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when something's amiss, check the episode director. i've traveled through much anime keeping such wisdom close, and it is unfortunate that such wisdom had to be called upon in the case of beloved mob psycho 100's third, final season. i use 'beloved' strongly, by the way, because i completely adore the last two seasons of mob and co along with all the adventures and character development they had, the reigen arc such a showstopping tearbuster that i got to watch both my friends cry in real time at its conclusion, reigen and mob sharing a sunset moment of understanding. indeed, that episode concluded with both ... on common ground for once, a silent admittance of fraud with warmth. at least, that was what i had drawn from such masterful dancing around the concept of "show, don't tell" in which one (writer, creator) wrote (created) "tell, but don't really". i guess i and all my friends had completely misinterpreted what i thought had been a mature conclusion to the arc as season 3 opens with backpedaling where we're practically back to square one with reigen and mob in terms of understanding or, in other words, "wait, he's still keeping up the fraud thing? mob doesn't know? huh? what? are they stupid? is one serious?" and speaking of one, he's not the episode director i referred to earlier. he's the writer (creator), remember? and no, i'm not talking about yuzuru tachikawa either--he's been directing mob since episode one (number).

nah, we're talking about takahiro hasui. who's he? when it comes to mob psycho specifically, he did episode six back in season one (number). there's an absence for season two... and then he's a full on, every single-ass episode director for season three. and you might ask yourself--is this guy putting all the blame for whatever he thinks sucks about season three on just this guy? no, not completely... the other half of the suckage can be attributed right to one (writer[creator]). like i said, things are amiss with season three: multiple, multiple things, and i argue that such suckage is a two pronged attack: hasui's senseless pacing and one's decayed writing.

let's be clear: i haven't read this shit. frankly the animation's so gorgeous and inviting (and still is, though not nearly as remarkably as previous seasons) that i aimed in watching mob psycho to its entirety to have said gorgeous invitations of frames and sfx and sound and music regale me in addition to its sourced art and script. this method of consuming psycho served me well in seasons one and two, but it's partway through season three's opening episode i thought to myself: "am i getting a poorer experience watching this?" i asked this because mob psycho season three has a horrendous pacing issue. scene by scene, viewers will find little congruence to it all--there are no neat packages tied here.

let's compare season two's brilliant first episode with the stinker of season three's for a moment. in season two, before viewers are blasted with reminders of who's who and what you might've forgotten and what you didn't, we're treated to a slice of mob and reigen's "work"--season one veterans are no doubt familiar with such "work" and indeed know what to expect, but newcomers are just as well filled in on what exactly's going on through this just-another-day-in-the-life moment, one filled with action and wit and nasty ass tomatoes, all culminating in the reveal of season two's brand new opening. following this, viewers are treated to a subtle five minutes of reintroducing characters by centering it all around a school election... one mob disastrously fails, but one which leads to the latter half of the episode's plot. episode one is so unbelievably well oiled of a machine, the episode glides through its pacing to the point where, and i am dead serious: mob psycho season two's first episode could be its own self contained indie short film. it's that good.

season three time! it opens with the new opening. yup, lol, that's it. viewers get to see the same sort of mystical introduction seasons one and two have, and then it's just straight to opening theme time. great. what happens next? ten fucking minutes of recap. dead serious, that's exactly what it does, and if you don't believe me, slap that bad boy right into vlc and start the watch the moment that opening theme (lol again). you might try to make a point that season three has the unfair task of having to recap two seasons worth of content versus season two only having to work with one. to which i hit the buzzer--BZZZT, wrong. the recap in this episode focuses on all the same fucking characters season two's pilot episode does. this time there's broccoli. that's the difference. similarly, the recap centers around a school activity, only this one's pretty much completely in mob's head while season two's is a s-i-t-u-a-t-i-o-n. i'm spelling it out because i'm sure it has to be.

season two: class presidential election with a massive audience and a crippling, hilarious end.
season three: whaddya wanna be when you grow up mob lol

if you've noticed, we're not just talking about crappy pacing now, for this is a writing problem just as well. one's decayed writing, specifically, and i too speficially use the term 'decayed' because that is exactly the state one's found his pen in lately. like i said, i've not cracked open a single book of mob, but you better believe i'm all caught up on one's incredible one punch man webcomic. incredible to a point--i didn't really understand it at the time, but there comes a certain point in the webcomic where things feel off. schmaltzy's the word i finally settled on, because one turns his punching hero into an overly saccharine voice of reason. things were always heading that way of course--saitama's got his bald head on straight versus a world of psychos, but it was never to the point of going "... oh, okay." sorry, i'm trying to dance around spoilers for such because, well, this is a mob psycho review, not a... the point is, i noticed something wrong with one then. and it's around the time of such schmaltz that mob psycho ended too, and holy SHIT is mob psycho season three schmaltz city. i don't know if it's a case of a creator losing his edge, but episode eight is an unbelievable piece of shit.

