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Dec 27, 2020
<MAJOR SPOILER WARNING>
“So basically this anime is like Among Us X My Hero Academia! It’s really fun! You should go check it out!” - Literally everyone.
Alright, I’ll be the first to admit that I took this recommendation and rolled with it. I mean, come on! Those are two things I genuinely enjoy!
And let me say, the first episode got me hooked. The first episode starts off with a pretty typical plotline resembling My Hero Academia (as the short description suggests). We are introduced to the world assaulted by the monsters called the “Enemies of Humanity” and students from all around Japan with supernatural powers
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called “The Talented” are gathered on a deserted island to train in order to fight these “Enemies of Humanity.”
Here we are introduced to our protagonist, Nanao Nakajima, who seems to be a powerless misfit on the island. He has no friends and is pretty much ignored by everyone until a beautiful young pink-haired girl named Hiiragi Nana (I see, the love interest of our protagonist) uses her own power to read his mind to realize that Nanao’s really lonely, then reaches out to him and becomes his “first friend”, and maybe one day even potentially being his girlfriend!
Now we gotta get into quirk, I mean, power training where everyone shows off their flashy powers to everyone until suddenly, oh no! Somebody accidentally unleashed a super duper power move and is going straight for Nana! Who can possibly save the day now?! But suddenly Deku, I mean, Nanao shows off his great quirk, I mean power, that he has the ability to cancel any power! (Wait, so we’re in the Toaru series now?!)
Suddenly, Nanao is super popular with everyone because of his heroic act, and Nana blushingly asks him if she can walk with him alone! Ooooo… maybe some spicy romance will come of this?!
The two of them reach the cliff. The wind picks up and scenery perfectly draws out Nana’s beauty in the sunset. Her eyes sparkle, thanking him for everything he’s done for her. The two get close together, wait, are we getting the kiss already? That’s pretty quick for a shounen series!
When they get closer, suddenly, Nana grabs Nanao’s back and flips him off the cliff with the only thing that leaves him from falling off the cliff is a rope dangling from the cliff fence. And thus her final words before dropping Nanao off the cliff, “it is not me who is the enemy of humanity, it is you people who are the enemy of mankind.”
The chills intensify. This is where the realization sets in that everything is flipped on its head. This is not Nanao’s story, this is the story of Hiiragi Nana on her quest to eliminate everyone off the island, the true “Enemies of Humanity.” And her power? Not a real power. She actually has no power, and all her predictions shown in the first episode were good deductive skills from small details in Nanao’s words, belongings, and expression, and therefore is called Talentless Nana.
But even though this first episode was incredible by introducing its premise and its twist flawlessly, this twist is also the start of its downfall because it begs to question, “Now what?” Nana even says to herself in the next episode that she can’t hide Nanao’s disappearance for much longer.
So what would any smart assassin do in this scenario? Learn everyone’s powerset before attacking anyone in particular? Wait for time to pass after everyone’s calmed down to make her next move? Maybe make a large and elaborate plan to kill everyone at the same time without anyone noticing until the final climax?
No, instead, she goes on a careless killing spree. For someone as “clever” as Nana shown in the first episode, she acts VERY irrationally from here on out. Nana goes on to eliminate as many people as she can one by one by picking her targets based on the “Kill Estimate Potential Amount” on her smartphone and how deadly they are according to the numbers. She doesn’t think of the consequences of her actions, leaving large tracks behind her during these murders, and making large contradictions in her testimonies when people like Kyouya Onodera, are interrogating her. Nana doesn’t even follow up with her brilliant deductive skills to fake her mind-reading ability where she straight up asks “what are you trying to say?” and “what are you thinking?” to other people on the island. Why would someone with mind reading powers ask “what are you thinking” to someone? Shouldn’t they already know?
So now that many people are gone, Nana is suspiciously away during these murders, and her alias and testimonies are contradicting each other, what do the survivors have to say? And this is where the second part of “MHA X Among Us” comes in. And just like public lobbies in Among Us, everyone is too dense and stupid to put the pieces together to realize that Nana is the real “Enemy of Humanity” and continue to remain oblivious and stick their heads in the hole. All Nana has to say is “oh the Enemy of Humanity is actually lurking this island and killing that person behind ours backs” and everyone just believes her. Even Kyouya, who’s pretty much deduced everything perfectly on his own, tosses up all his evidence and says to himself, “pft, there’s not enough evidence to accuse Nana because ‘she has no reason to murder.’”
This cycle continues on and on for a couple of episodes. Nana finds someone to kill, she kills that person with an “elaborate plan” with a major hole that NANA WAS WITH THEM BEFORE THEY DIED. Why do the characters still believe that the Enemy of Humanity only appears in front of Nana and not any other students. How does this make any sense?
The following few episodes continue to follow this formula and later becomes painfully obvious that this is just the new norm. This is probably the point where everyone just closes this series for good and labels it as “the worst anime this season” because of how everyone acts and that the story progression from here on out is illogical because of everyone’s stupidity.
But I beg to differ.
The series takes a break from its episodic target-of-the-week formula when Nana turns her attention to the cute, small girl Michiru Inukai who has the power to heal any physical wound with her tongue, followed by the introduction of Jin Tachibana, a previous island-dweller who has the ability to shapeshift into anything he wants and also copies its abilities.
At this point in Nana’s killing spree, Jin already knows that she is the murderer. But instead of reporting Nana, he insteads tries to investigate Nana’s origins and motivations because as a previous island dweller, he knows something fishy is going on because something similar to this has already happened. Everyone living on the island was eliminated, and the only reason Jin got out was because he was able to shapeshift into a bird to fly back home. But when he tried going back home to his grandma, she freaked out because she didn’t remember Jin. Something was clearly not right, and he realized that reporting the murderer would do almost nothing without figuring out who was behind the murderer herself.
While Jin is out figuring out more about the island situation with the help of Nana’s confiscated smartphone, Nana continues to go out and try to eliminate Michiru. But Michiru is constantly nice to Nana, healing her wounds after her multiple accidents trying to eliminate targets and also getting away from dangerous attacks even if it costs some of her life. Nana, because of her past of her dead parents and learning to trust no one, begins to question Michiru’s motivations and doubts herself on whether or not Michiru actually knows that Nana is the murderer.
