- Last OnlineOct 16, 2:10 PM
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- BirthdayMay 2, 2001
- Locationthe Netherlands
- JoinedDec 11, 2015
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Oct 1, 2024
This one blows every single romance anime we've had over the last year out of the water. The production is incredible. It feels like this was truly made by passionate people. The characters feel alive, especially our "main" cast members, those being Nukumizu and Yanami. The comedy is actually funny this time. Although not all of it hits (especially the low hanging fruit in terms of sexual innuendos), overall I'd say this is funny enough to warrant a comedy tag. That's more than can be said for most anime I've seen over the last few years.
Overall, highly recommend to everyone. It's peak. I'm so happy
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that we've finally had a good anime of this kind that is worth watching. They are few and far between.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 2, 2024
It’s almost impressive to have source material this good and then proceed to butcher the anime in the way that Studio Bind has done here. I have long accepted that we won’t get to see season 1s beautiful animation again, but the pacing of this anime is really killing any kind of thrill I could have while watching it for me. To put it bluntly: They’re cutting far too much content. It genuinely feels like I’m watching a summary of an anime instead of watching an actual anime. The characters are all bland, because everything that was deemed “not important enough” was cut from the
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anime to save screentime. It’s a real shame, because if this keeps up Mushoku Tensei will go down the same path as more or less every other seasonal isekai of the last 5 years.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 25, 2023
I initially watched Steins;Gate 0 back in 2018. I am a massive fan of the original and recall myself being very disappointed by Steins;Gate 0. I was 17 years old at the time and figured I'd give the show a rewatch now that I'm 5 years older. Unfortunately everything I thought about the show back then holds true to this day, and I do not recommend this show to anyone. Especially not to big fans of the original Steins;Gate like I am.
The main issue with Steins;Gate 0 is not what it doesn't have, because it does actually have a lot going on (too much in
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fact). It's the way in the plot is paced and presented to the viewers that's the issue. Not only are major events very easily swept under the rug, but there are times when the anime just drops a bombshell on the viewer only for that aspect not to be explored ever again. Mysteries are left completely unanswered and the characters just decide that they do not care. This adds to the disjointed nature of Steins;Gate 0.
Over the course of its (23 episodes of) runtime Steins;Gate 0 tackles several routes from the VN and it results in a structure that's very peculiar. There will be 3 mundane, or even boring episodes followed by a pretty strong episode where something actually happens. The issue is that after that strong episode, the plotline will be considered finished even though there are still lots of questions left for the viewers. It's a jarring experience and it feels like the show will actively step on the brakes whenever it's too close to getting interesting. The original Steins;Gate did not have this issue. Once it got going, it kept going all the way until the last episodes. Sure, not every episode was equally interesting, but there was not a moment where Steins;Gate slammed the brakes like this show does.
This perfectly leads into my second point, which is that Steins;Gate 0 is poorly directed. I don't know how this came to be, but the presentation of Steins;Gate 0 is completely flat compared to the original. Shots are static and backgrounds are very safely drawn. The result is that there's nothing interesting to look at. The original Steins;Gate definitely did not nail the art all the way through but it was willing to take risks in camera angles, artstyle and general presentation. I'm sure everyone recalls the famous scene in episode 8 of Steins;Gate where Okabe runs home and the colour scheme turns completely monochromatic with every piece of the foreground having thick outlines. You're not going to find anything along those lines here. The closest we get to creative direction is when the animators are looking for a new way to sexualise the show's female cast.
The quality of the art is inconsistent at best and horrendous at worst. In general Steins;Gate 0 lacks in between frames which makes animations appear choppy and stiff. This issue comes to light particularly during action sequences, where not only we have physically impossible situations happen like heads being chopped off with someone's bare hands, but these action sequences are genuinely so poorly animated that it's hard to enjoy them even if you let logic go out of the window.
