Back to verbinflection's Profile verbinflection's Profile

It is impossible to appreciate a work of art without knowing what the artist was trying to accomplish, which in the case of a work of fiction is broadly described by its genre. Romantic comedy does not serve the purposes of science fiction, for instance, and to watch 'My Dress-Up Darling' expecting it to explore the consequences of scientific advancement would be like buying a toothbrush and expecting it to peel oranges.

Notice how easy it is, in that example, to identify the genre: it's clear in the first ten minutes of the show — which is normal. It's not science fiction, so it doesn't put ... Marin on the moon; it's not a mystery, so it doesn't put her at the scene of a crime.

I bring this up because 'Oshi no Ko' has made it singularly difficult to understand what the artist was trying to accomplish. It is a toothbrush shaped exactly like an orange peeler, sold in the produce aisle, and marketed as having citrus-piercing bristles. No one ever actually told you to peel oranges with it, but you could be forgiven for trying.

'Oshi no Ko' spent the first eighty minutes setting up a murder mystery, although it isn't one; or if it is still trying to be one now, it isn't trying very hard. 'Chinatown' is a murder mystery; 'Oshi no Ko' is a soap opera. It may be filed under melodrama. Its purpose is to contrive scenarios in which sexy teenagers can slap, kiss, and yell at one another. The closest recent match is probably 'True Beauty', which is slightly more grounded and delivers about as much social commentary. You can also watch 'Melrose Place'.

With that understanding, 'Oshi no Ko' is fairly enjoyable. It does a decent job of contriving scenarios in which beautiful young celebrities living in the world's safest country can slap, kiss, and yell at one another. I can't imagine taking any of it seriously, but it's difficult to beat for sentimentality and sensationalism. Coming up next on 'Melrose Place', a beautiful young actress throws herself off a bridge during a typhoon after she was harassed by online bullies for assaulting her co-star, but her life is saved by a handsome doctor with a troubled past who was reincarnated after being murdered before he could deliver the secret twin babies of a teenage pop idol he obsessed over while treating a young girl for cancer — and you'll never guess what happens next.

The teen suicide arc in season one is when 'Oshi no Ko' really takes off, precisely because it has become impossible to take seriously. Right up until the moment when discount Light Yagami defeats online bullying through the power of friendship, and yandere Nancy Drew rewards him with a sexy cosplay of his mother, it was barely possible to believe that 'Oshi no Ko' is a story about a man investigating a murder, and not about long-lost twins in love triangles with coma patients, but no longer.

For comparison, if 'Oshi no Ko' were a murder mystery about uncovering the dark side of the entertainment industry, then Aqua's plan to help Akane, by making a director feel guilty about her jumping off a bridge, would not have worked until Aqua revealed the photos he took of the director with an underage girl — or boy — or Ruby, for that matter. It's not difficult to spot the difference: 'Melrose Place' is not 'Chinatown'.

To be clear, I enjoyed the arc. It's not particularly outrageous stuff — Aqua could have slept with Akane, for instance, on set, still in her cosplay, while Kana was doing coke in the bathroom with Mem-Cho — 'Degrassi High' would have done it — anyway, it did enough. Yandere Nancy Drew is delightfully nutty. Most of all, I appreciate the clarity, because continued misidentification of the genre invites continued disappointment.

Unfortunately, shortly after the series takes off, it crashes into a mountain called Tokyo Blade. Okay, that was unfair: I'll say it lost an engine. 'Oshi no Ko' is not a great soap opera, and a murder mystery that mostly goes nowhere and three hours of Tokyo Blade are examples of a general problem: it tries to do too many things; it's cluttered.

For comparison, there is another franchise where the main character gets involved in the entertainment industry to solve a supernatural murder mystery and avenge the death of his parent: it's called 'Hamlet', and you can watch the whole thing in about four hours. Brevity is the soul of wit. 'Oshi no Ko' is like 'Hamlet' if Hamlet put on five plays to catch six killers, he was dating three Ophelias, and one of them was his sister.

Tokyo Blade already featured Aqua, Akane, and Kana, and I assume they were getting up to all sorts of slapping, kissing, and yelling, but I can't be certain, because so much screen time was dedicated to fight scenes from the show within the show — some godawful shonen nonsense — not to mention the lengthy and rather dry lectures on the business of putting on plays, how a comic book may be adapted into a play, the difficulties that may arise when adapting comic books into plays, recent advances in theater technology, etc. The first episode of season one ends on the main character plotting his revenge; the first episode of season two ends on a comic book writer being unhappy with a script — and you'll never guess what happens next: she edits it.

Okay, that was unfair: I mildly enjoyed the arc. The comic book writer is fine. Almost everything in 'Oshi no Ko' is fine. Two writers struggling to adapt a story; two former child stars competing on and off the stage; a pop group aspiring to one day perform at a top venue; a supernatural murder mystery — oh, wait: one of those doesn't fit.

It's not just that any given thing would stand out more in less cluttered surroundings. Another problem is that some of those things, such as murder, suicide, revenge, and reincarnation, are inherently more ostentatious than others, such as a songwriter we just met feeling inspired to write a new song because he got an encouraging email; but in the adaptation, each of those things is given comparably lavish treatment. 'Oshi no Ko' is wildly overproduced. Ai's star quality just doesn't seem as impressive after it's been attributed to every single performance in Tokyo Blade. Aqua, being so cunning and manipulative, has a cunning plan to manipulate everyone to save Akane, but he also has a cunning plan to manipulate everyone to save the finale of a television show.

Speaking of manipulation, if 'Oshi no Ko' has a theme, then its theme must be deception or dishonesty. It's a fine theme, but the consequences of lying would have been clearer in a more focused, less cluttered story. When Hamlet deceived Ophelia, when Iago deceived Othello, the consequences were clear and relevant to the plot. When Aqua pretended to be in love with Akane, she found out immediately and played along for two seasons. When Kana pretended not to be in love with Aqua, everyone found out immediately, literally everyone, including undiscovered tribes in the highlands of New Guinea, and they all played along for two seasons. When baby Aqua pretended to be a god for two minutes — no, I didn't forget about that one, which goes exactly nowhere.

