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Dec 20, 2023
Kamierabi is like Mirai Nikki if it was boring, looked like Ajin and had none of the charm.
Kamierabi is pretentious all the way through, the art-style, the character design, the writing and the plot - NONE of it is ever developed within these 12 episodes, the anime makes heavy use of flashbacks to go through characters' backstories but it never actually shows more than "he was normal until he wasn't" and sometimes not even that little is given, outside of flashbacks development is never carried out at all.
The art style is atrocious, I don't mean that as in "CGI is le bad" I've watched very
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few shows in that style so I can't comment strongly on how well the 3D is used, but the fact they brought in an experienced director and it still looks bad at times and mediocre at best is confusing, I'm not sure about the production that went into this anime but it seems it was made under the name of a studio with no information behind it (and as such calling it a studio at all might be wrong); character designs are also horrible, it's like it exists to attract cosplayers and makes characters wear their personalities on their sleeves and that's not something that can be explained away as budget issues.
I gave this anime a try at release having heard that it was "the Yoko Taro anime that isn't Nier" and I was disappointed, watching this felt like an actual chore that came every week between all the good releases of this season, sure it feels like it was writing by Yoko Taro but is Yoko Taro that much of a hack? I've never played nor watched Nier and I can't even mention something else he worked in so I'm at a loss as to which this result should be obvious or not, all I got was subpar writing and philosophical takes on God that would make the average philosopher/theologian vomit.
With all that said and much more left unsaid, what propelled me into writing this review was the announcement of season 2, which feels weird as the whole 12 episodes now feel like nothing more than setup, not 50% of a whole story but purely setup, naturally anyone would rather watch the whole thing then waiting for months to decide whether to leave it at that or give the Yoko Taro anime a second chance, but if you ask yourself this question and for whatever reason decided to read this review after watching Kamierabi (part 1) then hear me out: this anime is neither entretaining nor gripping, something that is a death sentence to 'High Stake Games' anime; Mirai Nikki grips you instantly with the characters, Death Parade does the philosophical stuff much better while having a great atmosphere, Kakegurui is just a beast of it's own (Kaiji for coomers), Kaiji which is entretaining all the way with a unique art-style, even mediocre anime like Deadman Wonderland, Btoom! and Darwin's Game have redeemable qualities but Kamierabi has not a single good quality.
With all that said it's all the more frustrating in retrospect, these 4 hours I wasted over 3 months of weekly releases left me sourer than I did watching actual bad anime because this is the work of a bunch of experienced people and it does nothing right most of the time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 6, 2023
There is a trend with Girls und Panzer's mangas that a lot of them will expand on the universe and write entire character arcs that more-often-than-not are completely disregarded by the anime, at which point you - the dear reader - should realise that the mangas are essentially written like sponsored fanfic, and that is not at all a bad thing!
Pravda Senki acts as a prequel to GuP by focusing on Katyusha's rise to power and her saga to turn Pravda into a champion while destroying the defeatist mentality that permeates the Senshado team. Although it is focused on Pravda and Katyusha, the manga
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also shows other characters' arc who become relevant by the time of the anime* such as the Nishizumi Miho and Maho, Erika and St. Gloriana characters (Earl Grey, interestingly). It does a lot to show just how character-focused the GuP franchise can be at times though it doesn't test the limit the same way Ribbon Warrior (another great GuP manga) does.
*with a caveat that some of the character development doesn't exist in the anime and some is discrepant to other mangas, particularly Little Army and Phase Erika
This might come accross as personal bias but I personally found the art-style and writing to be strongly reminiscent of Youjo Senki's manga, the fact both have military themes, "saga" in the title, similar-looking main characters with similar instrospections and ways of doing things, but also how it portrays characters are viewed from the perspective of other characters, I can't write it off as just a coincidence. So if you enjoyed Youjo Senki I highly recommend this manga, though if you are reading this I can safely assume you are already a GuP fan and likely a Youjo Senki fan.
If you have only watched the anime and not read any of the other GuP manga it might be a shock how mature it appears to be at times, sure no one dies or get (seriously) harmed but just allusions to bullying, physical violance and profanity are things the original anime wouldn't dare to even bring up. This unique style however works in the favour of the comic and at times it truly originality and respect to a establishedfranchise. To quote Yoshida's afterword:
"[...]The Girls und Panzer in Director Mizushima's head is "genuine", so the speak. Anything that didn't pass through his brain is nothing more than derivative work. Another person can imagine what Director Mizushima would have done, but that won't make it genuine.
As Such I figured it would be more respectful to the original series to focus more on making the manga feel original[...]"
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jul 2, 2023
Disclaimer: This review is presented "as is" and will not change after (and if) Fate/strange Fake gets a full TV series, nor will this review draw comparisons between the light novels or manga adaptation, it will however draw comparisons between other Fate media.
