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This will sound harsh, but...why was this movie made?

It's a filler movie, it doesn't contribute anything to the overarching One Piece story. Is the self contained story compelling enough to justify making it? No, it's pretty shallow and kind of a mess. Is the moment to moment material entertaining enough that I felt like I got my money's worth? Kind of, there were definitely moments where I was having fun, but it was more just me enjoying these characters because of the hundreds of episodes of build up they've had and the attachment to their personalities I've formed, not anything in the movie itself being ... especially great. This movie really could have just not existed and I really don't think we'd miss out on much.

It's not even that well made of a movie. For example, the main motivations of the new major character, Uta, are pretty incoherent. She serves as the main antagonist for most of the movie, trapping the Straw Hat Pirates in an alternate dimension where she is all powerful and the heroes need to find a way to escape, but why is she even doing it? At first it's presented as if she genuinely believes what she's doing is right because she can make it a world of happiness all the time, but this doesn't hold up because many people she trapped are there unwillingly and she's not allowing them to leave. Then they make it as if she mistakenly believes she's trying to get revenge on her father, Shanks the pirate, for abandoning her, and they make this big reveal about her finding out he didn't want to abandon her, he was just protecting her from the consequences of her own past when she accidentally released a demon and killed everyone on an island. It's then revealed that she knew about that all along and was actually doing everything because...reasons? Then at the end she just changes her mind because the heroes defeat the demon and I guess that means she was wrong all along somehow? It's not clear, and considering she's the only character in the entire movie who's allowed to have a character arc, failing to deliver a satisfying one is extremely disappointing.

This lack of big picture cohesion extends to the little details as well, like animation and music. This movie has a lot of musical numbers, but many of them...just don't matter. They don't tell anything about the characters, they don't progress the story, they're just kind of fluff, meant to be pretty while stuff happens on screen. They are good songs, I'll probably listen to a few of them outside the movie, they just don't make the movie that much better. This is really unfortunate because there were a small handful of decent uses of music to enhance the story, like how an early piece started a song, then cut to the singer being asleep, hinting at her weakness, falling asleep, but this came after another song that served only as cheap exposition and was cut off because even the characters realized it was boring and pointless. This inconsistency trains the audience not to pay attention and ruins what good use of music there is. I guess if you really like idols you'd get more out of it, but I just didn't. Also, the basic animation, while clearly reasonably high quality with dynamic camera work and a high amount of unique drawings, was terribly directed. They constantly did this thing where the camera was whizzing around and zoomed in so close that you really couldn't tell what was going on. It was flashy, but lacked substance, which is kind of a good summation of the whole movie.

**This review contains spoilers**

Using an android to explore "what it means to be human" isn't exactly a novel idea at this point, but Vivy deserves credit for being one of the better uses of that trope I've seen, and it does this by very firmly grounding every single conflict on the very simple but impossibly deep question; "what is a heart?"

Vivy the character begins the series as your stereotypical "all that matters is the mission" android who can think for herself but has no understanding of basic concepts like emotions or personal desires. The first wrinkle is that her mission is literally defined as "make ... everyone happy with her singing by singing with all her heart." Having no idea what "heart" means though, her performances come off as stiff and she is generally a complete failure. It's rather depressing until an AI from the future arrives and recruits her to help prevent the robot apocalypse that will take place in 100 years, convincing her to help using the logic "you can't make everyone happy with your singing if everyone is dead," the first sign of her beginning to learn and adapt.

The plot goes on with a series of seemingly self contained stories, but each time we see how they've affected her as she learns the joy of saving people, the pain of seeing people she cares about die, and her own internal drive to fulfill her mission. Each of these stories really impacts her in ways that resonated with me, but the two questions that remain are 1) is she really making a difference if history always seems to correct itself no matter what she does? and 2) as much as she learns and grows, what even does "heart" mean? The second question becomes such a weight upon her that she loses the ability to sing at all because she still doesn't understand what it means to "sing with all her heart."

The story then does something brilliant and ties the two conflicts together. It turns out time travel was never the answer to the problem, the AIs planning to exterminate the humans knew what they were doing all along and easily countered all the changes they made to the time line. The mission itself was a failure, but the AIs were fascinated with Vivy, who, in the process of trying to change the future, had evolved beyond the boring, mission oriented character she was at the beginning. They make the shut down code her singing an original song she wrote, and it's then that Vivy finally puts together that "heart" is just the sum of all her life experiences, the people who have impacted her over her hundred year lifespan, the trauma she's endured, the loved ones she misses, the mistakes she's made, all her memories are her heart, and in a gorgeous cinematic display we see her save the world by sacrificing herself to sing with all her heart.

