Back to theGodde's Profile theGodde's Profile

very average movie.
The visuals were nice. I found the music obnoxious and generic but I'm sure other people will love it.
The story is lacking in cohesiveness, it's almost like 4/5 separate episodes combined into a story and so there's this feeling of "stopping and starting" every 20-30 minutes or so. The actual contents of the story itself are just a tired cliche. The little mermaid be re-enacted with still charisma vacuum characters and a literal bubble organism is not exactly my idea of a compelling drama
Speaking of the characters, what was there here to latch on to? The cast was nothing more than a ... vehicle for the plot, which was pretty empty as I mentioned before. There's nothing more to this movie to latch on to.

And that especially includes the world. The setting was cool conceptually, but they failed to ground it with a meaningful culture or realism. If this is a society of researchers, why are the only researches we see two adults that hang out with the blue blazes? There are things you need to explore with a post apocalyptic world. How does the economy work? What does society look like? Is there some kind of class system? Is there some form of law and order? What are the logistics of living in this society? These might seem like pointless criticisms to most people, but even if you're handling a fantastical premise, you need to ground it with something tangible and real that people can understand. Where are the criminals? the smugglers? the drug addicts? the lower class who can't afford to live anywhere else? A fantastical bubble tokyo needs more than just parkour orphans and the occasional researcher to feel tangible and real

in conclusion, if you're gonna watch a generic "feel good anime movie", I'd honestly recommend half the Makoto Shinkai catalogue before I'd recommend you ever touch this movie

Osamake is a travesty beyond the limitations of human speech. Words cannot express how god-awful this burning pile of putrid rotting pig-shit lying in a swamp full of blue-green algae, gamergirl bathwater, and every infectious disease known to mankind truly is.
Now allow my to explain why.

Osamake should have had a very simple premise -> a harem of girls compete to win the heart of the protagonist who are all his childhood friends (because that trope isn't dead or anything). However it somehow wasn't satisfied with the most overdone premise in the universe, because they decided to also make the show about acting (and proceed to ... grace us with some of the worst musical numbers ever produced in the history of mankind) AND for good measure decided that every single being in the show of the female sex should fall in love with our brick of a protagonist. And that's not even mentioning the toxic behaviour of the love interests - which the show goes out of its way to justify and avoid criticising.

The animation quality is awful. But not in a way where you could screenshot a random scene and meme about it to your friends. Characters are usually on model, usually to scale. However the fluidity of the animation is nonexistent. The composition and tone is all over the place, and worst of all the characters and poses just lack any sense of authenticity.
The music is just stock obnoxious slice of life tracks. The sound is generic as well. Nothing to say there, hate all the cover songs, hate the soundtrack, hate the OP and ED.

Now if for some bizarre twisted reason you thought you could hate-watch this or watch it in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. Don't. The show is just boring. The pacing is incredibly slow. Every episode feels like you wasted an hour watching it despite there being even less content per episode than your average weekly battle shonen. Don't watch this. Don't think about watching this.

Now I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. I love World Trigger. I really do. But it's kind of shit.

World Trigger has by far one of the best shonen power systems I've ever seen. It's in-depth and well thought out, allowing for levels of tactical warfare I didn't think was capable in a mere shonen series. However pretty much everything else is lacking as a result of this heavy focus.

The plot is fine...It's really nothing special. The main crew want to go to space and fight the big evil dudes that kidnapped their friends and shit, but they have to get on ... the team that's doing the mission. And so they have to win a series of fights and get enough points to be eligible for the mission. The biggest issue here is the pacing...once again. Since if you're bothering to read this review you probably know about it from the previous seasons, but the pacing in this show is just so...so bad. We get several episodes of hype for each fight, but there's not enough subplots in this stretch to pad it out, and many of the ones that do get focus don't really contribute enough to be distracting us from the main story.
There's actually a lot of smaller subplots here that are mostly character based. Osamu especially gets a lot of focus as he questions his competence as a leader...again. Chika's arc is the most interesting because it's a drastic shift from her previous character progression that recontextualises her character in an interesting way. Hyuse is also a good addition to the cast dynamic, as his battle hardened experience and stoicism bounce off well against Yuuma's more playful childishness and Osamu's insecurity. But most importantly, it is his willingness to push Chika that really produces some of the most interesting drama the show's had for a while.

