Back to uWuDesuWooWoo's Profile uWuDesuWooWoo's Profile

SPOILERS AHEAD

THE FIRST HOUR IS DOGSHIT, THE PHYSICS DON'T MAKE SENSE, THE PLOT ISN'T GOOD, BULLSHIT HAPPENS TO THE MAIN CHARACTERS BECAUSE OF COURSE IT DOES, IT'S LIKE IRON BLOODED ORPHANS ALL OVER AGAIN

HOWEVER IT GETS BETTER

I knew that the makers of this movie were messing with the audience when Athrun shows up in a literal loosened tie around 5600 with a look on his face that screams "I'm 1000% done with this shit".

BUT AS SOON AS KAGALI LITERALLY FACEDESKS AT 1:00:31 THAT'S THE TURNAROUND TIME BBY

There are ton of funny references (from multiple other Gundam shows and quite a few Star Wars homages) and ... whatnot that happen in the last 30 minutes of the movie. It's actually funny.

An extremely hardcore Gundam fan recommended it to me. He was right.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The second half of the show is surprisingly sad. I rarely cry, but I cried three times during those last 5 eps. For background, I cried once for Anohana, Watame's My Song, Porter Robinson & Madeon - Shelter MV, and once during the No Game No Life movie.

The first half of the show basically shouldn't have existed. It introduces the cast, then divides them into two idol groups, and connects them back to the dead idol in the first episode, Mana, who becomes the focal point of the entire show.

The show's main weaknesses are that there's WAY too much dialogue that shouldn't exist, 90% ... of the named characters have very little personality at all and fewer reasons to care, there was clearly not enough budget for more 3DCG dancing performances, and while they did make at least 5 original songs for the show, half of them are not to my liking (but I don't like slower songs in general). I say this because, like the name implies, this is an Idol show, it's gonna have singing and dancing and cute people (girls, in this case) in it. The costumes for the non main two groups are QUESTIONABLE at best, there's mismatching and clashing colors, weird asymmetrical outlines, different patterns and fabrics, etc. While I like slimmer, bodyshaped costumes best, this was clearly confusingly themed and I didn't like it.

That being said, "Last Chance" (Liz Noir version) on YT is great. I didn't know it came from the show, but Youtube did and I found that song in 2022, before I had heard of the anime, and I started watching this show in 2024 and learned it then.

The ending wraps up all of the loose ends that I could think of, but it's predictable from about episode 8 or earlier. It's not a bad sad ending. 7.5/10, not rounding up because watching this show's first 7 eps is a SLOG even at my 2x speed.

My scoring system is simple - 5/10 if it has a barely passable plot, minimum 12 FPS, and exists. +1 if it has cute girls doing cute things in it (+.5 in this case, not enough cute scenes, JUST LOTS OF UNNECESSARY AND UNFUNNY DIALOGUE). +1 if it has good songs repeatedly in the show (this rarely did, so +.5). +1 if something happens in the plot that surprises me (+.5, plot deviates slightly from the paint by numbers version of this show). +1 for good execution of the theme, and hoo boy it's meaningfully sad in the second half, so full points, hence the 7.5.

SPOILERS

Takes itself too seriously for what little action it is. The twists are barely twists. I guarantee you that the "twist" is that there is no cheating/automatic undoing of a witch's curse, you either have to blatantly overpower it, undo the exact steps used to cast it, or literally convince the witch to undue it of their own causing (this is the "kissing" cheat that gets mentioned). This a fan theory by me, but considering how this show likes to hint at answers with single lines of dialogue and then confirm the theory the next episode from the hinting/leading dialogue, this show is more Blues ... Clues than Sherlock Holmes.

The plot itself isn't complicated. There's maybe like 4 or 5 rules that you need to remember, and the characters are all one dimensional. Very little humor in the second half, and overall it takes itself wayyyyy too seriously with the 15+ minutes of redundant talking every episode. For a show that takes itself so seriously, it's ridiculously tropey to the point of self parody in some cases, we're talking Fate levels of a lack of self awareness. I suspect an abridged version of this would be hilarious with the in jokes.