yeah, i really dom't want to take a deep dive into each and every episode, but episode eight has got to be one of the most unbearably steven universe things i've ever watched that weren't steven universe. its sappiness goes to an extreme--it's an episode that's afraid to conclude its alien obsessed protagonist's arc in any way that isn't just outright giving her exactly what she wanted (and while a supposed adult is around, somehow). there's growth in accepting and moving on, not accepting and surprising with a cake hidden under the table, and good lord do these characters spend a long, long, long time eating that cake. ten minutes, to be exact. ten fucking minutes of steven fucking universe. "hey, what's wrong with steven universe, i love that show!" i know you do. in addition to this mess is a newly arrived character of the preceding episode--his entire arc is a nonstarter, and quite purposefully, but to little gain. what i mean by this is one clearly means to subvert a character that teeter totters into evil eventually by having him pacified through mob early on. that's well and good, and it's not a bad subversion, but the next part to writing such a thing is to answer the following question: now what? okay, you subverted having this suspicious on the edge guy eventually betray the group or whatever. now what? okay, the viewer watched these two episodes expecting something to happen with him, and nothing happens. now what? now what? now what?

i'll fucking tell you what's now: nothing. not a goddamned thing. one introduces a new and interesting character seven episodes into the series and forgets about him in two more. what the fuck. why did he even bother? hey, on that note, what's up with the unbearable samurai guy from episode 2? why? again, WHY? hey, wanna compare episodes again? i do. season two's second episode is a freak-of-the-week episode just as season 3's is... but there's a difference. season two's expands the world of magic and spiritual mediums in doing so as well as laying the groundwork for even more characters in just a couple episodes later. meanwhile, season 3's second episode... certainly lays some groundwork. for something. and then the construction crew decide to just fuck off and leave the site abandoned. the end. the starring character is never seen again save for a brief cameo at the season's conclusion. masterful writing, one. and masterful pacing, hasui, for those ten solid steven minutes mentioned a paragraph above (because i'm not even remotely over it). seriously, apparently that whole ending sequence towards the end isn't even IN the comics, so who the hell's to blame for that? easy: the director for not frowning at the idea and going "erm. no."

we could easily spend another few paragraphs detailing the utter childishness of dimple's "death", both in how mob wasn't affected a single fucking meter once that episode's credits rolled (and neither was anyone else who knew him, lol) as well as dumpster diving right into fan service with his return. we could also spend paragraphs complaining about the utter waste of serizawa's character (go on, tell me one piece of dialogue he uttered that was not centered around mob) as well as one's strange forgetfulness towards hanazawa (that dude was left in the broccoli when it rose into space. he was fucking left there). we could spend an eternity, really, picking apart each and every misdecision made throughout the course of mob's final season, but there's something depressing about it all: you end up realizing that there's more than a few good story beats and character developments, but none of them are told well at all. mob and dimple's confrontation has the right key moments, but ddddrrraaawwwwssss them out. suzuki and son's team up to take on an out of control mob is a great idea: pacing it so their fight and development's just half a fucking episode isn't. and then there's mob finally coming out of his shell... to only become a smoothed over nothing. it's frightening, actually, watching mob in the finale's finale sequences: he's the epitome of a Generic Good Guy, and We All Should Do Our Best! give me a fucking break.

season three is a failure. it fails to resolve character conflicts in meaningful, interesting ways. hasui's horrible pacing is not only a lack of experience (for his MAL page reveals as much) but a lack of understanding of mob psycho itself. there's no homework done on WHY nearly each episode of season two works, and there's nothing learned from his experience in season one. episodes are not paced like episodes--it's all one segmented block of story that's arbitrarily chopped up twelve times, and that's good enough, let's go! it's a director looking at the comic and, rather than reinterpreting it all into the medium of 24 minute episodes, thinks "oh fuck it, let's just do this thing like a longform movie". but it isn't a movie. mob psycho's final season is twelve episodes of tv, twelve episodes of tedium, twelve episodes filled with one asleep at the wheel, a creator who's likely losing his no-men while being surrounded by those who say yes and smile and give him thumbs up--cause he's one! and let's be absolutely clear on my position here:

whatever one makes next is when the real descent starts. you better hope i'm wrong.

there's a few things that really, really bother me about mob psycho. its biggest issue is the sometimes juvenile writing: characters abandon subtlety to announce their intentions or repentance aloud, as if performing for a play, and it comes off as childish. super, super childish, especially as characters heel turn themselves so easily, so... again, juvenile. i don't know why it didn't stick out to me so hard on any of my previous viewings, but it did so this time. there's just a ridiculous amount of scenes in which the viewer's intelligence isn't respected whatsoever and things have to be spelled out--but they don't! the ... viewer isn't a lobotomite, jesus.

the other thing bothering me is the wobbly pace of the first two episodes. i won't call them bad--they certainly aren't given they're an introduction to mob psycho's captivating art style and animation, voice acting aiding the presentation. it's just that their narratives--the way the plot travels--is super uninteresting, and super boring. to be honest, the third episode is a life saver--were it not for its sudden spike in interest, i'd have certainly dropped the show. but then, i'm forced to admit that the first two episodes put in quite a necessary amount of legwork in setting the tone, story, world for mob psycho. they're essential, sure. they just could've been done better, given the incredibly brilliant season two opener--ah, but that's not appropriate to discuss here.

