Back to outsidethemox's Profile outsidethemox's Profile

Really enjoyed the concept at first (crazy, possibly sadistic tanned skin girl torments nerdy boy but there's a hint of romance between the two), but we're now at a point in the series where the pacing has slowed to a near halt. Nagatoro has lost most of her edge and the story has devolved into a more traditional, forgettable tsundere romance with ecchi elements - the whole gimmick seems to have vanished from the past few volumes in order to develop an ongoing narrative. It feels like Nanashi is padding the story at this point and I've lost most of my interest. Art is still ... quite good and getting better as the series goes on, but I've definitely fallen out of love with the series.

Psyren is Wasted Potential: The Manga. There are so many interesting elements to the story that the author briefly touches on and then moves on (the "programming" of psychic abilities, villain backstory, powers revealed near the end...I could go on). Battles with seemingly big bads end in a matter of seconds/chapters and feel poorly paced. There is an enormous plot point introduced in the story that is never addressed again. Funny enough these only happens a little after the midway point, like the author got tired of writing the story or the series was cancelled and had to wrap ASAP. What starts as a cool ... premise of time travel turns into a rushed out mess of a product by the end, resulting in it being a fairly forgettable, skippable experience. In instances like this, the artwork can usually redeem a mediocre story, but the art here is nothing but average. Overall a fine "popcorn" read but lacks the lasting power of some other shonen out there.

Again!! had a fairly strong start; I grew attached to the characters, the art style was amazing (stays consistently good throughout), and the storyline was different enough to pull me in. Things took a turn for the worse quick.

Once the initial arc ends, the bottom falls out from under this story. The plot becomes convoluted, far too many story beats are added, and the writing just crumbles entirely. The drama club arc was by far one of the worst I've read in manga history, and there are now added elements of time travel/alternate timelines. Remember when the story was about reviving an ouendan group? Me ... neither.

I was praying that the story would pick up once that horrendous storyline ended, but it failed to do so. I couldn't regain my love for these same characters, and I couldn't keep reading for enjoyment; at that point I only finished Again!! for the sake of completion. Boy was it not worth it. The redeeming qualities about the series started and stopped at the artwork; the chapter breaks and some panels were expertly drawn. Everything else was just a hassle to read through.

Needless to say, I definitely won't be reading this Again!!, and I don't suggest you do either.

This season of Dragon Maid is going to be a no from me, dawg.

Within the first 3 episodes, we have a new petite dragon with unbelievably enormous tracts of land, everyone once again wants to have sex with Kobayashi (who magically grows a penis due to Ilulu/busty dragon's powers by the second episode), we've lewded the loli, and shown countless boob jokes/uncomfortable camera angles - aspects of the show that were a bit more reserved last season, and I could brush off these moments to enjoy the wholesome parts of the series. Tohru has practically been reduced to only thirsting after Kobayashi, with very little ... character direction outside of that. I can appreciate some ecchi in my anime and manga, but the frequency in the opening episodes feels very forced here.

There were some fun moments like Tohru's experience at the maid cafe, or when the whole cast went over to work on a maid outfit for Kobayashi. However lewd in all the wrong ways possible this show has become, there's still some fantastic animation and art direction in part from KyoAni, who seems to back in full force despite the horrific arson attack in 2019.

Animation aside, this feels like a very different show than the prior season. The MiniDragon shorts are a bit closer in tone, but this season feels like more of a skip, at least for me.

I was so close to finishing this series (about 10 chapters away from doing so) and I just couldn't bring myself to do so. I don't remember at what point the series plummeted into preachy bullshit monologues every chapter, but it became unreadable - a problem when your book's focus is on the dialogue. I found all of the characters guilty of this to be intolerable, and often glossed over these diatribes so I could continue on with the main characters and their conflicts.

As for the rest of the story, Ao no Flag doesn't offer anything too special outside of the rare glimpses of homosexual ... characters/their relationships with the heterosexual characters. The complex love triangle/quadrangle/??? could have been executed much better than it was, and became overshadowed by the banal drama of the side characters. The art here is nothing special either but does the job, and unfortunately most of the art is done in a cartoony/chibi style, contrasting highly with the attempted tone of the story.

If you're looking for a school drama with complex relationships, don't bother with this one.

Junji Ito's phenomenal highly-detailed artwork of sickening and disturbing imagery is once again at play here in Gyo. However, this story feels more like an homage to campy B-movies than his typical fare, and fails to really deliver enough scares. Scenes are often more ridiculously goofy than scary, and it's only really in the final act where the chills briefly start. Even then, nothing about Gyo is "traditionally scary," and more relies on Ito's body horror tropes than past stories that couple this body horror with psychological themes & twisted characters. The story is often hard to follow and the characters are highly unlikeable (especially ... Kaori, perhaps intentionally), so really Gyo's only saving grace is the art. The Viz collection I read this from also contained The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which was genuinely horrifying - it's a shame it had to come at the end of such a stinker of a book (no pun intended).

If you're looking for some B-movie-level schlock in manga form, then this is right up your alley, but when I'm looking to read Ito's work, I want to be legitimately spooked, and Gyo is not it.

God, what a miserable trainwreck of a manga.

Of course, starting a series like Triage X, I knew what I was getting into - gratuitous fan service, bloody hyperviolence, and trash trash trash. But not even my trashy tastes could redeem this stinker.

