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Can Umino Miyuki get HAPPY? Probably not. I began reading without any context as my first Urusawa work. I saw a YT video thumbnail saying it was his "Most Depressing" work, and decided to read it on a whim to surprise myself. It's hard for me to say that this manga was really "good" or "bad" because it's both incredibly frustrating but also fairly rewarding. The story starts off with an interesting premise, and immediately heaps misfortune upon the main character, Umino Miyuki. Almost everything she tries (with the exception of plot points required for the story to progress) goes wrong, and in almost every ... case, it's out of her control. This is the formula for the entire 254 chapter manga.

However, this constant misfortune is an excellent plot driver, as Umino must dig in her heels more and more to press beyond the struggle between her and her goals. However, after about 70 chapters, I will admit that I was more upset with the manga than anything else. But because you get so upset at everything going wrong, when things eventually go right, it feels like a much greater payoff. However, the ratio of negative-to-positive is around 60-40, with more frustration than payout, especially in the middle. I don't know if I should think it's brilliant or just dumb to write in a style that punishes the reader for liking the characters, all with the intent of making the rewards seem bigger. It's a really weird development style, and I would compare it to "Stockholm syndrome," a condition where a victim develops sympathy or emotional attachment to the person who harmed them or kept them captive over time (I was kept captive by the story, too).

In terms of the ending, this manga has one of those "one chapter" endings. Yay, everyone can be "HAPPY!" Except for the reader. Well... Maybe not. At the end, the story still seemed unresolved in a few places. What were Sabrina Nicolic's (the undisputed champion of women's tennis) true motives for playing tennis? Was she HAPPY with her tennis? What about Hina and Thunder Ushiyama? Were they able to get HAPPY? diD uMInO mIYUkI gET HApPy!? A lot of the characters were developed well, but at the end were unfortunately forgotten about (this may have been purposely). In this case, I don't believe one chapter was enough to round-off the story and make up for the parts that made the manga really frustrating to read.

It's well-written, and I must admit it was hard to put down, but also felt like a constant grind to get through. Pretty much anything bad that can happen will happen in this manga, in a Oliver Twist sort of way. Misunderstandings and heartless villains without a shred of humanity trying to either use or destroy Umino are stacked against her. And how heartless the villains are! But she continues to fight! She must! For the sake of her family. For the sake of her brothers and sisters. No one else can do it; she's the only one! And because she is the only one, a lot can (and does) go wrong for her her and everyone who is sympathetic to her cause. The main problem I have with this is that it's a very one-dimensional writing approach. The villains are evil, and the main character is pure. We have extremely defined "good" and "bad" roles. Her friends REALLY want to help her (but they can't)! The characters are treated too much like characters, and not enough like people, if that makes sense. And I'm over here wondering, "Why is the villain evil? Does she even think she's a good person?" Most people IRL, no matter how evil, think in some they way they are a good person. This isn't a complex work. It's a simple sports story that follows all the main tenets of a simple sports story. So is it bad? No. But is it good? Depends on how much you can tolerate Umino vs. the world. In terms of pure enjoyment, it was... eh. When you write a story that really leads the reader on, it's all about suspending their disbelief, like "wow, this could happen." This manga does that pretty well, but it gets to a point where it's like, "This again? Oh, another bad thing is gonna happen. Oh! There it is." For this reason, I don't say Happy! is written "poorly" but I don't think it's written as well as it could be.

I actually don't like Urusawa's art, and this was compounded by the fact that the villains look SO annoying. You'd hate them even without knowing how disgusting they act. But I should praise Urusawa for making such despicable villains. As expected of the creator of the highly-acclaimed "Monster." Despite my opinions, the manga is well-drawn (objectively). The action is easy to follow, the paneling is pretty much never confusing, and there aren't too many really annoying two-page giant scenes that are hard to parse. Urusawa is incredibly good at conveying emotions through his art, and the dynamic flow of the action is decent.

Overall, I don't think this is a "bad" read, or it's terrible or anything, but if you decide to read it, you should know what you're going to get. It's emotionally unforgiving with a fairly one-dimensional plot and characters, but if you can get past that, it's a decent story about grit and dedication to a cause, and how passion, virtue, and hard work are all rewarded in the end.

First, I am shocked to see that this incredible work has no reviews. Wangan Midnight the manga is a lot of fun, but it's weirdly specific in the way it's entertaining. I will say, don't start reading this thinking you're going to find some complex narrative with twists, turns, and suspense, or an emotion-packed drama or romance story. That's not what Wangan Midnight is: rather, it is about speed. That's it.