But even with multiple opportunities to kill Michiru, Nana refuses to kill her because “she might be a great alias.” Even with that excuse, Nana learns to care for Michiru and even stays by her bedside when she is unconscious for two straight days and wasting potentially valuable time that could have gone to eliminating more Talented.
When Michiru finally wakes up, Nana reluctantly stays longer with Michiru to learn why Michiru was unconscious in the first place. And all Michiru said was that she did this to herself while saving some injured cats.
”But why?”, asked Michiru, “why do you give yourself up for others?”
Michiru goes into her backstory, talking about how she was constantly bullied at school for being a Talented until someone who showed up in Michiru’s life that gave her power meaning to start using it for good in the world. We later learn that the girl who “saved” Michiru and became a close friend to her was actually dying from cancer, a terminal illness that Michiru can’t heal with her ability. But the message in the back of Michiru’s mind that the girl reminds her is that “it’s like knowing that eating sweets will cut your life a little shorter. You just got to live a little and accept it!” And although the girl passed away, Michiru continues to use that as her life motto that no matter what, she would use her ability to save other people’s lives.
This moment indicates the true climax of the series. Nana now knows that Michiru means no harem to Nana or anyone, matter of fact, and that her true loyalty lies with saving people around her, even at the cost of her life. As Nana begins to have an internal struggle over her ideals and mission, she begins to question the authority of the people who she is fighting for and what those kill estimate numbers really mean on the smartphone they gave her.
And that, my friends, is solid storywriting
Although most of this journey’s been a painful ride because of its base on stupid characters that leads to a relatively poor storyline, Talentless Nana manages to solidify itself with an interesting continuing premise that has potential to continue going in this direction and end up becoming a truly brilliant series. People may come and say that this series is truly garbage because of these major flaws, and I cannot overlook them. However, I will continue defending this anime for bringing up a great ending to the series and bringing up more questions about the mystery behind the government and their true agenda for the Talented.
So yeah, I guess I’ll go read the manga now (or wait for the second season that will probably definitely not come.)
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 26, 2020
I probably should have noticed from a mile away. Its "interesting" premise of a mysterious girl followed by slice-of-life episodic episodes until its big twist and pandering for a few episodes until the story gets wrapped up quickly to its “emotional end.” But instead of an enjoyable experience, all you get is a bad taste in your mouth because you realize, what was the point of this show?
Oh, is this another Charlotte?
This was probably the one show that I REALLY wanted to like this season, and at the same time, the largest disappointment this season. Everyone already knows the creator behind this anime, Jun Maeda,
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his other works such as Clannad, Angel Beats!, and Charlotte, and even the formula he uses to create his material: the first half of a show is to introduce the characters, the premise, and exploring the premise in interesting ways. Then in the second half, pull off its twist and end with its climax scene to get the audience emotionally invested in the show.
Even though this worked for shows like Clannad and Angel Beats! because of the setting and slowly builds up the setting over time with a natural progression into its twist, for shows like Charlotte and his newest work, Kamisama ni Natta Hi, or, The Day I Became A God, doesn’t have this clear “natural progression” and forcibly takes us from the first half of the show into the second half of the show while interesting characters lose their initial traits and ends with a poorly executed twist because of how poorly the buildup to that climax was written.
As said before, the first half of the show is dedicated to introducing all its characters, explaining the premise, and exploring the premise in new and interesting ways.
To start off with Kamisama, the premise is nothing we haven’t seen before. We get introduced to our generic protagonist boy who acts as our stand-in character and our mysterious girl, in this case, Hina Sato, a self-proclaimed God “Odin.” And this mysterious girl, just like other mysterious girls we’ve seen in other anime, has the supernatural power of predicting pretty much anything correctly. We follow their two adventures with other introduced characters such as the boy’s childhood friend, his crush, his little sister, some horny TV host, but more interestingly, Hacker.
But unlike Maeda’s other works where even the episodic nature of the first half of the show was interesting and brought up interesting points about its premise (even if one of the shows, Charlotte, pulls off its awkward twist that disregards the first half of the show), Kamisama had almost none of that, and at times, the episodic plot doesn’t align correctly with its premise.
Even if some of the episodes were somewhat entertaining and stupidly hilarious at the same time, such as the beginning episode with the horseracing and the shogi episode, the one episode, and probably the most “popular” episodic, that didn’t make sense was the sixth episode where we get the protagonist’s crush and she manages to make contact with her mother through some makeshift telephone that has access to the afterlife and ends with a discount Violet Evergarden episode where the father and the daughter get together and watch a series of video tapes at certain times as a “farewell” message before she passes away.
At this point of the show, we should already be convinced that Hina definitely has some supernatural powers and can even be considered to be a “god” because this is utterly impossible because it surpasses the realm of possibility. However, we learn later on with the show’s “twist” that she was just sick and her grandfather implemented a supercomputer that allows her to make insane calculations in her head. Although the horseracing episode and the shogi episode make sense because they have bases in statistical probability and calculations, this doesn’t make sense. No supercomputer, no matter how powerful, can contact the dead. And if the writers expect me to believe that this was a “super-duper” powerful supercomputer that can do anything, oh please, there’s better plot consistency in The God of High School because at least I’m expecting everyone to have supernatural powers even though it’s not explained at all.
Even though the first half of the show was very hit or miss because of its plot consistency and its general entertainment value, in Maeda fashion, everything falls apart in the second half of the show. Our “big twist” is that Hina was suffering from a deadly terminal illness and her grandfather implemented a supercomputer inside her to keep her alive. A large corporation soon learned of this technology in Hina’s brain and decided to capture her and surgically remove the computer into her brain. The protagonist tries to open up to her and finally does in its “emotional end” bada-bing bada boom the end.
Although I’ll appreciate the transition was a little smoother than Charlotte’s transition (but is that even an achievement?) because we get a few episodes revealing Hina’s secret, the worst part was that all the characters, in true Maeda fashion, lose all their character traits and plot relevancy in the second half of the show minus the protagonist and Hina. The supporting cast are all irrelevant to the point of calling the protagonist at the end to supporting cheers of “never give up!” and “please bring back Hina!”
