Back to iridi's Profile iridi's Profile

This show squandered all of its potential. It started off strong, with an interesting premise, beautiful art, and a colorful cast of harem archetypes that would no doubt get fleshed out into full people along the way. The opening is also a banger.

So you know what it did?

Immediately threw out the premise, kept each character locked to their singular core trait, and straight up did not show the most important parts of each episode. The show cuts to black to avoid having to depict anything more complicated than characters talking to each other and more than once resorts to still drawings (especially in later ... episodes). The MC also acts wildly out of character at random points. I'd praise her for being able to be more than a singular trait, but it instead just comes off as bad/inconsistent writing.

The show has roughly 5 cases that the Pretty Boy Detective Club investigates, with each lasting 2 or 3 episodes each. The investigations are all nonsensical with the kids proposing insane or supernatural causes and more than one of them go completely off the rails. That would be fine if the show wanted to go a supernatural or absurdist route, but it doesn't. It follows real life rules and conclusions of each case are largely mundane (if incredibly stupid) while also trying to wax poetic through a heavy helping of cheesy monologues. It takes itself too seriously. It does not actually describe how large portions of each storyline get resolved, instead skipping the climax and going directly to the epilogue. And nothing that happens in previous episodes has any weight on later ones save for a "sentimental" flashback sequence in the finale.

Don't worry, though: it also has a nice healthy dose of anime pedophilia. 12 year old who exists solely to sexualize his legs. 10 year old with a temu Hatsune Miku crossplay flirting with adult kidnappers. Middle school girl forced to wear a playboy bunny outfit "to go undercover". 15 year old betrothed to 8 year old so they can have a running lolicon gag. Scenes of middle school girl getting a nude massage and a bath. Bisexual pedophiles rejoice at the gender diversity!

There is no pay off to any of this. Like... there's multiple massive conspiracies introduced that could be really exciting to explore but they are all promptly ignored. Loose ends are never tied. I stuck it out on the assumption that surely even with the flaws in its story, its flat characters, and the uncomfortable elements there would be SOMETHING by the end that would make it all worth it. I willingly consume dogwater anime and can usually find something under L'Essence du Shít that is redeemable. Instead, I came away from the finale wishing I'd watched a One Piece Filler-Only compilation.

Save yourself time and skip this.

I picked this up from the library without knowing anything about it except that it looked like standard shonen fare. It turns out it isn't but it does have similar themes.

There's a high schooler whose parents were killed by a demon and now he wants to become an exorcist. He hunts down an eccentric man named Beethoven who runs a "church" (not a church, just a group of exorcists for hire) and tries to convince him to take him on as an apprentice. Beethoven says no, guy insists, gets hired as a cleaner with the implication that if he does well he could be an ... apprentice, yadda yadda. High schooler gets his own musician name at some point: Brahm. Everyone who is an exorcist has the name of a famous classical musician. There's a reason for this, but I'll leave it up to you to decide if you want to read the manga to find out.

Everyone is bishonen. There are battles sometimes, with lots of flowery visuals and musically-named attacks, but the story focuses more on the characters' relationships--all of whom are archetypes you'd find in a mediocre mid-2000s shoujo manga, despite this being from 2015--and is very obviously josei. But not particularly GOOD josei.

I will say that the art is nice and the music motif could potentially be very fun if it had more space to shine. However, at only 2 volumes, the story ends just as it's starting and I was left with multiple questions. On the bright side, the short length means that even though it's far from a masterpiece, it doesn't feel like a time sink to finish. If you just need something to do while waiting for the bus, this wouldn't be a bad choice.

The main character, Yase Hiiragi, is a run-of-the-mill idiot which I personally find to be a really unlikable trope. He's clumsy and constantly tries to stop his brother, Karasu, from selling people yokai because they frequently result in less-than-desirable circumstances, but rather than coming off as kind-hearted, he's mostly just annoying. He's pretty oblivious about everything related to yokai and ends up wanting to meet his father who Karasu keeps hinting (or sometimes outright saying) is supremely evil. If he wasn't the main character I'm sure the others would have kicked him out or straight up killed him as soon as he first blundered. At ... one point his brother locks him up in a cage to keep him out of the way and honestly I agreed full-heartedly with that decision despite the manga trying to make it seem like a bad thing.

The other characters aren't particularly outstanding either--none of them are BAD per se, but you've got the standard mysterious boy who turns out to be a weakling/god-tier combo, his worker/servant who tries to be the voice of reason, a couple mostly-forgettable yokai, and the big bad villain Daddy Issues.

The story feels like it has some pacing issues but isn't too bad, just feels kind of amateur at points. The art is actually pretty good and the diversity of the yokai is fun. Some of them are the standard kind of human/kemonomimi creatures depicting famous folklore characters like a tengu, but you've also got things like a guiding paper lantern, a spooky wall that sucks people in, and a literal storm cloud to break up the monotony of a Pretty Boy cast. It's a shame the story aims for a big overarching good vs. evil plot because the author does a good job with the yokai side stories. I wouldn't mind a more episodic kind of story sort of like Mononoke.

Overall though it's a mediocre series and not really worth the time unless you've got nothing better to do.

To be clear, I don't quite know if this film is supposed to be telling a story or not; however, the amount of effort put into this is evident and the visuals are fantastic. They don't follow the music but they're fast paced, ebbing and flowing, covering a range of mediums including ink, pencil, pastel, and watercolor (plus possibly more that I couldn't differentiate). Everything is drawn by hand, frame by frame, in both black & white and in color. It's kind of amazing how well animated it is considering there are a lot of traditional animations out there that end up really disjointed looking ... even without switching between tons of different tools. I'm probably biased because I used to animate when I was a kid and have a soft spot for work-heavy pieces like this.

The music was fine. Nothing special. It's the kind of vocal-less track you find in art films that doesn't stand out but isn't bad. It complimented the art in its own way.

I don't know how much enjoyment someone could get out of this if they don't care much about animation/art and are just looking for a story (or music) so maybe skip it if you're not interested in the tools/mediums themselves.

This series is dark and surreal but overall very good. The characters are cute but have no morals, killing or abusing anything that bothers them. The art is simplistic and reminds me of a children's cartoon at times which adds to the air of "innocence" that the story seems to give off despite being very grotesque underneath. At the start of the series it doesn't seem like there's any over-arching plot but some chapters have call-backs to the previous ones so eventually there's something tying it all together, though this was a bit confusing to me when I first started reading since I wasn't used ... to the style.
Definitely would recommend this to anyone interested in dark comedy, surrealism, or "mentally ill art" (if that makes sense).