Another thing that Steins;Gate 0 gets wrong is plausability. The original Steins;Gate is not realistic, because time travel is unrealistic. There is no theoretical explanation for time travel so it's the show's responsibility to lay out the ground rules for the universe a show is set in and make these rules plausible for the audience. The issue with Steins;Gate 0 is that the scope of what they're expecting me to believe is very different. Steins;Gate 0 will have any skeptical viewer go "well that's awfully convenient" more often than they'd like. There are so many strange phenomena that are just force fed to the audience with no real foundation and a critical viewer is just supposed to accept them. The very concept of Amadeus is a great example. It's an AI that's indistinguishable from a human, but the show completely quashes any concerns a viewer might have like "what it's like for her" or "is this ethical?" by straight up telling the viewers not to think about it and just accept it as it is. The show has several instances of completely impossible things suddenly being possible within the narrative that it's hard not to raise an eyebrow or two as you're watching.
In terms of the cast, it should be no surprise that Steins;Gate 0 is a major downgrade compared to the original. However, Okabe's character in Steins;Gate 0 is actually quite good. I find his demeanor very understandable for someone like him and there's nothing I'd change about his personality. Maho Hiyajo, while lacking the charm of someone like Kurisu and being unable to fill that void, is not offensively poorly written. I think giving Okabe a character to talk to who also knew Kurisu was a good decision and she's a welcome addition to the story even if a little bland. My problems are with the rest of the cast. It feels like everyone (and I mean everyone) other than Okabe was intentionally made to be less interesting. Meanwhile they padded the cast with useless characters who serve no purpose. Yuki, Nakase and Kaede have nothing going for them. Their sole purpose in the dialogue is to fill up the dialogue and nothing else. Nakase has a subplot surrounding her, but it only spans for half an episode and serves absolutely no purpose in the narrative. Mayuri and Hashida also got pretty significant downgrades. Mayuri does nothing over the course of the show and any interesting features she had in the original were stripped from her. She was bubbly, cheerful and yet emotionally intelligent in the original and in Steins;Gate 0 she's treated as filler. Hashida was always a nerd, but in this story he's straight up a pedophile even making creepy comments about Nae, a literal child.
With all of that being said, Steins;Gate 0 does actually have some highs. I think the show has a couple of very strong episodes that even fare well against the high bar set by the original. My problem is that those strong episodes are surrounded by dirt. While not perfect, the concluding episodes of the season are definitely passable and if the entire season had maintained that standard of quality I think I could have considered this a worthy sequel the original. However, as it stands Steins;Gate 0 feels like a hollow shell compared to the original and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to write about it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 1, 2023
This anime is missing a "comedy" tag. There's a scene in this show where the protagonist german supplexes a 250kg bear in front of his classmates and nobody has any questions. If that doesn't sell you on the premise of the show, then I don't know what will.
If you want something that is half competently written, don't watch this. If you want a show where the cast has any personality at all, don't watch this. If you want to laugh a show because it is so bad on every possible level that it's almost amazing, you should give this one a chance.
Every scene in
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this anime is what a 13 year old middle schooler daydreams about. It's so unapologetically conceited that it even makes the entire cast clap when our protagonist does anything at all. This is the self-insert fantasy of a 13 year old who has just entered puberty.
I am continuously amazed by how bad this show manages to get. When you think it's bad, it gets worse. When you think it has reached rock bottom, it will actively pound against the bedrock to descend to even lower levels into the void. So on that note, I don't know whether I should give this anime a 1, or a 10. Being so bad at writing is a skill in itself.
With all of that being said, my appreciation for how awful this show is might only exist because I don't generally watch isekai. There may very well be shows out there just as bad as this one, and by that point the novelty wears off. However, on its own merits as a comedic trainwreck I fully recommend this show to anyone who wants to have a good laugh.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 16, 2023
I think it's finally time for me to put my thoughts about this manga into words. Baby Steps is, in my opinion, the best manga ever made. It has loads of qualities, but if I had to highlight one aspect that this manga absolutely nails it's grit. Tennis, especially at a higher level, gets extremely grindy. I'm no athlete and definitely no better than basic club level, but this manga understands the core elements of tennis better than any other manga I've ever read. Tennis matches are long. When it's 30 degrees out and you're playing an extensive three setter on a steaming hot clay
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court, all that keeps you going is your desire not to lose. Baby Steps really does everything it can to show just how much that holds true in Maruo's matches. The art shows dark circles under Maruo's eyes and his movement getting sloppier as the match gets on, he keeps rambling on and on and the momentum of the match is all over the place. At its core, that's what a close tennis match is like.
