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"I'm a bird, Morty"
6/10
Alternative title: I max out Attack and Luck, and Truck-kun never got me, but VRMMO did. Am I actually the Strongest Lvl1 with solo-levelling OP cheat "debuff" skill in Another World?

Are the Visuals great? Yes.
Is it better than Sword Art Online? Yes.
Is Shangri-La just another generic non-tensei isekai without the visuals, and without SAO being the godforsaken benchmark? Also, Yes.

Takt Op Destiny, Lycoris Recoil of this season. Eyecandy hiding a boring AI generated story. One Piece levels of pace with barelarely 14mins of anime every episode, rest are recaps, omakes and mascot doll cringe. A short/ONA masquerading as a fullfledged TV anime
/EndReview.rtf
...
If you're new to anime, if this is your entry to this media after your friends recommended aN1mAyy, prefer visuals(=/=sakuga), or you have to participate in [Current Year] isekai fad to be accepted by anime society, then sure I recommend this over the rest.

In fact ShangriLa has some good pros:
1) No harem, No Ecchi(yet), No lolita, No Slavery or other morally ambiguous stuff
2) Visuals
3) Swapping to real life once in a while. Less escapism
4) MC is not some rejected by society, or crippled by overwork trope
5) Video Game Isekai and as such mensuration of xp, skills, equipment actually make sense vs Tensei Isekais

As for cons, the usual issues with generic medieval fantasy/isekais from japan. Just another OP MC with cheat level beginning aiming to be the top LoL player in some local ass server, but this time it's cringy Souls player in a WoW VRMMO, where he can endlessly respawn and succeed with enough grinding on meaningless fights. Zero Stakes. Usual MC in a tacky "I'm so special" half-naked+helmet outfit like no one has ever tried that in an online game. Copypasted mundane supporting characters with the usual archetypes and tropes. Supporting male character being a yesman and a nice_guy, while supporting female character being dumb about video game mechanics. No name AI beeg monstas as possible mid-season boss. The only thing partly new/rare is the FMC stalking her crush through the videogame depending on whether you consider Akane from Lvl[ArbitraryNumber] Yamada-kun and Suguha from SAO to be stalkers. It's Japan so karens stalking men is wish-fulfillment end of the day.

FMC is in one of those top guilds in video game because of course she is. She is totally not cuckoo to search for MC in the beginner pool of a massively played online game. In my 7k matches in a once popular game called DotA all match stats show I have met the same person twice only once. Now consider that for a currently popular game with majority players being beginners as the game is on a growth trajectory. This is the difference between random MMO inspired anime and .Hack franchise which was made by a game studio. That's not to say MC's path is entirely unrealistic. Top irl professional players like Grubby, s4, jerax have stomped other games purely due to skills carrying over from their signature games. But not failing even once to normal goblins is unrealistic. As for luck, I too played a Fire Emblem character Nephenee who's skill set enabled her to survive fatal blows with 1Hp and land a critical hit back which in turn she could lifesteal off of. Might as well could have added lifesteal too for MC and complete the OP trifecta.

There's barely ANY strategy shown. MC just stomps monsters while at 3Vitality and max Luck. The most unrealistic aspect for a game. Including the uNiQuE rare monster, he survives for more than a few seconds without knowing anything about it's skills and strategies it employs. Imagine stomp[ing an Elden Ring boss on the first try without knowing anything about it prior. Worse he gets the equivalent of magic resistance end of the arc, like that is TOTALLY NOT defense.

It's particularly funny when MC at ep3 screams at beeg "unique" AI monsta something like "I'll get you BigMonsta! I'll get you for sure next time!! I'll get back my treefiddy with treefiddy Interest!". Paraphrasing. Him saying that to a programmed monster should give you an idea how the rest of the season is going to be. I really have the urge to give a "Not Recommended" tag as I note all this but this is 2023 and it's about time for a new generation of zoomers to like a bland .hack clone like SAO was 10years ago and I know how rabid fans would get with sending deth threats and what not. So Mixed Feelings it is. Or rewatch and decide better. Imagine I wasted my lifespan watching a rando unlicensed game story and I can't even be bothered to remember MC's name. It reeks of the gazillion gachatrash available on app-stores.

