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Hell's Paradise was hyped up to a degree that few shows ever are; being compared to IPs like Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen in the "dark trio" (as some people came to call the group), set it up with some very reputable competition. That was a pretty major detriment to it.

I expected more-- this is maybe the most neutral I've ever felt about any show like this one.

It has some moments were it executes competent, emotionally aware writing-- especially with Gabimaru's character --but those moments were pretty scarce. The rest more-or-less fell into the box of standard shonen action, with all of the tropes ... associated with that: cliché dialogue and story path; anticlimactic character deaths; lots of fanservicey moments (which I can excuse in this case since many were actually crucial to the plots and themes); vague power systems (there are multiple here); and enemies that are built up as being infinitely strong but are easily combatable by the end of the season.

If the action managed to be fantastic (like Jujutsu Kaisen, for example), this show still would have managed to be great; but it's just okay. The visuals are okay, the characters are okay, the music is okay, the animation is okay, the story is okay... etc. It's worth watching, yes, and it did have a few fantastic episodes, but I'm just opinionless after this season.

I knew from the moment that I sat down and watched the first episode of this show, that it would be special... and it is. This is the best new anime of the year, so far.

Heavenly Delusion is an undoubtedly mature show, hiding behind the guise of cartoonish character designs and motions, and gorgeous sequences of landscape and background art; something that has become quite popular in recent years with shows such as Made in Abyss. Meanwhile, the content of the actual episodes is downright grim and depressing at times; but there's always a moment of entertainment or optimism that keeps its tone from sliding ... down into melodrama, the way that a lot of similar shows do. It keeps a perfect equilibrium of horror (both supernatural, and human), lighthearted comedy, and drama.

The story holds a lot of elements that may be considered cliché or lazy by some; the apocalypse that nobody knows anything about, monsters with crazy abilities and an unknown origin, the plethora of mysterious organizations that exist only to be mysterious, and a main character with a literal plot beam on her hip; but the way that it utilizes these things is far from the usual. They aren't just things that exist in the world just to exist; each part of the story was evidently meticulously crafted with each element in mind and at play in one way or another; either to exemplify character flaws or motivations, or to better set the stage for the rest of the narrative.

It builds up, throughout its 13 episodes, a sense of understanding about the world and what the grand design of the story will be, as the viewer picks up on the clues laid out scene after scene; but it continuously turns that understanding on its head, in ways that make every episode genuinely gripping. The ambiguous nature in which some of the plotlines end only served to increase my fascination, and left me feeling a way that I haven't felt in a long time about an anime.

I loved this. A lot.

Vinland Saga pulled off a complete 180 degree flip between the prologue and the farmland arc. Going from a bloody, action packed show; to a slow paced, dialogue driven character piece; it's a move so ambitious that ones like it are actively shunned within some cases in traditional writing. I have never seen it done better than how Yukimura did it with Vinland Saga. It is a perfect transition that completely redefined everything, while feeling like the natural-- and frankly, only --way that the plot could continue onwards following the end of the prologue.

I knew that the vocal minority would exist, even before this season ... began airing. A massive group had formed following the release of season one who had grown to love Vinland Saga because of the incredible action pieces within that season (They were amazing, to be fair). Many within that group had mixed or negative reactions to the release of season two-- and honestly, I don't necessarily blame them. The show took a monumental, jarring switch in its content and tone, and I think that not liking that is a perfectly valid opinion to hold.
This is what Vinland Saga is, though. If you didn't enjoy this, you won't like any of the future seasons and the things that they hold. The prologue was pure setup no matter how you look at it, but just so happened to be a masterpiece in and of itself.

Vinland Saga is a series where each arc is written so masterfully that the end of any of them would be a satisfying end for the series as a whole; they could even stand alone as individual stories, if they had to. You could pick this season up without watching the first, and still get a lifechanging experience out of it. The foundations set by the prologue, and the ones continued to be laid with the farmland arc, fuel and connect these stories together to form a whole that is arguably one of the greatest in all of anime and manga.

When I read the manga, I felt like Swordsmith Village was one of the weaker major Demon Slayer arcs; and I still hold that opinion after the anime adaptation has finished.

