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This first half of the final season didn't quite resonate with me the way I had been expecting. I actually loved reading this stuff so I don't quite understand why I felt that way. I think maybe the transition from Wit to MAPPA had something to do with it. The transition was very jarring. Because while the story was great, and the pacing was good, and the acting was great, and the music was great, the animation at times was hit or miss. I can't recall specifically which episodes, but there's a stretch of episodes (maybe 11-14) where the animation quality is kinda awful ... to the point that it was distracting. And while I was watching these crappy looking scenes I couldn't help but think of the show's better days. I'm not going to bash MAPPA as I think they're a quality studio which took on a tough job. Nonetheless, animation quality somewhat affected my enjoyment of the show.

Despite the crude looking visuals in some episodes, there is plenty of eye candy throughout the season. I was always impressed with the Colossal Titan scenes, whereas (ironically) in the Wit adaptation those scenes where usually the ugliest part of every season they animated.

As I mentioned earlier, every other aspect aside from the hit or miss visuals was excellent. So, I feel this season was a success.

An excellent follow up to season one.

I adored the first season. I also gave that one a 10. However, I found the story line in season two to be significantly more engrossing as the Haru-Legoshi dynamic takes a back seat to more action oriented story lines such as Legoshi's pursuit of Tem's killer and the aftermath of Louis killing the Shishigumi's boss. The stakes felt high in most of the episodes, whereas in season one it wasn't until Haru's kidnapping that there was much tension.

In addition to the improvement/upgrade in the story there's also the continuation of Orange's excellence in their production of this adaptation. ... The show just feels very high quality. The acting is fantastic again. The animation looks great again. The music was also excellent again. They studio didn't take their foot off the pedal and delivered an excellent show again. OP and ED by YOASOBI were fantastic.

Highly recommend this show.

Don't waste your time watching this garbage. It's a hack job of a manga that took a nosedive in storytelling quality after the events covered in the first season.

For reference here's my breakdown of the manga's quality throughout its serialization:

Ch 1-37 - Excellent. The material covered in season 1.
Ch 38-112 - Solid. Still maintains some mystery & tension. Ch 100 is one of the best chapters in the entire series.
Ch 113-181 - Absolute garbage.

As a reader, I was slightly excited about the prospect of the story being salvaged after learning that the manga's writer was going to be involved in creating new anime-only content ... for the show. The manga's final arcs and ending were unpopular. They fucking sucked. I deluded myself into thinking that the manga creator's involvement would right the ship and thus undo the unpopular nonsense that appeared the manga, while ultimately creating a new and better storyline and conclusion. I figured that the studio would somehow adapt the best parts of 38-112 and then tease a new anime only climax (and obviously conclusion) for a third and final season. They didn't do that. Instead they covered chapters 38-52 somewhat decently, then cut straight to chapter 112, and then adapted chunks of the worst parts of 113-181. What they ultimately created was an abomination of a story that was already trash to begin with... Idiotic storytelling without any of the qualities that made the first season successful.

At no point during this season did I ever feel tension similar to what I felt in the previous season... Hell, I'd go as far as to say I didn't feel any tension. Back then the demons were built up as a grave threat to the children's survival. Here they're depicted as impotent goofballs. The children can just bonk them on the head to knock them out. It's ridiculous. The story elements of world building and mystery get tossed aside in favor of dropping information rapidly because of the studio's pacing decision. Someone actually thought covering 140+ chapters in 11 episodes would work. And this pacing fuck up ultimately also produces a story that lacks emotional impact. I never felt anything that came remotely close to Norman's exit from the show or the prison break scene in season 1. The new anime-only scenes are just dull and inconsequential bad comedy scenes of the kids being silly with one another.

Despite the show overall being awful, there are few redeeming qualities. First off, the ending is kind of an improvement over the manga... Unfortunately, the pacing undoes the positives of this change. Secondly, the animation is good for the most part. There are many nice looking scenes scattered throughout the season, however animation quality drops off in the final four to three episodes. The only rough visual stuff in the the earlier part of the season are the godawful looking CGI wild demons. The OP & ED visuals (and their respective songs) are also great.

