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Here we go with another super trashy show that I kinda enjoyed even though it’s still pretty trash.

Part of the reason I enjoyed it was its unique protagonist. We’ve had plenty of villain protagonists in anime, but most of them are acting for “THE GREATER GOOD” or for “JUSTICE.” This one is just “Screw it. The so-called heroes did vile shit to me so I’m gonna do vile shit to them back.” He’s twisted and definitely not a role model, but audiences can still kinda sympathize with him, especially those who have experienced sexual assault themselves. There’s a certain catharsis that we get when ... the antagonists get what is coming to them.

Most of the characters, however, are not nearly as complex as Keyaru is. The heroines, particularly, just take a back seat on the Keyaru Train the entire show, both sexually and in terms of plot. Any time we have potential for them to grow for themselves and get a chance in the spotlight they are completely overshadowed by Keyaru hogging it. It kinda makes sense since most of them are his “slave,” but there are times where Keyaru just dips to do stuff (the bad guy is stuff) and not giving them a chance to shine other than as a satellite love interest to Keyaru. The antagonists aren’t very complex either, being primarily cartoon baddies who will either get screwed, get screwed up, or, most often, both, by Keyaru. Princess Flare in particular has a lot of underutilized potential, with only mere hints to her complexity with the dynamic between her two personalities. The closest we get to character development from her is a tie in Manga chapter from the original artist.

Speaking of the artist, Shiokonbu’s character design and art really elevates the show and makes the cast look way more interesting than how they are written. The soundtrack is also solid, setting the wildly-changing tone of the series nicely, with a couple of really standout tracks in the OST. The presentation, though, is very inconsistent. As with most shows by TNK, the ecchi scenes and a couple of fight scenes are very well animated, but it will often be stiff in others, just like the tone of the series. This wildly changing tone can be a detractor for the series, going from torture one scene to wacky, often sexual, hijinks the next, like it doesn't know what type of story it wants to be. It also seems to do a lot of mental gymnastics to bring us to a lot of the edgy scenes, with one scene having an important city getting brutally pillaged because Keyaru was like “I forgor.”

However, the ridiculousness of the plot and its VERY twisted sense of humor is part of why I enjoyed this series. The author wrote this series to see just how far he could push the envelope and he certainly succeeded. It’s definitely not a safe series and it is very much aware of it. It is DEFINITELY not for everyone and fits pretty well on certain adult websites, but it is certainly something to remember in the sea of forgettable fantasy and isekai. It’s pure trash, but sometimes it’s okay to get a kick out of some blatantly edgy trash.

If I were to describe BASTARD!! in six words, they would be "THAT'S F**KIN' METAL AS F**K, DUDE!!"

While not perfect, LIDENFILMS have begun to redeem themselves from the trainwreck that was the 2016 Berserk anime. I liked BASTARD!! for similar reasons that I liked High School DxD as well as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's dumb. But it's dumb fun and catches you off guard with the sheer amount of 80's metal references it gets away with, even more and less butchered by the localization than JoJo, mostly being lawyered up by spelling changes and adding hyphens in the subtitles.

BASTARD!! runs itself on three rules: ... Rule of Cool, Rule of Funny, and Rule of Sexy. This is a double-edged sword for BASTARD!!. On one hand, it's hard to take the plot seriously when, most of the time, it revolves around Mr. Schneider thinking with the brain between his pants, most fights just revolve around who can out-asspull the other, and the Fourth Wall is about as existent as it is in Deadpool. However, the sheer amount of these asspulls keep the audience on their toes, as surface level of a technique as it is, and its often juvenile sense of humor got a chuckle out of me more than a few times.

It has a solid cast of characters, even if it is mostly composed of Dark Schneider, the women fawning over Dark Schneider, and the EEVILLL villains. Their motivations are kinda vague and most of the women (and my boi Ninja Master Gara) are won over simply by Mr. Schneider's gigachad energy, but they carry the plot nicely and are entertaining to watch. It is also very interesting to see the dynamic between ultimate sigma male Dark Schneider who gets mad bitches and his total simp side who is forced to respect wamen, mostly by Yoko, who is alright as a female lead and we get to see her fend for herself a fair amount of times for a muggle character, even if she is kind of a generic character that the female fanbase can relate to and mostly overshadowed by more interesting waifus like MY BOI NINJA MASTER GARA who steals the show with his charisma and has his fair amount of time in the spotlight even if he is sidelined late in the series as a live commentator for Dark Schneider, the other (actual) waifu that steals the show, Arshes Nei, has an interesting story arc late in the series and (while her backstory is a bit sus by today's sensibilities) the character is quite relatable for an anti-villain.