Coming off the back of the incredible Entertainment District arc, it doesn't quite live up to it-- with slowed down pacing; the wild decision to not include Zenitsu and Inosuke; the most uninteresting villains of any arc; and the introductions of Kanroji and Muichiro who struggle to fill the shoes of Uzui and Rengoku; it undoubtedly has some dull moments. The production side of things also seemed a bit off this time around, with ... the animation being surprisingly inconsistent, going against what we've come to expect from the show.

In the end, though, it's still Demon Slayer. The issues that the season has are glaring, but it still retains all of the qualities that made the show popular in the first place. The final episode put all of that on display, and was one of the best so far in the entire series. The Swordsmith Village arc is a low point for sure, but it is still good even with that being the case. Its high points are very high.

This is a tough one. Ranking of Kings itself is one of my favorite anime of all time; but it was noticeable from the first episode that this was not the same. It jumps from side character to side character, and plotline to plotline, rarely ever giving the viewer anything relevant to what made the first season special. There were a few genuinely great episodes thrown in here that continued the plot or supplied important context, but there was a large amount of pointless filler, as well. I almost dropped this at one point.

A better idea than making this a full pseudo-season would have been ... to make a special or two where they included the good ideas that they clearly had, and eliminated half-baked and fillery ones. It would have made it look a lot less like they were just trying to throw anything out there to tide us over until the true season two.

This didn't really work for me. The world on display here is honestly pretty marvelous, at least conceptually. The the pacing of it all, the characters, and the narrative, though, never really got me invested. The emotional beats missed because of that, and I just couldn't get immersed.

The animation certainly didn't help that, either.

Trigun Stampede's is undoubtedly the most visually appealing 3D animation that I've ever seen in an anime, but it still just seemed off in most scenes. The faces are really expressive in a way that most 2D shows can't achieve, but the characters still feel soulless. The environments are vibrant and interesting, ... but still feel empty. The action is flashy, but lacks weight and cohesive choreography. The show even included some 2D scenes that were absolutely BREATHTAKING, and just made me wish the whole show was as gorgeous as those fleeting moments. 3D animation in anime still has a few years to go before it's good enough to really stand against traditional stylings, but this was certainly a step in the right direction towards that future.

I really wish that I liked this a little more-- I usually love sci-fi similar to this; but I just couldn't get into it. It's not a bad show by any means, just one that didn't land.

It really sucks to say it, but To Your Eternity, as a whole, is bad. I loved the first half of season 1, but by now the show has been garbage for almost triple that amount of episodes. The characters are atrocious, the animation is even worse, and the entire direction of the show is just mind boggling. Why is this an action show? Literally everything about the story would make so much more sense and work so much better in a slower paced, more dialogue heavy type of show. For some reason though, they want to throw as many poorly animated action scenes in ... as possible, and 0 of them are even close to being entertaining. I just don't understand why this is the way that it is.

The most frustrating type of bad shows are the ones that have strong concepts like this one, yet still find a way to mess it up. To Your Eternity, conceptually, is phenomenal. There is literally no reason that this show SHOULD be bad. Yet, it is.

I feel the same way about the show now as I did after finishing my (much longer) review for season 1, the only difference being that all of my optimism for its future is gone.

I'm almost speechless.

This is one of those times where I genuinely don't know what to say in a review, so this I'm going to keep this pretty short.

It thought that season 2 of Mob Psycho 100 was an incredible, borderline masterpiece, and I thought it would be the peak of the show. But it wasn't. Season 3 is somehow even better.

Of course the art and action were both exceptional this time around, which was to be expected. What elevated this season above the other 2 previous ones though, was the execution of the themes that were built up throughout those seasons, along with the ... conclusion of Mob's character arc.

There were moments during season 2 in which it seemed like Mob's character had reached its summit, but I was wrong. Everything from the previous 2 seasons was expanded upon drastically. Mob's relationships, his aspirations, and above all, his inner turmoil with himself. The way they handled these with the rest of his character development over these last 12 episodes was nothing short of masterful, and it led up to an absolutely beautiful final episode.

