. However, beyond that the cast isn’t very good. There were a few characters that were somewhat likable, but no one that felt worth getting invested in. There’s no real attempt at fleshing out bonds of any type. The premise may make you think that the bond between an orphan brother and the orphan sister he’s taking care of would be important, but it isn’t focused on at all. There’s also light romance with a couple girls liking Lucas, but it doesn’t go anywhere. For better or worse, everything genuine has been sacrificed on the altar of humor.

The art in this manga is genuinely great though. It has a very unique art style for manga that looks distinctively more western. It’s also really high quality, so it would be fantastic in a genuinely serious fantasy series. But here its constantly getting twisted into being wacky and that contrast works incredibly well for lots of great visual humor.

Jin is the tale of a Japanese brain surgeon named Minakata Jin that gets sent back in time to the Bakumetsu period. There he uses his modern medical knowledge to help the people of Edo while dealing with the various issues of the era. As such, one of the core aspects of this manga is medicine and medical techniques, with a goal of showing how amazing modern medicine through contrasting it with the medical practices of the era.

This manga is much more detailed and technical than I expected. And to be honest I often found it dull or hard to follow. Stuff like discovering and ... manufacturing penicillin and advances related to that was awesome and really satisfying, but things relating to very specific techniques in very specific surgeries was beyond me. Though I suppose I should note that I am just a lay person with no knowledge of medicine beyond what I learned in high school, and people with actual training and experience in the field will likely be able to get much more from it.

Beyond that, there are several overarching plot threads. The first is centered around time travel. This is heavily concentrated towards the beginning and end of the manga, but it pops up to a small degree at times throughout. Overall, I found this aspect pretty weak. Time travel in general can get pretty bizarre, but the explanation for time travel here I found especially nonsensical. I also found it strange how what Jin did in the past had so little effect on the future. For example, discovering and spreading penicillin 70 years early should have had a tremendous impact on history, but in practice the changes to history were pretty minor. As such, beyond the introduction I didn’t find much of value to this plot thread.

The second plot thread is chronicling the Bakumetsu period. The rapid changes to Japan affected everyone and Minakata is no exception. As such, a good amount of the manga is spent explaining the state of the world and how things were changing and why. However, Minakata is ultimately just a doctor. He meets and treats a lot of important people, but at the same time he isn’t directly involved in any of the historical events occurring. As such, the vast majority of this historical explanation is basically tangents and often narrated rather than actually shown. As such, it was often as dry as a history textbook. Thus, I would not say that this is all that great at portraying the major events of the Bakumetsu period.

However, that brings me to the next plot thread, or rather series of plot threads, the lives of Minakata and the various people that Minakata is involved with. Minakata treats all sorts of people, young and old, rich and poor, regardless of what faction they were in the various conflicts occurring. And there’s always some sort of story to them beyond just the treatment. In conveying these stories, the manga does a really good job of conveying what life was like in the era for various people of all types. This manga doesn’t do a good job of explaining the key events of the time, but does a great job of showing how these events personally affected different kinds of people. Thus, while it’s not all that great of a historical account, it’s pretty great historical tourism.

With that said, most of the characters in and of themselves I didn’t find all that compelling. While their place in the world was interesting, their individual stories were not. Most of the time, it never really felt like the author was trying to do anything or convey anything with these stories. I suppose that’s more realistic, but it’s also more boring. There were very few characters that were even slightly memorable, not counting historical figures. There’s also a romance involving Minakata that goes absurdly slowly and has a really lukewarm end. It also involves a love triangle that lingers far too long and ends up playing into unnecessary time travel nonsense. Due to this, the ending wasn’t really all that satisfying.

The art I didn’t really like. Though I suppose I should note that I’m not a fan of more realistic art styles for manga in general. However, I do acknowledge that such an art style worked well here. And the art relating to medical procedures especially seemed well done.

tl;dr: A manga with a strong and often deep medical focus that can get pretty dull, but that is also pretty great historical tourism.

tl;dr: A midquel that’s kind of fun at times but doesn’t really have any substance of value.

This is an anime that takes place in between Cold Steel II and Cold Steel III. If you have no idea what that means then this anime definitely isn’t for you and there is no point in reading this review any further. This anime was clearly designed for people that are already fans of the Trails franchise and very familiar with it. However, I’m going to be judging this a bit differently from most.

You see, while most fans watched this after having already played CSIII and CSIV. I on ... the other hand decided to watch it in between CSII and CSIII. Thus, I watched this knowing who all the reoccurring characters are and the general state of the world when this was occurring but no clue what what the Northern War was actually about. All I knew about the North Ambria was the stuff you learn related to Sara in CS II and the stuff related to the Salt Pale Disaster mentioned in Sky. And from that point of view, this anime was decent enough. It definitely had major issues and I wish it were better, but I don’t regret watching it or think it was a waste of time.

The first half chronicles a group of North Ambrian Jaegers as they go on a covert mission to investigate the hero of the Empire, the Ashen Chevalier. They are the worst spies in existence though. And they get into all sorts of bizarre situations. For example, they stop a terrorist attack by a bunch of people in Mishi costumes who stay completely in character throughout the attack. Things also flow absolutely bizarrely at times, with certain things being really rushed, but most of the time everyone basically acts like they’re on vacation. I’m not entirely sure what was intentionally funny, and what was funny as a result of bad writing, but overall I found all of this hilarious. Throw in a bunch of cameos and such, and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The second half actually relates to the Northern War. Everyone is back in Northern Ambria who is on the brink of an invasion by Erebonia. This part is much more serious. The plot was a mess. The vast majority of it still has nothing to do with the conflict with Erebonia. Rather, it has to do with some internal conflicts where of course Ouroboros plays a part. However, I have no clue what was actually going on in the final stretch. Maybe it makes more sense to those that have played further into the series, but I was completely lost. And while the first half was amusing, it wasn’t really enough to build up any investment in the new cast, so pretty much all their character beats fell flat.

There was also a heavy emphasis on exploring themes relating to what being a hero means, but it didn’t really do it all that well. It was here that I found it interesting how similar this series is to Akito the Exiled. The obvious similarities are of course that its a midquel side story that features a blonde girl as the protagonist. But it also explores themes relating to being a hero in a very similar manner and botches them similarly. All in all I suppose it was nice to learn a bit more about North Ambria, but there wasn’t really any substance beyond that.

The art and animation overall were pretty mediocre. The anime original character designs were also really plain. Still, there were small details that I liked, such as Crowe reflecting in Rean’s eyes when he was discussing his motivations. Though there were also some major screw ups. For example, using English text in world and writing Yumir instead of Ymir. The OP and ED were decent enough but not particularly good. The soundtrack uses tracks from the games pretty well.