Grit is also what I'd use to describe Maruo's character. Maruo is more or less a machine. Not in the sense that he has no human emotion, but more so in the sense that his determination or his "sense of duty" so to say is out of this world. It's inspiring to see someone achieve the heights that Maruo does by throwing his entire life at tennis and when you consider how much he works it does kind of make sense. A problem i have with a lot (and i mean a lot) of manga and anime is the disconnect the readers feel from the characters, which make it hard to understand their emotions. Baby Steps' pacing makes the readers relate to Maruo. When he loses we can feel his frustation, because we were there for the entire journey. We saw every step of the way, which makes the scarce emotional parts of this manga so much more impactful.
As said in the previous paragraph, the pacing of this manga is very slow. The matches sometimes span 20-30 chapters, so if you are not here for the matches themselves and instead here to see Maruo become a professional at unrealistic speeds, don't bother trying this manga. It will eventually burn you out. In my eyes, the matches themselves are the highlight of this manga. The characters and the romance, they're not bad. However, I love seeing Maruo duke it out with someone on the court and seeing him discover new parts about his tennis.
Is this manga perfect? Definitely not, far from it. One main issue I can think of is that the author definitely leans into the shounen part of the manga too much at times, especially during certain arcs. A jump shot and an egg ball are not real things in tennis. Strategically tennis is pretty simple. Hit with spin, hit deep and/or make your opponent run. If you're in a tough spot, hit a shot that gives you time to recover. That's more or less it. Obviously there's nuance here and there, but a lot of the players in this manga have a certain "trump card" that doesn't make sense in the real world where most of the time your opponent just has a super good forehand. However, there are other times where the manga actually does seem to be highly educated on tennis. One example I can give is that the manga stresses the necessity of a strong serve. Another thing I did miss is the mention of different surfaces. Maruo plays at plenty of different venues, so it's very hard for me to imagine all of them are the same surface. The difference between a clay court, a hardcourt and a grass court is huge. Takuma (one of Maruo's main rivals) has a playstyle that is much better suited for grass than it is for clay. I find it odd that for all the detail this manga went into, surfaces never came to light. Maybe it's because Japan almost exclusively has hardcourts?
In terms of art, I think the artstyle is appealing and definitely a lot better than season 1 of the anime (which is a little too cheerful in my opinion) but I do kind of miss variation in technique from Maruo's opponents. Maruo having textbook technique makes perfect sense because of the person he is, but in the tennis world you don't typically find players with the same strokes. There are certain parts of a forehand that are always the same, but there's variance beyond that point for everyone. I think the author could have used more footage from real life pros to give Maruo's opponents a bit more of a unique playstyle. Visuals come a long way with that sort of thing.
Overall, I stand by what I said. Baby Steps is the best manga ever made. Maruo's gritty journey is amazing and while definitely not perfect I can't think of a manga I love more than this. It's highly unfortunate that it got axed and I had to read fan translations for the last few chapters, but the manga itself is highly polished and is an amazing journey about Maruo's tennis career.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 2, 2023
This show has an issue that you'll find in anime/manga. Especially in romcoms. The main couple can’t get together too soon, because that would turn away viewers who exclusively watch for the romance, but it fails to offer the viewer anything else to distract them from the lack of romantic progression. This mainly happens because Japanese romantic “comedies” tend to disregard the “comedy” part entirely, or at least so it appears to the average western viewer.