But probably the worst of them all is the most promising character of the bunch, Hacker. He was introduced as almost a “rival” to Hina and his small bits at the end of each episode we learn that he is a genius and a supercomputer himself, just not as powerful as Hina. He spends time trying to discover the grandfather’s secret and his work and discovers Hina and her powers. But at the end, all we get is a sob-story of how he was mistreated and abused as a kid and ended up simply being a stepping stone for the protagonist to go meet Hina in the hospital. After that, he loses all plot relevancy and we never see him again.
Even the protagonist himself ends up becoming really annoying during his hospital stay as he tries to “open up” to Hina. He never learns or accepts that Hina is in a terrible mental state because he keeps physically harassing her and yelling at her to do something that ends up with Hina screaming for help. Like please, someone told you that she distrusts men now because of her mental state, so why are you attacking her and trying to force yourself onto her while she clearly doesn’t remember who you are?
In the end, Kamisama ended up being another tragically painful work from Jin Maeda and P.A Works. Although it had spectacular visual art and animation that rivals any other P.A Works anime to date, along with its great audio design to try to make the emotional scenes impactful, overall, this show was a mess from start to finish with its contradictory plot holes, painful characters, and a painfully obvious climax given Maeda’s other works.
I’m honestly a fan of this kind of formulaic writing because it can bring some truly impactful moments with its climax, but Maeda missed yet again with Kamisama. Hopefully, he will bring his A-game in his next work and give us something that will truly be an unforgettable experience.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Dec 21, 2020
Tl;dr: A wholesome, fun experience with a good message that bases its comedy on its characters and jabs on the anime fantasy genre.
(Light spoilers ahead, but… this is a slice of life-esque fantasy-based anime. Is there really anything to spoil?)
“Today was a wonderful and uneventful day” - Princess Aurora Sura Rhys “Syalis” Kaymin.
Great anime come in all shapes and forms. Some greats pull off different complex themes that transcend the norm and challenge the viewers to think about its messages and leave the viewer deep into thought after they finish the show. And some other greats masterfully build up their worlds and characters to establish
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a climax that takes everything we saw from the beginning up to the very ending and leaves us with a nonstop thrilling show from beginning to end.
Or some other greats, take all the already established conventional and “cliched” tropes from anime and other media but make them their own by adding their own spice and unique twists to make themselves a fun experience anyone can enjoy. And that’s exactly what Maoujou de Oyasumi or its English name, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, establishes itself as a formula-based slice of life-esque fantasy show that adds its own bright colors to give the viewers a uniquely wholesome experience.
At first, the show sells itself with a basic premise we’ve seen tons of times in anime. We start in the *insert kingdom name* kingdom where the royalty live peacefully, and everyone loves the royal kingdom until one day, the Demon King of *insert demon king dungeon name* swoops into the castle, kidnaps the princess, and locks her up in a cell in his dungeon. Now it’s up to the handsome, perfect hero to save the princess from the Demon King! See? Stuff we’ve seen (way too many times) before.
But this is where the show pulls off its “twist.” Instead of following the generic fantasy formula and following the hero, we follow the story of the princess, Aurora Sura Rhys Kaymin
(who I will be calling Princess for the entirety of this review because everyone calls her “Hime” for the entirety of the show as if her name is irrelevant because of her noble status), as she attempts to pass the time by doing what she does best: sleep. But oh, no! The bed in her “cell” is SUPER uncomfortable, and she needs to think of a way to optimize her sleeping experience.
So what does any normal captive princess in the Demon King’s lair do? Just deal with it? Of course not! She’s a princess! She will do whatever it takes to make sure she gets what she wants! This basic premise is the driving force of the show and the relationships the princess builds with her “captors” around her.
Even if there is a lack of “plot” in the show, since it can be described as the Princess trying to get her hands on different materials from around the Demon King Castle, the show doesn’t let its lack of a story progression stop itself from being a fun experience from start to end. Instead, the show relies on building the demon’s relationships with the Princess combined with its satire on the fantasy/isekai genre to carry the show’s comedy.
All the characters’ designs are built to follow typical anime fantasy designs such as your beautiful princess with a cute gown, your authoritarian Demon King with his two little horns sticking out on the top of his head, your perfect hero wearing his plated armor and sense of justice along his chest, and many more designs for the other demon and human characters that poke fun of the overused designs within the fantasy genre.
Even if the designs themselves are pretty forgettable because of this, the characters themselves are not. Our protagonist, the Princess, appears to be gracious and calm like how a princess should be. But this Princess is everything but “gracious” and “calm.” She uses her wit and diligence to trick little teddy bear creatures into breaking out of her own cell, sneaks off into different areas of the castle for things for her own beauty sleep, and even manages to get the Demon King and his right-hand man to submit to her by leashing them around just for their precious materials for her bedding! Absolute scenes!
And speaking of the Demon King, we can’t talk about this anime without mentioning the Demon King and his demon folk and their counterparts, the Hero™, the perfect examples of what this anime represents. Although their designs and actions suggest that they’re cookie-cut from their respective tropes taken straight from fantasy anime, they act as jabs to the fantasy genre by grounding them as “human” rather than “ideals.”
The demon folk, for example, are meant to be the “big baddies” of the universe and represent everything evil. But rather than true evil like how they seem to the outside world, they act as reasonable demons who act on good morals contradicting their outside personas within the castle. This leads to some great comedic moments between the demons and the Princess with them rather than acting as captors and captives, but as, sometimes, captive and captors, but most of the time as friendly equals.
The Hero™ is also a great play on the fantasy genre because it does a great job of painting his over the top for justice attitude and exaggerates that point to borderline insanity. Even though his intentions are always good, like an ideal hero, his overenthusiasm ends up hurting those around him, and more importantly, the Princess. Even though he’s continually on a journey to the Demon Castle and not physically with the Princess, we still have great moments with him and the Princess together as flashbacks and “nightmares” when the Princess is sleeping.
But even with all these great comedic characters that lead to great comedic moments, the best part about this show is the simple yet powerful message that the Princess says to the demon folk that she knows that they’re “all kind and good people.” And that’s the entire message of this show. Although we can easily group people into “good” and “evil’” based on our conventional past perceptions of these groups, we never know what these people, or demons, are like until we spend valuable time with each other as equals. Although it’s not a complex theme that challenges the viewer to spend time pondering on its ideals and flaws, it’s a rather good takeaway anyone can get from this anime to “imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes,” or to put it into simpler terms, “imagine yourself in the situation or circumstances of another person to understand or empathize with their perspective, opinion, or point of view.”