The entire premise is that Guideau, the main blonde lady, is actually a berserker dude that got bodyswitched, but you don't find out until ep 10. The bodyswitch happened with the big bad for the series, Angela, who doesn't get named until like ep 9, and Guideau has Angela's current body, but it turns out that Angela gets to break the 200 year max lifetime limit for witches by bodyswitching.

Guideau spends most of his time trying to kiss witches that he meets after beating them senseless, and while there are some neat fight scenes, most of the fight scenes are ok to meh. Guideau's real body is in a coffin that he carries around while he's in Angela's blonde girl body, and the power levels for his original coffin body are NEVER EXPLAINED, although they keep talking about "his right hand is ridiculously strong" and it's implied that he could punch the world in half or something around ep 10.

There's a blatant bloodborne reference with the necromancer lady that just randomly shows up as an episodic antihero to beat the episodic villain. This feels like a light novel author wrote it before the age of 27, it's literally got chunni tropes, witch tropes from madoka, bodyswapping rules from Orochimaru/whatever that trope is, fantasy trope episodic villians, and random witches being blamed for random problems and then attempted to be killed castlevania style.

The last episode blatantly sets up the exposition for season 2, with some random hole that they pulled out of nowhere and said "hey this level has vampires on it, we're gonna be wearing the special color black for REASONS"!

Not recommended.

Wanted to give this a 6.5/10, can't, and I won't give it a 7 because it didn't surprise me or make me laugh in any meaningful way. I can't remember any jokes from the show.

SPOILERS AHEAD

A friend that knows I love actually funny and/or horny romcoms with tomboys told me to watch this series. I will not be reviewing S1 or S2 because I binged those two seasons in one day and I can't tell them apart because I finished this by May 2 2024.

I was going to give the series a 7 out of 10 because it's fairly paint by numbers with pretty animation, great faces and almost perfect voice acting until the adopted father shows up as an actual character. Then I bumped it up to an 8.

In my review system, if the story is alright ... with some screwups, decent animation, decent voice acting and decent everything, it gets a 6. If it's got tropes that I like (good comedy, good tomboys, strong+smart+capable female characters, etc.) it gets a 7. If it surprised me, it gets a +1. If that anime does something better than anything else I've seen so far in a category that I care about (characterization, scenes, memes, etc.) it gets a +1. If it has an appropriate ending that I like AND I already gave it a +1 already, it gets another +1. This is how Lycoris Recoil and Interspecies Reviewers ended up with 10s from me.

So it's at an 8 already going in. And then the movie gives you backstory with the mom. I cry about once or twice a year and watch 20+ anime series, 5+ western live action shows and 10+ western movies a year. This was definitely one of those times for crying. It's at an 8.5 for me now.

And then they give you the backstory with Yotsuba and that's like 15+ minutes. By the end of it, I was like "Fine, Yotsuba deserves it, but that wasn't clear at ALL from S1+S2". That storytelling was good and unexpected. It's at a 9.

I really liked the interaction with the actual father showing up and the quintuplets rightfully deciding to stick together and ignore this random dude that literally showed up, ditched their mom, and decided to come back into their lives and insisted on being an asshole about it. I've seen it before IRL, and that is how it can go if you have emotionally strong children that know what is moral and justified that do not need random men showing up in their lives (mainly due to their finances being taken care by their adoptive father, but still). That was RIDICULOUSLY realistic and I felt good about it, and it definitely surprised me, but not enough to give it a 9.5.

I will ALWAYS be a Miku fan as best girl in the show, and I will die on that hill. I can't give a 10 because Miku didn't win. The dialogue+situations, for whatever reason, remind me of the Love Hina manga, but I don't exactly know why and I don't feel like rereading Love Hina for the 3rd+ time to find out. I am extremely biased and I don't care.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This has light novel energy from episode 1, and then just continues to pull things out of its ass the entire time.

I dropped this show (and gave it a 4) because it went ridiculously out of its way to explain "Word Arts" for literally most of episode 3+4, and it turns out that just doesn't matter at all to the story - they say things, and those things happen. It reminded me of when Hunter x Hunter put in the numbers for power levels for like 2 episodes and then never mentioned it again. I then went back to it because a friend that ... I trust finished the show and he didn't recommend it, but he said it wasn't the worst show he's finished.