Consider shows like How I Met Your Mother and Friends. Regardless of how you feel about these shows, it’s hard to deny that a lot of their viewership sticks around
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for more than just seeing couples get together. The fact that the entire show isn’t centered around a romance, but instead seeing the cast interact makes the actual moments of plot significance far more engaging. You see, Koori Zouksei Danshi to Cool na Douryou Joshi also makes it cast interact, but fails to not make every interaction a drag. There’s no life in these characters. The “funny moments” are typical anime gags that don’t land on any of their western audience and as a result the romance itself becomes less interesting. When the dialogue is something the viewers just have to “sit through” to get to the “good bits” you have failed as a writer in my opinion and this show is a perfect example of that. I have a soft spot for the romance genre as a whole, so I sat through the first 4 episodes. However, eventually they started taking screentime away from the main cast and instead giving it to an equally boring set of side characters. This made me drop the show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 6, 2023
While the premise is interesting, it tiptoes around its real narrative too much and provides us with endless amounts of filler. Every 20 chapters or so it’s hinted that something might come to fruition soon, but it gets sidetracked too much. We’re 86 chapters in and the romcom part of this manga is in the exact same place as it was 12 chapters in. Gojou still lacks the confidence to see himself as a potential partner for Kitagawa, and Kitagawa is gushing over him. There’s been no development in the last 70 chapters or so. The information on how cosplay works is quite interesting and
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I do like the open minded attitude towards crossdressing, but ultimately I want to see the Kitagawa and Gojou dynamic being explored more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 27, 2022
I will admit that I’m not completely impartial to this show, as a big fan of the manga. I think Chainsaw Man is an excellent show about what happens when you throw a young adolescent into a brutal world. It’s shocking, but not in a way that feels forced. There are abrupt moments of terror that take you by storm and leave you feeling exactly how they should: Like everyone is in danger. There’s this sense of mystery around the cast that is magnified by the idea that they could abruptly be taken away at some point.
Denji, as a character, doesn’t make a lot of
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sense from a logical perspective, but makes a lot of sense when you consider the environment he was raised in. Even though he’s a dumbass and has very odd values, you can’t help but root for him even if it’s only out of empathy. He’s a typical 16 year old who has had to sell several of his limbs while he was still a human. The result is a complete indifference to bodily harm and death. His behaviour can get borderline insane sometimes, but that’s once again understandable when you consider his upbringing.
What I like about Chainsaw Man is that it doesn’t force me to feel anything. There isn’t a wide variety of sad orchestral pieces to make me feel sad about a character’s death and as a result the character deaths do in fact feel more meaningful. It goes against the tropes of battle shounen by not giving us elongated flashbacks before a character’s death and they instead happen at breakneck pace. Seeing the different responses to having people taken away from them is amazing and really makes you question Denji’s humanity especially when put in contrast with other cast members like Aki.
I can’t talk about Chainsaw Man without talking about the production and I can confidently say that MAPPA has once again knocked it out of the park with this one. The animation is easy on the eyes and manages to be spectacular without ever trying to do too much. Chainsaw Man’s art is one of its redeeming qualities so having to match that level couldn’t have been easy. So far they’ve done just that, if not more.
Overall, this show is amazing. I would highly recommend it by anyone who isn’t immediately put off by gore, because it does go pretty heavy on the gore. Chainsaw Man is raw, thrilling, charming and as a result one of the best anime of the year.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 14, 2022
In my opinion Made in Abyss should be about exploring. Watching Reg and Riko grab a map and plan their routes through beautiful scenery is what I enjoyed about season 1. The violence was not a selling point, but a nice reminder that this world they were exploring was not fit for human beings. When you take the exploration away and add in some questionable writing (why is Mitty back?) you kind of miss out on what made Made In Abyss so appealing to begin with. Admittedly, It had its moments. I quite liked learning about what happened to the village and in general the
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first half was quite strong in my opinion. However, my main issue is that they made the world feel like it revolved around the cast too much, especially in the second half. I quite liked how in season 1 Reg and Riko were just passing through a world that was not moulded to into a path for Reg and Riko to get through. Season 2 seems to do the polar opposite, which takes away from the immersion of the viewer. Regardless, the art and music are great, barring some very distracting CGI in the early episodes. So yeah, if you’re into this kind of writing you might think very differently from me, but if you mainly enjoyed season 1 for the exploring and environmental world building this might not be for you either.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 14, 2022
A decent piece of media that is not on par with the original series. It’s exactly what I expected to come out of a Made in Abyss movie. It’s not that it’s an insulting addition to the franchise, but it has its fair share of issues and fails to deliver on what Made in Abyss so great in the first place.
