TL;DR – if you’re a gay man who loves anime, or if you like any romance-oriented anime, watch this. It’s not quite as good as Given, but it’s also miles better than Gravitation. This anime breaks ground in ways rarely seen in yaio/BL, and usually avoids tropes. There's even a nice post-credits scene on the last episode. Just don't expect twilight to come into focus.
This is the third time I’ve written/updated my review. I know, I said I probably wouldn’t update it, but the final episodes compelled me to log in and give another hot take. This is a long review, because I had my
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expectations set really high by the backlash Crunchyroll faced when they announced this, and by the first 4 episodes. The episodes featuring Mao and Hisashi are by far the strongest episodes, and they feel realistic, as if a man in his mid or late 20s is recounting a story about his first love. The other episodes featuring the other two couples are much weaker and I feel they undermined the quality of the show. They're not *bad* but they just felt so unnecessary.
I’m approaching this anime with a few perspectives – I’m a gay American man who loves anime, I’m a sucker for at least giving any anime with an LGBT character a chance, this anime was supposed to be controversial, and I’m fully aware that being a gay or trans person in Japan is taboo AF.
There’s not many *good* anime out there centered on LGBT characters. Calm down, you know it’s true! I said what I said!
There’s Ghost in the Shell SAC (Major might be a lesbian? Maybe bi? It’s not really confirmed), Tokyo Godfathers (I love you, Hana!), Given, Yuri on Ice, and Stranger by the Shore are all that come to mind, and GitS is a real reach by me. I am happy to add Twilight Out of Focus to this list too.
By today’s standards, stuff like Gravitation and Junjo Romantica are just bad, and weird. When I was younger, long before we had stuff like Given and Yuri, these seemed great because there were literally no other options to see an entire anime with characters who had something so deeply in common with me. The menu has expanded a bit since then.
I’d love to see LGBT characters just occur organically and unforced within anime (where’s my gay Vash or Goku?) but Japan just isn’t there yet. The taboo around LGBT folks in Japan has lead to these characters only rarely being portrayed, and usually as a stereotype – either silly comic relief or flamboyant and creepy (Hisoka Morow from Hunter X Hunter anyone?).
Twilight Out of Focus is rumored to be the show which caused Sony to remove all commenting from Crunchyroll – people are *that* bigoted, so naturally I had to watch it to see what made Twilight Out of Focus more edgy than something like Mnemosyne. With that in mind, I’m honestly disappointed. The opening is meh, nothing offensive, graphic, edgy… Heartwarming in a lightly cringey way? Cute even. In fact, this isn’t anything we have not already seen in other shows such as Yuri on Ice, or Given, which is not a bad thing, but seeing similar plots repeatedly does grow tiresome. It’s 2024, Japan, give us the gay anime which our parched souls are crying out for!
Now, hold on. I must be fair! This show opens with a character being acknowledged as a closeted gay man. Yes, “gay” not “uwu he’s cute and I don’t know why I feel this way! Wait, where are you putting that, senpai?! uuwwuuu!!!” This alone feels very groundbreaking to me, and I actually skipped the video back to hear it a second time. “Wait, did he just say he is…?!” Yes, and that alone is actually laudable.
Also, there are s3x scenes! Not pervy pr0n stuff, it's tastefully done. Sure, we've seen gay s3x scenes eons ago (Cowboy Bebop had Faye burst in on one), but this is presented as romance, not go-to-horny-jail stuff. This again feels very groundbreaking.
Nothing is implied, hinted at, or just left to be explained in a manga we’ll never read. It’s right there in the open. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen an anime character saying, “I’m gay” vs. them carrying on with men, but never saying the obvious, or finding themselves bedding a woman back in “real life” when they step away from their male lover escapade (pretty sure I’m looking at you, Gravitation or Junjou Romantica!). It's a very nice change.
As another reviewer pointed out - this show is also refreshing because it portrays the traditional BL/anime SA/PDF File relationships for what they are - gross and wrong. Gravitation and Great Teacher Onizuka, this is *not* (and let's be real, GTA wouldn't be able to air today). While I was tempted to point to a manga by an artist named Mikiko Crash'n'Burn as a point of comparison to Twilight Out of Focus or Given, it also opens with some light SA which is a very unfortunate trope, especially in BL. Tops are not just grabbing up waiflike men off the street and laying the pipe, FFS.