Overall this show is basically discount Fate, with very little of the characterization that actually makes Fate good for most people, and it shouldn't be suprising that I didn't like Fate Stay Night because of Kotomine, and this is very similar. I did like Fate Zero, and Ishura DEFINITELY isn't Fate Zero.

For example, at the last episode, the show throws in a bullshit flashback to 1 year prior to the events that happened in ep 11 and just says "Hey we're hoping for a tournament arc in season 2" and then the rest of the episode cleans up SOME but not all of the loose ends from ep 11.

The ending is completely dissatisfying because unlike Fate, there is no conclusive resolution to most of the characters+storylines and quite a few plot threads are dropped entirely:

World Art girl's home is never explained, you don't get an explanation if the story of the one lone hero defeating the true demon lord is true or any of that stories' characters, there is NEVER an explanation of the monarchy that controls Auretria(spelling) beyond "Hey here's some ministers+the princess(?)", the worlds that the random isekai'd heroes come from is never explained, nobody's powers except the Word Art are even attempted to be explained, the whole thing with the hot spider girl and her being killed once already+made into a weapon+her not being a minian (human-ish) race is never explained, the list of minian races is never explained, why the labyrnth exists is never explained, they never properly explain that Bandit guy solved the Labyrnth puzzle+stole the prize sword and then escaped the boss fight with the giant mech, the history of why the wyverns weren't exterminated isn't explained, where the magic items came from, was there history to the countries before or after the demon lord thing, why does the setting of the entire story revolve around basically two countries (one of which is a rebel country of the first), nobody cares about the summoned heroes as special AFAIK, etc.

Then there's the issues of the random flashbacks to cover up the holes in the writing that happen about once every 3-4 episodes, the bad writing, the annoying characters, lackluster CGI, and then random cool scenes that happen with the cold star laser.

5/10 would not recommend

SPOILERS AHEAD

It took me until ep4 to realize that this was a parody, and I was going to give a 4/10. Anyone that didn't get that far probably has a 50/50 chance of realizing it, and some reviewers, I'm guessing, aren't exactly the most empathetic or understanding or self effacing.

I then realized that the trope of naming characters and then killing them off was probably the #1 trope this show was beating you over the head.

I then made a spreadsheet with it with character names and timestamps, but because the mods here are overzealous with editorial control, they'll probably delete it. It's at least 91 ... named characters, with at least 50 named deaths and another 32 sets of unnamed character deaths.

It's not the best parody, it didn't have me laughing a lot of the time, its humor reminds me of Jashin Dropkick in terms of having a bit that it just keeps slamming you over and over again.

Don't watch this unless you REALLY like keeping track of deaths and are probably on the spectrum.

SPOILERS AHEAD

You gotta like tsundere-ish, small male protag characters with larger, mostly somewhat dumbass but cute tall girl. She doesn't get smarter until like episode 7/8, and then you're in for the good stuff that might as well be foreplay for degens like me.

My little switch heart. Ep 6ish with the closet scene. The video call with her in a sports bra and glasses. Around episode 7/8 with the chin holding "you should look at the real thing". There's a kabedon later from her. She's a switch, it's nice.

That's the good stuff. Was gonna give this a 7 until those scenes popped up.

Also nice ... to see that this was made after 2013, where the female love interest actually _likes_ true crime stuff.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Alright. I watched this in Jan 2024.

I saw the Gigguk Rail Wars abridged parody at the time (the one with the Keyori rap, 2014 I think?). I was convinced by that to not watch it.

I have, in the subsequent ten years, finally become the spectrum train enthusiast that I apparently was always meant to be. Yes I failed out of engineering and graduated with another technical degree, how could you tell?

My love for tomboys and spectrum women that know what they want and have the eerie ability to memorize facts about obscure engineering things has not changed.

Yes, this has fanservice and titty groping/accidental ... motorboating and there's an episode where the stereotypical housewife girlfriend route literally gets shoulder charged and her shirt rips off. No, it doesn't make much sense.