Although this anime is not the perfect experience, it establishes itself as a surprisingly solid watch from beginning to end, filled to the brim with wholesomely comedic moments and characters. I highly recommend this anime to anyone who needs a break from the deep and psychological a lot of anime tries to be and needs to binge a solid, wholesome series that will bring them some good laughs without thinking too hard about what they watch.
Overall: 7.3 (rounds down to 7)
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 20, 2020
{From the perspective of someone who has never read the Holmes’ series}
“Catch me if you can Mr. Holmes” - William James Moriarty
Unless you’ve been asleep during English class as I have or just have been living under a rock (again like me), you’ve definitely heard of Sherlock Holmes. But in case you actually don’t know who or what Sherlock Holmes is, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1892 featuring the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes trying to correct social injustices by offering a new, fairer sense of justice, all written in the first-person narrative
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by Holmes’ counterpart Dr. Watson. These stories were very well received and are known today as the staple of great detective fiction.
So what’s this anime series’ relation to the original Boyle's Sherlock Holmes?
“Yuukoku no Moriarty,” or its English counterpart name “Moriarty the Patriot,” is nothing short of a love poem to the original Sherlock Holmes series. But instead of taking an approach we see in other Holmes-related media by adapting different stories from the original books or making non-canon stories around Holmes, it takes an original take on the Holmes franchise by adapting an already pre-existing story by making the villain, more specifically, William James Moriarty, the protagonist of the story.
Professor William James Moriarty is a criminal mastermind behind many of the evil that happens in London. Unlike many other Sherlock Holmes villains, he goes undetected because he is never in direct contact with any of his accomplices. Holmes even acknowledges Moriarty as his equal, and to quote Holmes in the novels, “he is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.”
Even though Conan Doyle, the author of the original Sherlock Holmes series, managed to create such a potentially great and compelling villain to the franchise, Moriarty was left underutilized and only appeared in two chapters of the canon. But even in those two chapters, Moriarty made his mark on the Holmes franchise by proving himself to be the most dangerous criminal Holmes has ever encountered for his intelligence and cunning nature that was rivaled by only Holmes himself.
Under these circumstances, what does any avid Sherlock Holmes fan do with some writing and drawing talent? This anime series is the perfect answer to that question.
The series starts by introducing us to corrupt London,where the rich stay on top while the poor get gutted and exploited by those same rich people, and our antihero protagonist William. We begin to see William’s cunning wit when he acts as a consultant to the poor and rich, even as a child. His soon-to-be brother, Albert James Moriarty, notices him and chooses for William to be his new adoptive brother after his father asked him to choose an adopted child to gain a better reputation within the first class (you see where this is going?)
And because of this class divide, William gets mistreated by his new “family” members, but eventually gets his revenge by enlisting the help of, and essentially manipulating, the remaining Moriarty brothers to burn their house for the exploitation and mistreatment of the lower classes.
Even though William did a terrible deed by murdering his adoptive family in cold blood, was his motivations wrong? That’s the question that’s brought up multiple times through the anime as he continues fighting for justice for the lower class soon, the main driving force for the climax of the two-cour series.
Although I do not want to address anything more because this anime is truly spectacular and new watchers should go in without much of what goes on, Production I.G does a near-flawless job of both being a perfect complement to the original tale and a great stand alone series by outlying and highlighting James Moriarty’s origins, motivations, and builds up perfectly to the climax of the story we will get in the second season: the clash between the wits of Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty. The production value also heightens the tension with the great action animation and moving shots along with unforgettable facial expressions; the theme colors of the backgrounds and characters blend in the dark red colors of cunning evil and the dark green glum of London, setting the story's tone perfectly.
And as someone who has never experienced the Holmes series himself minus a few movies, I can confidently say this is all I've ever wanted from a series like this. I will be eagerly waiting for its continuation in the spring, hungry for more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 18, 2020
tl;dr: A very poorly executed generic romantic "comedy" with a unique twist that doesn't deliver and makes itself indistinguishable from others like it.
"Onee-chan! Why did you fall in love with a loser like him?" - Kaginoji Chitose
Good question Chitose, can we talk about it?
But first, can people stop praising this anime for being a romantic masterpiece? Because it's really not.
I get that people like how this romance anime brings something new to the table of being the relationship between a married couple rather than your generic harem-esque tsundere moe girl/ dense guy relationship you see in many other romance anime. Still, at the same
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time, the anime is basically your generic harem-esque tsundere moe girl/ dense guy relationship you see in many other romance anime, but this time with a solidified married couple as the "main relationship."
Let's start with the more unimportant stuff.
Art: (4/10) This is definitely an art style I haven't seen before in anime, most likely because it's supposed to directly reflect the mangaka's art style, but "unique" doesn't mean "good." There is nothing really special about the art minus the art style. The character designs are bland, nothing stylistically appealing at all, just your typical romance SoL anime movements with some awkward movements and reaction faces.
Sound: (5/10) The Opening Sequence is pretty cool, suchasthebeatdroppingfasterthanGodofHighSchool'sMALScore, but besides that, the sound design is nothing extraordinary you've seen in romance anime. Sparkle sounds during cute moments, wacky noises when something "funny" happens, you know, your typical SoL sound stuff with nothing notable to mention.
Now to the important stuff.
Story: (2/10) To start off, this anime REALLY doesn't care about the stuff about how they got together. We get our main protagonist Yuzaki Nasa, who's an ambitious and somewhat pretentious thirteen-year-old student who suddenly gets truck-kuned into another universe, but instead of being isekaied to another universe, we get isekaied into our cute romance story when the main girl, Tsukuyomi Tsukasa (and soon Yuzaki Tsukasa) "magically" falls in love with the main protagonist and with him. This storyline is followed by its most iconic moment "I'll only date you if you marry me!"
And this is where the story starts not making sense. When Nasa gets admitted to the hospital, he misses his high school entrance exams, studies for the next term, all for him just to drop out of school entirely and starts work as a minimum-wage worker "in hopes of finding Tsukasa." Why the sudden personality change? Did he lose it when he got hit by the truck? Maybe you can find an excuse like "he didn't want to work hard anymore" or "got tired by trying too hard", but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the plot holes.
And the story conveniences only start there.
The next thing is about how they immediately get together after two years of being apart.