Let's get back to Aqua and his cunning plans to manipulate everyone. Okay, "discount Light Yagami" was probably unfair — unfairly generous to Light Yagami — but the character is clearly meant to be cunning and manipulative — isn't he? At least twice an episode, the man is manipulating someone into doing something, whether he's manipulating a lousy actor into giving a decent performance, or manipulating Ruby into wearing panties around the house for once in her life, for God's sake, Ruby.

But why is Aqua cunning and manipulative? Why should he insist on playing three-dimensional checkers? Before he died, he was kind, earnest, and slightly awkward. Did reincarnation make him cunning and manipulative? Either commit to writing him as a cunning, manipulative teenage celebrity, or leave him the way he was and make it clear that he's in over his head when it comes to revenge and murder. As it stands, after two seasons, I still do not really understand who Aqua is, or even how many people he is.

To be clear, there are plenty of things to like about 'Oshi no Ko'. I wish it spent more time on them. Yandere Nancy Drew, for instance, that delightful nut: put her in every scene. She pairs well with Aqua, of course, who pairs surprisingly well with comedy, although that might be the one element of the show that is actually underproduced.

For example, Aqua, who excels academically (because he was reincarnated), enrolls in a school known only for its performance curriculum (to keep an eye on Ruby), but not as a performance major, although he does end up being one of its most accomplished performers. He floors the admissions committee by claiming to have been won over by school spirit — which is pretty funny. It's a comical series of contradictions. Why is it never brought up again? 'Love Is War' would have shown us the admissions committee once more after Tokyo Blade, patting themselves on the back for having snagged the hot new talent as a general education major. "I raised that boy," says Chika Fujiwara.

It's easy to miss a few small details when you're putting on five separate plays to catch six different killers. It's hard to focus on what matters when you're lavishly animating every encouraging email. The show is not at all bad: it's cluttered, unfocused, and overproduced, but I understood what it was trying to do eventually, and 'That Time I Got Reincarnated as My Cancer Patient's Favorite Singer's Baby' does a decent job of contriving scenarios in which sexy teenagers can slap, kiss, and breastfeed one another. It was all very watchable, except when it made me watch Tokyo Blade.

'Viral Hit' is a wonderful show no one watched about a Korean teenager who films himself getting into fights, and it proved to be thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish: twelve episodes of action, comedy, romance, and drama, fast-paced and well-balanced, with non-stop conflict, character growth, a satisfying conclusion, and zero filler. It's the type of show I look for every season, and it deserves to be better known.

Picture 'Classroom of the Elite' — okay, look: I don't have a problem with 'Classroom of the Elite'. It's fine, except when it tries to play chess. But it's going to take some collateral damage today, because ... this is the analogy I landed on. Picture 'Classroom of the Elite', except instead of being told that the main character is an impossible genius who trivializes every challenge because of a plan he came up with offscreen that works perfectly every time, and because he trained really hard in his backstory and casually mastered every field of human endeavor from ornithology to badminton, and that he did all that despite not caring at all about any of it — right, instead of that, we're shown that the main character is a relatable guy with relatable problems; that he comes up with actual plans that sort of make sense and never work perfectly; that he trains really hard to get a little bit better at just one thing; and that he did all that for relatable reasons, like pride and money and teenage Korean girls, which is why it means something when he comes out on top once in a while. It means something without trying to seem important. I wanted to see what Hobin would do next, I wanted him to succeed, I laughed when he screwed it up, and I was glad to see him try again.

Action, as I have said before, is about conflict; it is not necessarily violent. Violence without conflict is just spectacle: another pointless tournament arc. Well, there are no tournament arcs in 'Viral Hit': just an unrelenting series of conflicts, most of which happen to be violent. Although its violence is tempered with comedy and the overall tone is fairly light, watching it does feel somewhat like waiting to get punched in the face, and you won't have to wait long. The plot moves fast: there are no beach episodes in 'Viral Hit' either, and if there were, someone would have to wrestle an octopus. It really is non-stop conflict: in the span of an episode, Hobin will fight a bully, which attracts a bigger bully, and while he's fighting the bigger bully, he forgets to buy his girlfriend a birthday present, and when he goes to apologize to her, he falls in the octopus tank at the Lotte World Aquarium, and — well, you see where this is going.

Notice how much gets done in a season of 'Viral Hit', because everything that happens is relevant to the plot. Notice how little gets done in a season of 'Wind Breaker', a superficially similar and much more popular show that doesn't have a plot because it replaced it with tournament arcs. Wasn't there an entire episode of that show where they decided to have a tournament, and then another entire episode where they walked to where the tournament would be held? Or did I dream that? I might have fallen asleep during one of its interminable mid-fight flashbacks to yet another tragic backstory. Since action is about conflict, it's generally preferable to know who the characters are before they start punching each other, rather than finding out mid-punch. For example, you can do what 'Viral Hit' does: establish the characters before the fight and allow them to learn and grow in unexpected ways after the fight. Notice also that one of these shows — the one no one watched — has a main character with a clearly defined goal who drives the story forward, and the other has a main character with a clearly defined hairstyle. Look, I tried to finish 'Wind Breaker' — I just couldn't be bothered. I will say, it gets better when you play the 'Viral Hit' soundtrack over it.

Anyway, you don't need to be a fan of combat sports to enjoy 'Viral Hit'. You can enjoy 'Rocky' without being a boxing fan. You can enjoy 'Keijo!' without being a fan of that sport, although I don't see why you wouldn't be. Granted, 'Viral Hit' is more about the fighting than either of those franchises, so let me say a few words about fight scenes.

