Back to skynet5c's Profile skynet5c's Profile

First, let's talk about the one good thing about this manga, and really there is only one good thing: attention to detail. The author has clearly put a lot of effort into making the world-setting coherent, and making the characters and politics feel realistic. I agree with the other reviewers that the characters in this manga feel realistic.

Now, let's talk about the bad. Initially, the story was the MC and his team fighting monsters, sometimes using clever and non-conventional tactics based on the rules of the setting. That was fun and exciting and it made sense in the context of the setting. But as ... the manga dragged on, the plot just veered off in nonsensical direction, with the protagonists fighting the dungeon master who was practically a god, using tactics and logic that felt like they shouldn't work but somehow they do? I have to say that the story felt more and more unrealistic and nonsensical as it went on. The MC is a goofy type, who is only obsessed with researching monsters and cooking them, and not really interested in politics (at least that's the way it comes across in the manga). If events had proceeded more logically, then most likely the ending would not have been a happy one for the MC. But, a series of happy coincidences resulted in a happy ending for the MC. I didn't like that.

Another thing I didn't like about this manga was that there was too much cooking. Pages upon pages filled with nothing but dialogue about the cooking and eating of fantasy monsters. In the beginning it was okay, I thought maybe this was just some comedy joke thing, but as the manga went on, it got worse and worse. As the series neared its end, there were more and more pages in each chapter that was purely just cooking and eating monsters. Pages upon pages of characters just talking about eating fantasy creatures. It became increasingly tedious and boring for me but I powered through it and got to the end at last. Now, don't get me wrong, I like eating food as much as anyone. But I cannot stand a manga that was literally just about eating food.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

This manhwa is HORRIBLE. It's on the same level of bad as Solo Leveling.

The main character has no real goal other than revenge. Yet he doesn't even seem to be particularly motivated to do that. He seems to be more interested in stealing relics from other people. He is an asshole to everyone, constantly lying and cheating innocent people. Has no moral scruples whatsoever. That's okay though, the bigger problem is his recklessness. He doesn't seem to have any real plans and often takes risks for no reason. Somehow it all works out though because plot armor in the form of ... Crow always swoops in and saves the day.

I dropped it at chapter 28 because he took out an artifact called Shakespeare's Childhood Pen. Apparently that pen turns anything that the user writes into reality. I can't believe how ridiculously broken that item is, and how it's even allowed to exist in the story without any limitations. I mean what is even the point of having any other relics if this things exists? The MC can just write down all his wishes with that pen and it'll be the end of the story. Absolutely ridiculous.

Firstly, I have not seen Kimi no Na wa (not even a trailer) so my review is not biased by that movie.

The art is very good. It's probably about as good as you can get for an anime movie. The animation is just decent for a big budget movie. Nothing in particular stands out, I don't remember any sakuga.

Warning: Spoilers from here on

Now, let's talk about the story. The main thing that I wish was explored more was the moral dilemma where he decides to save the girl and as a result the entire city was inundated by rain. Presumably hundreds of thousands if ... not millions of people would have been affected by this directly as a result of losing their homes, and probably millions more would have been indirectly affected. The main character did not seem to be bothered by this. In fact, it was not shown that he had even considered it at the time of making his decision, and it does not seem that he was affected by the aftermath either.

I think the movie could have really capitalized on this dilemma, with Hodaka perhaps saying something like "society never cared about me, so why should I care about them?" to justify his action of saving Hina. Really, any kind of thought to justify his actions would have been better than the zero contemplation that he actually showed in the movie.

This is my problem with the movie. The characters are too simple. They don't engage in reflective contemplation of the consequences of their actions.

One example of this is when the girl lies to the boy about her age. She said she was older but in fact she was younger. Why did she do this?

In the movie, the boy (Hodaka) reacts by crying, clearly moved by ... the fact that Hina lied to him about her age? I don't think the lie was even remotely necessary. Why did she lie to him? As a stranger, okay, maybe she lied so that he can't tell her boss to get her fired (if it's illegal for underage people to work, maybe the boss should have checked her age. Is that not standard procedure in Japan?).