How did Tsukasa find Nasa? Not even Nasa knows that one! But let's ignore that so we could get into our lovey dovey romance. But wait! Tsukasa managed to get her marriage papers because she wanted to get married with Nasa, where were Nasa's papers? How did Tsukasa even GET those papers when it was clear that she ran away from home, shown in later episodes? HOW DID NASA GET HIS PAPERS? Wait, isn't the legal age of getting married eighteen for males and sixteen for females in Japan? HOW WAS THIS MARRIAGE EVEN LEGAL?!
You get what I mean by plot conveniences? The author clearly just wanted to start the lovey dovey romance immediately that they just brush away the "irrelevant part" of their backstory of how they got together. People might not care, but this kind of thing really takes the reader out of the story and makes the romance between Tsukasa and Nasa comically unbelievable.
But maybe the romantic chemistry and storyline
As I said before, the only difference of this anime from other romance shows is that the main couple is married, that's literally it. They go through awkward blushing lewd hand-holding hurdles, seeing each other naked for the first time, meeting their parents for the first time, you know, the typical stuff you see in any romance anime? There's even a plot point where two girls blush over Nasa and end up kind of sad when they realize he's married
The anime even ends with your generic cultural festival with their "sparkle sparkle moe moe kyun" yukatas but instead of a confession ruined by fireworks-kun, they kiss because they're married, which I guess subverts your generic romance trope, but again, these two characters are married! Please act like you're married instead of first-time dating high schoolers!
Characters: (2/10) Where do I even start with the characters? I already had my say on Tsukasa and Nasa, who are very well in the terms of a generic main girl and harem protagonist, respectively. Tsukasa is a little bit mysterious in the beginning when she abruptly enters Nasa's life by saving it and ends up being a beat-red tsundere girl that gets flustered whenever Nasa does anything remotely cute. Nasa is also your typical harem nice-guy protagonist because he somehow gets all the girls because he's… nice. Wow, haven't seen THAT one before.
And besides the main two leads, the side characters are also laughably bad. One girl, who isn't as remotely bad as the others Kaginoji's, purpose is to try to break them up because she realized that this marriage isn't even practical in the first place. Was she fourth-walling this entire time and calling out how stupid their relationship is? Two of Nasa's childhood (girl) friends' purposes was to be shocked that Nasa is married to a really cute girl, mope a little because they remotely like Nasa, then accept it and then move on without any repercussions or even help the two stop being embarrassed around each other.
Now thinking about it, is Nasa meant to be a self-insert male character where he gets a really cute girl to be his wife but also having a harem filled with other cute girls of a loli and an ara-ara one-chan? If so, then that makes a lot of sense. Gotta keep the Japanese birth rates high somehow, right?
Enjoyment: (4/10) I first got into this anime because people keep saying that this anime is "great" and a "refreshing" take on romance but in the end it's your typical blushing embarrassed romantic couple riddled with your dense nice-guy protagonist with harem bait and moe girls. While the cute moments were indeed cute, the many, MANY flaws to the backstory in addition to the generic romantic nature made this anime a very bad watch. If you don't really care about how two people end up together and just want a "cute couple does cute things" anime, then sure, go give it a watch.
Overall: 3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 28, 2020
In the second iteration of Korean Manhwa Adaptations, God of High School is supposed to be the returning king to bring Manhwa anime adaptations to the pedestal it belongs to. As a reader of the Manhwa myself, I was plenty excited to watch this anime to see the pretty visuals and fight scenes animated by MAPPA of all studios.
And what should I even say? It was very, very, very, very, very terrible. Even from a manhwa reader’s perspective who knows what’s going to happen, I was still plenty confused about what was going to happen. I got confused about why some arcs didn’t get
...
adopted, why some backstories were covered and not others, and, more importantly, the age-old question of “can we fit 113 chapters into a 13 episode season?” The fact that MAPPA botched a decent and fun manhwa read into the car crash that is GOHS is beyond me.
How does it stand against my five pillars of anime rating? Oh, probably not very good.
Story (1/10): Oh god, were the stories and characters a train wreck. We were promised a tournament arc, a good tournament arc filled with plenty of backstories, fair fighting, and emotional moments packed with each punch. But no, all the fights were lackluster, no backstories were gone into, which might’ve been a good thing because when MAPPA did decide to go into a side character’s backstories, it just felt sickening that we got to see a potentially good character to disappear for the rest of the series. And as for the actual fights themselves, there were no “solid” fights. All the battles had no direction at all and just throwing punches and swinging swords with no thought into them at all besides the occasional power name scream. One of the most hyped fights I read in the Manhwa was over in like, what, 10 seconds? And the ones that don’t matter and take an entire episode of runtime with have no impact on the rest of the story or characters.
But the worst, the ABSOLUTE worst part of GOHS is that they shatter the first rule of making a compelling story, which is following your worldbuilding. It’s clear to see that everyone fights with superpowers with all the “power naming” shenanigans you see in typical fighting anime. But no, they deemed all of that NORMAL without explaining anything, and when they do introduce superpowers, it just feels so out of place and comes out of nowhere. To the point where the story no longer follows the tournament arc and just goes to random bullshit God fighting or whatever.
The story and worldbuilding is absolute dogshit. Nothing is believable, I don’t even know what the hell is going on half the time and even the fights
Characters: (2/10): Part two of the story building trainwreck that is GOHS. God of HS’s characters doesn’t make sense. Their powers don’t make sense and their actions don’t make sense. We see this especially later in the series where new characters come out of nowhere and all they act is the one-dimensional friend or villain to our protagonists. The only thing I do believe MAPPA did right were our protagonists’ backstories, fleshing them out and them acting accordingly and some even wrapping it up nicely throughout the story. But again, the amount of inconveniences and character holes that exist are so massive, I can’t even tell if they told this in space, or in the writer’s room.
Art: (6/10) I’m probably not going to be the first to say this, but the art is definitely very nice, since, well of course, MAPPA of all studios did it. HOWEVER, although the art did look very nice, it just didn’t feel anything special at the same time. MAPPA does follow the artstyle and the battles are very nicely animated, but it just didn’t feel up to the standard I expected from an anime like this.
Sound: (5/10): Yea the OPs and EDs were unique and maybe good? The rest of the soundtrack was typical fighting shounen battle sequence songs and also a lot of songs and sounds that were inappropriately placed. Sometimes a happy go-lucky song would be playing in fight scenes and sometimes the largest punches’ sounds made the fights as convincing as a 8-year olds fist-fighting.
