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Feb 22, 2025
I don't often go back and substantially change my initial impression of a show, but there are bound to be exceptions to what I'd normally consider the rule, and that can happen when the sequel season is damn near perfect.
I walked away from this season with the view that it had an excellent idea at its core, an isekai that was doing something distinct and interesting with its world and powers, that went pretty hard in the animation department, and had an emotional journey at its center. Unfortunately, that journey centered on Subaru, a character who I have since grown to love but found absolutely
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insufferable for much of this first season. Before you ask, no, that frustration does not stem from him misusing Return By Death (people who say he should have been using it as a reset button are being a little much - dude has to experience death each and every time). It also came off as very edgy, an opportunity to watch Subaru die in a myriad of new and impressive ways that felt like they were all trying to one-up each other.
But then... the show just didn't leave my mind. I credit that in part to finding a number of YouTube personalities who were extolling the greatness of this series, which certainly reframed my understanding of it, but a lot of what changed my mind was my own perception of Subaru through season 2.
I'm not going to go into spoilers here, but it's not a stretch to say that Subaru embodies many of the tendencies we might expect for an otaku who finds themselves in another world. It's not the same flavor of ick as Rubeus from Mushoku Tensei, but in some ways, it's more painful to watch. Subaru is very much in his element being transported to a fantasy world, but also extremely unprepared for the role he chooses to take on in that world, as well as the ones that are foisted upon him by various circumstances. He does adapt... eventually. It takes a certain episode to do most of the psychological and emotional work (and yes, From Zero is easily the best episode of the season, I love it dearly) leading Subaru to take control in a way he's never had the capacity to throughout the rest of the series. It's earned, but it does come a little late to right the ship, so it took another season to bring me on board fully with him.
And that's why coming back to this series to review it is so interesting. Subaru has since become one of my favorite characters in anime, part of a subset of my favorites that are chiefly due to incredible character development (think Thorfinn from Vinland Saga and Shigeo from Mob Psycho 100), and that character journey is only so impactful because we saw him at his lowest in S1. Subaru represents what an unfortunate number of us (I might have been included in that not too long ago) would do and expect if something like this ever happened. He came in as a hikikomori, withdrawn from the world around him in many ways but not entirely socially isolated, and wanted to live out a fantastical rebirth in a new world only to find that the tendencies and mindset he had from his other world didn't go away. He was still that person, and all he could do was start, with a little help, from zero.
There's a strength in that willingness to tear away all the aspects of yourself that hold you back and rebuild. I didn't see it when I watched this show for the first time, but I see it now. It's a beautiful thing, and while there are elements of this season that hold it back from absolute greatness, even the best of its fights is a pale comparison to the internal struggle Subaru fights throughout, and I've garnered a much stronger appreciation for both that and the people around him who help him fight it over subsequent seasons.
This show is popular for a reason, and it all started from zero.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 9, 2025
Re:Zero is such an oddity among my favorite anime. It's the only isekai I'd rate high enough to put it among my all-time favorites, and that's despite initially feeling a little tepid on S1 (my score on it has come up since then). It's one of the few instances where I really didn't like its main character at the outset, but he so thoroughly impressed me with his character arc that he became one of my favorite characters. Couple that with spending a lot of time frustrated by how this series sets up and delivers on its romance, and having to be carried by a
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couple of side characters, its central gimmick of Return By Death and some admittedly pretty awesome action, and it's hard to even remember what really hooked me in the first place...
...oh, that's right. This half season is damn near perfect.
Starting from the gut punch that was Rem's encounter with the Archbishop of Gluttony and excision from most of the plot, particularly after the excellence that was From Zero, certainly set a tone. It probably wouldn't have worked if the series continued to lean into its romantic elements, but instead, the series places more of a burden on Subaru. He grew over the course of Season 1, but he did so in large part because of the people around him, Rem in particular. Despite having allies around him, he is comparatively more isolated than he has ever been from early on in this story, and it only gets worse from here.
