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I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's not easy to balance tones of an SoL with four boys living together in the same house getting up to all kinds of shenanigans with the emotional weight of their lost parents, but the show manages it pretty well all things considered. It might get just a little too light-hearted at times, but when it downshifts, you're going to feel the water works coming on. The neighbors as well were a good complement to everything happening on screen, with, in particular, Uta rising to the top.

Everyone gets at least some moments to shine, so none of the characters feel ... tacked on, even if some end up outshining the others. In particular, we spent a lot of time on Minako and Mikoto, who both get very well fleshed out, though I wish we'd gotten to more insight into Hayato, the boy who spent the most time with his parents and feels the greatest weight of expectation. It also could have filled us in more on the parents, who have personalities, but lack any real character depth due to a lack of screen presence.

I think this series is at its absolute best when its showcasing what it can do with animation, whether that's transitioning to a much more clearly drawn style with exaggerated motions or literally having our characters running through real streets in a scene that had me laughing. I wish we could have gotten more of these inventive scenes, but the ones that were in here popped all the more as a result.

I can see some room for improvement, but most of that could be solved with a S2 that, unfortunately, it's unlikely to get. Still, this was a lovely experience.

I don't do mid-season reviews, but sometimes you run into a series you just can't finish and this is one of those times. Seven episodes was too many.

This is painful. I'm a big fan of the manga and I remember some of these scenes well. They stood out in the manga for just how hype and fast-paced they were. Now... they're just drained of everything. The pacing is weird, the shots range from bad to OK, and even when things do look pretty decent, I just can't help feeling like I'd rather just re-read these chapters. It would be one thing if they could manage ... decent CGI and compositing, but they can't, and so much of the actual 2D animation remains just keyframes. Considering how pivotal these events are supposed to be and the investment we're supposed to have in these characters, my lack of interest is just making watching this week after week feel like a chore. It's a shame to watch a series this strong get so poorly adapted.

I'm not quite sure what I think of this show in the end. I think it came together more clearly as it went along, and I certainly appreciated it more because I watched it together with a couple of other people and we could fill in gaps in each other's understanding of the show as it was going. I don't mind having a show that is difficult to follow, but a lot of this show was particularly opaque for much of its run; it wasn't just a "show don't tell" strategy, but a "show and guess" setup at times. I liked solving the mysteries this ... show had to offer, but some - particularly Ran and Kano - remain pretty difficult to parse. It didn't help that the person we were following throughout, Ichise, had some pretty wild swings in his characterization. I did enjoy Shinji, Keigo and especially Yoshi early on, dude really set the tone for the series in expert fashion.

I think the messages it has about humanity and our attempts to prolong our lives are probably the strongest aspects of its themes. It does leave you with some small sense of hope that something will come out of all this, but this is laid out as the end of a set of cycles, a winding down of a humanity that has given up, and a return to something more primal (the roots digging into the ground) from a technological marvel (the texhnolyzing and raffia), all with the aim of creating something new and, perhaps someday, ascending consciousness beyond the physical as Kano and possibly Ran did.

In the end, I found a lot more to appreciate in this series than I found to enjoy. Maybe that's just me not jiving with how it was told with the scattered exposition in the latter half filling in some of the worldbuilding to various extents. Still a worthwhile experience.

I read the one-shot, loved it, and hoped for an anime adaptation. And, boy oh boy, we got one.

This is an excellent movie on so many levels. The visuals really deliver, particularly in the scene where Fujimo expresses her joy by walking, speed walking, skipping, dancing and running through the rain, as well as every transition between past, present, and alternate reality as the door functions as a sort of portal between them all, whether just in the minds of its characters or in reality. The music is a beautiful accompaniment and does wonders to elevate the scenes. The characters are just as good, very ... expressive and clear in their aims and feelings. Of course, there are only really two characters in this, with most of the others functioning as one-off background characters meant to pull Fujimo in other directions.

And that's not a problem. I don't need a huge cast for a small, self-contained movie like this. It's not the cast that I feel is missing a step, but rather the characterization. I'm very fond of how both this movie and the one-shot focused on this particular time period in their lives and didn't stray from it with unnecessary delves into their past, but it does make some of their characterization feel like it's just there to serve the plot. Kyomoto is a shut-in for reasons that are never expressed, and while that still very much works, it makes it harder to understand and empathize with her early on. It also makes her transition into the world outside of her home feel less powerful than it could have.