Overall, BASTARD!! is great dumb fun and has a solid ensemble of characters, entertaining well-animated fights, and I almost forgot to mention the ABSOLUTE BANGER of an OP by coldrain. This first season ends on a pretty abrupt cliffhanger but is mitigated by the fact that 1. you actually want to watch more, and 2. Netflix only is making us wait two months for season 2 instead of NINE DAMN MONTHS FOR JOJO I AM STILL MIFFED ABOUT THAT!

Overall, BASTARD!! is the guilty pleasure anime of the year. If you are a fan of silly dark fantasy stories I would suggest giving it a watch.

"Do you remember that episode of Power Rangers Time Force when the villainess had a date with the Blue Ranger? They made an anime about that." -SilvaDour on Kitsu

This series goes way beyond somebody's serialized Red Ranger/Rita Repulsa crack fic and becomes honestly one of the most wholesome series airing this season.

What really sells this series is the amazing chemistry Fudo and Megumi have despite their faction difference. In fact, I enjoy how the villains are not quite that different from our heroes and, when not fighting each other, have some funny moments when they are genuinely nice to each other [aside from one ... of them trying to take over the world ("OF COURSE!") and the other trying to stop them], whether they realize their secret identities or not. Getting to see how the heroes and villains live their daily lives and interact with each other is a treat. The plot isn't that complex and I wish the series would delve deeper into trying to resolve the conflict between these two factions instead of doing a "status quo reset" most of the time this relationship is nearly discovered, especially with the romance between Desumi and Fudo, but it is still incredibly fun to watch and good for your heart amid a sea of trashy ecchi.

A lot of anime have the villains be completely unlikable or unrelatable (looking at you, Redo of Healer) and this anime has both heroes and villains that are incredibly likeable, except Desumi's dad, I don't like him (but that's one out of a great ensemble). We even have a trio of top-tier waifus in Haru, Desumi, and HECKING MISAKIMMMMMMMMMM

Sorry, I lost it for a second. Where was I?

If I had to fault this anime on something, it would be its action. For a tokusatsu series, there seems to be a drought of well-animated fight scenes here, aside from a handful of mostly comedy scenes. However, it makes up for it, for the most part,
by its focus on wholesome slice-of-life comedy, which it does very wholesomely. However, there are a couple scenes where I was expecting a well-animated beatdown where the studio just cut to the victims being beat down and was slightly amused but mostly disappointed.

Overall if you're looking for a wholesome slice-of-life show (especially if you're a fan of tokusatsu or the westernized Power Rangers, which I am not, but I still thoroughly enjoy this show), this is the one for you.

Imagine a mediocre chicken wing dipped in a high-scoville sauce.
That pretty much describes this anime.

Under the sheer amount of ecchi content that actually had to be TONED DOWN from the light novel (which encroaches further into straight-up hentai territory the further you go into it), lies a by-the-numbers fantasy series. And while even the anime makes High School DxD look like HeartCatch Pretty Cure in terms of raunchyness, the fact that Basara is related, in some way, to half of his harem makes it even more awkward.

The biggest flaw with this series is that the characters are just so generic. Basara's basically your typical ... light novel/harem/hentai protagonist, whose sole character motivation, it seems like, is to protect the girls. While Basara has more of a backbone than, say, Issei Hyodo, at least Issei was a much more interesting and unique character with cooler powers than "magic sword" and "The excuse for the sheer amount of softcore porno scenes in this series."

The same can be said for most of the main cast. While Mio shares more than a passing resemblance to Rias Gremory, she's not nearly as likeable or interesting as her, being just a typical fiery tsundere who wears out her "I'll kill you 100 times" catchphrase faster than you can say it, and Yuki is your typical childhood friend character/Rei Ayanami clone who spends the entire series making Mio jealous. However, I actually really liked Maria a lot. Her trickster personality was actually quite endearing and Kira Buckland really nailed her performance as her.