Anyway, avoid watching this and avoid reading the manga. Just pretend the series ended immediately after the escape. It's for the best.

I went in backwards having first seen (and ultimately loving) the 2019 anime adaptation of BOTI before deciding to read the source material. It was an incredible experience going through this story a second time. And surprisingly it felt fresh experiencing it again. I attribute this to the flexibility/advantage in being able to tell the story over hundreds of chapters compared to a few 20+ minute animated episodes. I was able to experience many scenes that weren't adapted in the anime, and therefor was able to get more story details during this second go-around.

What caught me by surprise in experiencing this story again is how ... attached I became towards many of the villains. I was rooting for the Itto-ryu at points which was fucking bizarre given the shit they were pulling throughout the story. I even started to feel pity for Habaki which was also fucking weird. Samura did an incredible job creating a strong cast of memorable characters and putting them in situations where it was possible to dislike them at one point but then like them in another.

This manga has it all. Beautiful art. Memorable story and characters. Great action. And, a very satisfying conclusion. I highly recommend it.

It starts off great.

You get what is essentially a prison break style story line involving kids escaping their fate using their wits to outsmart enemies. The mind games and twists and turns that went into the first two arcs (~37 chapters in total) almost catapulted this manga to what could be considered a great manga. Unfortunately, those 37 chapters represent the high point of the series. The quality would slowly diminish over the next ~75 chapters. There were good moments in these other 75 chapters, but I began seeing the series lose the qualities that made it initially stand out as a good manga. ... Early on the story was all about the kids struggling to trust each other, trying to survive against great odds using their brains, and having to face tragedy due to the futility of fighting against vastly superior enemies. Unfortunately, that's all absent in the remaining 69 chapters the manga.

For the final 69 chapters, the manga transitions from a survival story with an emphasis on mind games to a battle story with mindless action. The children begin brazenly going on the offensive and repeatedly succeed against their enemies despite the early arcs painting the world outside the farm as being incredibly hostile and dangerous to them... As if they had insurmountable odds to over come. And yet, every time the children are exposed to a scenario that would result in the children coming out on the losing end, or surviving with great losses, the author became unwilling to commit to tragedy and resolved the issues without the children losing much. This kills all the suspense built in first 112 chapters because it never again feels like there are any stakes genuinely at risk.

This review only covers the first 12 episodes that have been released so far. The rating may change when the remaining 12 episodes are released.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I was rooting for this series to be great. I love GiTS. Despite not being a fan of CG animation, I was excited about this show particularly because of Kenji Kamiyama's involvement and also because of the return of the original SAC VAs. I always put way more weight on story telling than I do on visuals so I was willing to tolerate the changes in animation style. Furthermore, I think it's an ... awful practice for people to be unfairly critical of an anime simply because it utilizes CG. Watch the show and then make up your mind. You can't watch a 1 minute trailer on Youtube and come to a fair conclusion that something is bad because it uses CG. That's idiotic. It's a bad habit. Stop it.