What makes a good fight scene is not a mystery: Jackie Chan directed about a hundred of them. A good fight scene creates tension for the audience by conveying danger to the characters, and danger, meaning the risk of harm, depends on something more fundamental than choreography or cinematography: it depends on cause and effect. If Jackie Chan is in the Bronx, and he has to jump from one fire escape to another, what happens if he misses? He falls to the ground, he gets hurt, and the villain gets away with the suitcase full of diamonds or whatever. We hope Jackie Chan doesn't fall off the fire escape because we understand cause and effect. Or maybe he does fall, but he lands on a flatbed truck full of stuffed animals: that's fine; the man also did comedy.

To prepare for this review, I watched some fight scenes from a popular action show, which, to avoid further controversy, I won't name. In one scene, a pirate with three swords was in outer space or whatever, and he had to jump from one rock to another. Fine, so what happens if he misses? Does he fall in the ocean, or does he spin his swords around really fast and fly like a helicopter? I think at one point he actually was flying: can he do that all the time? If he does fall in the ocean, does he get hurt, or does he think back on how his friends are cheering him on, which gives him the courage to charge up a glowing yellow ball of energy that makes him immune to damage? There are no answers to these questions. You can practically see the hand of the animator at work: what happens next — in this unnamed anime — is whatever seemed coolest to him at the time. You can animate a jumping pirate and his glowing yellow ball as lavishly as you like, in sixty frames per second: it will not save your fight scene, which has no logic of cause and effect, so it can't convey danger, so it can't create tension.

In 'Viral Hit', every fight scene conveys danger: cause and effect are brutally clear. What happens if Hobin gets punched in the face? You don't need to speculate: I haven't seen this many hospital scenes since 'Neon Genesis Evangelion'. Combat is grounded, with a clear sense of time and space, action and reaction. No one carries on a lengthy back-and-forth discussion with their opponent in the fraction of a second before a punch lands. No one changes direction in midair. At no point does anyone's fist collide with their opponent's fist to create a glowing yellow ball of energy. Spare me the glowing yellow balls! Did you see how Taehun rotates his foot on the back kick? It’s perfect.

But make no mistake: 'Viral Hit' is not a work of literary realism. It does not attempt to accurately depict the day-to-day lives of street-fighting Korean teenagers. You will be asked to suspend your disbelief. Don't panic: this is a normal part of enjoying fiction.

Truthfully, 'Viral Hit' is the type of show I look for every season. I don't mean shows about Korean teenagers who film themselves getting into fights. And I don't mean charmingly awkward coming-of-age sports action-comedies, although I do welcome new entries in the 'Rocky'-meets-'WataMote' crossover genre. I have in mind the entire class of well-written low-budget genre fiction: fantasy adventures and death game thrillers and step-sibling romances alike — and you do need to go look for them, because you rarely hear about them, and what you hear about them is rarely good.

As I have said before, and as anyone can see for themselves, at the start of every season, the anime community, for remarkably superficial reasons, assigns certain shows to the must-watch trophy shelf and others to the guilty-pleasure dumpster. A well-animated fight scene in the trailer gives us a new anime of the decade at least twice a year, while the low-budget genre fiction sinks to very near the bottom of the dumpster. And if the content of the dumpster proves to be thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, if the anime of the decade proves to be unwatchable by episode three, any merits of the former can be dismissed, any defects of the latter can be excused.

Sure, 'Viral Hit' might be a decent little cartoon, a fun watch on a Wednesday night, but 'Solo Leveling' is a timeless masterpiece — and, being a timeless masterpiece, it doesn't need minor details like character development. It has video game mechanics! It has glowing yellow balls in sixty frames per second! Never mind pacing: just make sure it's slavishly faithful to the source material. We'll animate each panel of the web comic and play the clips one after another. Wasn't there an episode where they interrupted a fight to the death to show three random women eating brunch? Or did I dream that?

Year after year, the trophy shelves are crowded with timeless masterpieces with a shelf life of twelve or thirteen weeks; revolutionary achievements for the medium that rarely go through the formality of actually being fun to watch. If it's so good, then why isn't it good? Do you like being served fish bones and coffee grounds on a silver platter? I'd rather eat real food out of a dumpster — well, no: I'd rather those weren't my choices.

All art is dedicated to joy, said Schiller. 'Viral Hit' may not be popular, and it may not be pretty. I think it was animated on a laptop, in a weekend, by an intern, in exchange for a gift certificate to Panda Express. I suspect it was sponsored by Korea's powerful taekwondo lobby. And I'm certain no one will ever call it a timeless masterpiece or a revolutionary achievement for the medium. Nevertheless, it manages to achieve in any given scene what fish bones and coffee grounds and lavishly animated glowing yellow balls have failed to deliver in a double-length season: it's really enjoyable to watch.

'My Instant Death Ability' is a fantasy adventure-comedy, an isekai parody, that fails to entertain in any way, on any level: it fails as a fantasy adventure and as a comedy; it fails as an isekai and as a parody. Rushed, vacuous, convoluted, dull, predictable, and most of all forgettable, it is the sort of parody that can make me look back fondly on the parent genre's least beloved entries for the endearing sincerity and simplicity of their incompetence. Come back, 'Reign of the Seven Spellblades', all is forgiven!

Let me say a few words about the genre. It's not unusual for new fantasy series to ... embroider themselves with isekai kitsch: it's practically a cost of doing business, and it doesn't necessarily harm the story. Going someplace new is an evergreen theme, for Odysseus as much as Kirito, and the video game skill tree our hero might unlock upon arriving someplace new is a harmless bit of kitsch. Ideally, perhaps, the story would include no extraneous elements, but plenty of watchable shows sprint through a tolerable half-episode of isekai overhead before settling in for the real story, which turns out to have nothing to do with reincarnated teenagers assigning skill points.

'My Instant Death Ability', on the other hand, wallows in isekai slop from start to finish, doubling down on kitsch at every opportunity, indulging in all the worst excesses of the setting without once delivering on the core appeal of fantasy adventure — which, by the way, has been parodying itself for years. 'My One-Hit Kill Sister' can be considered a parody of a fantasy adventure, and in any case it's a lot of fun to watch; 'My Instant Death Ability' can be considered an insult to the viewer, and it's not even a clever insult.