That alone is great, but something Vivy does that cements it for me as a truly great show is it commits to its ideals. Vivy was only able to save the day because of her experiences, and I was deeply afraid at the end it would undermine this with the magical time travel device...but they don't. The show recognizes that even though a lot of people died and the ones who didn't had far from perfect lives, that undoing their lives would completely ruin the whole message. People stay dead, but the cast decides to move forward, learning from their experiences and being stronger for it. We can be strong enough to overcome hard things, I thought that was a beautiful message.

This movie...didn't suck. They really managed to address most of my problems with the original Sword Art Online, and once those weren't bogging things down, you could really see the potential of this premise.

For starters, this movie is actually just fun to watch. It approaches characters and situations with a self awareness not only lacking in the original show, but honestly most anime in general. For example, one of my (many) complaints from the original was the scene where a group is mad at Kirito for being a beta tester and a cheater, and they call him a "beater." That's...really stupid, but the show, both ... subbed and dubbed, plays it completely straight, as if it's some cool thing he's proud of. The movie goes the other direction, Kirito has this moment where he's like "beater? Is that really the best you got? Okay whatever." A very minor change took a scene that made me cringe in the original, to laugh in the movie. There's easily dozens of examples like this that killed my investment in the original, but similar small details that were added or changed brought my enjoyment up tremendously.

And what I noticed once the things I couldn't stand about the original were out of the way was that there's actually a really solid foundation for this story. The movie did a great job of showing how being trapped in a death game would absolutely shatter you. Small mistakes could easily get you killed, and even if you don't literally die, the constant pressure will erode your spirit little by little until you're a shell of yourself. "Beating the game" doesn't just mean surviving, it doesn't even just mean making progress to your goals that were assigned to you, it means keeping your spirits up, finding ways to enjoy life even though it's hard sometimes, and it keeps the theme that we need to work together to make that happen. It doesn't go super deep or anything, and this is a theme that was touched on in the original, but I couldn't take it seriously because of all the little things I didn't like about it, but this movie really delivers it home and I actually felt like it earned all of its feels.

Also, it had (almost) no fan service! If you're like me and think the fan service alone ruins the original, then you'll be happy. There's two unnecessary scenes where Asuna changes into her school uniform and takes a bath, but they're never more explicit than bare shoulders. I can handle that.

But even if you're not like me and don't think this movie is valuable solely for fixing the issues with the original, it's still a worthwhile movie for plenty of other reasons. For example, it really fleshes out Asuna (who I consider the best part of the original) and introduces a new character that brings suspense. She and Asuna make a promise to each other that they'd clear the game together, and I remember thinking "whelp, she's going to die tragically." I won't spoil what actually happens, but Mito's character was a welcome surprise that adds a lot to the experience.

The art is also a solid upgrade over the original. SAO was pretty decent for when it came out a decade ago, but 2021 feature film quality art assets really make a pretty picture. I will nitpick, I feel like the action scenes were overly concerned being pretty pictures rather than coherent fights with properly defined spacing and physics. This is unfortunately especially true of the very first scene of the movie which left a bad taste in my mouth right off the bat, but it ultimately ended up being a pretty minor problem, certainly outweighed by the fact that it did indeed succeed at making a really pretty picture.

Also, not nearly enough Klein.

Besides that, I honestly really liked watching this movie, and I did not expect that going in.

*Contains Major Spoilers for all three Heaven's Feel movies*

Fate is the series that I desperately want to be good. I remember seeing a clip of Saber vs Berserker from UBW and scouring the internet for the source. There are parts of this series I love, from the animation and general production Ufotable has brought to it, to the really touching character arcs a lot of the characters go through, to the really interesting way the main story gives us alternate endings that give us a good look into how the characters would behave in different circumstances. Despite all these things going for it though, there ... is not a single entry in the series that isn't riddled with problems, and the Heaven's Feel trilogy might be the most frustrating of all.