well, regardless of these issues, mob psycho 100 is still a very, very fine anime. like previously mentioned, the art style and animation is simply top notch: characters move as fluidly as the scenery does, the idea of 'flatness' completely obliterated as the two intersect regularly. magic powers, the crux of the show, are shown off with an immense amount of detail, an angling towards wow factors. voice actors that contribute do so well you'd be hard pressed to find replacements. and the story, as dramatic and (sometimes) plainly relayed as it is, still travels through funny, comedic, relatable, and interesting paths... especially towards its excellent ending run.

one thing that bothered me when i first watched this show years ago was a feeling of fatigue for school settings combined with a fatigue for overreactive, overacting typical of anime. mob psycho does both of these, but i'd say, admittedly, it probably does it the best of any... for what it's worth.

i'm not gonna be that harsh on jc staff. make no mistake, one punch man's second season is atrociously ugly, sloppily paced, and has zero sense of artistic direction. but i also think it's legitimately the best this romance angled studio could have done. it's a case of "wow, they really, really shouldn't have been assigned this job". it's a case of "wow, the powers that be should've REALLY waited on madhouse to be ready". but what's happened has happened: the art is abysmal, shaded like an overly glossy urban streetcar straight from the chop shop. the music and sound is fine, and the characters ... are there, but the animation that ties them all together is a best effort put forth that's still, comparatively, worthless. even if i didn't consider the first season of one punch to be completely perfect, the highs of season two never breach the lows of season 1.

but the biggest reason for this failure is, in fact, not related to jc staff at all: it's the manga. i'm dead serious, i think the manga's a piece of shit by this point in the story and there's nothing neither jc nor even madhouse could've down aside from dressing it all up in pretty animation. the truth is that the webcomic has been superseded by an impressive effort on part of murata and the anime adaptation, but that ends right here after episode one. from that point on, the manga spirals out of control forcibly delaying itself, focusing on the WRONG things (ie fights between two characters that aren't interesting in the slightest and dragged out for zero reason) and buying artificial time for one. the webcomic, meanwhile, expertly maneuvers the story of garou and paces it well to completion with a brilliant finale--something the manga will never do, and something the anime will never do.

that's how it is.

there's something rather fascinating about the position one punch man's landed itself recently within the anime canon and its viewers--a heel turn, of sorts. make no mistake, this season of 2015's most popular anime is still revered among mainstream anime fans, but they themselves are part of the problem if you ask any 'serious' anime viewer that watches more than whatever shonen's airing on toonami. that is to say, mainstream anime fans usually gobble up garbage after garbage whether it be sword art online and its numerous aimless sequels and its demon spawn of isekai cousins, pornsick angled romance or slice of life, or naruto ... for the seventh or eighth time. and so, it's easy to conflate anime 'popularity' with... 'bad'.

but one punch man isn't bad. in fact, it's good: damned good. it's one of the few times the general audience really got it right, and it's pretty easy to figure out why, too: the premise, attention grabbing as it is, is delivered through absolutely brilliant animation, key frames drawn and directed by legitimately the masters of the industry all phoned in for favors. legitimately every episode is filled with charming visuals, liquid movement--there's so many EXTRA bits of effort put in here and there that the concept of "filler" is completely absent throughout its twelve episode run, and that's really, really fucking impressive. to really sell you on this, i invite you to pick legitimately any episode and just watch it on mute. analyze--really observe just how buttery smooth and expressive every little action is.

that being said, it's almost a crime to even suggest muting one punch man when so much attention has been given to ensuring voice acting is top notch and its accompanying background tracks pull their weight. saitama sounds perfect. genos sounds perfect. tatsumaki sounds perfect. there's not a single misdirected role given, and the range everyone displays is phenomenal, especially previously mentioned one punch man himself, he who can go from thoughtless dumbass to distracted dumbass to serious... dumbass. i joke, but he really feels like a rounded character through his emotions (and i don't just say that because of his head shape). there's so much emphasis put on having saitama respond to situations uniquely in his saitama way, and the range... god, i'm struggling to really verbally express what i mean here. music wise, everything's up to snuff. it's a battle shonen at its heart, parody or not, and hearing THAT music or THAT track at key moments really sell the direction of each scene, the motion of the plot, the suspense of waiting on a hero. major props to saitama's direct character theme, "seigi shikkou".

i lose myself. let's wrap this up for why i specifically enjoy, love, etc what i describe: the writing. the premise, as funny as it is, immediately suggests a wearisome element--just how interesting can this be if no enemy is a match for the protagonist? the show is prepared to respond to this dilemma right from episode 1--it doesn't matter if saitama wins a punching bout or how he does so (he punches), because the battles one punch man really faces are psychological--against the self, against the minds of others, against unwinnable forces present through words only. the first episode, that which could legitimately sell itself as a short film if wanted, deals with the concept of boredom, of becoming so powerful that the fun is sapped from it all--this theme continues on through the show in a beautiful climax towards the end. other themes govern other subjects: "what's the point of winning if no one cares i won?" "what can you even do when public opinion has already turned against you?" "why will people hate you even after you've saved them?" and my absolute, absolute, holy shit this is incredible i wish i could write more but i'm avoiding spoilers: "when you see yourself in others, how long can you humor them?"