As rushed as it is vacuous, the show is watchable, barely, as a kind of twenty-minute weekly chore. Nothing lasts and nothing matters: establish a location, introduce a character, kill the character, leave the location; no stakes, no conflict, and no lasting consequences. If it ever slowed down enough to convey the plot, or if it ever asked us to care, even a little, about any of the characters, then it would simply be infuriating. As it stands, I did manage to point my eyes toward the screen for most of the runtime, though if you asked me now what happened to the sword master, or what the sage was trying to achieve, or why the robot turned into a dragon, I honestly couldn't tell you.

Anyone with eyes can see at once why the show doesn't work. You don't need to know what words like "structure" and "pacing" mean: the director clearly doesn't. It looks bad, sounds bad, makes no sense, and serves no purpose. The comedy consists entirely of yelling. For half the runtime, half the screen is taken up by title cards for roughly fourteen thousand characters, half of which die each episode, and I wish the other half had died too. There is one cute girl, but she spends every scene yelling at a fat ghost.

I may be misremembering some of that, but I'm not going to check, because I don't care and it doesn't matter. No one should watch this show, and it's embarrassing that it was made. I can forgive the people responsible for it, and I don't think they deserve to go to prison, but a hundred hours of community service does seem appropriate.

'Zom 100' attempts to achieve with zombies what 'Spy Family' achieved with spies: a fairly enjoyable season of well-animated action-comedy filler. Unfortunately, against a backdrop of mass death, its comedy appears callously stupid. The show has little to say and it says it all in episode one; what's left is an idiotic protagonist frolicking through a zombie-themed spring break like a late, third-rate, tone-deaf 'Shaun of the Dead'.

Let's get this out of the way: for the purposes of satire and other social commentary, monsters and disasters can stand for other things. Pollution awakens Godzilla, and he goes on a rampage: Godzilla stands for the cost ... of industrialization. Similarly, a zombie, being an unnatural, decaying mockery of a human being, can stand for an office worker: too much office work might turn a man into a zombie, or something like that. Indeed, 'Zom 100' opens on an exhausted, zombie-like office worker, which is at least somewhat relatable: in a way, each of us has our own zombies to overcome in life. For some of us, long work hours might be our zombies; for others, social anxiety or addiction to pornography. But the device on its own doesn't get us very far: you can kill a zombie with an axe; you can't kill the economy with an axe, so what have we learned?

In 'Zom 100', the zombies our hero has to overcome in life are actual zombies, which have actually relieved him from office work. I appreciate that it took an extraordinary threat to catapult him out of his ennui, but to make an exhausted office worker look like a zombie, and then to attack him with unrelated zombies, is a bit undercooked as a parable; frankly, it's more of a shower thought than it is a theme or a motif. You could have attacked him with Godzilla or even Mothra, so again, what have we learned?

I'm not really asking for didactic fiction: what I mean is, apart from some initial amusement or thrill, monsters and disasters, whether or not they stand for other things, sustain our interest only insofar as they provoke interesting developments in relatable characters. It's why survival scenarios bringing out the best and the worst in people is an evergreen theme. It's less about cool moves for killing zombies and more about the human condition: who gets to share the hero's zombie-proof bunker?

In 'Zom 100', the character development is about as thin as the social commentary. In episode one, the end of civilization and the prospect of a gruesome death inspire one man, Akira, to pursue a list of childish ambitions with a reckless disregard for safety. He proceeds to do exactly that for eleven more episodes — instead of, say, dying immediately to zombies, like anyone else probably would and almost everyone else actually does. As far as Akira is concerned, the apocalypse, for all its impressive spectacle, is about as dangerous as the haunted house ride at an amusement park.

The child-safe nature of the apocalypse is a contradiction: near-certain death prompts Akira to change; he changes in the direction of even more nearly-certain death; and the action-comedy plot protects him from the consequences of that choice, which invalidates his growth, if you can even call it growth. Either the zombies aren't that deadly, and he might as well have had his epiphany without an apocalyptic backdrop; or he isn't living for the present in a meaningful way, and he might as well pick up food and water while he's looting home electronics and tequila on his motorcycle.

Either way, further character development is unnecessary: Akira wins at the end of episode one, with nothing left to do apart from having fun. Characters may question his new outlook, events may temporarily reverse it, but his new outlook never made sense to begin with, so he can just change back at the end of the episode. So much for the human condition. Feeling bad? Feel good instead, baka! Quit your job and drink a case of beer. Maybe you really can kill the economy with an axe; at least, I've heard the power grid is vulnerable — by the way, 'Fight Club' handled this material quite well. Again, Akira could have died immediately to zombies with a smile on his face: at least that would represent a meaningful choice to live for the present with no regrets.

Instead, through filler action-comedy, we get to watch an office worker enjoying a zombie-themed spring break, drinking beer and meeting girls. Of course, the premise of his happiness is the end of civilization and the gruesome deaths of nearly everyone, which is another contradiction. No, a zombie apocalypse wouldn't improve your state of mind: just think of the smell. And no, it's not a black comedy: it's just a heartless and thoughtless comedy. It hands him a cute girl and, once she's served her purpose, feeds her to a zombie. I guess he doesn't need to loot condoms! Her faceless corpse in a pool of bloody slime can be set dressing for the wacky antics of our lovable goofballs.

Mercifully, the show rarely draws that much attention to the callous stupidity of its comedy, and the end result is often watchable and occasionally even fun, especially when Beatrix is involved, although I don’t remember laughing once. For some, the aforementioned qualities, plus a few well-animated action scenes, may be enough to secure a high rating and hope for a second season. For this reviewer, however, occasional fun is an insufficient return on investment from four hours of screen time, and the animation and other technical niceties are always secondary to characters, conflicts, and themes. Simply put, I would not watch another episode of 'Zom 100'.