The English voice acting is very well done (most of the time – some stuff is toned down from the Japanese sub). The tone is usually serious, but there are melodramatic moments in the writing and animation which feel jarring to me, akin to Vash in Trigun skittering across the sand and making snarky cat faces with no warning, or some of the more animated moments of Fullmetal Alchemist.
The characters… From the trailer, I knew that we would have multiple couples, which is kind of a trope with this genre. I’m not a huge fan of that, I’m happy with one couple vs. the entire cast suddenly tripping and landing on a chopstick, but it is what it is. Having several couples at once works fine in many shows, but here it felt like the writer was much more invested in Mao and Hisashi while the other two couples were an after thought to pad out the run time.
The pairing for Mao and Hisashi is very non-conventional for a yaoi, a serious tone is set and the two characters rapidly become multi-dimensional. They feel the closest to being “real” to me out of the six total POV characters, but the remaining characters don't manage to clear the bar set in the first act.
The second pairing is very on the nose for BL (uwu, this feels so nice, but he’s a guy!) and actually involves BL so I feel it’s honest satire. The third pairing is… Somewhere in between the first and second? When the anime arrives at couple #3, you will be greeted by a flamboyant openly gay teen who is absolutely on the prowl. Yaaas, queen, yaaas! He reminds me of those single guys whose only goal in life is to find someone to date. Nothing beyond that is planned, and it’s just not cute. There is character development with him and he does branch out a bit. The other half of this duo is also seemingly openly gay and vapid too, but vapid in the sense of not really caring all that much about affection or even relationships. He's presented with an older mysterious brother vibe in prior episodes, without any mention of having a history of openly dating male classmates, which made a grand reveal moment feel like a retcon when the relationship is revealed no one reacts poorly about it being two males. Definitely some plot armor and lazy writing going on there, IMHO.
The animation is well done, though it definitely has vibes from a previous era of anime radiating through. As stated before, the animation has a serious tone until it doesn’t for a few moments here and there.
The story itself is fine. It’s nothing too magical or out of left field, it’s essentially a high school romance drama with an ambiguous timeline as we shuffle through the 3 “how we met” arcs. The film festival is supposed to be the thread linking all of this together, but ultimately it’s a plot vehicle which seems to end up nowhere. We don't even get to see a supercut of the competing films. The Mao and Hisashi episodes are the best, hands down, and the screen time devoted to the other two couples really prevented the story from flourishing into something more than “how I met my first boyfriend” recollections, imo. Hell, the three couples don’t even cross paths outside of school and for all we the viewers know, they’re oblivious to each other’s existence, which just makes having multiple couples in the anime feel like a waste of time.
Final verdict – Opening the show with a new presentation for LGBT characters set the bar a little too high for episodes contained within other arcs, dragging down the overall quality of the show and depriving the story of anything truly meaningful, but ultimately the disparity between how later POV characters are presented doesn't undermine the *goodwill* earned in the first 4 episodes. The groundbreaking pushes my score up from a 7 to an 8. Yes, this is worth watching, just don’t expect twilight to come into focus.
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Oct 10, 2024
Tasogare Out Focus
(Anime)
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TL;DR – if you’re a gay man who loves anime, or if you like any romance-oriented anime, watch this. It’s not quite as good as Given, but it’s also miles better than Gravitation. This anime breaks ground in ways rarely seen in yaio/BL, and usually avoids tropes. There's even a nice post-credits scene on the last episode. Just don't expect twilight to come into focus.
This is the third time I’ve written/updated my review. I know, I said I probably wouldn’t update it, but the final episodes compelled me to log in and give another hot take. This is a long review, because I had my ... 