But this is where the show kind of fails. Aside from what we've got from Chika, there's a severe lack of depth for these characters. Hyuse is an alien who is from an entirely different culture, but because of his stoicism and the way the show handles it, his perception of life here on earth is never really explored, and we don't understand his goals and motivations aside from what is literally told to us by Hyuse himself.
Osamu wants to help Chika and do the right thing. He is extremely insecure because he feels like he holds his team back due to his own incompetence and low power level. However this is once again where is characterisation ends. We don't really understand what drives his sense of righteousness - it's never explored. But the greatest problem with his character is that he is currently going over the same arc over and over again. New challenger approaches - Osamu feels insecure, he doubts himself and works on a strategy. The strategy works and he is validated (or if we're feeling daring it doesn't work and his arc is prolonged further). Then rinse and repeat. I get that it's part of his character that he is insecure, but it doesn't feel very organic to see him trapped in this character progression loop that makes us feel like he is going in circles.
Now Yuuma wasn't always an empty character. When first introduced he was quickly found to be goofy but wise and battle-hardened. A somewhat distant character, Yuuma seemed to be holding out some secret - which turned out to be the fact that he is dying. However since it was brought up, Osamu mentioned how he will try to fix the problem, and it has never been brought up again in any meaningful way. As a result Yuuma has had no development on his character at all. He is the most static of all the team and there really wasn't much the show could do to develop his character - which means that he simply needed to be placed in new situations so we could learn more of his character. When a character can't be progressed, they can still have development placed on who they are now, and flesh out some of their morals and values a bit more. Yuuma as he is now is just an empty box that was once an interesting character.

Now this is a combination of poor characterisation and poor character design, but the various teams that Tamakoma-2 end up facing in the rank wars often feel completely forgettable. They are mostly either tall adult-looking characters or short-ish teenagers. However they all have a uniformity to them that makes these characters very difficult to distinguish without multiple repeat viewings.
What makes any of them even somewhat memorable are what I call the "boss" leaders of some of the teams. Particular team leaders who interact with our characters and who are actively participating in the story outside of the battles or just being goofy. They often have (relatively) unique designs and at least one character gimmick but even then they are almost always lacking.

Overall the animation is continuing in season 2's footsteps (it wouldn't surprise me if they were supposed to be one two cour season before the [i]varus[/i]) and has some incredible moments in the actions scenes, and remains passable during the more static moments (ie: the vast majority of the show). I've always liked the score for world trigger but after hearing the same tracks for the thousandth time I would really like to hear some more variation. Maybe work on a new theme for Tamakoma-2 since Hyuse has joined them. Although music is rarely given the focus it deserves by generic anime (especially Toei anime).

Overall, this season delivered on some incredible big brain fights and gave us a new direction for Chika. However it also has some very stale characterisation on pretty much everyone else to some degree. The extended cast is bloated and struggles to be memorable due to their poor characterisation and generic world trigger design. And the pacing and plot is barely passable and is in need of a major overhaul.

As much as I like World Trigger, I think a lot of these issues will turn people off, and I'm haunted by the fact that this has to potential to be a masterpiece if more effort was put into the characters and pacing.

This special is par for the course when it comes to the Mahouka franchise - bad

However it fulfils an interesting role in that it is the missing link to understanding who Tatsuya is, how he came to be, and his relationship with Miyuki. I'll get more into that later (spoilers I guess), but now for my surface level problems.

As usual the show has an over-narration problem. Miyuki narrates throughout the whole anime and it's used as a means of dropping meaningless exposition and lore dumps and telling us things that really should have been conveyed from the direction and animation instead. The entire Mahouka anime ... franchise is what I'd call a well animated visual novel with action scenes.

