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Mononoke the TV series, along with the joining episodes of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, has been, since the late 2000s, my favorite show of all time. It's held a special place in my heart like none other. When I saw a movie was coming, I can't even begin to explain the joy and excitement that overtook me; the painstaking moments of waiting and checking to see if it'd been released yet. I thought, no I *KNEW*, I would love this... Unfortunately, I'd been quite wrong. My adoration for Kusuriuri-san and this series has kept my rating high, but the movie itself, although beautiful, falls short. ... It is hard to put my finger on, but the art, despite colorful and full of promise, is simply missing some key element of depth or "SOUL" the tv series had. In all its vibrancy, it is somehow still bland. The pacing of the animation is almost painful to watch at times - frequently flickering around from scene to scene at such a rate that you never really appreciate any one thing. The colors, which were once a great selling point, due to the aforementioned repetitive and fast movement, began to do nothing more than hurt my eyes. Kusuriuri-san himself seems to lack a certain elegance and refinement in the movie, and he feels as if a completely different character, from speech to mannerisms - not even considering the change in attire/appearance, which alone I'd consider an aesthetic downgrade. Was it silly for me to want for a movie that was a continuation of the show's original vibe, beauty, excellency, after so long? Maybe so. But as a die hard fan of what it has been all of these years, I simply cannot love what this movie is. I am sure there are many who will disagree, but this feels too much like it was heavy-handedly pushed in a weird and modern direction that completely disregards what made Mononoke so beautiful in the first place. It feels rushed. It doesn't feel like it was made with care. Sorry.

Edit: Though I still feel the movie felt 'weak' compared to the tv series, it appears the Kusuriuri-san in the movies is not the same character as in the tv series - which explains quite a bit (I was not aware of this while writing my review).

After the first couple of episodes, I wasn't sure I'd like this show. I kind of trudged my feet along, not really feeling much for the main character. Boy, was that first impression ever wrong. My biggest complaint is that there are only going to be 10 episodes to this season, and it feels like its only getting started. The show has an interesting, sometimes surreal sense of world building that reminds me of the sort of mystical and curious feeling that I loved in the first season of Tower of God. It doesn't assume you are stupid and spoon feed you fact after fact ... of the world, it boldly introduces the concepts and runs with them as if you, yourself are born of this world and privy to the nuances of it's reality. Over time you start to better understand the mechanics of it all, and I have to say, I've fallen in love with them. It feels deeply imaginative and like having a wonderful dream you simply do not wish to wake up from. Were that not enough, it has a ever present sense of mystery that pulls you along - with questions and background happenings that slowly unfold before you, never thrown in your face and instead ebbing along in the back of your mind, building intrigue. I dare say this may be my favorite show of the season.

It starts strong, has an interesting premise, hooks you with a bit of mystery and plenty of suspense, but it being 3 short episodes doesn't allow much of anything. It's completely stunted, plot/character relationships and development feel incredibly rushed, and I truly hated the last episode's outcome - even moreso for how rushed it was. Precious moments are wasted throughout the ovas recollecting on stuff to attempt to flesh out characters/their backgrounds, but it really doesn't work what-so-ever given how little time there is to truly tell anything. They should have done more show than tell in those instances. I honestly can't see what the ... point of a 3 ep ova was for this, I can imagine the source material is probably great but this just left me dissatisfied and I can't say that ending made me want to watch more - it had me feeling disappointed and frustrated, if anything. Really poor execution of the limited time, this deserved a full fleshed out season for sure.

A literal child, malnourished and with 0 training other than sparring using wooden swords with his childhood friend, single-handedly saves a king, defeats multiple assassins, an entire village rumored to be filled with murderous bandits, trained armies, battle-hardened war generals, etc. etc., all without getting much more than a few scratches. He also annoyingly yells and avoids letting others speak during pivotal plot progression points, somehow winning over the hearts of all while saying nothing much at all.

The mountain people concept, mountain king and their masks are cool and I'm hoping maybe things become a bit more fleshed out in later seasons? But that's really ... all that's holding this at a 5 and not substantially lower. It would actually HELP if this show had some kind of magic or wuxia-xianxia backing behind it, to try to explain the absurdity of the children's inexplicable skills. At the moment, however, I can't say I recommend it. I will continue to watch and see where it takes me, but so far this is a hard miss for me.