Fate/strange Fake is in a rather unique place as most people didn't quite expect it to be great but there was hope it wouldn't be horrible, like all Fate anime it is doomed to be compared to what Ufotable has done, like all light novel/visual novel adaptations it is doomed to have a sluggish pace, and like all Fate media it is doomed
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to require homework to understand what is going on - so with all that you'd wonder how this hour-long special could ever do justice to the original story which is riddled with lore deeper than the Mariana Trench, well, you'd be rather surprised.
This special is visually pleasing, I cannot say it is "stunning" or else I'd get stunned by people saying Ufotable did a better job years ago but is everything about battle scenes? Whenever you look at a sunny park it is sunny and the backgrounds really is reminiscent of Nevada, whenever you look at a dark room lit by the moonlight and urban lights it really feels like such, there is never a problem with lacking contrast and generally characters look good regardless of the enviroment they're put in, there is one (1) scene where servants fight briefly and it is anything but stunning, again it does look pleasing but that's not what I should be feeling after seeing two strong servants going all-out.
It definitely doesn't "look like" an A-1 anime, the art style is unique and after the mediocre adaptation that Fate/Apocrypha ended up being the art direction was my main concern for Fate/strange Fake (both are spin-off light novels adapted into anime), I probably wouldn't have watched it on the release day had the trailer not shown a wholly different art direction that is unique to this particular adaptation.
As far as writing is concerned, it's Fate, you either know what's going on or you don't care, even so there clearly was an effort to make pacing good and I dare say it's the best Fate anime to date as far as pacing the story goes. Fate has this issue with explaining entire layers of mechanics and lore and it's always treated as a hurdle rather than an opportunity, Fate/Zero infamously had an hour-long first episode so it could get as much as possible out of the way and it still littered the whole serialization with talks about magic that frankly are irrelevant even to devoted fans, but here everything happens rather quickly and as such you can get a glimpse of the ambitions of all characters while cutting back and forth to show the passage of time and keep the viewer's attention, when (and if) a full TV serialization for Fate/strange Fake happens I believe this special will be treated as an "episode 0" of sorts, given that the post-credits scene is literally Kischur Zelretch (don't worry if you don't know the name, he's just lightly relevant in the whole Nasuverse) and another one of the The Twenty-seven Dead Apostle Ancestors (don't worry about it) choosing the Ayaka to partake as the master of Saber.
In case it isn't clear this whole special is a prologue and it hardly covers the "day 0" events of the story, which is why I believe it was done so well pacing-wise as to help bring in non-Fate fans, if you brush aside all the weird terminology being thrown around you can definitely tell what's going on without having ever read anything Fate-related before, but it being a glorified prologue is also a downside in the fact that nothing happens, it's essentially homework for an anime that haven't been released so at the moment it is only worth a watch if you're a fan of Fate and particularly this spin-off.
Soundtrack! Soundtrack... It's serviceable. I've been listening to FakeIt because it's really catchy but frankly the soundtrack in this special is nothing to write home about, I wouldn't say it's bad but it's hardly noticeable by itself, this is where I fail as a reviewer.
This special is definitely a step-up coming from the same studio that made Fate/Apocrypha (arguably one of the worst Fate anime) and a bunch of FGO commercials, though it's a bit weird to bring up Apocrypha when it's been 6 years and (almost?) none of the staff from Apocrypha worked in strange Fake.
In conclusion, Fate/strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn is a great watch IF and only if you are into Fate, otherwise I can only recommend it if you plan on watching the whole anime when (and if) it comes out, but at that point you might as well put it aside until (and if) said comes out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 26, 2023
It's almost comical to write a review for a 2019 anime that is so popular it's arguably the most mainstream anime that released in the later-half of the last decade, so I might as well put my feelings and biases to show instead of providing an objective review of an anime most people already watched or made the conscious choice to not watch.
If you want a great animation done by the same studio behind the (good) Fate adaptations then this might be for you, if you want good writing (like the Fate source material) then this is definitely not for you.
In the past few years
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Ufotable made a name for themselves, which I consider to be funny because the reason for them to stand among studios such as Kyoto Animation, MAPPA and MADHOUSE is not the Kara no Kyoukai anthology which featured dynamic camera motions with animation over CG backgrounds and such technics that would become iconic of them, nor was it Fate/Zero which put Fate back on the map for the wider weebdom after the horrible 2006 anime and arguably helped nurture one of the most profitable IPs ever made from Japan or even the Fate/Stay Night adaptations which followed where DEEN left off with 2006's Fate/Stay Night, doing essentially everything better and offering an adaptation that wasn't as dragged as Zero's writing and pacing while doubling down on the action sequences and from then on making some of the best battles in modern anime - coming from a Visual Novel nonetheless; no, instead what put Ufotable on that pedestal was Kimetsu no Yaiba, a shounen adapting a manga that was relatively obscure (which is to say no one was actively glamouring for an anime adaptation) which then became their main focus evidentiated by how since 2019 they haven't released a single title that wasn't Kimetsu with the exception of Heaven's Feel 3 which was in the works for a long time.