^ Congratulations, that's my short summary of this show. ^

I am not a train expert, but I know enough about regenerative braking, electroresistive braking, cog systems for getting up hills, mechanical linkage vs airbrakes, gas turbines vs pure diesels vs electrics, etc. and I didn't have any obvious problems with the episodes. The train physics _largely_ makes sense, although the tunnel+organ transplant episodes were massively exaggerated for entertainment, but their speed was artificially high anyway.

The harem trope is overdone IMO, and nobody gets laid or killed in this show, so you can tell it was made before 2015's era of Slime/Overlord/etc. where bad guys actually start dying. Yes, it's based on a light novel, no I don't read light novels, and the animation studio definitely took liberties with some of the physics, the girls, the situations, etc. but it's basically danmachi+highschool of the dead levels of fanservice.

I was going to give this a 7, until there's a fix for an AC unit by replacing the fan belt with a stocking temporarily and keeping a breaker closed with chopsticks. I've listened to 10+ years of Car Talk and I can tell you that those temporary fixes actually work.

Here's my grading rubric for this show:

6/10 for animation execution - besides some screwups with variable chest size, some faces not being right, Haruka's child hair going from brown to pink to brown to pink to brown in the cat tuna confined to their house episode, it's fine.

7/10 for tomboys, trains and physics/engineering knowledge being important to the plot, character and tone of the show

8/10 for replacing the AC fan belt with a stocking and actually giving a crap about trains

SPOILERS AHEAD

Probably skip this one unless you like to watch harem romcoms by the truckload.

Hoo boy. First four episodes are pretty standard modern day (2013-2023) harem stuff. The fanservice is boilerplate. Amagami SS had better fanservice for the swimsuit fetishists. Tsundere girl with Asuna hair is well, basically Asuna. Musclehead blue haired girl is VERY similar to Gold Ship from Uma Musume (the comic relief character). The other three have a bit more depth, and I liked them more. Short haired blonde musician girl kuudere is my waifu choice personally.

Anyways, the show itself.

Some of the character development+backstory scenes are memorable, and some are good, even. ...

I'm simple.

Cute girls + decent execution of a reasonable show gets a 6/10. 7/10 if there's something neat or there's good tomboy characters/women that know what they want. 8/10 if there's something actually well written.

There's like 4 or so good episode parts that I thought stood out - the walking around to the suppliers bit in the beginning, the rich girl backstory, the child actor backstory, the grandma backstory. Everything else was paint by numbers, would've given it a 6/10 without those scenes.

SPOILERS AHEAD

TL;DR read the manga instead, do NOT watch this

Reason why 1: the time skipping forward and backward is atrocious, maybe 33% of those scenes from the 10 year forward time skip don't exist in the manga, and the manga handles the future scenes+exposition better, as in, you can ACTUALLY understand what's happening

Reason why 2: this anime had serious problems with the 2D animation, especially when they switch to part 2 (aka eps 13-24), to the point of being comparable with Ex-arms for ep 14

My background with this anime:

Watched the first four episodes as it was airing. Wanted to get caught up. Read the manga ... to around chapter 43 or so, got to the part where Ariel gets partially mind eaten by Kumo, and then forgot about the show for like a year. Watched some more of the anime, got to episode 12 or 13, it got delayed for a few months, then read chap 58. Forgot about the show for two years, finally finished it Dec 28 2023.

Episode 14 was BAD. Positions of characters gets royally screwed up, camerawork is terribad. Truly was up there with Ex-arms for ep 14.

Rewatched episode 13 because of issues with the animation, a friend found a reddit discussion on what happened. Found the part about how their subcontractor for animation basically stopped production for some unexplained reason. Found the tweet from the former producer that was published Aug 1 2021. The information on AnimeNewsNetwork has links to what I'm talking about.

Episode 23+24 aren't much better.

Was going to give this a 5 because it's _animated_ and the story is decent, but the time skip jumping is horrible, and without reading the manga literally 2-3x, I would have been lost.

I LIKE shows like Slime, I like watching decent isekai, I watched the Mama Twin Swords Isekai show, Shield Hero is fine. This is horrible.