Anyway, I fall in the middle between liking and disliking this show... Although I guess I am mostly in the like it camp as I am happy it exists. There are elements of SAC_2045 that made me happy. Primarily it was the return of old characters that I love. I enjoyed seeing Section 9 together again. I enjoyed seeing the Tachikomas interact with them. Some of the action scenes in the first few episodes looked really good. The cyber warfare stuff was fun as usual. All that familiar stuff is good for the most part. It's definitely not anywhere near as godly as the other adaptations but there were enjoyable moments here that I was satisfied with. Where the show falls apart is that it pivots from the serious tone and complex storytelling of the earlier series to what is largely a straightforward action sci-fi show rife with comedy. I kinda think it made sense to go this route given the cartoon-like (and mostly god-awful) character designs. Would it really be sensible to tell a story as complex, political, and serious as the Individual Eleven with cartoon-like characters, many of which look like children? No. So, I was willing to accept a different take on GiTS. I figure that SAC_2045 being more viewer friendly and slightly different from past GiTS doesn't mean that GiTS fans won't ever get a follow up to SSS/Arise. There's no harm in experiencing a different spin on something familiar. That said, this is still a flawed show even with my expectations kept in check. Midway into the season they slowly abandon the action and comedy and start to include more horror and dialogue heavy scenes. The show falls flat on its face when it makes this change because the CG models can't adequately convey the emotion the show is trying to elicit. How am I suppose to feel sympathy for a grieving character when the words coming out of their mouth are not in sync with the mouth movements on their cartoon-like faces? Or when they're sobbing and it looks ridiculous? The horror elements at best look awkward when they're not comically bad. The cartoon-like designs detract from the mood that the show is trying to set in these later scenes.

Another issue with the show is that it takes too long to get interesting. Overall I enjoyed watching it, but it didn't get interesting until the final episode. Everything was too straightforward. There was no mystery to be found until episode 12. While watching GiTS I have always been accustomed to racking my brain trying to figure out where the story was going and trying to understand what I had finished watching after each episode. It can be convoluted and hard to follow at times, but there is fun in trying to make sense of it. SAC_2045 is too simple. All of the political intrigue, espionage, and chess that is common in GiTS is absent here. So this also means that important characters like Aramaki are tossed aside because he isn't given anything interesting to do. He was never given an opportunity outsmart anyone and get his crew out of a tough situation by using his giant brain.

Anyway, this review is getting to long. Some quick thoughts:

+ Nice CG for the most part... Mainly in action scenes.
+ Old VAs return
+ Couple of fun episodes
+ Nice to see section 9 again

- Awful OP animation and OP track
- Too much comedy. The majority of it falls flat.
- Takes too long for the story to get going
- Awful character designs... What the hell is Boma wearing? Purin looks ridiculous.
- New characters are unlikable.
- 12 episodes in and Aramaki has been treated like an afterthought.
- The CG is bad in dialogue heavy scenes and horror scenes.

I generally dislike slice-of-life type shows. I find them incredibly dull. And, given that the majority of them take place (understandably) in Japan I'm always left feeling alienated and bored. I couldn't care less about the growing pains of your typical Japanese child or teenager. I however have an understanding of animal predation, and can easily imagine how that would cause tension between different groups in a fantastical civilized society consisting of different animal species. So, given this show's interesting premise and the very high praise it received in the fall I finally decided to give this show a look.

Great decision. It's an incredible show. ...

The story is fantastic. Lots of interesting twists and turns supported by wonderful acting. The interplay between the typical turmoil young people experience and the predatory relationships of the animal characters works incredibly well. It makes the slice-of-life concept go from 0 to 100%+++ on is-it-interesting-scale. And that's largely because it also features action. This show is more often than not full of tension because the world presented here isn't some bland benign society that barely impacts the story, rather it feels very cruel and often distresses the characters. Carnivores live alongside the herbivores in Beastars, and even Carnivores that act gentle can strike fear into the plant eaters simply out of instinct. This gives the show an edge that you don't find in other slice-of-life shows because it often feels like anyone can be in danger at any time.

All the personalities depicted in this show are fantastic. I'm generally not someone who is sentimental, and yet I often felt a lot of emotion in response to what many of these characters were experiencing. I loved all their exchanges.

The music and visuals were also top notch. I really felt there wasn't any aspect of this show that was lacking. As great shows go, this is the total package. I highly recommend it.

I liked this a lot as it had many of the great elements from GiTS that I've come to love.

A lot of wonderful action scenes? Check.
Beautiful animation? Check.
Fantastic soundtrack? Check.
Fun interactions between all of Motoko's squad? Check.
Fun interactions with the the support bots (Logicomas in this series)? Check.
The usual fun hacking/diving/net/cyber and philosophical elements? Check.
Political espionage? Check.