i wish i could delve more deeply into these aspects, but you must absolutely take my word for it when i say one punch man deals with every single one of these lines of questioning, and does so respectfully. it does so through one of the single best written characters of anime, period--someone who is grounded and down to earth, but no genius. someone who has very little time for extravagant displays and showmanship. someone who's reasons for being a hero are, frankly, dumb. someone who isn't afraid to inject humor into adversity (but not in, like, a standard awful tropy japanese way).

someone who wins, time and time again, with just one punch.

bakemonogatari is a glorified harem anime. it is the usual sort of self insert wish fulfillment every living, breathing otaku regularly desires but "elevated" to psuedointellectual heights, dressing up the crass menagerie of one dimensional wives in a flurry of, admittedly, brilliant visuals and sound design. this is an intoxicating aphrodisiac, it seems, to many who watch it and somehow conflate high word counts (best watched at 1.25x speed, mind you) with good storytelling--it is not.

a show built around the concept of conversations and deriding twists and purpose from them, bakemonogatari is surprisingly inept at even this, dialogue regularly dipping into the most generically ... deplorable of sex appeal based conversations (again, that aphrodisiac) and usually coming from the mouth of an unrealistic, unrelatable, insufferable talking piece. the first and main heroine fires off tsundere cliches and tropes like a 5.56mm magazine, and the show has the gall to poke fun at itself outright calling her tsundere, as if this forgives it, as if i'm not supposed to eyeroll into the ground at what is no better than a self aware parody doing exactly what is being parodied. more on my personal hatred of this character in a moment, but--the inept storytelling. each arc's focus is a character and their past, and it explores such with the cautiousness of a sloth and the execution of a sixth grader writing his first english paper. here, in an effort to avoid spoilers, i will write my own storyline for my own character and just tell you that this is any one of bake's.

"hello! my name is GIRL. i really like BOY but i'm not going to admit it. i will talk about SEX for fifteen minutes of the show and wag my ass in front of the camera for the director's MONEY SHOTS. actually, i'm carrying a burden: my DOG died and i am ignoring this. this makes me sad. i have decided to not be sad. i guess my DOG died. i am no longer sad. i really like BOY."

of course, i'm distilling several episodes worth of several adapted lines of several dialogue, but characters talk in circles anyway and i do genuinely shit you not when i say that characters "realizing" their arcs does literally just happen in blatantly spoken, completely unsubtle dialogue--like the sixth grader and his paper, like--no, it makes sense. your average anime fan who thinks attack on titan and death note are comparable to the west's godfather parts will definitely enjoy this harem thriller because it spells everything out for you, terribly afraid of a watcher being left behind.

back to my hatred of this main heroine, now. she is completely insufferable, a sex object given the most "anime" personality ever, a parallel to that one scene in perfect blue where a clearly fictitious movie scene is being shot, cringe inducing dialogue purposefully so. she flies through episodes without ever being checked--no, she's coddled, like a baby, and the viewer is supposed to enjoy her presence, and--even worse--the viewer is supposed to pretend there is any sort of pay off for her, that "oh, she gets better!" like a one piece recommendation with ill-intention. this is horrible character writing. this isn't how you do it--i am putting my foot down and saying, firmly: No. if you are going to write a character who is a representation of garbage, you keep her in check with other characters or events or anything but the worship bake bestows upon her. i dropped on episode 7, in fact, exactly when a character described (heartfelt?) how 'perfect' and 'pure' this character is. what perfect lack of self awareness.

perhaps the most agonizing quality of this show is the fan's rejoicing at its non linearity, that there are things that "make things make sense", that there are future parts that improve past parts. this is a trap, a black hole, and it is disappointing to watch someone talk themselves into it. let me explain: a show does NOT become good because of things that happen later. you cannot retroactively make a show better. if a show isn't good from the starting line, it isn't good. i am unwilling to compromise on this. any show that has a slow start--serial experiments lain, for instance, is still full of enjoyable qualities right from the beginning. a shonen like hunter x hunter that, truthfully, has its worst arc up first is still enjoyable, and only improves. garbage like this is not setting the foundation for a rich hotel to be erected later...

... it is unabashedly a brothel from the first second.

helpful senko san is worse than indulgent--it's borderline offensive in its shallowness.

well! that just about reveals my overall thoughts, but i'm not happy to leave it at just that. there's so many different things that bother me overall with sewayaki kitsune no senko-san that i'd feel wrong not touching on every single aspect--but first, a couple clarifications. one: i am aware that this is an adaptation. in this sense, i can forgive the team for simply doing their best to adapt what i assume to be just as awful material as what is animated. in another sense, i can't forgive the team when i consider ... adapting to be an art and that an adaptation should strive to eclipse the source material and exist as its own unique product. in a final sense, i can totally forgive the team because this was a tick-off-all-the-boxes money machine through and through and they chased that money to the bank because why the hell would they not. additionally, a lot of the complaints i'm going to have here are probably more than just senko-san, instead probably more appropriately focused on the "hole" it is digging into. but i watched senko-san, so here we fucking are.