But after they got closer she didn't say "hey, I lied to you about my age. Here's a list of all the other stuff I lied to you about". Instead, Hodaka had to find out by (iirc) accidentally seeing her ID card.

In real life, this would immediately cause a loss of trust. "Why did she lie to me? What else has she lied to me about?" would be the obvious normal reaction. Hodaka's reaction on the other hand is clearly unrealistic and not normal.

I think the story itself is fine, but the way the characters act in this movie are problematic and don't feel realistic at all.

Konosuba's skits tend to be very hit-or-miss, and this OVA is definitely more miss than hit.

For me, the strength of Konosuba is that it doesn't rely on ecchi fanservice to carry itself. Sure, Kazuma is very lustful, but that is not his only personality trait. He is not a one-dimensional character, and that's one of the strengths of the show.

Unfortunately, this episode is solely about satisfying Kazuma's whims, and all of his whims happen to be of the sadistic lustful kind, so it's about as boring and repetitive as you can imagine.

Konosuba as a show has never relied on good art or ... animation to carry itself. So ecchi fanservice definitely does not play to its strengths. And unfortunately this entire episode is basically just ecchi fanservice.

The skit at the end was a rather underwhelming payoff. Megumin's remark was probably the only funny thing in it that I remember.

Overall, I think this entire episode could have worked as a 1 or 2 minute skit in one of the episodes. Maybe as a flashback. As a 20 minute OVA, it dragged on for way too long and wasn't even that good of a concept. The other OVA (with the golems) was much funnier imo.

Let's start with the good. Spriggan is notable for its sakuga. The animation is very smooth and the choreography is decent. The art style is quite aesthetically pleasing too. It's easily up there with Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust as far as popcorn action flicks go.

Now let's talk about the story. Well, the story is quite poor and cliched. It's like an Indiana Jones movie. An ancient artifact is found that is used to destroy the world by an evil villain. Protagonist goes to stop the villain. So, nothing really to talk about here.

Most of the fight scenes are really, really stupid. In ... the first fight, the Fat Man has grabbed Yu by the neck, and is slowly crushing his neck. Yu doesn't do anything except grab at the Fat Man's hand, even though he has a knife. Then Jean calls out to Yu, and Yu suddenly becomes smart and remembers that he has a knife and cuts Fat Man's arm off? Why didn't he do that before?

But the final fight scene is what really ruined the movie for me. The main villain has the power of telekinesis. He can knock people back from a distance. Every time Yu tries running up to him, he uses his power and knocks Yu back. Yu keeps doing this and he gets knocked back every time.

Does Yu learn from this and try a different strategy? Nope! He just continues to run directly at the bad guy, and every single time he gets knocked back, he gets back up and tries the exact same thing again, running at the bad guy screaming at the top of his lungs. Until eventually he suddenly gets really angry and runs really fast, and this time he doesn't get knocked down, even though the bad guy is using even more power than before. Yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds.

Having said all that, I liked the little touches here and there. Moments like when Yu was disassembling his pistol and cleaning it (what was he using? WD-40?), for example. The dialogue, although it was pretty stupid at times, was direct and snappy. All of this contributed to the anime having the "feel" of a classic 90s action movie.

Yeah, it's nothing to write home about. But it's not unwatchable either. It's no worse than Ninja Scroll. If you just want to turn your brain off and watch some mindless action, at least this movie is direct and to the point and doesn't waste your time with useless filler.

Let's start with the good:
- Art is okay.
- Animation was pretty good! The ep 2 fight Gojo vs Sukuna was nicely animated.

Okay, now let's talk about the actual story.

What is Yuji's motivation? At the beginning, he swallows Sukuna's finger in order to save himself. This feels a bit like the start of Bleach (not a good sign). After that, what does he do? He decides to go on a quest to defeat Sukuna. Except this is not his own decision, but a decision forced upon him by Gojo - either he goes on the quest, or he will be executed. This is problematic.

To put it ... simply, the MC has no agency. What is the MC's motivation? His grandfather told him to "help other people"? That is such a lame excuse of a motivation that he got called out on it in the anime. He then tried to justify his decision with "I'm the only one who can suppress Sukuna". But again, that rings hollow to me.