I had a blast most of the time watching this. That said, there's one big glaring issue that hurts this series somewhat. A lot of the plot in many of these episodes is extremely convoluted. Episodes 7 and 8 in particular have some of the most convoluted hard ... to follow fucking plot that I've ever come across in any form of media. After watching both episodes I had to jump on google and scour reddit to find an explanation in regards to what I watched because I was totally lost. Some of the earlier episodes aren't that much better in that regard, but 7 and 8 were especially frustrating to watch. Fortunately, episodes 9 and 10 are fucking great. It's just straight up action and it's very easy to follow plot-wise. Both episodes 9 and 10 apparently feature all new content whereas the rest of the series was adapted from several OVAs. It made me happy to see Arise end on a high note after episodes 7 and 8. Anyway, I recommend watching this series if you're a fan of GiTS. It's great GiTS content. And, it's not a big viewing commitment time-wise either. Only 10 episodes around 24 minutes long... It's an easy and quick watch.

It's refreshing when studios adapt stories that aren't the typical/bog standard junk that flood streaming services every season. Shows that you can barely differentiate from one to another. Stories that don't set out to do anything unique or fresh. I could praise Dorohedoro on this basis alone, but fortunately it also happens to be a fantastic adaptation of an excellent manga.

The story is about a character named Kaiman and his mission to recover his human face and his old memories. Kaiman fell victim to a sorcerer's spell resulting in memory loss and having his face changed to that of a reptile. He often seeks, interrogates, ... and kills magic users whenever he gets the opportunity, so that he can gain information on the person responsible for his amnesia and reptilian face. This routine eventually leads to him attacking two magic users tied to a powerful group from the magic world, thereby kicking off a war between Kaiman and his friend/ally Nikaido and the brutally violent En family. The story alternates between the human world of Hole and the world of sorcerers. Sorcerers are capable of using magic to summon doors connecting their world to Hole. To sorcerers Hole is nothing more than a training ground to practice their magic. Hole's human residents are utilized as guinea pigs.

MAPPA doesn't totally successfully reproduce the gritty style and atmosphere of Q Hayashida's drawings, but they (probably) have done as a great a job as could possibly be done for a TV series. It manages to feel like Dorohedoro except less filthy/gritty. What really helps the anime capture the visual style from the manga is the godly background work by art director Shinji Kimura of Akira fame. It impressed me every episode. The CG looks good most of the time and is often enhanced by really excellent looking 2d animation. There's some weird looking CG animation here and there but Dorohedoro is a really good looking show 99% of the time. Other than the weird carnival music in the En family scenes, the soundtrack is also fantastic. I'm also fan of the voice work by the cast. This is an anime that was just excellent in every category. I highly recommend it.

This was a great show. It started out rough. I didn't like the first three episodes that much, but I was drawn to the character and the concept so I stuck with it. I like the more adult/violent stuff... And this has an immortal wisecracking samurai. What's not to love? I couldn't be any happier about my decision to stick with the show more so than how I feel today having watched the finale. That was excellent. From episode 4/5 to the end I had a blast watching this every week alongside Vinland Saga in the fall, and alongside Dorohedoro this season. It was consistently ... great every week.

So, the main problem with this adaptation for most viewers should be the story. I haven't completely read the manga (I've only just begun) but I am aware that they have cut some material out and have rushed through some of the things they adapted. Despite not being aware of what was cut, it definitely did feel disjointed at times. That aside, every other aspect of this show was fantastic. Great voice acting. Great music. Nice animation. Maybe not the quality of Attack on Titan or something fancy like that, but still excellent most of the time. I loved the direction and style I saw in these episodes.

The closest anime I could compare this to is Shigurui. I loved the Shigurui manga. I was somewhat disappointed by the anime adaptation. This show is what I wanted the Shigurui anime to be. It has life and style to it that was missing from that other show.

I couldn't recommend this show more.