enough preamble. first thing's first: the art is quite good. there's really never anything too special to look at: i don't remember more than four or five different environments even existing, the majority of the show taking place inside an apartment (not that this is a problem, but as far as art variety goes...). characters are certainly drawn appealingly, and there's rarely any animation that sticks out in a negative sense (with the only example really coming to mind being a backrubbing scene with zero weight or interaction to it). sound design is good, too, and it's not like any song in the show is obnoxious or anything. so hat's off, there.

now, let's dive in.

the first thing i want to truly ask: who is this show intended for? furthermore--what is helpful senko-san performing for exactly in its genre? this is half rhetorical--i realize obsessive otaku is the answer, but the other half is genuine, and reflective: what do otaku like about this? a slice of life anime involving cute girls doing cute things, for instance, is vapid but comfortable in its simplicity: cute girls really do just go around and do cute things for twelve episodes, ticking off the tropes of the genre and cementing themselves as the usual 7/10s that they are. helpful senko-san feels immeasurably worse than that concept, however. it bills itself as a "romance" involving a certain male nobody, a black hole of personality fit for self insertion, and a doting fox-girl who is completely and utterly sanitized to be a robotic personal maid/servant/lover/mother. now, whether the otaku audience has mommy issues or girlfriend troubles or anything else, i must ask this question i've been leading up to: is this show REALLY the aphrodisiac to the masses that it's set up to be? does it really placate otaku who yearn for these sorts of fantasies? as in... when the show is set up and finished and done, where exactly are you? a CGDCTSOL (how's that for a mouthful) is a window into the lives of cute girls screwing around and then you look away from the window. helpful senko-san is you, the viewer, stepping into the flesh suit of character nakano for twelve episodes, imagining yourself "pampered" and taken care of by the littlest most perfect aide to ever exist, and then it ends and...

well, i have trouble shaking away the imagery of seeing your self insert laugh along with all his friends in a richly colored world before the screen dims, the camera pulls back, and there sits the otaku, the illumination of his computer monitor not only capturing him but the squalor of his desk, the rows of beer bottles clumped together, an undone mattress in the corner, a--let me be direct. i am not making fun of senko viewers. what i am getting at is an unintentional cruelness on the part of the show: what is the archetype of those who self insert strongest supposed to do next? how do they even feel? how SHOULD they feel? and all of this leads to another line of questioning: am i projecting? hah, i suppose so, but the question stands. and another line of questioning: is there anything wrong with a self insert in a romantic setting? romance is a big genre, after all, so why am i being unfair towards this one when there stands thousands more? and now, we can take apart the meat of the show.

the helpful senko san is unbelievably shallow. ankle deep. the wet on your skin after a shower but before the towel. over twelve episodes, we meet five characters, and each one of them is, without exaggeration, absolutely nothing. main character nakano is an every man who works a demanding job (and i'll touch on that later) who has very, very, very simple characteristics: he is a hard worker. he likes to eat food. he can feel embarrassment. he plays video games and watches anime sometimes. that's it. there's the character. i'll just unzip his costume for you so you can gear up, okay? across from him is his lovely fox servant, senko, and here is her character: cheerful. doting. happy. subservient. docile. willing. very willing. exists for nakano. alright, there's your girlfriend for twelve episodes! or, wait, that's not right, because the show gets really, really weird with the crossing boundaries of what constitutes a marriage and what constitutes having a sugar mommy. indeed, these lines are blurred between whether nakano sees his submissive servant as his partner or his mom, and she feeds into it, and it's all... kind of disturbing, really. and empty, because there's so little to either of their characters that, really, whatever kind of "relationship" they form is vapid... and worthless. it's so much worse than just being "not that deep".

and to what plots do these characters engage in? all sorts! like... shopping for groceries. drinking. eating. taking a bath. using a vacuum cleaner. working. yeah, real exciting, but why is this different from the aforementioned CGDCTSOL genre? well, it's been awhile, but in the last two i watched--yuru yuri and new game--i seem to remember there being some forms of conflict and character squabbles in each episode, even if only slightly. characters in these shows somehow define themselves more than anyone in senko-san, and that's surprising... and kind of depressing. every episode here is a wet blanket of plot. there never exists any kind of real pushback to anything save for an absolutely paper thin pathetic attempt at underlying drama that one will unearth for themselves should THEY choose to follow this episodic virtual pampering. and, again, if the point isn't to watch cute girls do cute things nor to have any sort of real, substantial plot develop, then the point has to be, again, to self insert and indulge myself. but what am i indulging in? nakano gets a backrub. i'm not getting a backrub. i'm not getting anything.

i've written way, way too much about such an empty show, but this last bit of criticism is something i feel more necessary than anything else: helpful senko-san plays with the idea of critiquing the rigorous and disgustingly unhealthy standard of japan working culture. the phase is "plays with it", unfortunately, and that pisses me off, because why do it all then? in almost every episode, we get glances into his working life, the unfair conditions, the constant stress imbued, the, frankly, harassment stemming from his coworkers and boss that feed into his own time, the... oh, it's all such bullshit because nakano just shrugs it off, right. well, he's got senko-san, it's all okay! that's fucking great, but there's millions of workers who DON'T have senko-san, and they DO face the constant horseshit conditions that nakano does, and the show just doesn't do enough with the window it offers. lean into it more, damn it. have some teeth, you pathetic otaku fantasy. a conversation begins with the easiest placation an anxious populace purposefully seeks--entertainment.