Now from a construction standpoint I have two more gripes. First is the framing of the story. Having present day Miyuki and Tatsuya flying to the island and reminiscing about the past is a terrible way to frame an origin story because it provides a context that disconnects us from what is happening. It would have been better to begin in the past and immerse us in the story, and then timeskip at the end to present day to remind us of how these characters have grown and where they're going.
The second gripe is the plot itself. It doesn't really exist. There is no act structure of any kind. Tatsuya is introduced. Various events happen that affect Miyuki in various ways, Tatsuya gets to flex, there's a big battle, and Miyuki's arc is brought up to the status quo that will kick start the rest of the series. It's a terrible, uninspired way to tell a story and as a result the special has no real momentum or driving energy to it. And no you can't call this a "slice of life" side story since there is already plenty of action and plot progression (albiet incredibly botched). It's just a very bad regular story

As for the fact that this is supposedly an origin story, there are problems with this as a concept, and most of them are not necessarily adaptational issues but general issues with the story itself.

First of all, if you have an origin story, what is the best way to deliver it? Typically speaking you would want to start from the beginning, establish who your characters were, and explain how your characters became who they are now. However the special begins after Tatsuya has already become an OP God. It only covers Tatsuya and Miyuki becoming acquainted and forming the incestuous sibling duo so many fans know and (supposedly) love. So why then do I call it an origin story if it's not really an origin story at all? That's because it drops all of Tatsuya's origins in an information dump in the last 10 minutes. This was a terrible idea for several reasons. First of all, we didn't get to see Tatsuya before he underwent surgery and became an emotionless OP god, so we don't really understand what Tatsuya lost in order to become who he is. We've only ever known the god Tatsuya and not the person who he was before, so we aren't given any reason to care about his origin apart from the fact that it sounds cool.
The implication of this is that it makes it less meaningful when Miyuki learns of his origins because we can only empathise with his suffering on a surface level.

Another issue here is with the way his mother views Tatsuya. Because he can't do "proper magic" Tatsuya is considered lesser and therefore not worthy to be anything other than a bodyguard for Miyuki. However as we see in this special, and even more so in the rest of the show, he is practically speaking a better asset to the Yotsuba clan than Miyuki has been, and far, far more useful than pretty much every other character we've met thus far in the anime. So while I can understand why on a political standpoint he doesn't have the qualifications to be the next leader, I fail to understand what meaningful reason his own mother would have to look down on him as a failure. While the reasoning may legitimately exist in the source material it's very poorly communicated considering this is the foundation for the entire story going forwards.

overall, this is a poorly directed, poorly written, poorly characterised, but well animated mahouka special. Ie: a generic Mahouka special

The biggest hot topic with Edens Zero is just how similar it is to Mashima's previous works, and since that's been done to death I won't bother to beat the dead horse. Suffice to say I also reckon it's a ripoff.

But what pisses me off more than anything else is the world. This world is not science fiction. It's fantasy in space. And that is just so bland, lazy, and uninspired considering all the fantasy drivel being pumped with isekai and its ilk. Ether is quite honestly the most disgusting BS power system that I've ever seen in a sci-fi world. Magic is not illegal ... in sci-fi, but basing your entire power system on it without quantifying what it does makes things completely confusing. Ether just does whatever the plot wants it to do. There's no consistency and as a result the world building suffers. This show has no love for science or science fiction. It's always minimised to the greatest extent to make way for more fantasy-style generic bs.

And let's talk about the plot. It's so full of convenience and contrivance that seeing a character push the plot forwards is a rare occasion. Anything can happen to anyone, but no matter what there will always be a happy ending and the entire main cast will make it out unaffected even if the plot has set it up an inescapable situation. People die and then come back to life whenever convenient. The morality of this show is confused and childish. Some of the logic that these characters espouse (especially Shiki) is so nonsensical that a 5 year old could probably write more logical dialogue. Whenever you see an emotional climax, you just know the show is going to shove more twisted moral BS on you.

If you want to watch this show, just rewatch fairy tail, instead. If you want to have standards, don't ever watch either of those shows. It's up to you

Star Wars: Visions is yet another medium in which star wars is expanding into and experimenting with. I think that based off some of these shorts, I could definitely see a full-length star wars anime working.

That said the shorts themselves had some problems overall. The vast majority were not satisfying short stories, they were more like pilot episodes for extended series. And this may make some fans enjoy them more because they can imagine how entertaining that particular story would be as an extended series, but as self-contained, satisfying stories in their own right some of these shorts fail miserably.

But I don't get why ... so many are judging these shorts together. Each one is completely different and deserves its own mini-review. And I'm going to do just that.