The annoying cardcaptors keroberos type doll contributing nothing but plot armor doesn't help either. Worst of all is each episode is around 15mins of runtime and the gaps filled with after-credits moe gags. Production only puts in effort for 15mins, rest are all OP/ED, pointless gacha fillers and recaps.

Obligatory Disclaimer for potential blind people, this is a preliminary review and MAL allows for one post-watching three episodes so it's perfectly valid review. I can turn out to be entirely wrong later on like I was with my Eminence in Shadow review. So don't come to my profile after consuming laxatives for the brain unless there's anything useful to say. Just put confusing emoji and move on.

Remakes without any creative liberties apt for the times, no matter how small, are just cashgrabs reliant on nostalgia. One can see in the countless remakes in Hollywood without a soul. And Rurouni Kenshin remake showcases the same. This is an insult to the original not only for those who watched the original but also newer people getting in to this in 2023. Urusei Yatsura remake was so much better as a remake. UY remake wasn't as good as it's OG but the remake did it's own twists and unique production.

Rurouni Kenshin remake is not only a blind copy, it's actively worse for 2023. ... The artstyle is reminiscent of the inorganic/machinic shiny varnish feel in Death Note or Bíble Black which was common for anime softwares around 2005. It was good then, monumentally lazy today. To think this studio did Insomniacs previous season and regressed to Tokyo Revenger production this season.

The backgrounds are just static screens, the characters in the background don't move half the time. One can compare the Market scene first episode on the OG and the remake, the OG has very lively market scene going on in the background. There are similar problems everywhere with focus only given to the middle of the screen. This reinforces the fact that it used some generic anime software with no special touches added. I'm going to bet it will focus on animating only fight scenes well and continue being lazy on the rest; as opposed to the OG which excelled in both. I won't wait till Sanosuke appear and ruin my hopes further.

I'll get hate for this but I have mixed feelings on Kenshi's VA. It's not bad, in fact it is somewhat similar to OG but yet to feel there is any baritone scope on the vocal range. It is important because far far into the story there is an arc where Kenshin breaks and makes an iconic kamehameha like scream. I don't know how it can be remade here.

4/10- Would give 5-6 if all the things below are intentionally done like Eminence in Shadow
This anime offends me with its averageness like Saiki K loves staring at that most average guy in his school. Everything this show does, it does by the book, as if it aims to be the middest of mid consciously. Good to know the technology is there now to input some character archetypes, plot skeleton, color filter and a Computer will massvomit such generic content. Finally able to finish till ep3 on my fourth attempt. Before this, my brain made me wash dishes, clean my room walls instead, rather than ... watch this. So much unnecessary verbose while completely void when needed. The plot is bad, the production follows Tokyo revengers style adaption, doing no creative interpolation for the plot.

(Made things as abstract as possible to prevent spoiling. Find TLDR at the bottom)

Plot or the lack of it, Plotholes, Inconsistencies:
At 2minutes in, 6 random characters walking by the street on their way to school orientation become great friends just like that. Big Monsta at 4th minute, these not-even-first-year group up and tackle it while some 70 people watch and do nothing. Oh, they are already proficient in kinetic spells but later on why attends class on basic magic? All mob characters are static, the FMC is in a silent crowd in small ass room, talking to MC yet her facial expression looks like she is shouting. 2nd episode ends with a cliffhanger of a fight only to have nothingburgers in the 3rd episode.
There's a 20% fatality rate for the students, because too much magic is dangerous and imploding of character, but it appears that all danger so far originates from students maliciously attacking each other hunger games style, sounds like edgy survival fight plot, but why at school? We are told that fights without safety spells are strictly forbidden, but then they are attacked with killing intent by older students. Except that for some reason this aggressive behaviour is perfectly normal and they could have gotten in trouble for fighting back? Later a teacher uses illegal torture magic on a student, in front of other students and another teacher but there are no consequences. he even admits to ignoring the law and says he'll do it again.
Safety rules only apply to swordfights, but in another class a teacher was expecting the students to get injured and did nothing. Well, that fits the narrative with the fatality rate, but why such double standards? Characters with little importance or mobby choosing a 20% fatal murder school is ridiculous. There are two AnimalLifeMatters characters which while not wrong, why would they join a murder school lol?