So many scenes and so many moments from this season are burned into my head. ONE and Bones have accomplished something incredible here. The pacing of this season was crazy, and the animation was inconsistent at times, but it still ended up being nearly perfect despite that.

I will always love Mob Psycho 100, and I'm sad that it's over; but I could not have asked for a better conclusion.

Blue Lock, at least so far, has not been good.

For months prior to the airing of this show I had been hearing nothing but great things about the manga. "It's peak!", "It's the best new-gen!", etc. Maybe I just got spoiled by how good Aoashi was, but this show has been neither of those things.

The art and animation, which I thought would be the only guaranteed great thing about the show, is arguably the worst. Every episode, every scene, and every shot looks exactly the same. The same color palette, the same backgrounds, and the same lighting. Bland blues and grays are the only colors ... that exist in the blue lock universe, so get ready to see a lot of that. The art direction is bad enough, but the animation isn't much better. I'm serious when I say this- this show has the worst CGI usage I have ever seen in my life. Every time they play soccer (which is often, as you can imagine), almost every character not directly in focus is a mobile game quality 3d model walking across the pitch. I don't know how much time, money, or effort was spent on each episode, but they need more of all of those things.

The characters are so unbelievably uninteresting. They all have decent enough designs, but each one's only actual character trait is that they wan to be 'the world's greatest striker!', and then they'll throw something like "he's lazy," "he's an asshole", or "he's smart" on top of that. When every character has the exact same ambitions, they all feel one dimensional. That isn't helped by the fact that we know nothing about any of them outside of their soccer careers. What do they like to do for fun? Who knows. What are their families like? Who cares. What are their school lives like? No idea. At this point in the show, literally every character on the main team, including the MC, are critically underdeveloped. They need to stop cramming as much action as possible into each episode, and start dedicating a large amount of time to expanding on these characters ASAP, or this show will be beyond saving. That might be an impossible task though, when all of the writing sounds like something I would come up with after watching a sword art online episode when I was 12. All of the 'cool' lines are something like "I have monster inside of me that wants to eat you all >:)", or "You have to let the demon out to score goals!". As you can probably expect, the way the characters talk and interact with each other, is also not good. Even if the characters were developed, it would still be hard to make the watcher care about them with that being the case.

I don't really know what people see in this show . Despite the massively flawed anime, the popularity has absolutely exploded- hell, Japan is wearing blue lock themed jerseys at the WORLD CUP! The biggest sports event in the history of the world! How did the author manage to pull that off???

Anyways, I'll keep watching until the end of the show, but my optimism for the next 15 episodes is pretty low.

Chainsaw Man, Mob Psycho 100, Bleach, My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, Blue Lock, To Your Eternity. That is just a short list of some of the shows that are airing right now. This is a huge season, full of massive names. In such a season, the odds of a smaller, lesser known title standing out are really low, but Bocchi the Rock has done it.

I've been a fan of the slice of life genre really since I started watching anime, and I thought I knew what a great slice of life looked like.

I didn't. THIS is a great slice of life. It does everything ... right. A banger soundtrack. Realistic, relatable, characters. A fun, enticing, plot. Creative, hilarious, writing. It's all there.

Something about this show just feels so special when compared to other shows in its genre. Its style of comedy is so refreshing, it's more like a western cartoon than an anime in that department. I think the best comparison I can make for the comedy style is...

And hear me out here, because this is going to sound absolutely insane...

Family Guy. Similar to a show like Family Guy, Bocchi the Rock utilizes a lot of cutaways to punchline its jokes. For an example, Bocchi might make a statement like "I hate coffee", and then the screen would fade into a fictional movie where Bocchi is fighting against a giant coffee cup that is destroying the city or something like that. There are even a few scenes were it transitions into other animation styles, or all the way to live action just for a single joke. The animation reminds me of a show like FLCL, with the way the characters move and the faces they make during the comedic scenes. It's just so creative, and that's what separates it from other slice of life anime.

You don't have to be a slice of life fan to enjoy this. You don't have to be a music fan to enjoy this. You don't even have to be an anime fan to enjoy this. Bocchi the Rock is just an amazing, inventive show, no matter how you look at it.