Enjoyment (1/10): I think it’s clear to say that I didn’t enjoy this anime one bit. The story and characters are abysmal at best, and even the art and sound are pretty lackluster compared to the hype it got in the beginning of the season. Even though I haven’t kept up with the Manhwa in a while, I think I’ll keep at that instead of watching more of this hot burning garbage pile of anime. They even hinted at it at the last episode, but I really hope that it doesn’t go that far.
Should you watch it? Oh god no, go watch something else.
Overall: 2/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 26, 2020
TLDR: The story and the characters are atrocious to the point I couldn’t take the anime seriously anymore, but I think that was the entire goal of the show: a mindless OP main character show that’s supposed to be one hell of an entertaining ride. The art, which I will admit, is pretty, and sound design all does its job as a fantasy. Should you watch it? If you want mindless entertainment of an overpowered MC... sure?
“Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-Tachi no Gakkou e” or “The Misfit of Demon Academy” can be summarized into a single phrase:
...
“Oh, did you think killing me would kill me?” It pretty much explains how terrible and messy the worldbuilding and the characters are. It simultaneously shows its true colors by being the standard fantasy trash show that you’re not supposed to take seriously and enjoy the ride.
Let’s break it down.
Story (2/10): As I said before, the show was pretty trashy from start to finish, and one of the large offenders for the story was its worldbuilding. So much of the “fantasy” aspects, ranging from magic to mythical items, made no sense at all. There is no explanation to where the magic comes from, how it works, what types of magic there are. Just isekai-esque magic being pulled out of nowhere to drive the story forward.
The only reason I didn’t give the story a one is the promise of the “end goal” of this anime and also the mini-arcs that are genuinely interesting. But a lot of the exciting mini-arcs and “end goal” is shrouded by the OP protagonist doing OP protagonist things to resolve the conflict as soon as possible, which takes away the… magic (pun intended) of the stories.
Characters (2/10): Just like the show, the characters are all trashy. The main characters besides our protagonist, are all just typical troupes you see in fantasy harem shows. You have your kuudere white-haired girl (haven’t seen that before), you see the dynamic red tsundere girl (haven’t seen that before), and you have your friendly handsome guy side male character (haven’t seen that before) all following the protagonist like the god he is.
If the main characters are that bad, the side characters are even worse, but for comedic reasons. The parents, even though I liked them, are just the “nice parenting young couple” (although you don’t see that in many anime), and he even has his FAN CLUB that SINGS PRAISES ABOUT HIM and LUSHES OVER HIM. The introduction of this “fan club harem” was when I realized that I shouldn’t take this anime seriously.
As for the antagonist… were there antagonists? I honestly don’t remember minus the unreasonably go-crazy villain at the end that gets the “redeemed after his defeat” treatment like most heroes vs. villains shows are. But as for antagonists goes, the best antagonists in this story were probably the plot twist reveal antagonists that aren’t antagonists that made the anime somewhat reasonable. It was just to the point where we already knew that the main character would win because he was so stupidly overpowered that I can’t even bother remembering that real antagonists exist in this story.
As for our protagonist, although I bashed him a lot for being the overpowered MC he is, no spoilers, of course, I do find his “twist” interesting where his motives aren’t of a typical demon king. He does carry the show with his charm and dark demeanor where the show, which is still really bad, didn’t become appalling because of his shithousery at times.
Art (6/10): Although I think this is just a sign of the times, I like the art and the art style for this anime. The main characters are iconically distinct in their ways, and the magic is super pretty to watch. But the best thing about the art in this anime was almost the lack of CGI used. Again, it was nothing special, and there was the occasional noticeable one sprinkled in; I appreciate how decent the CGI looked in this anime.
Sound (5/10): As for the sound, on the other hand, there’s nothing special going on. The OP/EDs were average at best, the OST didn’t stand out that much, and the voice acting was pretty standard for all the characters and their tropes.
Enjoyment (4/10): As I said before, this is a show you should take with a grain of salt. Nothing’s meant to be taken seriously, just a standard isekai show that’s supposed to be a fun and hilarious watch from start to finish. I knew that, and even though I was supposed to enjoy the show for what it was, I just couldn’t. Although I did enjoy some good laughs and, at one point, genuinely was interested in what was going to happen, it became incredibly dull from time to time. It showed its true colors as the generic OP isekai (not-isekai) harem show of the season.
Should you watch “The Misfit of Demon King Academy?” Uhhhhh, the only reason I saw it was because it was a seasonal anime, so if you’re looking for a full-length season watch, you should probably skip this one.
Overall (3/10)
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 25, 2020
TLDR: Flimsy story, Flimsy characters, good looking art, and sound, and genuinely enjoyed the dumpster fire trash that it was. Should you watch it? If you want a fun romantic comedy experience with good looking waifus, then be my guest.
<Minor Spoilers Ahead>
Aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwww man! It’s the obligatory dumpster fire harem romcom show of the year everyone! Sound the alarms! Whether it was over flipping their shits over how Kazuya, our protagonist, is such a living bruh moment, fighting each other over their best girl (it’s Sumi by the way), or literally pointing out how the entire concept of the show is softcore prostitution, “Kanojo Okarishimasu”, or
...
“Rent-A-Girlfriend”, was definitely the talk for non-sequential anime this season.
So as I must: let’s break it down like we always do here.
Story (3/10): Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that the storyline for Rent-A-Girlfriend is pretty flimsy. We can even say it starts at the beginning. Episode One does a good job setting the rules of “the world” the characters live in, but the rest of the story doesn’t rely on these ground rules too much and the future events don’t rely on these facts too often. Instead, the main drive of the story revolved around one person being kept in the dark about the romance in the show. When it gets to the point where they are the one of the only two or three factors keeping them together, it’s reasonable to say that any future events only happen because the author says so rather than highlighting the outside factors that truly bring them together.
Minus the flimsy main drive, the story also has some gaping plot holes. I’m going to admit I was one of those people who tried to defend the plot holes, but when the author makes so many of them, it’s often hard to explain why the story and characters behave the way they do. I’m not going into major detail about them because of spoilers, but plot holes concerning the characters’ feelings for each other, some of their actions going forward in the story, and, more importantly, being kept in the dark about the romance in the story almost becomes unbelievable at some point.