1: The Duel 8/10
oozes style. Black + white cell shaded CG that looks so good you can barely tell it's 3d. Story is classic kurosawa but set in the star wars world. A good short story with a coherent and satisfying ending.

2: Tatooine Rapsody 5/10
probably the weakest short in the entire anthology, it just blows my mind that someone made a star wars idol rock anime. The sheer audacity alone deserves respect.

3: The Twins 7/10
Trigger do be trigger. This show isn't very star wars, but it's very ball to the walls trigger madness. If you wanted to see Star Wars Promare, then this is exactly what you would imagine it to be. It's more of a pilot episode than a short though.

4: The Village Bride 9/10
This short is respectful of the star wars lore and even builds on it in new and interesting ways while being an actual short story with a proper resolution.

5: The Ninth Jedi 9/10
Another very Star Wars short (although it has a lot more anime tropes than 4), this short also does some interesting things with the star wars lore that some more hardcore fans might not appreciate. Overall the story is pretty contained and satisfying, however it does seem to set up an extended series with its open-ended conclusion, which in some ways feels a bit arrogant considering this is a short.

6: T0-B1 6/10
Astro Boy in the star wars universe. A very childish and goofy short that felt somewhat lightweight and unimpressive. However it does feel pretty conclusive and contained, and so functions as a proper short story.

7: The Elder 10/10
My personal favourite episode. It felt like a short story ripped straight out of the star wars prequels (in a good way). It's concise, satisfying, and conclusive. This is what I was expecting from a Star Wars short anime.

8: Lop and Ocho 7/10
A story about family told within the star wars universe. And yes. There's a bunny girl. Overall it's not a bad story, but it didn't really feel very tight or conclusive. A lot of forced drama occurs and character motivations are all over the place. I feel like this could have easily been one of the better episodes if it had focused more on the two surrogate sisters, Lop and Ocho, and their moral dilemma rather than focusing solely on Lop's struggle.

9: Akakiri 9/10
This short is very kurosawa esq, but also explores the dark side in an interesting and relatable way. This short is concise, satisfying, and conclusive in the best way possible. This is probably the most conclusive short story of them all, actually telling a complete and whole narrative in its 14 minute episode duration.

Overall, I'm glad this anthology series exists, even if it doesn't end up leading anywhere.

I'll make this quick since I tend to ramble

this is probably the most average season of MHA so far. But it also contains my favourite episode of MHA so war.
The first arc is very, very average. What should have been 3/4 episodes was dragged out to over double that. The work study arc that succeeded it was also rife with filler and padding.
But after all that meh. All that averageness. All that boredom. We got to the good stuff. The light at the end of the tunnel. And boy was there some truly crackin' good shit at the end of that tunnel. I ... ain't gonna spoil anything, but that final arc is well worth the watch. Speed through the previous arcs on 2x speed if you have to.

Overall this season is a mixed bag. Not nearly as bad as all the overhyped manbaby MAL users are making it out to be, but you get the point.
But hell, the show's finished. Why listen to me? Why not jump right in and see for yourself? Then you have my permission to go and whine on my profile.

Before writing this I read through a few other reviews, and it seems to me that no one can really explain just how bad this show is. So I'll give it a shot.

The "plot" (if one could call it that) surrounds the adventures of a detective and her sidekick. Except the detective doesn't do much detective work, being closer to an inconsistently godlike action hero, and the sidekick mostly just exists to be a punching bag (either emotional or sometimes even physical). Now if the show was honest about that it could be in some way entertaining, however it constantly manages to work in detective ... mysteries that then get solved in the most ridiculous and nonsensical ways. It spends far too much of its time trying to be a detective show and failing miserably for you to ever enjoy the action shounen mystery.
But even then that aspect has massive problems as well. For starters, this world contains supernatural powers. But these supernatural powers are never clearly established. We are never explained the power scaling system, the futuristic technology, or any significant amount of world building. The main goal is pretty simple - they need to stop the evil organisation SPES. But what from? Nobody knows. Not even SPES knows, they have orders from a mysterious bible/prophecy thing that tells them what to do. And as a result it's hard to ever feel any sense of urgency or even concern for our protagonists' plight.
To make matters worse, the meaning of the title "the detective is already dead" is revealed in the first episode, where we find out that the detective died offscreen at the end of the first episode and everyone just went back to their own business. Not only does this destroy the pacing of the rest of the story - since they wasted the first episode establishing a character who is already dead - but she doesn't even stay dead. And that is to say that we return to the past before she dies. If they were going to show us the adventures of the detective and her sidekick, then why did they kill her off at the very start? Now we know undoubtedly the fates of the main characters - the sidekick will survive and the detective will die - but only at the very climax of the story. So there goes all the suspense and tension.
There are a lot more problems with the story, but I don't want to give any more spoilers than I already have, so suffice to say that most of the pacing is also really slow and all the individual resolutions of each arc feel hollow and bland.

