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A dissapointing read...
Despite its promising start and beautiful art style, I was overall quite bored from this 300+ chapters story.
The story tries to tackle typical themes and questions for a ronin sotry, such us: what is true strength, how can we become an honorable man and so on; these are fine topics, but it was handled without much originality and poor pacing, but more importantly I couldn't get interested in the story at all because of the lack of compelling characters I wanted to latch on.

The story doesn't have a main plot since it focuses on the personnal journey of several characters who ... are trying to find their path and purpose in life, which is fine if it results in satifsying character development.
Unfortunately, none of the characters in the story stood out to me: I did feel pity for them since all of them got difficult lives, but I didn't like any of them. All of the main characters are obsessed with fighting for different reasons, which on itself is fine too, but none of them showed interesting personality traits or ambitions other than becoming "strong" or "honorable". The protagonnist is an impulsive and rather selfish person, which can be explained from his childhood, but it was still boring to read about him.
Overall, I think that this story can still be enjoyed by people who like typicall ronin stories, but don't expect anything special from this read.

How I rated this:
Story: 04/10. There isn't really an interesting or complex political plot that could've been exploited in this setting, but that's fine.
Art: 09/10: really great, it terms of semi-realistic manga drawings, i haven't come across many artworks that are better.
Character: 04/10. None of the characters is particularly bad, but none of them gained my interest.
Enjoyment: 02/10. I felt like there were way too many chapters than necessary for this story.
Overall: 05/10.

Frustrating is exactly how I would describe this show: it had really good potential, but the execution of its elements were mostly disappointing.

First, let me quickly sum-up the plot of this anime, and why I think it could’ve been a great show: it follows the story of your average male protagonist who hasn’t achieved much in his life and realizes how much full of regret he is when he learns in the news that his one and only ex-girlfriend was killed by a gang. He discovers afterwards that he has the power to travel exactly twelve years back into the past and decides to change ... the events of that time to save his girlfriend and allow himself a better future. I was quite interested in the beginning: although I am not a fan of time-travelling, I was intrigued to see how the protagonist would overcome his fears and fix his past regrets, and the setting of delinquents caught in gang rivalries is something that I often enjoy.

To this story’s credit, there were a few elements that I thought were well executed:
- First, I liked the way the protagonist realizes that he must fight his past fears in order to improve his life, and although he is quite afraid to face the reality surrounding him, he makes a real effort and manages to bring a change through his actions.
- I liked how the anime showed the several layers of delinquency and criminality, from the low-ranking victims forced to serve more powerful brutes, to charismatic and powerful leaders who have real plans and influence.
- I enjoyed the soundtracks and character designs.

Unfortunately, there is a much longer list of points I didn’t enjoy personally, and I’m going to list them here:
- Some characters felt a bit bland, despite their promising start: for example, Mikey is the leader of the Toman and is immediately presented as an important main character, who wishes to give a new era for delinquents. Although it is an intriguing point, it is never really explained what he means with that, or what his motivation is. In fact, we don’t know much about him at all other than the fact that he is really good at fighting and cares about his people. It wouldn’t be a problem if the mystery was kept to let other characters shine, but the other characters felt the same: the main antagonist is purposefully mysterious, which is a respectable decision, but all the main characters feel quite boring; except for Draken who was given a short backstory, we never learn how they got into delinquency, or what their motivations are, other than following Mikey.
- Following the issue with the characters, there is the lack of exploitation for the themes that could’ve shined in this anime: delinquency is a complicated issue, where teens get involved for tons of different reasons, but it is often linked with society. In this anime, we almost never see how society impacted these characters even for the protagonist: we don’t even see his parents, his perspective of the world around him.
- The fights are really over-the-top for me: I can get myself captivated by a typical shonen protagonist who takes one punch after another and gets up afterwards by his strong will if it happens in some magical world or if his bodily constitution is protected by some superhuman strength, but in this anime, it is never justified, and it just feels odd to me. The characters often get beaten to a pulp, but many get back up if they are determined enough, and few suffer serious physical consequences from their actions: that’s not how it works in real fights.
- The pacing is awfully slow, and it feels repetitive: the protagonist always thinks that he has solved his main threat and returns to the present, but then realizes that there is a much bigger issue and must return without much preparation.
- There are characters who feel abandoned or simply used as narrative plot devices for the protagonist: his initial group of friends isn’t much developed after the first few episodes, but what annoyed me most was his girlfriend whose name I forgot since she was the perfectly bland female character; we don’t even know how they got together in the first place despite the protagonist stating that his past self was a bit of a looser, and she is a bit like an obsession for him: They broke up years ago and he almost even forgot her before hearing about her in the news, but somehow she is the main person to save in this whole story even though she doesn’t do much narratively apart from that.