A couple of the side characters were actually some of the standouts in the series. The position of best girl easily goes to the school nurse Chisato, who strikes a nice balance between cool and flirty, not to mention catering to all the right fetishes, except for the one where she's, you guessed it, related to Basara. I also really liked Yahiro, who's a really good "best friend character" and has some really cool moments near the end of Season 1 and also has a great performance courtesy of Ray Chase.

Overall, Testament of Sister New Devil is a really mixed bag of some decent ideas and a pretty solid fantasy action series, but its extremely generic overall, and it doesn't tickle that certain spot as much as its content wants you to. If you enjoy shows like High School DxD and Date A Live, you can get some enjoyment out of this series, but otherwise there are much better alternatives that do what it tries to do better.

Two anime genres tend to be targets for complete dumpster trash: isekai and gacha game adaptations. However, Princess Connect Re:Dive manages to pull off both very well.

One of the biggest sticking points for this anime has to be its plot, which is VERY slow-paced. Most episodes are told in an episodic manner and we really don't get much plot until episode 10. Further, it focuses a lot more on slice-of-life than most other isekai anime do. While I wish the anime progressed the plot more in the slot it got, and we really need a season 2 to see just how good the plot's going ... to be, I still very much enjoyed seeing the group dicking around and eating food, not to mention meeting the colorful supporting cast.

I can see why Yuuki is a very polarizing character. He makes Aqua look useful as he's often a side character in his own anime. However, I still kinda like the way they portrayed the "blank slate" character archetype here. Instead of having him be a boring stoic, they make him basically a 17 year old toddler, speaking in sentence fragments 90% of the time. While this creates many hilarious moments where the girls have to save his ass from monsters, it also allows the stronger female cast to shine out even more and gives opportunities to see him gradually become less of a monster punching bag, which are quite satisfying.

Speaking of the female cast, they are plentiful and, most importantly, have distinct character designs, which definitely comes from this being adapted from a gacha game. Pecorine, in particular, steals the show with her infectious personality and intriguing backstory, even though I, again, wish they delved into it more before episode 12.

What definitely sets this apart is just how detailed this anime is, from the backgrounds to the animation. Fights don't come often, usually once per episode. But when they do, they're some of the most gorgeous fight scenes this side of Ufotable. They could have just phoned this in for a quick buck to promote the game, but they very obviously didn't. Between the gorgeous setting and colorful cast of characters, this is one isekai I would actually get hit by a truck to enter.

You know you came for the "plot." The last thing you expect, however, is for there to actually be plot.

On the surface, it's an anime that shouldn't work. It's about a horny teenager who somehow manages to run into the one group of girls who want to ride his "Boosted Gear." However, the sheer ridiculousness of everything that plays out in this anime manages to make this work.

It takes the extra step in adding the extra flavor that the Ecchi Harem genre needed that School Days failed to do. While School Days tried to half-ass themes about the consequences of infidelity, DxD throws that ... all out the window and focuses on a guy who literally wants to become a "harem king" and who thinks about sex so much he can literally undress anyone he wants. While the horniness of this anime can get overbearing at times, with the anime finding any excuse to show a titty, it never gets boring by any means.
With Akeno's Darkness-level amount of casual kinkiness, Kiba's bromance with Issei, Asia being absolutely adorable, Rias's constant "God I wish that were me" moments, and Koneko constantly stating what's on the audience's mind, there's a lot to love.

It helps that the English Dub of this anime is nuts, and definitely the way to watch it. It isn't on the same level as Ghost Stories or the Devilman OVA's, but it is obvious that that the dub cast had some serious fun dubbing this horned up joyride, and it deserves all the recognition it recieved. While Josh Freeman shot himself in the foot by basically being IRL Issei, he really captured the spirit of the character, and Josh Grelle fills the role just as well. Jamie Marchi is definitely the definitive version of Rias and I'm glad she was is still around even after several of the cast has gotten shuffled between BorN and Hero.

The animation isn't the greatest. The fight scenes are okay, but this is TNK we're talking about. If you expect anything other than the boob physics to be S A K U G A you're gonna be disappointed. Thankfully, it looks like Passione upped the ante after they took over with Hero, and while the new character designs that are closer to the Light Novel artwork may get some getting used to, I find them to be much better overall, as TNK's designs look a little too similar to some of their other works, with some characters such as Raynare looking like they could be put in School Days and no one would notice.

While this is definitely a "turn your brain off" anime, as no real woman would consider getting into the pants of someone like Issei, it's a fun ride for anyone interested in a fantasy anime that's quite raunchy but a whole lot of fun. I would highly recommend this.