A lot of this trilogy is good...with an asterisk. Sakura, arguably the most important character of this adaptation, is a great example. She'd been built up in previous movies as a kind hearted girl who's years of abuse has left her mentally and emotionally fragile. This is shown visually by her magic becoming more and more unstable in conjunction with her mental state, and this movie capitalizes on all this set up brilliantly when she finally breaks down and confronts her sister Rin asking why she never rescued her from the hell she grew up in. I loved this scene, it's raw, and it's honest. Even though we understand Rin wasn't at fault for what happened, Sakura still had to let out those years of resentment, because bottling up those feelings does not solve anything. This is a fantastic conclusion to a strong character arc...if you ignore the first 2/3s of this movie where her arc is completely undermined by being possessed by an evil Zoroastrian God who's goal is to destroy the world, turning her into an incredibly boring antagonist who's sadistic love of violence not only doesn't line up with Sakura's established character (kind-hearted but broken from years of abuse) whatsoever, it also is just unpleasant to watch since her insanity is so contrived it becomes really uninteresting. Honestly, every scene "Dark Sakura" has a speaking line in from the beginning of this movie to her confrontation with Rin at the end actively detracts from her character, which sucks, because it really wouldn't be that hard to completely cut it from the script. We see her almost kill Rin, but Rin recovers off screen in no time. She kidnaps Illya, but Shirou rescues her immediately. She kills her grandfather, but as far as the audience knew, he was already dead. Literally nothing she does in the first hour of this movie affected the plot in any way other than killing time and undermining her core character arc.

This same meandering writing style can be seen in other aspects of the trilogy as well. Take Rin's character arc. Her big conflict in these movies is balancing the guilt she feels for not saving Sakura with her responsibility for stopping Sakura from killing everyone. This is...actually pretty great! There's a reason Rin is one of the most popular Tsunderes ever, watching her pretend she doesn't care, only for her to get flustered as cracks in her emotional defenses start getting exposed before she finally accepts her new relationship, a sisterly one rather than a romantic one this time, just works...if you pace it well. Seeing her revert from "dere" back to "tsun" just feels like they're trying to elongate the last movie more than they had to, we'd already seen "stone cold killer" Rin Tohsaka, we already knew it was just an act, so to see her put it up again, then take it off as if it's some big reveal just felt unearned. Don't even get me started on the time travel side quest where she gets a magic dagger that lets her effortlessly overpower the strongest character in the entire series (I'm basing this on Sakura effortlessly overpowering Gilgamesh, the strongest character in both Zero and UBW, I'm sure there's stronger characters in the rest of the series, I just haven't seen them). You're telling me this Deus ex Machina was just sitting in the back pocket of the Tohsakas this whole time? I don't think the writers understand how awful of an idea this is, if nothing else, it completely undermines the climax to Unlimited Blade Works.

These weird and unnecessary backtracking and side quests are especially annoying when you realize how rushed other parts of the story are. Take Shirou's relationship with Illya. I want more of that. Realizing they're basically siblings, coming to terms with what that means, fighting and dying to protect each other, taking 5 minutes to explain what exactly Illya is and how she fits into the Holy Grail War so that we actually understand what the heck is going on when she saves the day at the end, those would all be freaking amazing, but instead we get two really short scenes that are nice, but insufficient.

And while they're at it, explaining how Shirou's powers work would be nice too. Unlike in Unlimited Blade Works, they never really did that in this adaptation, and having him save the day by copying Caster's Rule Breaker that can sever Sakura's connection to the Holy Grail doesn't have the same impact if you don't understand Shirou's projection magic lets him copy other powers.