... sorry, one more quip. i don't fucking get the tail thing. at all

Shinsekai Yori is the most conflicting watch I've ever had concerning anime. For most anime, it takes only a few episodes before I'm sure of how much I'll like it, what I think works for it and what doesn't--I was unable to do this with Yori, and even now, I could not possibly tell you if I enjoyed watching it or not. I should give it credit outright for that, but I'm also not willing to score the show above a 7 whatsoever.

The biggest issue lies within its storytelling, lore, and pacing. Two times this will happen: the story will gradually introduce its worldbuilding elements, ... build upon its characters, and wrap them up in a plot that becomes more and more interesting... and then the show slams the door in your face, and then begins to slowly creak the door again. The pacing is a painfully straight line for the first handful of episodes of each of these arcs, and then slowly begins to rise until it all comes to a screeching halt just as things grow exciting. I need to call this what it absolutely is: a problem. The actual concept of a mutliple arc story following characters as they age and grow is a tried and true storytelling device, but Shinsekai Yori's plot development happens so slowly that I begged for a heart pounding climax that never came each time. But then the question remains: is the story itself interesting?

And this is the biggest point of contention for me--Yes, and no. The world they've constructed in Shinsekai Yori is absolutely fascinating and cleverly original. It genuinely inspires curiosity in the environments around the main characters as they navigate themselves through them, and it feels satisfying to learn something new about an aspect of such. It is trying to ask a lot of questions by using its world: do the needs of the great outweigh the needs of the few (concerning the focus on sacrificing some humans for the greater survival of others), and, in a slight twist, do the needs of the lesser deserve more than that of the greater (when concerning the divide between Human and Beast)? There are clear parallels to humans and apes as there are with humans and "queerrat", a comparison the show readily acknowledges. The show, in a sense, feels as if we're a teenage boy recently gifted an ant farm. I don't think the show is ever very heavy handed in portraying its parallels and questions concerning morality, and I can respect that in a show, knowing to speak just enough to avoid looking like a fool.

The characters are another big point of contention: I did not care about the characters very much at all, but they were not unlikeable. Yes, they were different personalities pushed in front of us to observe as they navigate their "school" and grow up through different adventures, but I can't say I ever formed an attachment with any of them. I certainly didn't hate seeing any of them on screen! But, while their development over the course of the show is interesting, they themselves are kind of... boring? Normal? Fine? They were fine characters. Saki herself is fine enough--I add the 'enough' because there are a lot of aspects about her that disappoint me--she never really has a chance to fully act on her own and instead usually relies on the other characters as a crutch for herself. This itself isn't particularly offensive, but she never really grows out of this reliance and ends the anime on that same note. Not much of a coming-of-age, is it? Actually, all of this isn't as much true about all of the characters so much as it's true of the *humans*. The beastfolk are fascinating in Shinsekai Yori--there are big players that are present from very early on and develop in excellent, exciting ways to the point where I felt much more engaged when a 'rat was on screen versus a skin ape.

Now, the music is fine and the sound design is fine, but the art is what I would call disappointingly poor. It's more than a lack of shading (which absolutely stands out in nearly every scene and is unable to get used to whatsoever. Colors are just... wrong, sometimes. The colored hairs never really worked in contrast to everything else. Characters themselves never really *felt* like they were inhabiting this world. It's a shame because this itself is purely a budget issue and I don't like discounting a show because of this when the writing itself is what's important... but it should be acknowledged.

After writing all of this up, it's no clearer how I feel about the show. I've written much that could be considered negative and dismissing--but the story and world and the moral positions they offer are strong in many ways regardless, and I could not consider Shinsekai Yori a bad anime at all because of their presence. It's due to this that I do believe the show to be worth watching at the very least, but to have the slow (and sometimes, mostly, painful) pacing on the mind while progressing. Shinsekai may not hit all of its notes correctly, but it's a drawn out melody I wasn't upset to have listened to.

Kimi no Na wa, or "Your Name", leaves me with only two words to describe my thoughts immediately after viewing: impressively unimpressive. It is a beautiful, beautiful product, a masterful combination of film-like cinematography and anime's best in coloring, shading, and rendering motion and vista. If you were to watch it mute, you'd still be left in awe of just how lovely the animation is--but that would be cruel as well, as the sound design and music serves perfectly to compliment every piece of motion, every pebble cast aside and twig snapped, the sliding door of wood in the town and metal of the trains ... of the city.