Some anime you recommend because of its engaging, thought-provoking story, others for its insane production quality and animation, others for its great cast of characters, others... for kicking all sense of logic to the curb and being so bizarrely stupid that it's hard not to be intrigued by how we got here. This is the latter.

This is definitely an anime to watch with your expectations set WAY low. I expected to be just bored to death with all the fanservice slice-of-life garbage and I was thoroughly surprised that this anime had a semblance of a plot. The big problem is that the anime tries to ... be some kind of deconstruction of the harem genre while at the same time falling for the same tired trappings- weird filler and way too many gratuitous boob and butt shots. Most of the dumb stuff thankfully happens within the first half of the series, and by episode 6 we actually get knee-deep into the affair plot.

I had a hard time really sympathizing with most of the characters, because they make so many contradictory actions it's not even funny, it's hilarious. Let's go character-by-character

Makoto- This guy is extremely dense, like most harem protagonists. Except, instead of being completely oblivious everyone in his harems' feelings, he accepts EVERYONE'S feelings and proceeds to bang everyone for increasingly inane reasons, except for, of course, the one girl who needs the emotional support the most. Not to mention he ignores pretty much all the advice of his friends. Sekai tells him not to get too aggressive with Kotonoha? He tries to hit 2nd base by the second date. Literally every one of his girls tell him to stay faithful? Naw, let's have a four-way with three random bitches.

Kotonoha- I want to feel sorry for her. Her "boyfriend" is cheating on her and half the school is harassing her for it. But she's perpetually in denial when it is perfectly clear that her relationship with Makoto has completely collapsed and either does jack about it or goes completely mental and doesn't ask a parent, a teacher, a counselor, a friend, any decent human being, or literally anybody or thing for help with her crisis.

Sekai- Sekai is either manipulative or she's just too dumb to realize that her actions are not helping him at all in his relationship with Kotonoha. She offers to guide him in getting to second base with Kotonoha, but, for some damn reason decides it would be okay for that to lead to them having sex. She lets her feelings get in the way of her helping Makoto get closer to Kotonoha, and then completely forgets that and throws a fit when he finally does.

Setsuna- I liked Setsuna more than most of the other girls, and she seemed relatively right in making sure he stuck with Sekai, even if her actions against Kotonoha were way too cold, but even her way of making sure he stayed loyal was to offer to sleep with him.

Otome- Yes, offer to sleep with that one guy you kind of knew in middle school and barely had any relationship experience with. That will certainly go your way. Except it somehow works because Makoto will sleep with anyone who asks him to.

Yuki Ashikaga- 404 Cross Days not found BestBoy.exe can not be run

The ending is certainly surprising, but it is yet another bizarre tonal shift from wacky harem slice of life, to serious NTR drama, to slasher horror. Still, it's a unique ending for a very unique anime. It's like The Room. In fact the plot is kind of the same as The Room. Is this the anime adaptation of The Room we've been waiting for?

All joking aside, this is another very good anime to watch while inebriated and/or with a bunch of friends who want to watch something really stupid. This anime's not that good and the production quality is fairly decent but not exceptional, but this anime is a 12 episode trainwreck that has to be watched to believed

Once upon a time there was an anime called Sword Art Online. I never watched it, except for, like, a few minutes of it and never really picking it up again. It looked kind of generic. Bland male protagonist, hot looking love interest, a bunch of other cute girls that don't really stand a chance. Didn't really stand out.

But this anime has a 6 foot tall college girl masquerading as a less than 5 foot tall loli dressed in pink fighting in a battle royale video game with a just as pink P90. Now Sword Art Online has my attention.

SAO Alternative doesn't really stand out ... in terms of its plot. Like JoJo Season 1, it's a very straightforward plot: "Pink Loli plays Fortnite". A few sideplots show up, including a major one where a character is trying to replicate the "People Die If They Are Killed" mechanic, and a minor one where she meets a few school girls who have the opposite height complex as she does, but it often takes a side line to the main one where its just her and the friends she meets along the way playing the game.
It doesn't have a complex story like Fate/Zero and Code Geass with five million plot threads and character arcs that wrap together nicely, but many anime, including its bigger cousin, try to replicate that and fail. GGO thankfully sticks to its guns (pun intended) and tells a simple, yet entertaining story.