Allow me to pitch a version of this movie that would have been absolutely amazing. Right off the heels of Sakura losing control of her magic at the end of the last movie and killing Shinji, we again see Shirou burst into her home, but instead of creepy grandpa dude, he actually catches Sakura. It's not "Dark Sakura" though, but the shadow we saw in the previous movies. We're going for an allegory for the stages of grief here, in the previous movies we saw denial, then bargaining when she tries to reason with Shinji, now she's in the anger stage and can no longer be reasoned with. The shadow lashes out at Shirou, he attempts to escape. Eventually he makes it back to Rin, Rider, and Illya, but the shadow is still hunting him. Now creepy grandpa dude shows up, but he has no control over her, so even assassin joins the fight. This is when the shadow spits out Berserker Alter just like Dark Sakura did in the real movie, and we get a very similar scene to the original movie where Shirou releases the seal on his arm and uses Archer's powers to beat Berserker just like the original. While he and all his friends are busy with that, the Shadow is busy brutally murdering creepy grandpa dude and absorbing Assassin, and this time he stays dead the first time (dying 3 times in one movie is really stupid). I'm completely cutting Kotomine because his sociopathic character is just irredeemable at this point. Having defeated and absorbed all six servants other than her own, Sakura has officially won the Holy Grail War. Now Illya begins to explain exactly what the Holy Grail even is. This time, there's no evil Zoroastrian God, it's 100% Sakura losing control of her magic due to her shattered mental state and resonating with the negative emotions involved with the Holy Grail War. If she's not stopped, her negativity could turn into a wish to destroy the world. Shirou, Rin, and Rider chase her like normal, fight Saber Alter like normal, but give Saber a final line like they gave Berserker when he was defeated, but this time when Rin catches up to Sakura, she's just barely gaining control of herself back from the shadow. This time their confrontation is clearly the transition from anger to depression for Sakura, and Rin doesn't have a magic dagger that lets her effortlessly win, she takes advantage of Sakura realizing everything that she's done and going into shock to get close this time, and just like before she decides not to kill her. We still get that touching moment between the sisters. Now when Shirou shows up and uses Rule Breaker to free Sakura, it's made clear that it's a metaphor for him reaching out to her to rescue her from herself. With no Kotomine, the final scene of the climax is dedicated to Illya explaining the energy from Sakura's Holy Grail needs a vessel or it'll run rampant, we get a touching goodbye between her and Shirou, and Illya can sacrifice herself, just like before, but there's more time for the sacrifice to have its desired impact. We then get an epilogue showing Shirou and Sakura living together, showing her finally overcoming her grief and living a happy life.

Sorry for the big rant, like I said at the beginning, I want Fate to be good so freaking bad. I love the characters and concepts, I just hate the convoluted story and writing. I think there's a masterpiece in here somewhere, we just didn't get it.

I'm just going to say it: This season sucked.

I'm not some AoT hater, while the series has had its bumps, I've given every previous season a positive score. I like Attack on Titan, but the hype for this extremely flawed "final" season is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's start with the most pervasive problem; this show just isn't fun to watch. The dialog is awkward, the characters shout all the time when it's just not necessary at all, and they beat you over your head with their themes so hard it genuinely made it hard for me to even keep watching at times. Plus there are moments the ... art shows a character making a reaction face that's just...ugly. Not in a cool, horrifying way that communicates the tone of the scene, in a gross, "I don't even want to look at this" kind of way.

Now, if you read my reviews of previous seasons, you'll notice all of these things existed in the series prior to this point. Those seasons made up for it with bombastic action scenes and powerful character moments. This season...doesn't. Okay, that's not completely true, Reiner got fleshed out a bit and it was pretty good, but that's literally it. The action was a major step down from previous seasons, the returning characters all get shoved to the background until the end, and the new characters...oh man do they suck.

So if the things that made previous seasons great are missing, surely they replace it with something equally engaging, right? Right? No. We spend a ridiculous amount of time with two brand new characters, Gabi, who is somehow a less interesting and nuanced version of Erin McYells-A-Lot from season 1, and Falco, who's somehow a less interesting and nuanced version of Reiner. To be fair, I actually like what they're trying to do with these two, demonstrate how hate and war are a cycle that will continue from generation to generation...unless individuals each choose the hard path to not seek revenge and stop the violence. This is actually beautifully demonstrated when a father chooses not to kill the soldier who murdered his daughter in order to set a good example for his other children. It is then immediately ruined when one of his children immediately tries to exact revenge themselves, rendering his noble action meaningless. Gabi and Falco are equally confusing, you can make the case Gabi is only the way she is because of the environment she was raised in, but Falco was raised in the same environment and came out completely different, so she really doesn't have an excuse, she just sucks as a human being. Is that the point the series? Some people just suck? I guess that's a valid idea, but is it an entertaining one? No.

And this is all just the surface level stuff I've been complaining about. The more you think about this season, the more it falls apart. Like how the 5 year time skip, and subsequent radical changes in personality, robs us of any connection we had to these characters, or how, at the end of the day, this whole season was almost completely pointless because they're still in the exact same situation they were in at the end of last season, except now the main character is an unlikable douchebag. So...if this season isn't fun to watch on a superficial level, and it's not engaging on a deeper level, what's good about it exactly? I genuinely can't tell.