Wangan Midnight is about men and women who chase speed, trying to go as fast as humanly possible on the highway at night. Why? It's just a human instinct. The instinct to do dumb ... shit. They throw away everything in pursuit of driving just one kph faster. Wangan Midnight is about racing/speed addicts who just want to drive fast. Just like drug addicts, some people ruin their lives, some suffer withdrawal, some die, and some decide it is not worth it. Indeed, in their intense pursuit, some characters decide that that the illusion that only lasts a few seconds is best left alone. Perhaps the most interesting/unique part about this story is that the characters don't even really care about ego or bragging rights or status for being the fastest (like is typical in other sports-type stories). The characters just want to be the fastest for the sake of it. Wangan Midnight captures this illogical human desire incredibly well and that's about all it does, but it makes for some really good dumb fun. Well, that and it has cool cars in it (who doesn't like reading about cars from half a century ago that have been modded to a point where you can't even really recognize them?).

On a final note, the art is nothing special; in fact, it's not that good. So don't expect to see some Ryoichi Ikegami level art (but the lines are at least clean, and the action is easy to follow). Overall, I'd highly recommend this to any automotive geek or fan of the anime. If you liked Initial D, I can't guarantee you'll like this, but there's a good chance you will.

Quick Review:

Story: 5
Sound: 7.5
Art: 6.5
Characters: 4
Enjoyment: 5
Annoyance: 9
Overall: 4

... Virtua Fighter is pretty much the epitome of all the tropes I hate in anime. I started watching this show to give my brother (this is his FAVORITE anime, and he's watched quite a few) the benefit of the doubt. I thought that perhaps it was truly a hidden gem and had some merit. The show made me quite upset with it by the end, but I will say that some people will definitely like it much better than others.

First, let me start with what was good about this show. Given that it is a 90s era show, the animation isn't superb, but it isn't atrocious either, and the fight scenes are fairly well-animated. The animation is (mostly) consistent throughout the show. The voice acting (original Japanese) is fair, and features the talents of several well-known seiyuu, including a few of the original voice actors from the games. The soundtrack was one of the more enjoyable parts, and I found the main theme song/preview theme to be quite catchy (also the power-up song is cool). The main characters were mostly DECENT (not good, or great, or anything of that sort), albeit rather shallow, but this most likely won't bother anyone who loves shonen, since the main demographic is a younger audience and viewers who are watching mostly for action scenes. The comedy was simple, but definitely made me laugh. It wasn't especially clever or fall-out-of-your-seat funny, but it makes for a great addition to a mostly action-adventure based show. I also really loved the character Wolf Hawkfield, as he seemed quite human as opposed to some of the other characters (maybe this is telling in and of itself).

Speaking of which, the main problem with this show is... the characters, and the unbelievably stale character tropes. If you were to make a list of all the cringiest tropes from anime prior to the nineties, I would guess that a good 60% would appear in this show. Although I found this problem to be mainly with the villains, that doesn't mean I didn't see any other problems with the rest of the cast. All the villains are evil for the sake of being evil; none of them have backstories other than Lau, whose backstory is the typical, "but he had no choice, it was the best thing to do in that moment" backstory, as well as "Oh yeah, I totally screwed all my relationships up and everyone thinks I'm evil, but you know, I'm not gonna try to defend myself or anything, I'll just be the badguy for no reason" (a la Lelouch vi Britannia). We also have the totally evil woman, who wears purple lipstick and makes your skin crawl because her lines are so contrived, saying things like, "No one will be able to stop me in my quest for world domination! Hahaha!" (she doesn't actually say this, but she may as well have). You'll see tropes like the rebellious son whose rich dad wants to make him do something that he is rather adamant on not doing (you actually get 2 of these, yippee), and the kid who gets bullied for absolutely no reason. There's also a "strongest woman alive" as well as a "I just can't understand why people would be good to each other; why aren't they evil and self-seeking like me?" and topping it off, we've got your typical tsundere female protagonist who accidentally kisses the main character in the first episode. Oh, how could I forget the MAIN CHARACTER, the altruistic and OP dude who's dumb, super strong, can tackle any problem or beat any baddie, and loves food (so basically he's Goku). Not to mention that he has a whole power-up sequence/speech that happens every episode.

Aside from these points, the show does have an adventurous vibe and lots of traveling, meeting new characters, and funny scenarios, so if you like those kind of shows, than you'll probably like this show. I will bear in mind that the intended audience was probably 8-14 or so, so it makes sense that the show would be rather shallow. However, for anyone who is watching this for the story, character development, or general writing will most likely be as disappointed as I am. I rated it average for most of the categories, but the reason that it gets such a low overall rating is because the characters bother me so much.

You may notice that I haven't watched all 35 episodes. This is because the first 24 are the first season, and it's quite difficult to find the second season anywhere. You can find it on archive.org, but it does not have subtitles. I have also heard from my brother who watched the second season that it was not as good as the first season, and I have seen first-hand that the animation quality suffered massively (It's bad).

To summarize, I won't condemn anyone for liking this show, but it's not the kind of show that you should watch if you like philosophical, complex, emotional, well-written, drop-out-of-your-seat funny, or clever shows. It doesn't do anything new or particularly well, but it is a simple show that would be a good deal of fun to watch if you can stomach the (to me) absolutely egregious tropes. If you want to watch a fighting game anime, then you're probably better off checking out the Street Fighter II movie, The King of Fighters: Destiny, or even the Fatal Fury 2 OVA.