A real person does not completely change his life goals after just meeting a guy. That's the difference between Naruto and Bleach. Naruto always wanted to be a hokage ever since he was a little kid. That's a believable motivation. By contrast, what is Ichigo's motivation? "I want to protect my friends"?

Jujutsu Kaisen reminds me of Bleach in that respect. The MC does not have a believable motivation. It's just: this thing happened, now I'm going to devote my life to beating this bad guy that I've never heard of before up to this point. That's not how real people work.

Let's talk about Yuji. At the start of this anime, his grandpa is on his death bed and wants to tell Yuji something important about his parents. Yuji is like "nope, don't want to hear it". Then his grandpa dies and Yuji starts crying. Literally WTF. If you love your grandpa so much then maybe pay attention to what he's telling you when he's on his death bed.

There is a lot of "tell, don't show" in this anime. We are supposed to believe that Yuji had a strong bond with his grandpa, and yet we don't see any evidence of this, other than Yuji crying and visiting his grandpa's grave.

This is one instance where flashbacks actually would have helped. What was their relationship like when Yuji's grandpa was alive? What did they do together? What kind of stuff did they talk about? What did his grandpa do for him? And so on and so forth. None of this is explored, which makes the relationship feel hollow. We are TOLD that their bond was very strong, but this was never SHOWN in the anime.

Let's compare Jujutsu Kaisen with Chainsaw Man. The MC from Chainsaw Man, Denji, had a convincing motivation based on his entire life experiences. Denji grew up in poverty and was forced to sell an eye, a kidney, and a testicle in order to pay his debts. In the very first chapter, he enthusiastically swallows a cigarette for money.

These little details serve to flesh out a character and make them believable. If we are to believe that Yuji wants to "help people", it would help if the anime showed him doing things like helping the old lady cross the street. Even little things like that help to flesh out a character. In Jujutsu Kaisen there is none of that. Again, we are TOLD that he wants to "help people", but we are not SHOWN this. The only purpose of this motivation seems to be to be used as a "power up" during fight scenes.

The characters in jujutsu kaisen do not have distinct personalities. What do I mean by that?

In Chainsaw Man, consider 3 of the main characters: Denji, Aki, and Power. Power has a fundamentally different personality to Denji and Aki. This was shown the very first time she was introduced, where she tried to murder Denji in order to save her cat. She literally does not give two shits about humans. She is a pathological liar. She's practically a psychopath. Aki is the very opposite. Those are very distinct characters and personalities. Given any situation, you can easily predict that Power would act in a selfish self-serving way, whilst Aki would act in a way that would be consistent with his hatred for all devils.

Now we look at the characters in Jujutsu Kaisen. How is Yuki differentiated from Fushiguro or Kugisaki? What even are the personality traits that define these 3 characters? Sure, we can see that Kugisaki speaks in a rude way, but, come up with a situation and try to imagine how the characters might act in that situation. I find it very hard to predict any differences in the ways that the characters would act.

The first mission in Chainsaw Man revealed the character of Power, and how different she is from Denji. In contrast, what did the first two missions in Jujutsu Kaisen reveal about the characters of Yuji, Fushiguro, or Kugisaki? Really, I can't think of anything.

First mission in Jujutsu Kaisen. Kugisaki was confronted by a hostage situation. It doesn't seem like she had an answer to it. Yuji saved the day by coming through the wall, but that mission did not reveal any fundamental differences between the two characters.

Second mission in Jujutsu Kaisen. A super powerful curse comes out. Fushiguro and Kugisaki are useless. Again, Yuji saves the day by telling them to get out and then unleashes Sukuna.

Let's talk about Sukuna. The way he's used in the show is very similar to how Ichigo uses his Hollow or Naruto uses his Kyuubi. In the second mission, when faced with an overwhelming enemy, his team mates are useless and Yuji has to unleash Sukuna to save the day. This is just like the many situations in Naruto where Naruto's team mates are useless and Naruto has to unleash Kyuubi in order to save the day. It's essentially a get-out-of-jail free card. Why bother coming up with clever, creative solutions when you can just rely on your secret hidden power?

Man, there are so many problems with the story but I feel like I've written enough already. The animation was good, I'll give it that.