Everything to make a great anime is here. It’s got the simple but deep plot, the tear-jerking character moments, the superb visuals, it’s got it all, but it just doesn’t come together in a satisfying way.

Do you remember Season 1? Of course you do, everyone and their mother saw the first season of Attack on Titan. For all the criticism it got, it knew how to do one thing: it knew how to make something feel like a big deal. The specific example I want to bring up is retaking Trost, between the dialog by the characters, the music, everything, we knew it was a ... big deal. It was the first real victory humanity had ever had against the Titans, the first glimmer of hope, hundreds of people died for that tiny victory, and it felt like it was worth those deaths.

If I told you right after that retaking the wall and winning the entire war with the Titans would be treated as a footnote, how would you have felt? You’d probably laugh me off, but that’s exactly what happens here. The series is so preoccupied setting up what’s next, that paying off all the hours and emotions that have been invested up to this point gets...forgotten.

Let’s take a look at what’s changed since Season 1: the main characters are still surrounded by an overwhelmingly powerful adversary, Eren is still completely defined by his obsession to defeat his enemy and has little character beyond that, and...wait, is that basically the whole show? Okay, fine, there was a lot of side content like the political fights, but let’s be real, those weren’t the appeal of the show. The appeal of the show was Titans, how overwhelming they were, how mysterious they were, how they affected the characters, and now that they’re gone we’re stuck with...Nazis? I might be overblowing the racist internment camp parallel, but the new antagonists just don’t have the instant impact Titans had at all.

Then there’s the characters. The only character that had any significant growth this season is Armin, he gets a little bit of the spotlight and actually thrives in it. Eren is baffling to me, he started the series strong, showing real human emotions like anxiety for about 5 minutes before he puts his angry face on again. So much happens to him this season and he just doesn’t react. He retook his home town, does he react? Nah. He finds out his dad wasn’t a murderer, and actually loved him, does he react? Nah. He finds out his enemy is his brother, does he react? Nah. He’s been basically reset back to his Season 1 self, except instead of shouting about killing Titans, he just internally broods about the new bad guys with nothing to his character besides that.

Erwin though is the big complaint I have as far as characters go, because he has easily the best moment in the season if you look at it in isolation. When he leads the scouts in the suicide charge, preaching about laying down your life, trusting your successors to make your sacrifice worth it, it’s incredible...until you remember he already had this moment in Season 2 when he lost his arm. That moment in Season 2 was great, it was high action, and it spoke volumes of Erwin’s character as he prioritized Eren, mankind’s only chance at survival, over his own life, making him a selfless, dedicated, and pragmatic leader. Then they retconned that in Season 3 by making him a selfish gambler who only goes down because he gets backed into a corner and his best friend thinks he’s better off dead. What? No seriously, what? Great moment sure, but Erwin’s whole character is just a mess at this point, one good moment doesn’t salvage him.

This season left me unsatisfied. We've invested a lot of time and emotion to get to this point, and to see all of that ignored just to set up a dramatically less compelling next arc is so disappointing.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This was a bold new direction for the Attack on Titan franchise...seeing how for almost the entire season didn't actually have any Titans to...Attack...on? Did it pay off? In the end, yes, but the ride was a little bumpy.

This season puts all its chips on characters, which up to this point has definitely been a weakness of the series. You've had your stand outs like Jean, but you also have Eren McYells Alot, unbearably stupid aristocrats that are evil just because they're aristocrats, and so, so, so many uninteresting red shirts there to be eaten by Titans. The characters in previous seasons ... weren't so bad it ruined the rest of the show, but they weren't the major draw either.

This season immediately sets to work trying to change that with an early scene of Historia and Eren talking. Eren points out Historia has changed a lot, before she was too nice and hard to believe and now she just felt...normal, and you know what? He's absolutely right. Wait a second, did Eren just go 5 minutes without screaming about murdering Titans? Turns out he's mellowed a lot too.

This gets to the main complaint of the season though, because they took it too far. Historia is more believable, but she's also just kind of...boring. Turns out her nice act was just an act, but what's underneath? Not really anything. For most of the season the plot revolves heavily around her, and the entire time I'm wondering who she even is. Eren meanwhile is just depressed, which, to be fair, makes sense. He feels guilty about all the people who have died because of him, and it's finally enough to make him snap a little, but I thought we were past his. I thought Mikasa's speech last season thanking him for staying strong, awakening his deus ex machina power was supposed to symbolize him growing and maturing. Eren doesn't feel like he's grown though, just the opposite, feels like he's a whole new character.