But fortunately, Rent-A-Girlfriend did save itself by having the main character have SOME character progression and the general plotline of the story made sense, even if it was littered with plot holes
Characters (3/10): To say the very least, Rent-A-Girlfriend has pretty poor characters. It’s especially clear to see how poor the characters are if the show introduced one of the main characters AT THE SECOND TO LAST EPISODE, but I digress.
To start off, we can’t talk about characters without talking about our idiot Kazuya, right? As I said before, Kazuya is a living bruh moment. Some of his thoughts, his actions, and his motives are downright questionable and childish that makes even the real-life horny, otaku high schoolers look like mature, middle-aged businessmen. Even though I do appreciate the subtle differences in his character and some genuinely good acts he does, his good acts that happen are so sporadic and out of nowhere that it makes it hard for me to believe him as a character. But the worst part of him is that for some reason, the girls (except for one) forgive him for the large messes he made, just for him to go on and make more messes.
But unlike the bruh moment that is Kazuya, the girls in this series are fairly decent. Chizuru, our “main girl” of our series, is such a good girl that she just transcends the human world of women because of how fine she is and becomes… a useless goddess *insert Aqua.* But in all seriousness, she is such a good character not because she’s really pretty (more about character designs later) or her witty attitude, but by how mature she is. Even as she knows that Kazuya’s romantic life is a trainwreck, she stays by him and helps him know that he needs her help to get over his current situation and move on for him not to be only happier, but to better himself as a person as well. I don’t know if that’s waifu enough for you, but that is good waifu material (saying this as a Sumi fan.) Unfortunately, she doesn’t do much for her “character development.” She stays stagnant throughout the story and almost seems way too perfect to be realistic as a character.
Now we get onto our next girl, the “worst girl” of this series, Mami. A lot of people are giving her slick for being an asshole, which she is, but they don’t realize that she’s actually in the right in all of this. The way she was treated perfectly justifies why she made the decisions she made, even if it did come off as a little antagonizing, and still put her in the same category as Rachel and Myne. But similar to Chizuru, she also falls short in the “character development” area. She doesn’t get ANY development throughout the twelve-episode range and just remains an asshole. There’s no inkling of development anywhere, but I am excited to see where her progression goes.
Unfortunately, the rest of the girls quite fall short. For one thing, one of the girls, Sumi (my personal favorite) isn’t even INTRODUCED until basically the very end, so I can’t say much about her besides “she’s adorably shy” (which is why I like her.) The other girl, Ruka, is a mess of a character. She’s also very one-dimensional as a character, which is basically being an “attached Baka-desu” for the entirety of the episode. Although they do explain her over-attachment within the ending sequence, it came off as extremely shallow and the only reason for her attached personality.
So basically, besides the fact they have at least some romantic feelings for the main character (as the harem tag suggests), the girls are at least decent in their own right.
Art: (7/10) Even as a typical slice of life show that isn’t drama heavy like Oregairu, I found the art for Rent-A-Girlfriend very appealing. Although it wasn’t something astonishing that made me jump out of my seat, I enjoyed the pretty visuals, especially the characters’ eyes and the very good character designs for all the girls. I can tell this is just a sign of the times and how anime’s improved in general, but I still appreciate the artwork that went into the show.
Sound: (5/10) As for sound, the OSTs were adequate for the show and supplemented it well, the OP/ED were all very catchy, with the special ED sequence especially hitting hard with the lyrics and tone of the song, and the voice acting, as expected from the top tier female seiyuus, making the sound direction for this anime a good experience.
Enjoyment: (6/10) Even though I spent a majority of my review bashing the anime for its weak storyline and characters, I still enjoyed this show for what it is: mindless trashy romcom experience. Yes, some moments made me bash my head on my desk or scream at my screen about why some characters were acting the way they were, which is why I only gave my enjoyment a “6” rating, I'll still appreciate how the show gave me very good laughs and a general enjoyable experience.
So should you watch Rent-A-Girlfriend? I mean, if all you want is a dumpster fire, fun romcom experience with good-looking waifus, you definitely should.
Overall: 3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 25, 2020
TLDR: Pretty awful show with no character chemistry or plot progression, even for a lighthearted rom-com. Go watch it only if you wanna check out whatever Twitter's screaming about.
Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! Or Uzaki Wants to Hang Out is one of those shows that gets carried by its main character, or in these types of anime, main girl. Shows like Himouto Umaru-Chan or WataMote revolve around their main girl, in this case Umaru and Tomoko respectively, so if you can’t stand the main character or can’t take her seriously, you probably won’t like the show.
And judging by my score, you can probably tell that I didn’t
...
like Uzaki, the main carry for this show, as a character.
Let’s see how this anime breaks down.
Story: (2/10) Even for a slice of life anime which is usually defined by no action or story, the one main plot progression, the romance between Uzaki and Senpai didn’t feel natural at all even though the entire premise was that they fell for each other as “they were hanging out.” But no, it felt more as if Uzaki was just annoying Senpai and they just suddenly started blushing at one point without any noticeable progression. And when they introduced an interesting cliffhanger at one point, they completely ruined it within the first few minutes of the following episode and went back to the poor character interactions after that.
Character: (1/10): Alright, this is probably the worst part of the anime. Every character, including Uzaki, is one-dimensional. We have our main girl Uzaki, a girl that can be categorized by her large breasts and annoying high pitched anime voice to the point where it became painful to hear her say anything. We have the boring, generic tsundere-esque main male character where his two interesting traits are “mean eyes” and “six pack.” We also have our forgettable side characters: the grandpa owner of the cafe where his entire character is Uzaki/Senpai commentary, his daughter who acts as a love rival but then fades away into the abyss to become the replica of her father, and the blonde nice handsome guy that no one falls for apparently (haven’t seen that before) and also acts as relationship commentary and convenient situation fodder. But the worst, and I mean the worst character, the one I absolutely despised, was the cat. In random scenes, you see the same orange tabby cat that just has a silent shocked face whenever Uzaki and Senpai are together which I think was supposed to act as the audiences’ reactions and how we were supposed to react? But the cat didn’t come up as funny at all and made me groan everytime a still image of a shocked cat came up on screen. Maybe the characters would have been a 2 instead of a 1 if the cat was removed.