Now why am I giving it a mediocre score while raving about how it's certainly not Ufotable's best work? Because it is a good show by itself, I am biased as I cannot stand shounen and my experience with the genre is rather negative, but I find myself liking Kimetsu, I liked when I watched in 2019 and I liked it as I rewatched it now 4 years later and still pissed that all they've done since then is Kimetsu and it's that one anime newer weebs run towards to say they don't just watch Naruto because apparently JoJo isn't good enough for it, but I digress - the reason why I enjoyed Kimetsu despite all the flaws that I'll get into down the review I still enjoyed all of it, at not point was I particularly bored or rolling my eyes in agony, perhaps I just found it fun to unwind to the tune of a shounen with absolutely no plot convolution or expanded lore and expanded universes, I shouldn't add but to give context I watched this right after going through all of Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 back-to-back and I came out of it mentally tired regardless of how great the writing and (most) characters and development was, it was tiring, and Kimetsu had none of that tiring brain-usage.
WRITING:
Standard shounen trash, protagonist has a marry life and one day it all gets taken away by a demon who for some reason turns his sister into a demon too, he then decides to protect her despite the risk and fights a Demon Slayer to do so, said Demon Slayer floors him but decides to send him to his master because there is just *something* about this duo; you may say I make the plot sound worse than it is but really how many times did you watch an anime where the protagonist cries at disaster then become strong and even stronger than his peers? It's not a particularly offensive plot but it is unimaginative nonetheless.
Where it shines however is in it's worldbuilding, the world of Kimetsu is well-crafted, the use of Japanese folk context is great and goes well, near the beginning someone points out that the Demon Slayer Corps aren't recognized by any form of governing body, and that consistently carries throught with how they are respected by people in small rural towns but have to hide their swords in bigger urban towns where no one believes in the Demons and the police are just going to stop someone who's grappling a random guy on the street while carrying a katana, it is a world that follows the context given to the viewer, but for better or worse it feels rather small, as in demons are this menace to humanity but only one guy can make more demons and he's too busy disguising himself among humans, or the Demon Slayer Corps probably numbers in the hundreds while having to presumably protect all of Japan (speaking of which no demons exist outside of Japan?), it feels painfully small which makes it all the weirder with how urban people don't even know the Demon Slayer Corps is a thing.
Where the trash shounen writing becomes the most apparent is where characters are concerned, *none* of them are slightly interesting and most of them come accross as one-dimensional, I know the Hashiras apparently get a whole arc for each of them but you shouldn't need to waste 2-3 hours to get me to like a character by showing his sad background especially when whatever you reveal is hardly any different from what you get the moment you meet them, Muzan is not a compelling villain, his two most striking traits are that he's careful (yet weirdly he decided to attack a cabin in the middle of nowhere and left a living demon, he only changes his aura after Tanjiro screams at him, he still kills people for picking a fight with him, etc) and being a megalomaniac (yet hardly ever showing it aside from talking about how ruthless he his to the lower 6), 'Master' is meant to be this leader figure that everyone respects yet he doesn't pass off that impression any more than the Hashira pass it off for him, the fact Tanjiro doesn't know who the Corps' leader is despite there being no indication that the leader's identidy was to be hidden is also a bit weird, speaking of Tanjiro, he's likely the most deep character (which should be the case as he is the bloody protagonist) he approaches the whole morality of killing demons in a somewhat mature manner, he kills them as is his job but not in any sadistic manner, when he kills that one spider-lady with a painless attack it was almost emotional to watch until we watch her sad backstory as well as all of Rui's make-believe family's backstories and then it's trying too hard. Oh yeah about Inosuke and Zenitsu, I don't care about them. As a side-note, isn't it weird how almost all unammed Demon Slayers only wear the uniform and have a generic sword? Why aren't there most people walking around shirtless dual-wielding like Inosuke?
ANIMATION:
The meat of this whole anime, the colourful moments people post on Twitter every other day to say it's the best anime ever done as if pushing down on your eyes doesn't do the same pretty colourful effect, well there is a reason why people say "carried by animation", it really is great, Ufotable really came through with it and watching something like Kara no Kyoukai afterwards feels almost moot (though I'm more focused on the plot), though I noticed CGI use was sometimes excessive, it was never *particularly bad* though it often is very noticeable, you shouldn't transition the character from 2D to CGI in an angle change, or was the angle just that hard to draw? At time it really feels like cutting corners when going 2D would've costed hardly any manhours - then again it is a 26 episode season of a show that they couldn't guarantee wouldn't flop so every hour of work counted.