Now the characters. The main character here is Kimihiko, the sidekick of the legendary detective - who only goes by the name of Siesta. The two develop this back and forth banter throughout the series that was incredibly poorly handled. The dialogue felt stiff and awkward, but more than anything it was just too surface level. These characters never really go beyond this safe, boring banter. Every time they get into some deep or challenging conversation where their true feelings are confronted, they back out and return to the dumb banter. Good character dynamics are not forged from the banter, but from the absence of banter. What made Spike and Jet's relationship in Cowboy Bebop feel so close is that they were so in sync with one another. Their dialogue felt streamlined and efficient. But here the banter is incredibly hard to listen to. They say things like "do you remember that time we did XYZ" "yeah there was this ABC and it was really wild I can't believe we did that". Normal people don't spell out every tiny detail during conversation, and that's mainly what made this feel so unnatural.
But the characters themselves are also a problem here. Kimihiko starts off the show as a cynical bad luck charm. His inhuman ability to get caught up in the worst possible situations is a good point of humour and makes him likeable. However this never really makes a return in the series. The cynical charm of Kimihiko is eroded as the series goes on and we get more of that awful banter. Siesta is also a terrible character, probably the worst character in the entire show. She is this "genius detective" who solves cases with the most nonsensical BS imagineable, but then is also able to predict future events in the series without any real explanation being given, while also being unable to predict certain events when the plot needs them to happen. To top this off she is mysterious and distant, with many not so subtle hints throughout the show that she might be a more caring person than she appears; climaxing in a "heartfelt" farewell. The problem here is that instead of feeling distant or professional, she just feels inconsistent. All that banter strips away any sense of professionalism or distance, and as a result it just feels like her relationship with Kimihiko is a never ending cycle of witticisms where neither party really changes or grows throughout the story.
The side characters are pretty bland. There are almost no men here, just a constant never-ending stream of generic waifu material to distract you from the awful plot.

And that brings me to the "plot". The animation here is terrible. Incredibly average. Do not be distracted by the stellar first episode, every single one after massively overuses still frames and all but ditches the 3d tracking shots. The episode direction is also terrible. Shot composition is either your average "shot reverse shot" for dialogue scenes or during action it's a series of janky panning shots that don't fit well together. Everything beyond that first episode feels rushed and cheap.
As for the character designs, the women have plenty of "plot" (aside from the lolis, of which there are at least two) and their designs are somewhat creative. Overall the colour palette is generic digital colour shading with almost no interesting deviations or creative lighting choices. If that went over your head basically the show is cheap and bland.

The sound is pitiful. The only memorable music from the show itself is the comically bad action music, which sounds like it comes from Mortal Combat lmao. The opening and ending are fine I guess. Neither were particularly memorable to me so I have little to say on them.

Overall I was not enjoying this show. Do not watch for any reason other than morbid fascination. It's actually quite interesting to consider just how this show manages to fail so badly, so if you're a student of animation or film, I would recommend checking this show out to obtain an extensive list of what not to do when making an animated series. For everyone else, stay away from this steaming dilapidated festering abomination of a dung heap.

Before I begin, I'll mention the obligatory episode airdate fiasco. Yeah don't watch this in the order it's been streamed, some director decided to go full "avant garde" and mix up the airdate of the episodes. I think absolutely everyone who watched it in this incorrect airdate agreed it made the story worse. It is 100% necessary to watch this in the correct episode order in order to actually enjoy this show.

So this will be made in an attempt to review the series as if this incident had not occurred. Keep in mind I have not seen the series in this order, so there will ... be a bit of negative bias to this review as a result of the poor airdate that you as the reader may want to keep in mind.