But then...that changed. We learn Historia's back story, that she was ignored by her father and despised by her mother, and that she felt worthless, so she put on a face of being impossibly nice while all the while trying to die in a blaze of glory just to feel useful. When she had that smacked out of her, she latched herself onto anything she felt gave her purpose, be it the scouts, or her father. When getting tugged in a million directions finally breaks her and she gets a second to look in a mirror, she realizes she doesn't need someone else to give her meaning, she can do that herself, and the meaning she gives herself is making people who feel unwanted and worthless realize they're wrong, that they do have worth, and they can be happy, and her first project is Eren, who's descended so much by this point he's asking her to kill him. By the end, she was great! It just wasn't always very interesting on the way there.

We see this pattern with other characters too. Eren by the ending was the best version of himself, when he and Jean got in a fight, expecting someone to stop them, only for no one to step in, so they both just keep punching because they can't bear to admit they don't hate the other? That's hilarious and interesting without the psychotic undertones that have plagued his character for most of the series, but depressed Eren was just painful to watch getting to that point. Kenny was a great villain, but they saved all of his characterization to his very last scene. Historia's father...actually, I have no clue what his deal was, he kind of just sucked the whole time.

In the end, I like where we ended up, but I'm really scratching my head how we got here.

It's amazing how just a tiny bit of room to breathe can make such a huge difference.

Attack on Titan Season 2 really isn't all that different from Season 1. Eren still screams about murdering all the titans way too much, people still get eaten like it's going out of style, and the fights all look amazing, but the biggest thing that bugged me about Season 1, the overdramatization of minor events making major events feel less impactful, has been completely fixed, and it turns out that was all it took to lift this show up to being worthy of the hype.

I absolutely loved the added ... variety in tone this season got. Quiet moments like Hannes, Mikasa, and Armin reminiscing about the good old days before riding off on a mission just adds so much to the series. Don't even get me started on how they chose to handle the big reveal, no fanfare, no dramatic music, if you were only half paying attention, you would've missed it, which made it have so much more impact when you did realize what they were talking about.

That's not to say the hype machine shut down. Eren vs the Armored Titan was better than any fight Season 1 had, and the scene where a titan skull crashes down straight at the camera, followed by a hard cut to black and "to be continued" made me jump out of my seat.

This season also did a lot for the series as far as plot and characters go. Events happen much more organically now, with one problem not politely waiting for the previous one to get wrapped up to start wreaking havok, which makes a lot of sense. Characters like Hannes, Reiner, and Commander Ervin got a lot of time to shine and came to really old their own. One complaint I had was Mikasa, who was my favorite character in Season 1, regressed quite a bit in this season, but considering they made even Eren's screaming feel important by the end, I'm willing to forgive that.

This is a weird review simply because they didn't do anything earth shattering, they just gave us a reason to care about the world and characters and that's all it took for the already amazing action to shine.

So, I just watched D-Frag!, it's a show I vaguely remember hearing about when it came out and then basically nothing. Every time it did come up, it sounded like another run of the mill high school comedy that runs on clichés and doesn't bring much new to the table, but I'm going to try and explain why D-Frag! might be my favorite comedy anime of all time.

It starts out simple enough, there's a club about to be shut down due to lack of members. It's full of cute girls, one of whom explicitly says she's gonna miss doing nothing. On the other side, you've ... got the main character, a juvenile delinquent who's the leader of his own gang but is actually a softy and will absolutely do the right thing in a pinch. Heard all this before? Yeah, the show knows, you're not supposed to take it seriously, because the characters don't, the club president forgets the name of her club and the gang bemoan stereotyping and side characters comment on how unremarkable the main character Kazuma is.

The show is cliché, but it knows it's cliché and uses this to regularly make meta jokes, frequently in the form of Kazuma pointing out exactly what the audience is thinking when something ridiculous happens. An early example is when he gets in a fight with a girl who uses a cliché anime "special move" where she blinds her opponent by revealing a bunch of curtains that block out the lights and windows. This is really weird, actually, no, it's dumb. How did she set that up, did she know she'd be having a duel in that exact part of the hallway or are these curtains set up across the entire school? How did she trigger them to fall with a snap? That makes no sense. And wait a minute, they're just curtains, Kazuma can't see, but he can just run forward and push through them, this won't stop him at all. All these thoughts went through my head, and they probably went through Kazuma's too because he does exactly that, runs forward and pushes through the curtains...right through an open window. That's...smart, no, it's dumb, but clever. Really clever. D-Frag isn't cliché because it's not creative enough to come up with something original, it's cliché because it knows the inherent value of these cliché moments and what mentality it'll put the audience in. From there, it can play to or subvert your expectations at its leisure because it's honestly not trying to manipulate you, it's just genuinely trying to be a fun, likable show.