But animation does not save a product's story, the most important asset of any piece of media. Simply put, it's dull. There's no real substance to it. Some concepts are interesting (and others, not so much) but the execution lacks any real meat to it, instead leaving the movie feeling more like an inoffensive boardroom creation. The characters themselves are nothing. A small assembly of side characters makes up those who support the two main heroes, but they are devoid of any roundness. Attempting to describe any of the side characters in more than five traits is an impossible task. Now, do not mistake my words to mean that every character blasted onto a projector screen demands to have a fully realized arc--this is silly and not always true. However, if the side characters are merely going to be two dimensional support beams for the protagonists, they better be amazingly realized and fully fleshed out.

They are not.

Mitsuha, the female protagonist of the story, has an interesting premise to her at first. She feels trapped in a scenario in which she serves the temple while her father serves the government, leading her to desire fleeing this lifestyle and seek a new one in the city. Taki, the male protagonist, has absolutely nothing. He's just a guy. A dude. A stand-in. Funnier, Mitsuha's premise is soon dropped as the center of attention revolves around their trading places, but there's nothing REALLY done with it. It's all just sort of goofy and silly and then it's over. Her premise seems dropped even as she doesn't seem to have any more of an issue living where she does, so... was the beginning just a bad day for her or something? The issue becomes that their characters pretty much just become devotees to each other no more than forty minutes in, and the rest of the story is just that empty, senseless devotion. They're open ended enough so that anyone can juxtapose themselves onto the girl or boy, thinking "Oh, he's just like me... I would do that for my love..." A symptom of a movie trying as genuinely hard as it can to reach widespread appeal, I guess.

The other main issue is that the concept is quite interesting, but handled very poorly. The movie is based around the concept of not only switching bodies, but switching timelines, and there is magic there. However, it becomes bogged down not only with a boring romance (as discussed above) but the concept of losing memories, an enormously unnecessary plot motif that serves no other purpose than to... what, exactly? Confuse people? Make it seem more heart wretched? Give me a break. It's an annoying concept that does nothing for the movie whatsoever, and, in fact, little about the movie would change regardless of whether someone could remember a name. Let me go a step further: it is my firm belief that this ridiculous plot element exists only so that they could call the movie Your Name. That's it. That's the only reason. I would bet sums on this.

In conclusion, give me a movie that plays up the duality of time travel and body swapping along with more realized characters--and if you're going to crowbar in a romance, do so LATER in the movie when everyone has been more than fleshed out--but not this.

When its art style is so damn attractive and refined, when its animation is such a spectacle to watch--how far can that get Demon Slayer before it runs out of steam due to incredibly mediocre writing and dialogue and obnoxious, one-note characters? Not very far, really.

Let's not mince words here--Demon Slayer looks fantastic. It has a bold art style utilizing thick outlines meshed with incredibly thin outlines while never being afraid to revert to silly, cartoony imagery when necessary. The fights can look memorizing--but unlike many's opinion, I find the 3D a huge turn off. There's a lot of praise for a particular fight that ... occurs halfway through the show, but I couldn't believe how unbelievably bland the execution was for it despite the novel concept--it's just a character flying around in a rotating 3D model. That's it. This scenario as well as other uses of 3D only serve to take me out of it all. But as for a bit more praise, the sound design is very well done--something that I usually don't think about when it comes to watching anime, frankly. Every impact genuinely carries its weight thanks to the fantastic sound design, and the soundtrack, while forgettable, definitely fits each scene well. Some of the voice acting isn't too bad, either--there are some painfully generic voiced characters (such as most side characters and the villains), but others shine very well in their shoes, like Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Giyu, the last of which doesn't exert himself too much to essentially play his Dororo role again, but hey, he doesn't necessarily need to.

This is where the praise ends, however. I've rated this show a 5 for a reason.

I don't really know how else to word this--Demon Slayer is bordering on the edge of being incompetently written. I say bordering because it's not as if the writing is horrific and unable to be tracked, because you definitely have a solid flow of events from one to the other and know what's going on all times. The problem is that it's 100% comprised of shonen tropes and bland dialogue, and nothing else. There are nearly zero shreds of originality found within Demon Slayer despite the interesting concepts introduced, like Tanjiro traveling with his demon sister, a man that wears a boars head, a corp of demon slayers unofficially sanctioned by the government--these are all cool and all, but the show doesn't REALLY do anything memorable or interesting with them in execution. When I watched Demon Slayer, all I could think was that I was watching some sort of "Shonen's Best Hits!" collection and would rather just be watching Hunter x Hunter instead.

Let me explain, because it's not fair to go "oh this sucks, this sucks, and this sucks" and leave it at that. The show is dull, and it is this way because it does not try to be anything else. There are a huge amount of fights, but none of them--and I do genuinely mean NONE--are ever solved with clever thinking, ingenuity, or--christ--having a character lose so that they can come back and try again with a new strategy or take. Instead, every fight ends with deus ex machinas--either the main character "believes" hard enough or he's rescued by someone else. That's it. That's every fight in the show. After watching Kaiji or, again, HxH, it just feels downright insulting to watch these battles unfold the same bland way over and over.