It is not to die that makes a man wretched, said Carlyle: it is to live miserable and not know why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to die slowly all our life long. But he also said that a man perfects himself by working; that there is endless hope in work; and that idleness alone is without hope. As it turns out, there is more than one thing to say about this evergreen theme — by the way, 'Full Dive' handled this material quite well. But in the end, 'Zom 100' has too little to say about its theme and too little to do with its characters. I mean, fine: zombies can stand for office workers; they can stand for industrialism, or free trade, or fiat currency, or the managerial state, and the hero can kill them with an axe or something. In a way, each of us has our own zombies to overcome in life, but you can't kill regret with an axe, so what have we learned?

'The Eminence in Shadow' is a comedy subversion of a fantasy adventure, where the joke is that the hero of the story doesn't understand what's happening and doesn't take it seriously. It's complicated without being clever, and it proves that irony and self-awareness are not substitutes for meaningful conflicts, character growth, or properly timed punch lines. By season two, any given episode was barely holding my attention long enough to deliver its payload of mildly enjoyable action-comedy fan service.

I'm told you need a very high IQ to understand 'Rick and Morty'. Whether that's true or not, you do need a remarkably high degree of media ... literacy to understand what 'The Eminence in Shadow' was trying to achieve. Cid, a Japanese teenager, is obsessed with acquiring the power of a fantasy anime protagonist. Coincidentally, Cid dies, gets reincarnated in a quasi-medieval world, and promptly acquires unlimited magical power, just like in a fantasy anime. At that point, Cid decides to devote his second life to making that world conform even more closely to fantasy tropes by re-enacting his favourite scenes from anime. For example, he wants to battle a demon cult alongside a harem of busty ninjas, so he invents a demon cult and recruits a gaggle of busty ninjas to cosplay with him. Unbeknownst to Cid, the busty ninjas fall for all of his ridiculous lies. Also unbeknownst to Cid, all of his ridiculous lies are coincidentally accurate, right down to the demon cult's made-up name. Thus, Cid alone somehow continues to misinterpret as cosplay the battle he started against the demon cult he thinks he invented, even as his over-the-top finishing moves level city blocks, killing hundreds.

It's a bafflingly complicated premise for a fairly generic fantasy story. That is, if we ignore the protagonist's internal monologue, if we adopt any other character's point of view, the events of the plot play out as one would expect in a typical fantasy world, complete with an overpowered main character. He is, in fact, the shadowy leader of a powerful faction of busty ninjas battling a demon cult, so his actions make sense on a surface level. His monologuing merely wraps them in layers of spurious irony: no one else knows that he's lying, but he doesn't know that his lies are true. It's like wearing a clown costume under your regular clothes so no one ever sees it. Actually, it's even more pointless than that: the possibility of a secret being exposed can create tension, but in this case, the secret can never be exposed, because the secret makes no sense.

For the record, this is not a parody of fantasy: it is not exaggerating genre tropes. Cid's over-the-top finishing moves would hardly look out of place in 'Sword Art Online'. It's certainly a comedy subversion of fantasy, because of course we don't expect a fantasy hero to be delusional and stupid. Unfortunately, as a fantasy adventure comedy, 'The Eminence in Shadow' is hampered precisely by its subversive premise: again, the one thing that sets it apart from conventional fantasy is that the main character doesn't understand what's happening and doesn't take it seriously. That does set up a lot of jokes, or a lot of repetitions of the same joke, but it also makes it difficult to get invested in the plot. That's forgivable in a straight comedy: the girls from 'Survival Game Club' can run over elderly Australians in a truck, and all is forgotten by the next episode. But 'The Eminence in Shadow' is not exempt from earning our investment in the plot, both because the joke relies on juxtaposing a serious story with a ridiculous hero and because the rather dry business of the plot takes up so much of the screen time.

Like 'Overlord', it suffers most from its unrelatable protagonist, who is never allowed to learn anything or grow as a person because it would spoil the joke. After two seasons, Cid remains a mentally disturbed teenager with no interest in meeting girls or making friends, narcissistic to the point of being delusional and armed with overwhelming firepower: a school shooter in a wizard hat. Also like 'Overlord', the supporting cast of typical fantasy characters is far more interesting simply for being sincere, but they're given too little attention and too little respect. When a beautiful princess falls for the school shooter, she becomes the butt of the joke because he's not taking it seriously.

You can reverse-engineer a better fantasy series by leaving out a layer or two of irony. Here's one: a self-aware protagonist is trying not to be the main character, but he can't resist interfering with the plot; in the process, he inadvertently wins the heart of a beautiful princess, making him the main character after all. Fine. So why make him delusional? How does that help? If he knew what was happening and took it seriously, it would raise the stakes. Now what if we gave him a relatable motivation to interfere with the plot, instead of a weird pop culture obsession? Maybe he could even express a healthy interest in beautiful princesses. Oh, wait: I just wrote 'Trapped in a Dating Sim'.

Or how about this: a genre-savvy protagonist winds up in a typical fantasy world, where he exploits common tropes to predict the tactics of a typical fantasy villain, making him uniquely qualified to be the hero. Fine. So why make him a narcissist? It's easier to get invested when the hero actually cares about saving the world. Now what if his over-the-top finishing moves were justified by the extraordinary threat? Maybe the villain also knows how to exploit common tropes. Oh, wait: I just wrote 'Cautious Hero'.

Here it is without the villain: an excitable protagonist recruits a harem of busty ninjas to battle a non-existent threat and has to redirect them to solving mundane problems. The villagers keep getting sick? Clearly, the river is infected with demonic parasites: have the busty ninjas build a water treatment plant. Take the fight against demonic corruption straight to city hall: have a busty ninja run for public office; land a finishing move on wasteful spending. Fine, now it's a satire. I don't know if that series exists already ('KamiKatsu', perhaps), but the point is, practically any change toward greater sincerity would be an improvement. I will not wear the clown costume! Take me anywhere else, from 'The Dungeon of Black Company' to 'The Last Dungeon Boonies'.