That reminds me, there is no reward mentioned for surviving the school. Do they get a plum civil position, do they get infinite god powers, do they get pensions, or do they just get a piece of paper. Whats the reward, why people especially those can't even hurt a fly want to join this school?

This show can’t decide whether the school is hunger games no holes barred, or it has some law and order. Person gets hexed into a deadly situation, survives and reports to the authorities, then no action. So, there is a reporting process in school yet a hunger game situation is also present and punishments are little to nothing for hunting noob’s spines and dicks? Headmaster even talks about being independent and free and that life and death is in the individual’s hands, legitimizing violence. How does it even make sense?


Environment:
There is no worldbuilding and foreshadowing, nor any real setup, everything is so disconnected, isolated and contextualized. The plot is so random and all over the place. They are doing too many things at once. And all this in the midst of continuous barrage of useless convos either explaining dumb basic stuff, or just fillery talk and sequences like putting a blanket on a sleeping roomie. Instead of fillers there could have been some creative sequences connecting isolated contexts by detailing useful info.

Character:
With such a big cast they should have focused on 1-2 character per episode instead of all at once like Monogatari. The MC is especially boring but somehow I feel like MC+FMC going to spellblades just because they look the complementary pair and the others will also be paired up for no reason.
Can't even figure out whether it is a school college or university. On one hand people already know spells so they must be teens or adults but then FMC claims "she was in a war" just before. What war, woman? The war does not have a name?? You were there last week!! Teens and Adults would know of some war going on by name even if its overseas, c'mon. Such a dumb script.


Art: generic/10
Main Character: Kirito/10
Characters: forgettable mass isekai/fantasy shounen characters/10
Music: Japanese dubchestral you decide/10
Story: Negative/10

Conclusion:
Initial Impression was it is Shikimori isn't just a cutie level of blandness, now my impression is it’s on the level of SAO. Production did no creative interpolation and much like Tokyo Revengers, just feels copied frame by frame from manga. I know source is LN but that’s how the adaptation feels, 1:1 inappropriate copy. Combining how bad and generic each and everything was, I am vociferously offended, maybe not to the level of animes that exploit blindness, cardiac, pancreas issues in FMC or animes that exist to promote idols and figurines but this show is somewhere up there.

One of the best manga I read and I've been binging quite a lot recently. No pointless arcs, no mindless action, concludes the story with the right number of chapters. Helck is plot, plot is Helck. However, it is a solid 9/10 that I'm reducing to 8/10 because of the frustrating and regular chapter number retconning from the publisher themselves. Good luck finding a site or source that maintains all the chapters with all the pages. One has to keep 3/4 sites open and confirm they didn't skip chapters and pages.

It's somewhat dated manga and the initial parts may feel generic but the story is ... pretty straightforward unlike myopic or franchise milking repetitive storytelling from the likes of JJK, DS, CSM, Dandadan, One Piece, OPM spanning gazzillion chapters. The closest similar story that comes to mind is actually Attack on Titan and not the myriad generic medieval fantasy stuff. Just that unlike AoT it is not very serious, but not comedic either.

I'll add more as I finish rereading it.

I have an active dislike for shounen genre buuut JJK was something I begrudgingly admitted it was very good initially...that was until the end of Shibuya incident arc. It turned gigabad with the PubG hunger games type Tournament Arc that I can't recommend it anymore.

Without spoiling, the greatest issue by far is Gege's need to revive a character Archetype after the first instances of the archetypes get good opinions from crowd. The result is the "revivals" make new "characters" with 1:1 motivation and make for extrachromosomal plotholes. There's the Tojo type revived twice, Geto type revived once, NobaraxMegumin type revived once just to name the ... main few. It's expected when Gege claims he consulted a sTrInG theory physicist to rebrand the typical chi/mana/yokai fantasy mechanic to the convolutedcolorclusterfk of a system of cUrSes.

The motivations for the tournament arc was dubious. The antagonist sets whatever rules and the protagonist team decides to participate in it instead of focusing on reversing what happened on the Shibuya Arc. But the dumb rules are not all set by the antagonists though. The more one gets to know how "magic" works in the JJK world, the less it makes sense as to why fights have to be like old turn based Final Fantasy-esque. For example, someone "dies" but not really because the battle is not over and the equivalent of a "revive potion" can be applied by team member to resurrect him before the battle ends. Like what??