But when they aren't fighting, it's time for the characters to shine--kidding, they're all about as boring as the combat scenes are. When you write a character, you genuinely have some strong two dimensional elements to them--"Character is SAD because of issue, but is also ANGRY because of this issue. Character LIKE one thing and HATES one other thing"--you then expand on the concept and flesh them out so that they feel like a real human being. Such is not the case for Demon Slayer, in which characters are represented by their initial markings--Tanjiro is DETERMINED and KIND and LOVES his sister--and then never expanded on any further. No, seriously, try to argue the point after 26 episodes. He develops in no way whatsoever beyond these facets. The viewer never sees Tanjiro really come to terms of even really talk about his family's slayings. Tanjiro never expresses any interest in any sort of hobby or interest that doesn't have anything to do with fighting demons and holding his sister. He's just your run-of-the-mill shonen protagonist who fights for good, and that's it. The problem's made even worse when the show REFUSES to stop fellating the main character, with nearly every single interaction with Tanjiro and another character ending with them ooing and aahing over how kind he is, how noble he is, how gentle he is, and whatever else. It feels like a bizarre hug box and gets grating fast, as if Demon Slayer wants to have us believe Tanjiro is Jesus Christ himself.

You might read this and think I find Tanjiro the worst character of the show, but you couldn't be more wrong. That right belongs solely to Zenitsu, the blonde haired banshee of a character that feels genuinely written to spite his audience, as if Koyoharu Gotōge wanted his viewers to actually suffer while watching. Zenitsu feels as if he's straight from hell. From the moment we see his appearance on screen, he's already a miserable, loudly crying baby of a character--and do not mistake my words, for I love a character that can be realistically emotional and expressive, like Shinji of EVA. Zenitsu is not like this in any capacity, however. Nearly every scene depicting him shows him screaming, yelling, crying, wailing, and otherwise being a noise polluting nuisance. Most of Demon Slayer's awful excuse for "comedy" revolves around Zenitsu, with many scenes showing him being a coward--for laughs? It's really not funny the fifth time--or horny, as Koyoharu, for whatever reason, thinks it's goddamn hilarious that Zenitsu can't help himself from exploding in affectionate energy and chasing women--it happens constantly. He's written to be redeemed by his ability to perform like an amazing fighter when passed out, but honestly? That's such a crock and does not forgive or pardon, whatsoever, the suffering of having to deal with his character the other 99% of the time.

It's just a shame because it's very impressive that Demon Slayer is both written and illustrated by Koyoharu, and there ARE good puzzle pieces lying around that could be more narratively captivating, but instead the show is clearly just a vehicle to showcase interesting animation and stop at that. Demon Slayer is an unfortunate example of pure mediocrity, performing no better than its predecessors and certainly not its successors. At the end of the day, Demon Slayer is a shonen anime, and besides fantastic stand-outs like HxH, it's a genre that lends itself to this cartoonish blandness. Either watch these 26 episodes because you want to admire neat art, or just skip it and watch something more worth your time.

What makes an animated show work so well when it's actually barely animated? That's the sort of question Akagi seeks to answer, and it does so marvelously by displaying the following: iron-tight writing, stellar voice acting, and a real weighty sense of tension and stakes--even if you know Akagi will win in the end.

How does it all work? For one, the writing isn't held back when it comes to the primary conflict of which each arc surrounds--Mahjong. While it would be very easy for a show dedicated to displaying how ridiculously powerful its main character is, the anime shows little interest in letting Akagi win ... through ass pulls and random high value hands. Instead, each and every game gets a thorough explanation of each and every move by Akagi and his opponent, bringing even the most unaware-of-Mahjong-rules watchers along for the ride in a way that is understandable. There will be entire episodes following an insane play by the protagonist that is simply 24 minutes of explanation--and it works, because you find yourself on the edge of your seat dying to know how Akagi pulled it off.

Pacing can be issue, but it's a matter of perspective. If you accept that the show effectively has no real ending and accept that its final arc will stretch across more than half of the show, then you're mentally prepared for Akagi. Each episode has a specific purpose to fill, whether it's to simply show the psychology of an opponent, explain the rules for an upcoming match, or just re-evaluate the current stakes. This may sound boring, and for some, it absolutely will be. However, these episodes are incredibly necessary to building the foundation for some of the most unbelievably bombastic moments that follow--every episode is effectively a domino (or Mahjong tile?) knocking one another down until a piece whacks a sensitive landmine of an episode.

Like I said, there isn't really a whole lot of animation--but that's not to say it's dull to watch. Camera angles always make sense, allowing the viewer to observe the hands at play, discard piles, etc so that they're not out of the loop while also taking creative liberties in showing a huge range of emotions across characters' faces that display far, far differently from most anime thanks to the unique art style of Fukumoto. Additionally, voice acting is nothing short of remarkable with regards to the two biggest characters in Akagi--the main character himself, who correctly expresses a menacing, emotionless demon of a player--and Washizu, who gives one of the most unforgettable performances in anime ever--period--breathing life into a character that is maniacally evil, but completely fallible.

In any case, Akagi will not be for everyone simply because Akagi is not like most anime. If you can't enjoy slow pacing, this is not for you. If you like fan service (or even women in general showing up in anime), this is not for you. If you find the idea of an anime centered around a board game to be too silly or far-fetched... reconsider. Seriously. Try four episodes, and you might just surprise yourself with how badly you want to watch what comes next.