Still, I don't know if the story could have been done with that kind of context without screwing with the pacing. As it was, Fujimoto's work is impossible to adapt in a way that captures the way his manga panels are laid out and how they push readers into a very deliberate and effective means of pacing out the story. It's the one aspect on which this adaptation cannot hope to stack up, but it does its damnedest and still comes out the stronger for it. This movie is still a must-watch.

At this point in the series, much as I've loved the hype matches (and yes, I know more are coming), this is the one I waited to see chiefly for the character moments. Over the course of this series, Karasuno has been the MC team of the series, but if there was a secondary team, it's Nekoma. We know the players on both teams well at this point, and more importantly, the players know each other well. This isn't just a rivalry between two characters or one of these teams proving themselves against a powerhouse opponent. I'm very fond of those as well, but they ... rely on big moments and action set-pieces to thrive.

This movie is a different story. These teams played multiple times over the course of the series (mainly in scrimmages), creating strong ties between multiple characters on both sides. There is also a long-running history of these two engaging in this kind of match on the national stage. But it's less about these broader elements and more about the personal ones. These guys devolve into laughter over the course of the match multiple times, finding a joy in this that went beyond just the drive to succeed. It's telling that the final point scored doesn't even register as the ending because they're (or maybe just Hinata's) focused more on the next step than watching the scoreboard.

But, at base, this is the culmination of a character journey from Nekoma's Kenma. He's not the only character in this series who starts with a lack of drive and develops it, but his desperation to hold onto each moment later in the match is particularly striking. I never thought one of the scenes I'd best remember was just a slow pan from his perspective around a frozen moment from a previous scrimmage.

This isn't my favorite Haikyuu entry. It's got some excellent animation in certain scenes, but there's less hype to this one and less of a focus on big moments, particularly as we get later into the game. The character moments cover for much of that, and I still loved the experience in the end, despite it leaving out some of the better character moments from the manga.

I can see why the series is so highly rated. The music and relationships were the big high points for the series, and episode 7 in particular absolutely soared. A lot of the subtle communication and effective romance that I love are at least present on some level here, even if it doesn't quite deliver as strongly in the end (I'll hand it to the series for not giving us a clean happily ever after, but I find it hard to believe that Riko and Richie just never communicated after that heartfelt train scene, and I felt that Sen's exit from the plot was a ... bit forced, even if their reunion was on point). It's a series that makes me want to see follow-up OVAs that fill in more of the time skips in the story, or maybe just read the highly rated manga. Generally speaking, my only substantial quibble is that they did jump around quite a bit, which made parts of the story feel rushed even when it acknowledged a lot of time was passing. Still, those end up feeling small compared to the heights this series soared to.

Gundam, especially in the UC timeline, has been very hit or miss for me. Some of its entries are among my favorites, others are baffling misfires, and there's a whole lot of mid.

So, how about this one?

I'll get the obvious out of the way first: the CGI is mostly good to great. Its mobile suit fights look solid and, especially as it gets later in the series, there's a sense of weight to the fights. I don't think it does ground-level views quite as well as previous entries (the gold standard so far is Hathaway), but there's a grit to this and a sense of ... rawness that most of the other series don't really convey. This feels like a real war, even with all the giant robots in the thick of it. Where it falls on its face a bit is... well, in the faces. The humans, aside from a couple of the bigger characters, do not look great and we see an awful lot of them so it's a difficult flaw to ignore. Still, I think this show nails enough of the CGI where it counts, and looms large as a result, particularly for the Gundam which does come off as horrific at times.

Everything else is largely fine to good. There's not a lot to the narrative, which I actually appreciate. So much of Gundam is told as grand epics with massive galaxy-spanning wars and grand plans. This is grounded and very localized. It's not perfect in that regard, since the series can't help but insert two Newtypes, but it also doesn't go too far on their powers (unlike many entries I could mention) and, with one exception, doesn't give them substantial plot armor. That being said, the simpler plot does mean there's not a lot to really elevate it. I've seen this kind of plot in war films and it's pretty common and basic. It's nice to see it under the Gundam banner, but it's not going to elevate it much.

The characters land more in the fine category. Beyond Iria who gets a particularly affecting dream sequence in the final episode (also some of the best animation in the series) and goes through an arc that is relatively well-worn in Gundam without feeling overly tropey, most of the characters just aren't all that interesting. A couple give signs of it, but it's telling that they don't really have arcs in this series. They're other soldiers on the battlefield who are working towards the singular aim of getting home. Yuri Kellerne shows up for a cameo straight out of 08th team where he feels like he stepped out of a different universe with his open shirt and extra haircut (and yes, I realize that show is probably more akin to this than most Gundam UC series, but dude still looks so out of place).