Truthfully, if we take away its self-awareness, if we decline to be impressed by its nesting doll of irony, what is left of 'The Eminence in Shadow'? Apart from the hero, the cast comprises, firstly, the fan service: two dozen barely developed female characters whose purpose is to fawn over Cid, though again not to the point that it can be called a parody, if indeed the sexless harem trope admits of parody; and, secondly, the blood bags: however many faceless male minions any given action scene requires to supply the school shooter with targets. In two seasons, I detected no meaningful conflicts. The jiggly ninjas are never in danger, so the action scenes are unexciting, even when Cid lands an extra-flashy finisher on an extra-large blood bag. Like 'Overlord', his opponents are the underdogs, making his casual brutality appear downright tacky.

The character growth is minimal. Cid is never allowed to change, and his delusional monologuing drags out many scenes, leaving too little time to develop even one dozen jiggly ninjas. On top of that, through the monologuing, the series effectively tells us not to get invested in the supporting cast, by making them the butt of the joke. As for the jokes, their execution is mostly dissatisfying, Cid's intentional loss in the season one tournament being a clear example. The concept is fine: he's trying not to be the main character, so he has to lose his match, but he can't resist trying out every one of his lovingly rehearsed death animations. Unfortunately, his non-stop monologuing spoils the punch line, and it's the same animation each time, and it goes on much too long. By season two, the comedy often feels perfunctory: Cid does something stupid for a stupid reason; the harem misinterprets that as a Machiavellian scheme, making them look stupid; and it all works out anyway because of a blatant plot contrivance.

Most episodes are mildly enjoyable, delivering competent action-comedy fan service sprinkled with general anime weirdness. It's not particularly outrageous stuff; once again, if the goal was to parody either fantasy, harem romance, or anime in general, then it didn't go far enough. In a season with 'Ragna Crimson', Cid the school shooter looks downright tame. At least put the jiggly ninjas in danger! The paradox of general anime weirdness is that it always appears more outrageous in a story that takes itself more seriously. 'Future Diary' shot up several schools, and it never stopped being funny. Indeed, 'Survival Game Club', in addition to being much funnier than 'The Eminence in Shadow', also somehow takes itself more seriously and appears more outrageous for it.

'The Eminence in Shadow' does fill a need: it is the perfect fantasy series for people who are embarrassed about enjoying fantasy. (Compare 'KonoSuba', the perfect fantasy series for people who hate fantasy.) You get to watch an overpowered main character battle a demon cult alongside a harem of busty ninjas, complete with screen-rattling finishers, Japanglish one-liners, and hypnotizing jiggles — and if anyone breaks into your house and accuses you of enjoying fantasy, you can tell him no, it's bad and you hate it, but this one is bad on purpose: it's a deconstruction of the genre, a commentary on the audience. When I said "Delta is best girl," I was being ironic! Mystify your intruder with semiotics, and he may never suspect that you secretly do enjoy women's breasts.

Or you can just tell him to leave. It is possible to enjoy genre fiction without layers of ironic detachment: I'm told Gladstone enjoyed 'Treasure Island' (although he might have drawn the line at 'Future Diary'). Of course the fantasy genre has its well-documented foibles. It has been two centuries since Carlyle admonished the ordinary poet, forever seeking in external circumstances, in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, the help which can be found only in himself. And how far have the critical sciences advanced in that time? What novel insights do they offer us? "OP MC! Power fantasy! Wish fulfillment!" Stop breaking into my house. None of that is notable. Heroic fiction predates written language: Achilles was overpowered. 'Don Quixote' parodied heroic fiction in 1605. Dante wrote a self-insert isekai during the actual middle ages. Two centuries ago, every title was a paragraph long. There is nothing new under the sun, including lazy criticism. You can make any story sound stupid by describing it in a stupid way; that tells us nothing about the story, although it does tell us something about the critic. In every case, it is the execution that counts, and not a plot synopsis.

In short, the fantasy genre was not a problem in need of solving. Like any other genre, it has its tropes and its conventions. Think of them as writing prompts: channels for an author's creativity, rather than limitations on it. They guide the audience, too. Tell us that a Japanese teenager has been reincarnated as the demon lord's step-sister's panties, and we understand immediately: we're settling in for the real story, about being true to your harem of busty feral wolf-girls, something we can all relate to.

The most derided tropes can serve a story well. I may be the only one who enjoyed it, but let me point out that 'Isekai Cheat Skill' has an excellent theme: a good-natured boy with low self-esteem from being kicked around all his life has to learn to let himself be happy when things take a turn for the better. That's why he doesn't have to earn his overpowered abilities: because it serves the story to make him feel like he's cheating. Now tell me: why is Cid overpowered? What narrative purpose does that serve? Or is it enough that the series has drawn our attention to the mere existence of the trope?

I do understand what 'The Eminence in Shadow' was trying to achieve; I just don't care enough about tropes to care about subverting them. I care about meaningful conflicts and character growth, but I didn't get that. I'll settle for well-crafted jokes with a side of general anime weirdness, but I didn't really get that either. In the end, what I got was an alibi for enjoying genre fiction, which is one thing I didn't need two seasons of. It's an overcomplicated, relentlessly self-indulgent fantasy series from which a patient viewer may be able to extract a kernel of mildly enjoyable action-comedy fan service.

'Reign of the Seven Spellblades' is a fantasy action series about teenage wizards at boarding school. It has a lot of ideas and it tries to do a lot of things, many of which could have worked: after all, it's basically 'Harry Potter', only darker and more violent. Unfortunately, every part of it is rushed, forced, and underdeveloped, practically perfunctory: watching an episode feels like reading a plot synopsis. It's an awkward mess from start to finish, entertainingly bad at times, but mostly just boring.

It is immediately clear that the series is drastically abbreviating its written source material, and whatever appeal the original may possess, ... little has survived this brutal treatment. It's like ordering a pizza and receiving a ball of dough, a slice of processed cheese, and a squashed tomato. Scenes play out as if the writer or the director were checking off plot points scribbled on a sticky note, with no added detail or depth.

It's difficult to discuss 'Spellblades' without rewriting it scene by scene, because it does practically everything wrong. I will try to avoid doing that, but — well, for example, if you want to establish that a magic school is dangerous, you can introduce what we think is the protagonist of what appears to be a general fantasy action series, then subvert our expectations by having a magical plant devour him five minutes in. It's a bit more entertaining than having someone state that magic school is dangerous.