Somewhere in middle of Shibuya Arc itself, the author seems to have wanted to cash in on the endless carnage trope that titles like CSM, Dandadan etc do. The change is reminiscent of when Yu Yu Hakusho deviated from a proper story into doing tournament arcs because DBZ popularized it. I can't like this anymore because how videogamey it has become, similar to how isekais quantifies experience, whether cyber or fantasy.

The plot hasn't felt like it has moved in the last 3years. If one considers Shabooya arc's intention to enable development of supporting characters, that fix has only created more holes, more complications and more plot armor. It feels so much fillery-ish especially with new characters out of nowhere, going nowhere; that I hope JJK doesn't embrace DBZ, Naruto, Bleach and One Piece's footsteps to become a long running series. The fact how the story has often changed course abruptly tells me that the author never planned far ahead on how to close the story, which could only mean JJK will get stretched and milked down the line.

Pokemon/Zatchbell x Cabin in the Woods x Mieruko Chan x Chainsaw Man x Toshi Densetsu

Story-4/10 Really just a Disney plot but with ecchi for the teenagers. Extremely formulaic, zero progression, nth character joins the crew and has an anthropomorphic pokemon familiar etc.

Art- 3/10. Author only knows how to draw DETAILED cute girls often in panties sometimes getting groped, and maybe few edgy "s0ft sEiNeN" tokyo ghoul male faces. Not even the monsters are well drawn. All ghosts have looong teeth for forcing that disconcerting horror feel, most are tall like hachisakusama. The aliens are mostly horni. The environment visuals are simplistic. Like we get it ... you can draw a city,.

Writing- 5/10. The long term plot is terrible but on a micro-level, dialogues are good.

The only reason it's rated extra high is because CSM author promoted his assistant's work. Its CSM lite: no gore, heavy ecchi, and same endless....endless action. Arcs are beginning and ending in the fictional world within a matter of 1-2 days. Like go to school, bam! umpteenth monsta in school arc; returning home from school and bam! another new monsta arc.
All the monsters be it aliens, spirits and the rest are varied free for all everywhere and just...whatever; like the monsters in OPM and Cabin in the Woods. At least in OPM and Cabin it is relevant.

A good quarter of the chapters showcase fillery monster of the ((half) (school)) day. Whats annoying is the nested arcs. Oh, the crew has to wait for the next night to meet XYZ monster again? Why skip the next morning when you can experience a different monster arc in between.

At first the Earth doesn't know about aliens, spirits and the rest; but within 20 chapters, author ran out of ideas to keep them "hidden" in that world, and so went full CSM way in normalizing XYZ monster carnage as daily society life. But unlike how in CSM that was the premise from the beginning, here it is obvious its from a lack of creativity. Normal people sees wanton destructions or super/para-normal stuff and dumb enough to forget it next chapter or write off as some trick in the mind.

Half hearted attempts to make some monsters eerily scary. Mieruko-chan is so much better in this and yet rated low because it did not have a bigwig promoting it. The scare attempts are there but always fall flat. Myriad plotholes everywhere. X monster can't physically fight in Y environment, few chapters later he can without explanation. If you don't want one single crass dickjoke get reused for the 86th time, then watch "Ore no Kokan wa Bishoujo Datta no ka" instead

Read if you prefer cute girls getting sexually assaulted for shock value or lighthearted "fun", or prefer mindless shonen *cough*WWE wrastling*cough* action every week.

Pretty unnecessary season with 5 episodes being filler and anachronistic. 6th Episode is all that's relevant, but also kind of unneeded.
Felt like usual low effort Netflix work. More of an epilogue season like Pokemon Mezase. To be more specific, its essentially like six totally different OVAs broadcasted as a season.

Season 2 had a well done ending, keeping things vague. There was no reason to explore it further, that too for a basic 15mins reason as shown in episode 6. Rest all the the episode/shorts were predictable and formulaic, well too much to make it entertaining after the long experience.