One more substantial gripe: the series doesn't lend some real humanity to both sides of the conflict, something other Gundam series manage much more effectively. In a sense, it does do that with regards to the Gundam pilot, but we barely get to know that person and most of the EFF forces in this are just faces without any personality whatsoever. They're just enemies. I get that that's part of the point, for Iria to try and connect too late, but it also just makes some of the losses feel weak, particularly for a character who has seen so much of the battlefield and lost so many people close to her. The ending is pretty decent, but it fell flat emotionally for me partly for this reason. The show clearly wants to have its cake and eat it too, garnering both the terror of the faceless Gundam and, eventually, the empathy for the person piloting it. The former works, the latter not so much.

Still, it's not a bad show, just one with a mix of workable and throw-away elements that comes together more often than it flails. I enjoyed the watch well enough, though I don't think I'll be coming back to it because it's just not memorable for anything beyond its solid visuals.

So much joy packed into 24 minutes. I was grinning ear to ear throughout.

It shouldn't be hard to believe that One Piece can grace us with a one-off special that hits this hard, but it still blew me away. The fanservice was perfectly timed and didn't overstay its welcome, the perspective shifts were awesome and recontextualized a lot of what happened during two pivotal arcs without changing them, the new characters were a joy to watch, and yes, the animation was incredible (checks the team behind it... oh yeah, no wonder - same director behind Where the Wind Blows and instrumental in OP26).

Other studios ... and directors, take notes: this is how you do it.

Yep, this was certainly... a show that happened.

The first episode was great, which makes this one particularly hard to rate because it's a balance of that with just how far it spiraled down in the next few episodes. Maybe... maybe that was the point? To make the audience feel like they're spiraling as well? If so, kudos to the showrunners: you did it.

I'm sure plenty of reviews will talk about the visual quality, which took a nosedive after episode 1. This was a fraught product in development and it shows, with the budget for this thing nearly drying up after that first episode. It's ... too bad because you can really see the commitment to visual fidelity side-by-side with what it looks like when a studio phones it in, and the jank is absolutely real.

But it's not just the visuals that bring this thing down. The team behind this knows how to emphasize the creepiness, but don't seem capable of showcasing the horror. The storytelling and presentation made some of these scenes outright goofy. I laughed outright several times at scenes that were supposed to evoke dread. None of that is helped by the series' need to keep moving to the next element, which meant that, even if a scene worked for me, it was left behind almost immediately and no one talked about it anymore. I've heard that that gets explained in the manga, but here, it just looks like even the series just doesn't care about most of what it sets up.

It's not all bad, though without episode 1 to bring up the average, this would be significantly worse. I went into it thinking four episodes was not enough. I left thinking it was too many.

It's just what it says on the tin: great.

I watched this show a short time after watching Golden Boy. I'm not going to be comparing to that show, but it had a similar vibe to it, and I think in many ways this is a broader realization of the ideas of Golden Boy.

In many ways, this show probably shouldn't work. When your premise is that Onizuka is becoming a teacher to perv on high school girls... yeah, it's not the best, especially since he doesn't really drop that throughout the story. Hell, a substantial arc in this story involves Onizuka getting one of his students ... work as a model using some very revealing outfits to display her ample... assets.

But that's also kind of the point. Onizuka is a good person at heart, even if it's hard to see at times (like, a lot of times), but he also doesn't give two shits about the methods he uses to achieve his aims. He's willing to do things that would absolutely get other teachers fired in order to deliver a message to individual students (or small groups, depending on the arc). That sometimes involves skirting the law, giving up his and others' worldly possessions (RIP so many Crestas) and even potentially losing his life. He puts his students first and foremost, especially and strangely when he's pursuing something for himself.

And his students respond in kind. Even students who are outright hostile to him to start are slowly won over, and while it almost seems formulaic, the series never falls into a clean rhythm. There's always some new wrinkle to address, and while Onizuka is often abnormally confident, he's also just so human in how he deals with repeated threats of firing and imprisonment. The students themselves require very different forms of intervention, some of which Onizuka does actively, and some of which is just a consequence of a series of actions that include Onizuka, but all of them showcase why he's the man for the job.

Really, though, what makes this show is the humor. Yes, all the memeable moments are impressive, and Onizuka especially knows how to make me crack a smile, but this is one category I have to give to the antagonist that is the Vice Principle. Dude is a laugh riot despite being introduced as a terrible human being. All those poor Crestas...

It's a show that revels in the mess that is its characters, and while I couldn't appreciate everything the show did, it did more than enough to earn its classic status.