Art: (5/10) Nothing special going on for the art. I’m not going to act offended about Uzaki’s body proportions or whatever like on Twitter, but I am going to say that Uzaki is the epitome of a waifu design I don’t like (large breasts and short boyish hair.) But that fact doesn’t take away from Uzaki as a character or the general art of the story, just an opinion.
Sound: (5/10) Nothing special going on here either. The opening and endings were as generic as you can get for these types of animes, although they were kind of catchy. I would normally give that a 6, but the voice acting in this anime was pretty poor mostly because it felt like the actors were just saying lines instead of jumping off of each other (as I said before in characters.) The OST, if there was any, was very forgettable but didn’t ruin the show in general.
Enjoyment: (2/10) In terms of enjoyment, there was no enjoyment. Although this show was painfully boring, at least it wasn’t offensively bad, I guess.
But take my words with a grain of salt. Some people do like the show (for reasons that I still can’t comprehend), so you may too. Should you watch the show? Well, if you want to watch it because of the Twitter farce, go on right ahead. Should you watch it if you want a good, compelling romantic story between characters with good chemistry? You should go watch something else.
Overall: 2/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 24, 2020
TLDR: A very poor buildup to what is a generally good ending to an outstanding anime series. Sprinkled with some emotional moments supported by the amazing production done by Studio feel. I will miss this series for the experience for the foreseeable future.
[Light Spoilers Ahead]
Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru, or My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected is many things. A pilgrimage destination for people who set out to quench their thirst for finding something genuine masterfully created genre-breaking romantic comedy full of ironic tension and witty dialogue, a journey exploring the themes of self-realization, inferiority complex, cynicism, and social
...
awkwardness.
At least, that was what we were promised. The first two seasons of Oregairu did this well by introducing its characters, showing how each of them interacts with each other, unpacking everyone's secret desires and motivations with a conclusion of a competition overarching this entire series/
So now, after five years of waiting, we get our conclusion, and all I can say is that Oregairu Kan (meaning climax in Japanese by the way) is one massive letdown.
Let's break it down, shall we?
Story: (3/10) Starting with the positives, the most remarkable aspect of Oregairu is how deep the superficial scenarios are. I'm not going to spoil anything because I want you to read this knowing nothing but a general analysis, but many scenes in the stories, if you look hard enough, have profound significance all surrounding one central concept, "there is no happy ending for everyone in a romantic comedy." So if you're going to watch Oregairu Kan, keep a mindful eye and notice how the characters interact, the environment around them, and the relationship dynamic everyone has with each other to notice trends you don't usually see in romance dramas.
Now we get to the bad stuff. As good as Oregairu is at making their scenarios have deeper meanings, it also screams melodrama. The main goal of the entirety of Oregairu Kan is nothing special, planning a high school prom, but they made it seem like a life or death scenario that it was almost laughable. The worst part of it was that the whole planning of the high school prom lost focus and at some points, forgot about what they were trying to do. At one point, it jumped quickly from "we're concerned about how this will turn out" to "okay, it's fine let's just do it" out of nowhere. I thought I missed something, so I went back, but no, I was right that it jumped the gun on the prom idea without much resistance with the "main antagonist" saying that "you know, the people will still get mad over this", which is basically saying that the conflict was never even resolved in the first place.
The story also focused way too much on one character and essentially, the story became about her when she shouldn't have become the focus because she's not the love interest in the end. A lot of the story evolved from a story about acceptance about losing your love to becoming a cry bait for audiences over the fact that she lost. But I'll talk more about this in characters.
Characters: (2/10) Not enough Saika this season? Automatic one.
Okay, but on a serious note, my statement has some truth in it. But not just Saika, just everyone else. A lot of the characters we saw and were built upon in the previous seasons were all rendered useless in this season. Either the characters have no plot significance or impact, plot devices to remind Hachiman of one fact that he forgot, or literally background noise to what's going on.
But the largest offender was that Yukino, the main girl of this story, was pushed to the sides. No, the main focus of this story was Yui, or as the light novel readers will say, "Yui cry bait." I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, a few episodes dedicated to that should have been good enough, but the worst part was that so much of the airtime was dedicated to Yui and Hachiman together, implying that they will be together in the end. But no, in the last-gasp effort, Studio felt realized that this story was entirely about Yukino and quickly wrapped it up towards the end with no buildup at all of the chemistry between Yukino and Hachiman.
Art: (10/10) As for art, I can describe it as "unnecessarily beautiful." We saw it with the drastic art style change in Zoku: the subtle facial expressions from the characters, ESPECIALLY Yui, the sunset shading on all of the characters' faces and setting, even the iconic finger/hand animations, all of it is unnecessarily beautiful. I understand the fantastic animation is to bring out how tangible the emotional scenes are between the character interactions, so I'm going to keep the art at a 10 because of how effectively Studio feel pulled it off, but it still doesn't take away the fact that Oregairu is unnecessarily beautiful.
Sound (9/10): I think out of all the OSTs even from the first and second seasons, this season definitely stood out the most. The opening and ending themes doesn't only sound good with the seiyuu singing spectacularly, but the lyrics as well have a special connection to the message of the anime itself. Take the example from the opening theme: "One after another, Happy ever after, At the end credits roll, What I hoped for, Won't appear on the screen, No matter how long I wait" just talking about how Oregairu needs a conclusion, but it won't damn right be a happy one. I also can't mention sound direction without talking about the ending theme. The cherry ending theme with both Yukino and Yui sings speaks volumes, especially when the more mellow single seiyuu versions of the ending theme plays in the more emotionally impactful scenes. And oh, do those scenes hit like a truck(-Kun)!
Besides the openings and endings, the rest of the OST was also really good, even at times calling back to some old themes and OSTs from the past Oregairu seasons.
Enjoyment (4/10): All in all, I can say that Oregairu Kan could have been great. The art and sound direction were impeccable, the past two seasons had good buildup to this point, all for it to be "destroyed" in the final season, the "Kan" as you can say. It wasn't bad by any means, the emotional scenes hit hard, the art was outstanding, the soundtrack was great, and everything was wrapped up very nicely. I'm just saying that this season could have been so much better.
Now would you excuse me while I go read the light novel so I could have a better experience with a writer that actually knows how to write a good buildup to a good conclusion.
My Equation Total Overall: 4/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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