NOW TO BEGIN
Peach Boy Riverside follows the separate adventures of Sally and Mikoto as they both wander the kingdom fighting Ogres, their paths sometimes intersecting. Ogres are strange beasts that come in many forms with only one similarity they all kill humans.
This show has a strong thematic message through the two leads - Sally represents the desire to coexist with the Ogres, while Mikoto represents the human hatred against the Ogres. Sally gathers companions to herself while Mikoto isolates himself from others.
The problem here is that the thematic elements are incredibly ham-fisted and lack the subtlety and nuance of real life systemic issues. Characters spend long conversations talking about the divide between Ogres and Humans, but never seem to be able to say anything profound. Anything of value. Anything that someone with a pair of eyes and a working brain couldn't have figured out for themselves. And that's the problem here. The show is too immature to tackle such a complex issue, but since it does so anyway, it weighs down the experience from what would otherwise have been a violent and cool action fantasy show.

And this immaturity permeates through every aspect of the show. The characters are incredibly bland. I would go so far to say that none of them really have any complex characteristics and personalities. Sally's 'party' is composed of a series of bland caricatures. You've got the pure-hearted knight Hawthorn, the mute humanoid bunny Frau, and Carrot the obnoxious goth girl with divided allegiance. None of these characters feel realistic or tangible, but if you're a lover of anime tropes, then this'll be your bread and butter.

The animation is very average. Just like with most other action-heavy shows with a low budget, there's a lot of standing around during fight scenes and awkward posing to attempt to cut costs. Don't watch this show for the animation, it's not worth it. The character designs are fine I guess. I am honestly concerned with the amount of bust all the female characters have to carry around in this show. It's one of those 'anime logic' moments where all the warrior women have gargantuan breasts despite that being completely impractical. There's also a lot of violence. When people are stabbed/sliced or hurt in any way blood goes flying in ridiculous fashion. That said despite the seinen origins of the manga, there's absolutely nothing mature about how the show handles this violence. There's no real abuse or torture. The show doesn't do anything particularly dark. It's the kind of violence that would please only an edgy 13 year old or a haemophiliac.

The music is pretty much composed of stock isekai fantasy music and a bit of electric guitar. I found the opening and endings pretty average. In all there's nothing particularly unique about the sound of this show.

TL;DR Peach Boy Riverside can be considered an edgy shounen or an immature seinen. Either way it's not particularly unique or interesting. Racism in anime has been handled better before, and the characters aren't interesting enough to compensate for this lack. I wouldn't really recommend this show to anyone. I guess edgy 13-14 year olds will get a kick out of the ultraviolence and busty women, but if you're looking for literally anything more look elsewhere.

Heaven and Earth takes everything that worked from the original series and builds on it. There is a stronger thematic structure and a more focused plot.
The story picks up two years after the end of the main series and while it doesn't take full advantage of this change to grow the characters, it still feels like they have settled into a new status quo. That said Heaven and Earth doesn't bother to properly reintroduce the returning characters. If you haven't seen the original series then this show won't make any sense. It doesn't bother re-explaining anything, from Fafners to Festums to Mirs. It's all ... assuming you're already familiar with these concepts.

The animation was a massive step up from the original series. The fights are incredibly dynamic and fluid. The overall quality massively improves upon everything. This movie still holds up today. None of the CG feels dated (if you were even able to spot it). That said it still has the same issue from the main series where all the character designs look very similar. That combined with the introduction of a few new characters and further focus on some lesser side characters from the original series meant there were a lot of new (but similar) faces to differentiate from.

The characters were good, but nothing incredible. However the standout here was Kurusu, the new addition. His personal struggle is the heart of the movie, and it's well tied in to the themes and concepts the film focused on. A lot of the side characters had multiple separate arcs that arguably shouldn't have worked, but they were all tied together through the main theme of the cost of war, and it helped to paint the picture of war being a grand but ultimately futile struggle with a terrible toll - something that may not have had the same impact if it had focused on only a few main characters.

Overall I'd say this is a must watch if you have seen the original series. If you haven't then this is hard to recommend. It comes with the price tag of having to watch through over a dozen episodes of mediocre garbage in the original series to get to this. However if the rest of the franchise continues to be this consistent it might just be worth it.