Initially I fell prey to the claims of plot holes and inconsistencies I'd heard echoed about this show. However, by the time the season wraps up, you start to understand that the "plot holes" are created by the subjective/limited viewpoint of the characters, and what we are really seeing is just their understanding/perspective, and not legitimate plot holes at all. It all starts to add up and give little bites and pieces of something deeper going on behind the scenes.

In the end, I actually binged all 13 EPs in a single night. There were twists I suspected and others I genuinely didn't see coming, ... only recognizing the subtle set up in retrospect. It's not a next level genius story, but it is very enjoyable, and I highly look forward to a SE2.

Bonus point: cats continually saved from tragedy

I rate this with extreme personal bias and zero objectivity, as I love Kengan Ashura and I've been waiting for this release for what seems like a lifetime. In all honesty, though, it definitely will need part 2 of the season to (hopefully) round things out. My sweet husbando Kaolan must have a sore back because he hard carried this season; in fact, I might argue you could watch the episode of his fight and the ass-end of ep 12 and you'd have not truly missed anything all that interesting by ignoring the rest. That said, I'd not take back bingeing it all in a ... single night purely for how much I love Kengan Ashura and the fighting tournament style.

Objectively: It was like 12 episodes of filler that really just rehashed things we'd already established in SE1. Still think the Kaolan fight ep is worth every other second, though.

I went in thinking I would like this, the visuals in the first episode especially gave me great hope... But visuals alone couldn't carry it, and by the end of episode 3, I knew I wouldn't be able to take the logical inconsistency and shallow character depth which they were trying to grow with a premise that really makes no sense. The way the show jumped from scene to scene was more confusing than dramatic or thrilling, and it left no real time for build up or attachment to the human characters before it too rapidly killed them off. The scene with the plane, for ... example, should have been a tear jerker emotional moment where you really feel for the hopelessness of it all, but it's barely a blink of a second, weirdly shown and comes in after something distinctly important already having happened as if it's some silly afterthought. The 'personality' they give the main character feels very 'off', her choices and thoughts don't really adhere to what they've laid out for us, and her conversations with the other AI just seem out of place for what they've set the standard of her character. Perhaps it gets better, perhaps later on these gaps are closed, perhaps there are others who can easily overlook such things and still enjoy this anime for everything else. I simply can't.

This was one of the worst shows I've attempted to watch and I have no idea how it got such positive reviews. Outside of the animation quality I can't think of one redeeming aspect of this poorly paced borefest. The character's reactions are nonsensical and any hope for it moving into an interesting plot via the initial 'mysteries' that are posed is just dropped on the floor, run over and spat on. If you're hoping for this to go anywhere promising after the first few episodes, you'll be sorely disappointed. Imagine the most obvious outcomes possible to the point it's like you're reading the storyline ... of someone's first fanfic.net post, force in some hamfisted anti-climatic monsters, destroy any interest or tension, and then watch in the desperate hope it'll redeem itself until you finally recognize "shit, this is it, they're serious", and then wish you had the power of the MC so you could unwatch this hot trash fire.

This was absolutely awful. I made it to the end of part 2 and gave up. I tried to give this an honest chance because it had so many good reviews, but I'm actually stunned and confused on HOW...

The dull character personalities, zero reason for viewer connection and lack of tension in action scenes/plot 'developments' (feels like too much credit to even call them that) made watching this the equivalent of dragging my feet through glass in an attempt to reach, what I can only assume, is a non existent destination. The only thing that could've made it worse is if the male MC ... had frequent, inappropriately timed and distracting magical girl scout transformation sequences.... Oh.. *wait*. (Spoiler: he did).

I don't know how I make the repeated sin of trusting MAL reviews, yet here I am. Save yourself the suffering and don't bother with this if you, like me, were going into this blind.

It's beautiful visually, but it's literally just beauty and the beast. There's no real emotion, suspense, character depth or reason for interest. Despite the many attempts at embedding tearjerker moments that should pull on the heart strings, it just kind of falls short. I honestly probably wouldn't have finished watching this if it wasn't for my enjoyment of the visual aspect, and if you don't enjoy the visuals or don't find that a good reason to watch - I can't say I'd recommend it for literally any other reason. At all. What-so-ever. Not a single redeeming quality in this movie outside of graphics, I can't ... stress this enough.