A relatable protagonist is a solid foundation for a story, which is why 'Harry Potter' begins at home with Harry Potter. 'Spellblades' begins by rushing no fewer than six main characters into a fight scene. It makes the most important character less relatable by relegating much of his personality to a mysterious backstory to be revealed at some later date, which is problematic in a point-of-view character. Also, it's difficult to create a sense of mystery when the setting is so underdeveloped: we can't tell if a scene is intentionally confusing because of a mystery that hasn't been solved yet, or unintentionally confusing because the adaptation is missing some important detail.

Having met on the first day of school, the main characters quickly become close friends. Anyone who ever lived in a college dorm can understand this formative experience of young adulthood and how the series has failed to capture it. I am not asking for literary realism: I am asking that they bond in a way that feels credible. Real life is often unrealistic. Real students can build a close friendship on a chance encounter in a stairwell at one in the morning, because real students are notoriously stupid. Wizarding students, on the other hand, are too busy self-seriously collecting plot points to have any formative experiences at all. I think one night of bad behaviour would go a long way toward humanizing them. Didn't Harry Potter use a cloak of invisibility to sneak his friends into bars? Let the edgy wizard boy date the goldfish-brained samurai girl. It doesn't have to be dark and mysterious: it can just be fun.

As it stands, the tone is inconsistent: the series often attempts to be whimsical — easily detected in the soundtrack — but the characters, the setting, and the plot are really too dark for that. 'Harry Potter' meets the minimum threshold for whimsy because Harry Potter and friends are basically normal kids, not child soldiers; none of them has a death wish, not even Ron; and the Slytherins are bullies, not murderers.

As for the violence, action scenes are fundamentally about character conflict; they are not necessarily violent. (The potato chip scene in 'Death Note' is a good example.) Violence without conflict is just spectacle: another pointless tournament arc. 'Spellblades' has plenty of violence but little conflict: many of the fight scenes serve no purpose, as the students are continually challenging one another merely to show off.

The plot is practically impossible to spoil because it includes practically every fantasy trope and treats each of them with about as much detail and depth as a plot synopsis. None of its ideas are inherently bad: every good pizza begins with a ball of dough. The plot, the setting, and the characters could have worked: just rewrite every scene. Make the goldfish-brained samurai girl the protagonist: her backstory, her struggle, her growth — all of it has potential. I know you can make any story sound stupid by describing it in a stupid way, and I have tried to avoid doing that. So an elf and a troll fight bees with a werewolf: so what? 'Hamlet' had a ghost and a pirate ship, and it turned out fine. In every case, it is the execution that counts, and in this case — I mean 'Spellblades', not 'Hamlet' — the execution is perfunctory, wasting its potential.

On the positive side, the series is morally inoffensive, exalting friendship, courage, traditional martial arts, and the ethical treatment of animals; in that respect, it's better than 'Black Lagoon'. I liked the kissing scene, the severed hand, and the barbecue guy. The last arc was watchable. The voice actors did the best they could with the material.

All in all, 'Reign of the Seven Spellblades' is unfortunately quite bad. At times, it was entertainingly bad; looking back on the season as a whole, the edgy wizard kids, the goldfish-brained samurai, the slightly improved final arc, etc., I can even say that it was endearingly bad, so long as I do not have to rewatch any of it. I can recommend it as a case study in how not to tell a story, but I cannot recommend it as a fantasy series.

'Isekai Cheat Skill' is pure fantasy fun: the lightest of light comedies, an exuberant adventure full of warmth and charm on an animation budget of two nickels and a banana peel. Like 'Keijo!' or 'Domestic Girlfriend', it's completely serious about being utterly ridiculous, devoting roughly every minute to fun characters and fan service.

It's normal to sprinkle in moments of pure fun, like a beach episode or a Chika dance. It's a form of fan service; it's icing on the cake. 'Isekai Cheat Skill' is a cake made entirely of icing, a fan service apotheosis, and it works improbably well. Light comedies look downright mean-spirited by ... comparison. There may be no series more eager to please the viewer. If a scene isn't pleasantly surprising, it's at least predictably enjoyable.

To illustrate, I've just written a new episode: the hero goes to the zoo; obviously, an escaped lion attacks; using his isekai cheat skill, he chucks it into a lake, saving a cute girl with enormous eyes — let's say the prime minister's daughter; she takes him on a date, and the rest of the episode can just be a close-up shot of her eating a crepe.

The theme was well chosen as a fan service comedy delivery system: the nicest guy in the world gets everything he ever wanted, and he has to learn to let himself be happy; which is to say, the conflict is internal. Aside from that, the stakes are hilariously low: threats ranging from intramural sports to escaped lions are introduced, defeated, and dismissed in five minutes flat, leaving plenty of time to watch a cute girl eat a crepe.

In light of its tone, it's difficult to fault the pacing. Yes, we spent an entire episode at a shopping mall. On the other hand, that episode was delightful. I will absolutely take a trip to the mall with fun characters and fan service over the finest hand-crafted generic fantasy fight scenes, which in any case the show could not afford. Plenty of heroes have faced off against greater perils, but did any of them go out for crepes?

Actually, yes: there are crepes in 'Trapped in a Dating Sim' (episode five) and 'Chivalry of a Failed Knight' (episode three). So, granted, the stakes could have been higher — the adventure and the comedy more balanced — but it's okay that they weren't, because those series already exist, and I don't expect a balance of flavours when I order an all-icing cake. 'Isekai Cheat Skill' went overboard, but at least it fell off on the warm and charming side. I have tried to rewatch episodes without smiling, and I fail every time.

(For the record, I fail as soon as Kaede, the redhead, enters the frame in the opening credits. Watch episode five; gaze into those enormous vermilion eyes: you can really tell when both of Kaede's brain cells are operating at maximum capacity.)