It feels like I'm going back to writing but to see Tanjiro pull fire breating out of his ass and cut Rui's neck was cool until he was like "actually I cut my own neck before you could cut it" just to get floored and saved by Giyu who effortlessly kills the 11th strongest demon (12th if you could Muzan), if anything the mountain fight was more interesting for Zenitsu which is really funny when I said I didn't care for him - yeah it [Tanjiro vs Rui] is a really cool really hype really well-animated sequence but for me it's almost ruined by the shounen writing.
Ufotable's iconic trademark, the moving 3D backgrounds, are back! And they are as cool as they were all the way back in 2008-2009 but now they aren't nearly as distracting, it's something you noticed if you attentive but it's mostly done well and feels really smooth, that is frankly all there is to say on the matter.
SOUNDTRACK:
I didn't like the openning much less the ending, but the rest of the soundtrack is... alright? I'm sorry I didn't pay as much attention to it as I did to the animation.
CONCLUSION:
Kimetsu no Yaiba is a good anime, but that's all I'm willing to say, it's not great or the best thing ever made and I'm not pretentious enough to say Legends of the Galactic Heroes is, but I'm well-versed enough in shounen to say it really is one of the best, in a way it feels unfair to complain about things such as the writing when it's pretty much part of the shonen genre, I mean what good shonen has released in the late 2010s? Dr. Stone? My Hero Academia? JoJo? None of those have good writing by non-shounen standards so at the end of this review I - the author - feel stupid for wanting to complain about Kimetsu's writing, but really I just want to say it doesn't deserve the spotlight it has gotten, if anything it's one of the best animes of the late 2010s *that too offensive* and thus is easier for people whom we once referred to as "normies" to say they like, lest we forget, that role used to be filled by Attack on Titan.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 20, 2023
tl;dr If you don't want to waste 20 minutes of your life simply skip it, there is a reason it's not considered the 24th episode of S;G 0 despite being released as such.
Bittersweet Intermedio is a Valentine's Day special, obviously there is nothing here that is relevant to the plot or that could be considered a development in any way, it take place sometime after the attack as implied by dialogue but it doesn't matter as characters aren't carrying any sense of urgency, obviously.
One of the strongest factors for Steins;Gate 0 is how it explores different sides of the cast that we couldn't see in
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Steins;Gate proper while also putting them in what is essentially a bad ending and see how they fare, this Valentine's Day special simply doesn't show any of that, instead it shows all the characters (mainly the girls) as the most extrapolated form of their personalities, it's also generally much worse than any of the casual banter we see in either S;G 0 and S;G.
To use Steins;Gate as a comparison, it also had a special (Egoistic Poriomania) though it managed to avoid (most) of these issues mentioned - it was to-the-point and just avoided showing characters that are too one-dimensional outside the plot (such as Moeka), had a change of scenery and a quicker pace while keeping characters to their usual roles and even had a hook for Suzuhara's situation, all taking place after the ending of Steins;Gate.
In conclusion, even if you really do like the characters it is still really hard to recommend a 20 minutes long special about the girls making chocolate and trying to be cute, in all honesty I don't care about most of the S;G 0's girls and couldn't bother to remember their names, they hardly get screentime and when they do it's rarely interesting, so to have a special focused on them it makes it really difficult to care or feel invested especially when absolutely nothing new shows and especially after you just finished Steins;Gate 0.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 7, 2023
Hellsing: Ultimate is an anime that does not take itself seriously.
Almost everything from characters to the setting to the entire plot is pure rule-of-cool, but at the same time it is a "mature" anime in the sense that despite being the definition of edgy it never crosses an invisible line where it becomes grating or childish, if anything the very few ecchi scenes are easily more eye-rolling than the gratuitous gore.
It is something worth noting, if you want to watch this OVA I IMPLORE you to watch it dubbed, the voice actors all nail it perfectly in their roles, especially whereas accents are
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concerned.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 7, 2023
This manga is great if 1) you really liked Girls Und Panzer (more the girls than the panzers) and/or 2) you really love Anzio.
The story follows the Anzio girls travelling around and trying to prevent poverty while making the most out of their Italian catering talents, very little Senshado (tankery) is done and very little money is actually made.
A few things to note, if you liked GuP for the girls then you'll love the writing as all characters featured in the anime are very similar personality-wise in this short manga, the manga has nowhere near the art style of GuP, however it has very
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little of the tanks featured. If what you liked about GuP was mainly the panzers and not the girls then it is hard to reccommend it, but if you loved the girls more than the panzers then it is a great manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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