How I rated the elements of this anime:
- Story: 05/10. It had a good premise, but it was painfully dragged out.
- Art: 06/10. The art was fine, I enjoyed the character design of some characters such as Draken or Baji.
- Sound: 06/10. I enjoyed the soundtrack, and the voice actors did a good job.
- Characters: 05/10. This was really a middle-ground for me, and despite the potential of some characters, from what I was given to me in this season, there wasn’t any character I really grew attached to.
- Enjoyment: 04/10. It was entertaining enough, but the pacing didn’t help.
- Overall: 05/10: Very mixed feelings, but mostly disappointment because of the bad pacing and characters.

To be totally honest, I'm a bit too confused to review this story. I must admit, I only picked it up because of the extremely low score that was shown, so it sparked my curiosity, so I wanted to see if it was really so bad.
The thing is... it was so hilarious! It assembles all the worst cliches present in the shoujo genre in less than twenty pages, so it should be a parody, right?
But after consumming so many terrible shoujos, I can't know for sure...
Anyway, it's only around 20 pages long, so if it is meant to be a parody poking fun at the ... worst elements of the genre, it's quite entertaining.

Since it has many positive reviews, I was curious to see what the story was about, and to be honest I was rather dissapointed. There were a few good points that are worth noting, but I grew so bored that I had to quit watching after only 5 episodes despite my best efforts.
The first arc I watched is based around one main "mystery" that the protagonist needs to investigate around. There is a list of elements I personally disliked from the five episodes I watched, so I've made a list of the positive and negative points of the series from my perspective:

The negative points:
- ... The plot is kind of confusing from the very beginning: the protagonnist makes his third "ascencion into Heaven" without any of the process being shown or explained to the viewer.
- The characters are extremely bland, at least from the 5 episodes I watched: the protagonnist ist just there to fulfill his mission, AKA the plot without showing us much about his personnal traits. We only know that he wants to repay the debt he caused during his ascension, but other than that... What are his objectives in life? what does he like, dislike, what is he afraid of? Since this is the adaptation of a popular novel, I'm sure that it is well detailed in the book, but not all viewers have read the book, and the show doesn't do a great job at introducing us the characters.
- It is extremely slow paced: I personally don't mind slow paced shows if it allows the story to focus of character growth or interesting world-building, but that wasn't the case here, so it bored me even more.
- This is a mystery investigation springled with some magic, but the scenes that were supposed to be scary didn't affect me the least, for I felt no emotional impact from them.
- The main antagonnist from the first arc has a rather stereotipical backstory and motivation: basically, that person was hurt before and decides to take revenge on innocent people. Well, it is more detailed than that, but I don't want to spoil too much.
- The character design is a bit generic: while the art was very pretty and detailed, the main characters all have similar faces, making it difficult to differenciate them.
- There are almost no explanations about the magic system: while soft magic systems can be great to add mystery, when magic take such a big part in fights and in the world, explaining a couple of rules of the magic system would've been great.

However, it is important to note the positive points, which helped save the rating I give this series:
- The art is really beautiful, especially in the opening and ending.
- The soundtracks are nice.
- The voice actors do a decent job.
- The fights scenes are decently animated, although there is nothing special.

To sum up, how I graded this series:

- Story: 03/10 there was some effort for the plot in the first arc, but it was boringly presented and resolved.
- Art: 07/10 this was really the positive point of this series, many scenes were really beautifully made with virbrant and harmonious colors.
- Sound: 07/10 the songs were nice to listen to.
- Character: 03/10 unfortunately, there wasn't one character I was invested in.
- Enjoyment: 04/10 as I said, because of the slow paced story and the bland characters, the enjoyment was rather low.
- Overall: 05/10 despite the little positive points I mentionned, this is really an average story for me, with nothing horrendously bad, but nothing really good either.