No scene demonstrates this better than the very next one after Kazuma falls out the window. Another cliché moment happens when Roka manages to catch him at the very last second and yells about never letting go no matter what. Kazuma then points out the absurdity of the moment, tells her to cut the moe act, and then suggests letting him go because he's not even that far off the ground so he'd probably be fine if he fell to which she responds that it's not an act, sure she's a little eccentric, but that's just who she is and she's not apologizing for it. The show isn't apologizing either, it's a cliché high school comedy and it owns that. That self awareness and unapologetic attitude lead to an amazing ride.

I barely scratched the surface of why this show is great, you can break down just about every scene just like this and see multiple layers of depth there, but basically, if you haven't watched this show, give it a try. Obviously it's not for everyone, no anime is, but it's criminally under appreciated and also has a great great GREAT dub if that's something you care about. On MAL it's got like a 7.6 which is insane, because I'd genuinely give it a 10/10, I unironically loved every second.

Jumping around, switching perspective and focus over and over promising there's something great at the end can't distract the audience from shallow and uninteresting characters forever, especially when you don't actually deliver on that promise.

The show takes a while to really establish itself. I went in with no prior knowledge of the show and was really confused what it was trying to do for several episodes. There's not a real main character, not really any antagonist (not at first anyway), just a bunch of random stories about people living in the same city. This doesn't hold later content back as once the stories start overlapping ... it's very enjoyable and they needed that set up, but the first few episodes feel weak on first watch.

The show hits its stride specifically during chance interactions. Celty running into Shizuo is a great scene that breaks down barriers between the characters, Izaya beating up Mikado's bullies is fun and ups the stakes, those scenes are good because they show more is going on than meets the eye, the only problem is the "more" is just disappointing.

The mid-season finale for instance has a big reveal that's meant to shock you because 2 elements of the show are revealed to be connected and a certain character is revealed to be involved in more than we thought, and at first I was excited, but then I realized, this doesn't change anything. The bad guys are still insane, the good guys are still boring, I don't like anyone, and if the plot ever ends up going anywhere, I won't really care.

Okay, there were 2 characters I liked, but they still have their issues. The first is Shizuo, because he says what I'm thinking. He hates Izaya because he's shifty and doesn't make sense, I hate Izaya because he's shifty and doesn't make sense. He hates characters acting like idiots in the name of true love, I hate characters acting like idiots in the name of true love (no seriously, at least 5 characters behave completely irrationally and do things no sane human being would ever do because they're in love with another character for superfluous reasons. It's the single worst part of the show). He gets along with Celty (the other character I like) because she's the only reasonable human being (which is actually a pretty cool contrast because she's not actually a human being) in the show, I like Celty because she's the only reasonable human being in the show. The issue is Shizuo is presented as the weird one, like his fits of rage is an unreasonable character quirk instead of being right. As for Celty, her character is completely ruined by her relationship with Shinra, who's honestly just the worst. He’s manipulative and dishonest for contrived reasons, he basically holds Celty captive for a time because she has nowhere else to go and directly impedes her in her primary character motivation and trivializes all of her insecurities and desires, and she ignores all that because he says he's loved her ever since he was a toddler and sliced open her naked body (yes you read that right). Two seconds of analyzing Shinra as a character reveal he's about as bad as it gets, and the fact that Celty can't see that ruins everything good about her.

Celty is a perfect example of everything wrong with the show. There's a lot to like, I enjoy most of the stories, I can get behind a boy looking for his cute classmate’s shoes and a headless horsewoman tearing a city apart to find her head being put right next to each other as if they had the same importance, but major parts of the core of the show are horribly thought out and undermine the good. Every time I think of something I liked, and there's a lot that I liked, I have to add on "but it doesn't go anywhere," or "but it doesn't change the status quo any." I want to like it, "but," I just can't, it's extremely disappointing and more than a little frustrating.