It's animation doesn't stand out either, though several key scenes do look pretty good, not to the point of "sakugasm", but pretty damn good. The soundtrack is also pretty good, but not "I'm gonna go listen to this on repeat ad nauseum" good.

The best part of this series is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. We live in an age of anime that can't decide whether to be goofy or serious, which is one of the big gripes I have with Darling in the Franxx. Sure, SJ2 does introduce a pseudo-antagonist, but it rarely negates from its little goofy tone it has going. Even when it does take itself kind of seriously, it's in a very nonchalant way and doesn't hesitate to crack a joke when it starts getting a little grim. I mean, the anticlimax ending of SJ2 would have baffled me in some anime, but in this one, I laughed my ass off.

Overall, it's a simple, yet effective anime that may not blow your mind, but it will leave a dumb smile on your face.

Isekai anime have a tendency to be bland popcorn anime that exist mainly to indulge the authors' fantasies of not being a mediocre light novel author. This is definitely not the case with Vision of Escaflowne, which virtually perfected the isekai genre long before Sword Art Online popularized the genre and made it what it is today.

The best thing about Escaflowne is how gracefully the anime aged. While it didn't hurt it got a remastered Blu-ray release that Crunchyroll used instead of some crap VCR rip, *cough* Futari Wa Pretty Cure *cough* the amount of detail in even something as simple as the backgrounds look ... breathtaking. Its reminiscent of how some modern anime like Fate/Zero or Your Lie in April blow us away with how much effort was made on the pristine details of the animation, lighting, sound, and backgrounds.

The plot and characters are really great too. It doesn't shy away with having characters with dirt on them, going so far to have a major protagonist involved in an affair. Like Casshern Sins and Devilman Crybaby, its cast of characters don't go to waste. For example, I expected Dilandau to be a throwaway antagonist that would be killed by the halfway point. I was then shocked to find he would be a key part of the climax of the show. Conflict with internal and external forces are a key part of the show, which they fully embrace through the surprisingly good last episode. The ending of the show felt kind of rushed, in due part to the fact there was 13 additional episodes planned that got axed, and some ideas felt kind of shoehorned in, with some of Zaibach's powers feeling kind of BS like "luck blood" and their power to control fate, and the affair I mentioned earlier doesn't have as much impact as it probably should have above that "it happened". Nevertheless, Escaflowne does amazingly with what its got.

The sound design is pristine, furthing cementing the series as an anime that refuses to age with an amazing Yoko Kanno soundtrack with such a rich orchestral sound it feels John Williams-esque, giving a boost to an already epic-feeling anime. I swear, Sunrise and Yoko Kanno in the 90s is the golden bullet that today would probably be ufotable and Yuki Kajiura.

Overall, Vision of Escaflowne is a series that deserves the praise it gets from fans of classic anime. It aged like fine wine from a sound and presentation standpoint and has a complex plot and characters that is miles above the genre it helped create. It may have been a dream or vision, but it was a damn good show.

So, you've probably seen Crybaby if you found out about this. The big question is "How's the OVA's?" The answer? "Eh?"

This OVA takes basically the first part of the manga where our wimpy hero becomes the hero that Japan deserves, Devilman, and drags it out ad nauseum. Crybaby had the right idea condensing the part this OVA adapts to a single 20 minute episode, because its littered with boring exposition and flashbacks that you are likely to skip. Despite the lengthy runtime, we don't get a whole lot of development from our main characters, much less side characters like Miki, who were absolutely spoiled in ... the Crybaby adaptation

However, the presentation is actually pretty good. Action scenes are smooth and have surprisingly good impact and it still looks really good despite being from 1987. Not to mention the delicious amount of gore. This is the 80's after all.

If you are to watch this, watch the dub, because the excessive swearing and one-liners is what most of the enjoyment of this otherwise mediocre late 80s slugfest comes from. However, when the characters aren't being more hammy than a Boar's Head, particularly during parts with exposition or parts where the plot is making an attempt to be serious, the delivery is quite wooden. At these points, the Japanese dub is actually much better, and some parts where the dub overdid it, such as the "I'M DEVILMAAAAAAAAAN" scene, the original actually sounds really cool. But the original language, without the swearing and overacting, just makes the underdeveloped characters and plot in this simultaneously bloated and thin OVA more obvious.

So just pop a cold one, turn your brain off, and enjoy the condensed 80s in this pretty fun romp.