When it comes to Made in Abyss, I think it’s almost unanimously agreed upon that its greatest asset is its world building. And while the characters themselves have charm and are interesting enough, the world building is the pillar that the entire story rests on
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and makes you care about what happens in the first place. This movie spends exactly 20 seconds world building. They show that certain pillars can collapse into water and they show that some scary monsters live on the fifth layer. That’s it. There’s nothing inherently interesting about the setting and the movie certainly doesn’t try to convince us that there is. It is however not this movie’s only issue.
In general, I have this issue with movies that they try to do too much. Every movie needs to be grand, intense, highly emotional and tearjerking. The result is that when movies push those emotions onto me too much, I become completely disconnected from them because the entire thing stops feeling authentic. Prushka, one of this movie’s lead characters is the prime example of this. The moment she was introduced with her overly bubbly and bright personality, I knew immediately that she was going to suffer a horrifying death. The movie gave her the bare minimum amount of dialogue for us to feel that we need to care about her. Then when she’s dead, we get this flashback of who how she lived and how she came to see Bondrewd as a father figure, but it was but it’s hard to care when she was only in the movie to die in the first place.
I would have been okay with Prushka’s character if it weren’t for the fact that her getting valuable screentime takes time away from the real star of the show, Bondrewd. A truly heinous, but ever so interesting villain who’s extremely hard to read. A character like him deserves several seasons, but unfortunately they had to cram him into a single movie. I would have liked to know more about Bondrewd. His motivations, his ideas and the like are all things that were far more interesting to me than Prushka’s predictable end. It’s a shame we didn’t see more of him in the show, but he was a great character despite his extremely limited screentime.
On the topic of death and general sad things, can we please go 15 minutes without having something genuinely traumatic happen to one of the characters, only for it to be completely glossed over in the next 5 minutes? I mean, Reg was viciously tortured, which was a great scene by the way, but the pacing completely ruins it. A scene like that is supposed to have impact and is supposed to have lasting effects on Reg. Just throwing it in at the start of the movie and then after a minute of crying moving on from it is not the level of writing I expect from Made in Abyss. I expect more. And the worst part is they keep doing this. Sad moments need time to be processed, at least that’s how it works for me. When you bombard viewers with them it just takes them out of the movie, which is exactly what happened to me. This does kind of circle back into the whole point about movies though. They try so hard to be impressive that they kind of end up doing the polar opposite of what they intended. Also, the characters cry too much. These three did not nearly cry this much or have this many emotional outbursts in the original show.
Regardless of these gripes I have with the film, its surface level qualities are stellar. Art and sound are both amazing, but I do miss the colourful scenery of the original Made in Abyss. It’s understandable though, because the fifth layer is in fact a very grim place.
Ah yeah, and one more thing. The ending of this movie is a complete joke. All the white whistles we had met in the show so far were both insane and extremely powerful. Rinko is neither of those. In fact, despite her intuition and knowledge of the abyss, she is weak. Admittedly you could argue that Reg is part of who she is, but I just find it a little unsatisfying to see her become a white whistle this way.
All in all the third Made in Abyss movie is just “alright.” It’s not awful, but it’s not on par with the rest of the show. It suffers from pacing issues, predictability and poorly distributed screentime. Having said that, Dondrewd is still a fantastic character and the production quality here is amazing. And I mean.. it’s still Made in Abyss. It’s okay to deliver mediocre products on the back of an amazing IP once in a while.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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