With a good-natured hero and a pleasing eagerness to let good things happen to him, 'Isekai Cheat Skill' consistently achieves a kind of easygoing joyfulness that shows with bigger budgets and more reputable pedigrees have struggled to deliver even once. In an age of irony, it's 'Candide' minus the irony: every episode is a beach episode, every girl is the best girl, and all is for the best in the best of all possible fantasy worlds.

'Spy Classroom' is a simple, competent, consistently enjoyable light action comedy about cute girls learning how to be spies. The high-stakes first arc is particularly engrossing, but the fun cast of characters makes even the mid-season filler episodes quite watchable.

The show feels solid from start to finish because it never overreaches: we were promised cute girls learning how to be spies, and we got exactly that. It's spy fiction as light action comedy rather than military thriller, but it still delivers reasonably clever spy-like twists: gadgets, disguises, shadowy figures, double- and triple-crosses, assorted brinkmanship.

The tone is well balanced because, again, it doesn't overreach. The girls ... are cute and silly, and the deadpan teacher complements them perfectly; the spy missions are exciting, even when the stakes are low; and the tragic backstories, when they come up, give the story a bit of heart without wallowing in sadness. Overall, it's about as cozy as spy fiction gets.

The season is actually fairly well paced: three main characters, including the teacher, are well developed, and what I called the filler episodes typically focus on developing one side character each, largely through enjoyable albeit low-stakes action and comedy. The voice acting is charming, the animation is serviceable, and the subtitles are acceptable.

I remember once slogging through an episode of some romantic comedy I won't name, trying to force myself to enjoy it. I gave up eventually and put on 'My First Girlfriend Is a Gal', of all things, a less than beloved franchise. My relief was immediate and overwhelming, because finally I was watching a show that actually tries to deliver on the core appeal of its genre. I feel the same way about 'Spy Classroom' now. It's a minor, quiet success. It doesn't shout at you. It's not trying to seem important. It doesn't even demand your full attention in every scene. But if you find yourself slogging through the latest "revolutionary achievement for the medium," consider a simple story about cute spy girls instead.

Widely praised, even before its release, as a revolutionary achievement for the medium, or for art in general, 'Chainsaw Man' is a dark subversion of the superhero genre, like an R-rated 'X-Men'. It's well animated, fairly stylish, sometimes funny, and gruesome enough for teenage boys. Unfortunately, as a standalone story, it lacks direction and depth. By the end, I wanted to shower off the bloody slime and curl up with 'Bocchi' instead.

You can get a lot done in twelve episodes if you pick one thing and focus on it, whether that's a character or a theme. In 'Chainsaw Man', a lot of things happen, often ... violently, but not in great detail or depth. It wanted to deliver a series of shocking moments, and the plot had to be stretched pretty thin to cover them all. I guess you can patch it up with flashbacks, but the end result lacks the polish and precision of, say, 'Akiba Maid War'.

Typically, to deliver a shocking moment, you put a normal person in an extreme situation. There are essentially no normal people in 'Chainsaw Man': innocent bystanders barely exist; ordinary emotions barely register. It can be intense, but without that normal baseline, it's difficult to know how to feel about strange anti-heroes fighting equally strange villains. It's certainly dark: darkness takes centre stage, in Hot Topic eyeliner. Characters obsess over death and revenge; get drunk or go insane; kill brutally and die horribly. Again, it can be intense — more so if we knew them better, but that takes time and restraint. You can't ask me to care about someone you've already blown up, no matter how big the explosion.

Flashbacks are not actually a substitute for proper pacing and structure. If you want to introduce a major threat, consider foreshadowing it. Change the source material if you have to: there's no law against it. Imagine if, say, the work relationship between Aki and Himeno developed in parallel with Denji's origin story; it might highlight the difference in the characters' motivations. The first eight episodes could have been stretched to a full twelve, with a little extra world-building along the way: it was really at its best in the mid-season as a monster-of-the-week workplace action romantic comedy. As it is, Himeno, a fine character, is given too little attention; with enough flashbacks, we do learn quite a bit about Aki; Power's comedy is always welcome, and Kobeni's too. Unfortunately, the protagonist is Denji, a shiftless idiot defined by his lack of both depth and agency. Denji works fine as a joke; as the show's main character, he fails to drive the story forward.

All art is dedicated to joy, said Schiller, who invented dark, and I wish there were more joy in 'Chainsaw Man'. Is a beach episode too much to ask for? What I mean is, I've seen joyless, nihilistic subversions of the superhero genre, and other genres, many times. I know you can kill people with a chainsaw. Maybe next season we'll find out why that matters.

'Ninja Ittoki' is an action show about teenage ninjas in robot suits, and it's surprisingly frustrating because it comes so close, in so many ways, to being a pretty good show. Basic character growth, little world-building details, a willingness to take risks, fight scenes that matter, occasional comedy to lighten the mood, a plot that wraps up in a timely manner: a lot of it only sort of works, some of the time, but its heart is definitely in the right place.

The early episodes are problematic. Simply put, if I can't understand how the characters feel, I can't get invested: like a ninja after dropping ... a smoke bomb, suspension of disbelief is nowhere to be found. A character makes a strange choice: am I supposed to be surprised by that, or am I putting more thought into this than the writers did? The surface-level content is generally fine: there's no plot hole. We're just missing the underlying motivation.

The rest of the season is much improved, like an intensive care patient making steady progress toward a full recovery. Weaknesses remain: the villains are never especially well motivated, and I would have liked to see more emphasis on Ittoki's training and less on his fancy robot suit. Still, I must admit, by committing so hard to taking itself so seriously, 'Ninja Ittoki' eventually wins on sincerity, and the final episodes are downright exciting.

If you want to see teenagers fight with knives in robot suits or something, and you also want a show with a heart and a brain, 'Ninja Ittoki' sort of works, more or less. There are certainly better options, like rewatching 'Future Diary', 'No Game No Life', or 'Chivalry of a Failed Knight'. On the other hand, to my surprise, I think I would watch 'Ninja Ittoki' stumble through another twelve awkwardly sincere episodes of knife-fighting ninja friends.