The "story" (or what I gathered from the amount of the series I could tolerate) is that of a group of vigilantes tasked with eliminating the "cancers" of society: general ne'er-do-wells such as mob bosses and thugs. The latest addition to the team is Arashi Mikami, a high school student whose various organs were replaced with those of an old childhood friend after the ... two were bystanders of a deadly terrorist attack. And that's basically where the story stops.

All of the characters are relatively bland - Arashi is the typical edgelord who doesn't feel any remorse when killing undesirables and broods over how he doesn't know who he is anymore (somehow his friend's organs make him have an identity crisis?). Kiba and Oriha are the only other two I remember the names of - one is Arashi's partner and schoolmate, while the other is a quirky pop idol. The others I'll call "sword girl with magical changing hair" and "sexy nurse with a gun penchant (I think there was another though?)." I'm writing this shortly after reading the first two volumes and the fact that I already can't remember character names proves how forgettable they can be. Maybe I was overwhelmed with the boobage.

Outside of the ugly art and horrendous writing (the latter of which I somewhat expected), the series does have a few pluses. The outfit designs of the characters are definitely cool to look at - lots of dark leather, armor and masks gives a sense of style to otherwise drab characters. The fan service is there in abundance for those looking for it, but also can get in the way of story points (haw haw insert "plot" joke here). And I have to say - I love the cover/book design.

Other than that, I feel there are manga out there that can balance ecchi and action a lot better than Triage X, making this a fairly forgettable reading experience.

Toradora is one of those anime that overstays its welcome close to the mid-way point, and by the time the climax arrived, I was somewhat underwhelmed. A lot of the characters lose whatever charm they originally had and said charm is replaced with heaps upon heaps of melodrama. The whole "scary-looking nice guy and short, fiery girl are the outcasts of the class" seemed to have been shelved fairly early into the show, and I felt like they could have spent some more time on this gimmick. I think the only reason I liked Taiga throughout was because she was both cute and I wanted ... her to find her happiness. Ryuji's long-running struggles to win Kushieda's affections grows old after around the beach house episodes, and actually found this (a good chunk of the show) to be the most-poorly executed aspect of the show. Their dynamic was the weakest, with Ryuji's ineptitude to talk to his crush and Kushieda's over-exuberance/quirkiness. Kitamura and Ami had brief flashes of development but stayed fairly stagnant after their arcs.

Story aside, the art style became equally as grating over time. I got very tired of the moe-blob sameface syndrome that everyone but Taiga and Ryuji had, and the dated animation does it no favors either. Ultimately, it may have been a good romance story at the time Toradora aired over 10 years ago, but has been eclipsed by several other stories since then.

What started off as an interesting premise quickly degraded into yet another generic isekai story. A 30-something year old man is killed and reborn into a fantasy world as a slime, with abilities developed from his last words stated as a human. As a slime, Rimuru gains godlike strength by absorbing every creature in his path and gaining their abilities. Instead of slowly developing these abilities, he masters them at the blink of an eye and one-shots future enemies within a few minutes, barely allowing him to get any kind of character growth. The gimmick of being reincarnated as an OP version of one of ... the typically weakest creatures in fantasy/RPG games is a cute idea that sells the story, but gets stale fast.

While the majority of Tensura revolves around the development of Rimuru's village, that might be the only interesting part. The forgettable supporting characters have no personality and are mostly one-note, and aren't given any growth outside of their initial dilemmas. Battles are fairly boring - Rimuru gives them the old "that was cool, but watch this" OHKO move and that's it. We never stray from the formula of new enemy -> 5 second battle -> join my village, only rinse and repeat ad nauseam. By the time the second half of the season rolled around, watching Tensura became more of a tedious chore than having a fun experience.

As somewhat of a newcomer to the isekai genre, I'm not sure if this is pretty par for the course, but it definitely bored me out of exploring the genre further. Guarantee you can find doujins of Shion's tits more entertaining and better written than this show.

To sum up Nisekoi nicely - it's popcorn entertainment. It's your fairly standard rom-com/harem story; boy/girl like each other, more girls enter the fray over time and complicate things, hijinks ensues. You eventually pick "best girl" and you rarely get the result you want in the end (which was my case, but I knew it was a long shot to begin with ;_;). The only thing that really stands out about Nisekoi is the gimmick. Raku Ichijou, the MC, made a love promise 10 years ago to a mystery girl, and the only clue he has to this is a pendant/locket he wears around his ... neck.

This premise gets grating quickly. Over time, the author likes to shoehorn in dumb plot elements like having each girl make identical/eerily similar promises to Raku, or somehow each cast member has some kind of connection with the others. The most enjoyable chapters tend to be those where none of the plot is involved, and instead is the typical harem dating affair. Raku himself is the most frustratingly-obtuse character in rom-com history, which might not be so evident if the manga didn't go on as long as it did, and surprisingly became my least favorite character in the story.

Sure, it may seem like I'm ragging on the manga, but it's fun fluff. The girls all get their time in the limelight with their nice 1-on-1 moments with Raku. The series itself, being on the SJ app, made it incredibly easy to binge, and the breaks between chapters make you want to read a few more chapters.
Wouldn't necessarily say Nisekoi is my top choice, but if you're looking for a mindless, simple (but cute) rom-com manga to binge through in a few days, this is it.