Aug 24, 2024
Trigun Stampede
(Anime)
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This reboot of Trigun blew my expectations out of the water. I was skeptical but also optimistic and willing to give it a chance. What initially struck me as a weirdly out-of-order and botched retelling of the original anime instead turned out to be a proper prequel for a full reboot of the series. Many people were (and still are) quite upset about missing characters, character career changes, the shift in tone, and the 3D animation, but as the show unfurls most is explained.
Story: In the OG Trigun, we're not given any real answers about why everything is the way it is until well into ... 
Aug 24, 2024
Eve no Jikan
(Anime)
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Firstly, if you're going to watch this, do the movie instead of the show. The movie is the entire series with added scenes rolled into one comfy viewing. I believe this show is overlooked by a lot of folks who would absolutely love it. It's well made, well written, and most of the characters are likable. Of course, I'm sure almost any fan of anime can point to a single show and declare, "This is the best anime that no one watched!" I wouldn't go *that* far with this show, but you are really missing out if you like scifi/cyberpunk, drama, and slice of life
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Aug 23, 2024
Gakkou no Kaidan
(Anime)
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This is a terrible anime. It's fkn bad. But, hear me out, watch the English dub! The US studio got permission to do whatever they'd like with it as long as they kept a few things from the Japanese version intact. The cast took a terrible anime and made it into a campy comedy firmly belonging to the 2000s. Sure, in 2024, it's not nearly as funny as it was 15 years prior. Society's norms have changed and several of the punchlines are literally dead people now (making it harder for younger folks to get the jokes), but this perfectly encapsulates the 2000s weeb culture
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Aug 9, 2024
"Hello There!" This is the sort of anime which you watch without any real investment, you just want to be entertained and pass the time. Maybe you're doing dishes, folding laundry, or camped out in a hotel with nothing to do. You open Crunchyroll and fire this up to pass the time.
This is a show which can't decide if it's SAO or Overlord, and that's not horrible, but it's also not gonna replace Full Metal Alchemist as your favorite show. Every episode is a laundry list of how to use plot armor with no consequence for any characters who are unfortunate enough to find themselves ... 
Aug 9, 2024
No spoilers - I watched all of this in one go with my roommate around 2009. I recently re-watched it and through the eyes of someone approaching 40, it's not quite the masterpiece I once believed it to be, but it's largely held up well with age and is still a fun watch. The music def feels dated, and there are instances of still backgrounds which are immersion breaking (those are still common today though).
It's very sexual, graphic, and gruesome, but plot armor does crop up more often than I'd like. There are elements of the show which remind me of Ghost in the Shell, ... 
Nov 7, 2023 Not Recommended Funny 
I'm about to upset some folks, but this anime is low effort trash. From the opening scene, this anime felt like something written by an untalented self-published writer who watched too much SAO.
The dialogue is heavy-handed and clumsy, the central character is extremely overpowered and invincible, the overt haram theme is out of place, the characters are severely underdeveloped and one-dimensional, and every problem which arises is summarily dealt away with a heavy application of plot armor. The animation leaves a lot to be desired, with computer generated content jarringly out of place. I suppose I could see a preteen enjoying this anime, although the ... 
Nov 27, 2022
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
(Anime)
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Upfront: This is a violent and at times sexual anime, nearly on the levels seen in Rin ~ Daughters of Mnemosyne.
This amine is great, but you really should play the video game prior to watching (or after) to get a better grasp on the lore and setting, because this was clearly made with the intention that viewers would have already played the game. While some reviewers bemoan "cyberpunk tropes" there's honestly not a large body of popular cyberpunk anime out there, and viewers of this anime are unlikely to have read Snowcrash or watched Blade Runner, so this anime is really bringing the genre to a ... 
Nov 27, 2022
Koukaku Kidoutai: SAC_2045
(Anime)
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Watching this series without first seeing the 2 seasons of Stand Alone Complex and the Solid State Society movie will leave you feeling disoriented. Character building and backstories are all handled in those, so without the investment of watching those (quite good) anime, you likely won't have a clue who any of the characters are.
The opening of the first episode is similar to the opening of Balde Runner 2049 - there's a large gap between the prequel and sequel, and there are events just casually mentioned which are not fully explained until the 2nd season of 2045. We also are greeted with fast paced action ... |
