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I just watched the movie for the first time in theaters for Ghibli Fest and BOY do I have things to say about this one!

It has a lot of queer themes and coding and you have to be blind to not see it. First of all, the main character Anna presents with short hair that makes her look boyish. Aka she's a butch. She wishes in the beginning of the movie to be "normal." This could be interpreted as her wishing to be "straight." Soon she meets a beautiful blonde girl named Marnie, and she blushes when she sees her and tells her she is ... beautiful. They dance with each other, and they tell each other "I love you". Anna also obsessively draws Marnie in her notebook. Gay art kid, I see you! However, Marnie cannot go far away from her mansion, and sometimes Anna suddenly wakes up like she was just dreaming. The romantic feelings are clear as day.

However, the writers must have realized that this movie was too queer for a Japanese audience (as they are very conservative compared to the western world and a bit behind on lgbt rights) and decided to cover it up by making Anna and Marnie are related to each other. It is revealed at the end of the movie that Marnie is supposed to be the spirit of Anna's long passed grandmother. Yes, you read that right! This revelation really caught me off guard. I figured that Marnie was a ghost, but I did NOT expect them to be related. This left me feeling really weird about the movie, since it kinda implies that Anna was in love with her grandmother this whole time. I am not a fan of incest so it really left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I wish the writers could have kept it just a cute sapphic movie with no strings attached.

I don't know what to even rate this movie. I really enjoyed it at the beginning but the ending really throws me for a loop. It wasn't necessarily a bad movie but the ending kinda ruined it for me.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION

I don't normally write reviews, but this series left me with such strong feelings that I had to. First off, I don’t really know how I feel about this series. At first I really, REALLY enjoyed it. I loved seeing Nana and Hachi’s worlds collide, and I loved Nana and Hachi’s dynamic. The music and fashion was just the icing on the cake. Nana and Hachi’s relationship is heavily queer coded, and you have to have read this series with your eyes closed to NOT see how obviously in love with each other they are. I was very ... disappointed to see that they never got together and settled for guys that could have treated them better. And yes, I know that not everyone gets together in real life (been there, done that), but when the characters clearly reciprocate the other’s feelings and then say something like “oh I’d marry you if you were a guy” then it just becomes infuriating. If Hachi realized she was sapphic then this series would have been like four volumes long.

This opinion is gonna get me hate but I wasn’t a fan of Hachi. Not necessarily that I hate her as a character, but the decisions she made. She keeps making the absolutely worst decisions possible, and she never matures and learns from them. I was especially unhappy when she chose to keep the baby. This decision completely ruined her life and caused almost every problem afterwards. I would have liked to see her get an abortion and see how she changes and copes with her loss. Instead, she chose to keep it for selfish reasons.
I also didn’t like that she made absolutely no effort to communicate with Nobu. I’ve seen a lot of fans blame Nobu for all of it. Yeah it was wrong for him to jump to the assumption that she cheated but he attempted to communicate. When Nobu questioned her, Hachi never explained herself, just cried. Also Nobu tried reaching out to her later and all she did was look at her text and cry.
Additionally, I hate that she chose Takumi when he is clearly a red flag. Sure, he offered to take care of the baby, but was it really worth it? Not at all! He r@pes her multiple times, isolates her, cheats on her, yet she still stays. She could have changed her mind and left after clearly seeing he’s abusive, but she doesn’t. And before you attack me and call me a victim blamer, no I’m not. Hachi was kind and didn’t deserve any of the abuse, but she should have stood up for herself and recognized she deserves better. She could have left at any time.

Although the series introduced certain tropes I don’t like and some content I found triggering, I couldn’t stop reading it. It felt like a train crash I couldn’t look away from. I mainly kept going because I wanted to see how things played out. There were some questions I wanted answered: Will Hachi get an abortion? Will Hachi leave Takumi? Will Hachi and Nana ever get together? Unfortunately, the answer is no to all of these questions. Also, later in the manga, it eventually just starts to drag on. Reading this manga gradually started to feel like a chore, and my main thought was “how is this chapter going to make things even worse?” Because of this, I barely felt anything when Ren died. I know people will say “oh but it’s realistic because lots of bad things happen all the time in real life” but in my opinion when each chapter just becomes bad thing after bad thing after bad thing, it starts to become unrealistic, like watching a bad soap opera. Real life has good things sprinkled in too. It’s a rollercoaster that goes up AND down. I regret not dropping this series when it was revealed that Hachi is pregnant, because from then on I started to lose my enjoyment of this series.

My favorite anime of all time! It's got everything: It's funny, it has amazing fight scenes, stellar animation, serious moments, and heartfelt moments. The series also gets very deep and philosophical at times, focusing on themes of superiority and inferiority complexes.

This series is about a boy named Shigeo (aka Mob) who has really strong psychic powers. Despite this, he doesn't see himself as "better" than average people, and tries to live a normal life. He works as a part time exorcist for a con man named Reigen, who exploits him for his powers. Reigen does not have any psychic powers but tries to fool ... everyone around him into thinking he does. On paper this guy doesn't sound very likeable since his morals are questionable, but he's really funny and also serves as a mentor/fatherly figure to Mob. The series follows Mob and Reigen's daily lives as exorcists. I usually get bored of slice of life shows but this has the right balance of humor and action to keep it interesting.

Most anime/manga don't know how to write an OP character without them becoming Mary Sues, but Mob is one of the few cases where it works. Despite being really strong, Mob still has flaws. He doesn't know how to process emotions and tends to bottle them up. However, is easily emotionally overwhelmed, which causes him to have emotional outbursts that cause his powers to go crazy. In a way his powers can be interpreted as a metaphor for autism (whether this was intended or not by the author I'm not sure).

I've watched this show in both English and Japanese and I gotta say the English dub is really good. Reigen's voice actor especially nailed it, he sounds exactly how I pictured him to sound in my head. Crunchyroll even posted the first episode up on Youtube! That's how you know the dub is noteworthy. Also shoutout to the German dub for somehow being even more unhinged lol.
 
Overall, this series has something for everyone, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys anime. Whenever I'm sad or just need a laugh, I watch clips of funny moments of this show on Youtube. 10/10 GO WATCH THIS MASTERPIECE ALREADY!!!