Most of the recurring characters were barely ... existent, not more than 10mins. Worse yet another transfer student with a quirk was added amidst all things. It was not suited for an epilogue of a story with all major adventures over and done with prior.

I get this is adapting from the manga but like not everything needs to adapted. Kaguya sama skipped a bunch of chapters to keep the initial episodes engaging. Ultimately this one was a borefest. If you just want to pass the time and casually see an episode after work or school, you may not feel as antagonistic to this season as I am.

Taking from the synopsis:
" Jinpachi initiates the Blue Lock—a prison-like facility where three hundred talented strikers from high schools all over Japan are isolated and pitted against each other. The sole survivor of Blue Lock will earn the right to become the national team's striker, and those who are defeated shall be banned from joining the team forever. "

Blue Lock is legit entertaining and fun when it follows the premise, its' USP. Easy 9/10 for me. It wasn't a sports story so it was not up for comparison with other sports mangas.

But then the victors/survivors premise got concluded kinda and the matches since then is ... 11v11 soccer which is the usual stuff one sees in sports manga/anime. Except, without the battle royale survival aspect, Egoism in matches just ends up feeling assholy. Everyone feels like an asshole, griefing their own matches. It can be directly compared now to soccer content like aoashi, hungry heart etc and its just bad when football concepts are involved. 4/10

Overall I will rate it 6. Its the Kaguyasama of japanese sports content. It was very amazing to read at first, but was destined to become a bit less enjoyable once the quirkiness of the premise ran out.

(Edit: My beliefs did 180 at the end and actually liked it but won't change my prelim review. But I didn't like it as much to write a fresh review. Stop pinging me)
Maybe I am too boomer to understand what this show is supposed to accomplish in the post-Isekai Ojisan era.

Is it really a satire to isekai? No doubt it is not a run of the mill isekai but where is it poking fun at isekai though.

MC has delusions of grandeur, okay. He peddles a lie about a malicious illuminati to his harem, okay. But the illumaniti exists, okay.
Here have this girl who got assaulted ... once, getting assaulted again just for the viewers. Why have one, have two or three similar characters! Le epic satire guise.

Is it supposed to be a slice of life of the daily adventures of an isekai'd OP MC, with mid delusions, girls with serious messed up histories casually joining his harem just because. Am I not supposed to take all the excess sexual assault stuff seriously and consider it as light hearted humor device? If I had to watch for misunderstandings and sUbTlE humor, Isekai Ojisan is how one would tackle it, not adding serious assault stories into the mix.

I don't write reviews without descriptive critiques but I literally have no place to start for this show. So have this showerthought of a review instead. Maybe I am wrong, but its 5 episodes already and I have no idea what this show is about.
Or perhaps it is exactly what it is about, experiencing nothing when normal isekais would have some climactic revelation. Maybe that is the parody.

Visuals, Sound are nice like 6.5/10 mid. Everything else I don't have 9000iq to comprehend whether the show is being big-brained or the reverse. NA/10

Spoiler-free but some can vaguely figure out by reading between the lines.

I binge-read the manga after seeing one of my absolute favorite animes getting a season2 after 10years and the complaints around the ending in LN. This is obviously not the review for the anime or the LN. I wanted to give a chance to the manga as I do not regard an ending around otps can warrant such reaction to the story and the comedy quality itself.

Story- 3/10
Art-8/10
Character-10/10
Enjoyment- 8/10
Overall -5/10

Now, the manga is still ongoing compared to the LN, so my bad rating on the story has n o t h i n ... g to do with the ending. Even though I got spoiled of the ending it is not the reason the story is bad for me.

Personally, it is two certain chapters serving as the backstory which decimates the entire story, premise, and background and I regret reading it. When you read a fantasy story, you kind of take the magic as the fundamental law and explain things from there. Hataraku Maou-sama destroys the magic component and then proceeds to not explain all the magical things that got used.

The art still holds, the characters are still extremely funny and emotional at the correct situations. I would have rated enjoyment as 10 if not for the two chapters ruining the fun I was having.

Overall I still believe the manga has legit quality compared to many others but it loses out couple of points due to the negative impact of two chapters on the overall experience. You can read it but you have been warned. Sometimes its just better to stick to the impression the season 1 anime gave.