It's a nice story, BUT...
It's been years since I read this series, but I still remember my curiosity when I discovered this story. The plot is rather original, with a demon girl, demanding to be given seven reasons to save the earth, or else she destroys the earth.
I always appreicate original tropes, and it had started well, unfortunately I wasn't very satisfied with the way the story was ended. I felt that there was a lot of wasted potential about elements presented from the world and the other elements of the story, but it was still rather enjoyable.
The art is really pretty, we can ... see that the author made a lot of effort, and the characters are rather likeable.
How I personally rated the elements of this manga:
- 05/10 for the story.
- 08/10 for the art.
- 06/10 for the characters.
- 06/10 for the enjoyment.
- 06/10 for the manga overall.

A regretable dissapointment, even with my low expectations.
I had heard from many fans the mixed critics of this show, so I tried to form my own opinion after watching a good number of episodes. To me, this "new generation" is a pale copy of the original franchise, despite its solid potential.
This is how I noted the elements of the anime, based on my very subjective opinion:
- 03/10 for the story: it had potential but was handled poorly.
- 06/10 for the art: it's fine, its pleasant enough to watch, but doesn't bring much new to the table.
- 06/10 for the sound.
- 03/10 for the characters: quite ... dissapointing for most.
-04/10 for enjoyment: most of the enjoyment comes from the nostalgia we have from the original series, so it isn't really great.
- 04/10 for the anime overall.

The main elements of the plot aren't bad, which is about the evolution and changes of the ninja world. Unfortunately, it isn't exploited so that the watcher is invested, mainly because of the unsufferable amount of filler present in the episodes.
I would say that the biggest dissapointment comes from the characters. Personally, I think that even an action-driven story can be saved from a bad plot if the characters are complelling, but it wasn't my impression watching this.
Most of the characters from the new generation are at best pale copies of their parents, thus making their actions often predictable. The son of Shikamaru for example, I don't even remember his name, is almost the replica of his father. The same goes for many side characters. Boruto is also very similar to his father, but is much more annoying. The only characters I personally liked were Sarada and Mitsuki, but for the moment they haven't gotten major character development moments.

Overall, it really feels like the series was made to bring more money to the producers, while not really caring about the plot and relying on the nostalgic feeling of the watchers.

While I personally don't seek comedy centered stories, the high rating of this anime made me watch it. I had a good time enjoying it, despite the story not really having a main plot, but that isn't a big deal since it is a comedy slice of life.
The characters are clearly the heart of this story, with each character having a unique personality and some growing slowly in maturity over the episodes. The main character Saiki is someone who seeks to live a quiet, normal life, but because of his condition and friends, he gets involved in a series of misadventures.
My main criticism would be ... that some of the secondary characters aren't well-developped enough, but that is easily forgotten, for the main character Saiki shines with his thoughts anc actions throughout the story. Also, the jokes didn't always work for me, but like anything humor related, that is very subjective.
I could recommend this series to anyone seeking to watch some comedic slice of life anime, but that's it.

Akatsuki no Yona presents the viewers a solid first season to untroduce the story. Despite its flaws, it makes a decent job at introducing its characters, the plot and the mysteries that are quickly presented.
The main character is Yona, a pampered princess and only child of the king. While she does fall into the cliche of the annoyingly sweet and naive girl at the beginning of the series, her character makes sense when we learn about her background and she goes through a long personnal growth. The secondary characters are also interesting and serve all a distinct purpose for the plot. Also, I am ... not really the biggest fan of romance, but the romantic aspects of the story don't take over the more important plot, and it is reasonnably handled.
The points that I liked about this anime:
- The characters were well realized enough for me to somewhat care.
- The elements of mystery regarding the dragons and the history of the kindgom is engaging.
- The main antagonist is also interesting.
- The soundtrack fits the story well.
- The art is neatly made.
The points that I personally disliked:
- The way some of the conflicts was resolved.
- Some comedic elements that I sometimes felt didn't match the tone of the scene.
- The exaggerated naïvete of the main character, even if that is justified in the story.
- The story seems to imply some sort of reverse harem, even though it is only mildly shown in comedic scenes, which were elements that I didn't think were relevant or interesting for the story.
Overwall:
I would recommend this series for anyone who enjoys medieval fantasy while not minding some elements of romance sewn into the story.