But the season isn't going to just send us spiraling downward into despair, at least not yet. Parent and Child is an absolute master class of an episode, the perfect demonstration of Subaru's growth as a character up to this point in the form of a test. Isekai can get creative every now and then, and the idea of having a character return to their original world, even if it's just through an illusion, and reconcile with the family they left behind is one of my favorites. It's one of those choices that's made all the more effective because of who is doing it: Subaru would never have had the kind of conversations he did with his parents before being isekai'd, not as he was anyway, so this "test" ends up giving him some much needed closure. And that would be amazing in and of itself, but there's so much I love about Subaru's parents, the sides of him that they represent, their acceptance and love of him, and their words of wisdom for him. I cannot think of another set of parents I love more in anime, and these two reached that level in a single episode. This rates as one of my favorite episodes in television, period.
That would, however, not be enough to elevate the season to a 10 on its own. If this episode didn't dovetail so well with the rest of the season, it wouldn't be rated this high. Subaru isn't done facing trials this season, and from here on out, they run him through the gamut of physical and psychological horror. Learning of Beatrice's trial is a start, the conflict at the mansion more insurmountable than ever, and his run-in with the Great Rabbit is somehow even more disturbing to read than it is to watch, but if we're talking real darkness, this series takes 3 major turns that chilled me to the core.
First, the second trial. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with a statement like "see the unimaginable present," but Subaru's experience of this trial only makes his return by death ability all the more messed up. Dude has to experience the "present" that occurred immediately after every one of his deaths in rapid succession. It would be one thing if this was just an illusion and Subaru could just mentally divorce himself from it, but he lived these lives, knows these people intimately by now, and the experience isn't just unsettling. It's possible, even plausible, that Subaru is experiencing the actual lives of people in the many worlds he has left behind, gaining insight into a multiverse of worlds created by his life coming to an end and him hitting the reset button. Just being faced with that possibility, let alone seeing each instance of it coming to fruition and watching those either doomed to unknown dark fates or simply left bereft in his absence, is more than enough to break him and another example of how well this series handles its central gimmick.
Second, the witches. Echidna in particular is the stand-out this season, functioning both as a lifeline in Subaru's desperation (as the first person who he can tell about his ability to return by death - that scene of him repeating it over and over to her is powerful), as someone who rescues him from nearly losing his mind to the second trial, and as someone whose goals for him are decidedly more... devious. I love the slow build-up of her as a villain, and the reveal during her Tea Party of her actual motivations - to throw dead Subarus at problems until she finds the optimal path forward - is brutal given how much trust she had fostered in Subaru up to that point. She presents a form of love that is utterly beyond him, one he cannot fathom, let alone reciprocate. And each of the witches does this in part themselves, fostering a different perspective on love and what it should mean for Subaru. Getting to meet Satella and see the depths of her love love love love love love is particularly creepy, but the fact that they end up pushing Subaru to love himself is an unexpected treat that shapes a lot of his actions going forward.
Third, Roswaal. His role in the plot of this series is particularly insidious, functioning as a father figure of sorts to Subaru and one who helps guide a lot of his actions going forward. Season 1 gave no hints towards a greater purpose for him in the story, and given how essential he is to Subaru's survival and the safety of those around him, Roswaal engenders a lot of trust. Yet, at the end of the season, he betrays it all, revealing that he's been the source of the threats against those Subaru loves all along, the means by which Subaru has suffered so much of his physical and psychological torment, forcing him to choose what to protect when he cannot in an effort to break Subaru. It's a betrayal on a different scale than Echidna's, and one that beats him down far more as a result.
And neither Echidna nor Roswaal would be quite so effective if they didn't all come back to that amazing episode Parent and Child, both functioning as funhouse mirror distorted reflections of his parents. Each of them technically does want the best for him... in their very twisted ways. Echidna wants to create the best path forward by micromanaging each of his actions and guiding him to what she believes is the best possible future, very much the opposite of his mother who refused to make choices for Subaru and gave him room to make mistakes. Roswaal wanted to twist him up to look similar to himself, someone who had suffered loss and would be willing to make hard choices to push forward, very much the opposite of his father who wanted Subaru to avoid trying to emulate him too much, allowing his own personality to shine through.
Yes, I've gone on for a while and could continue this for still longer. There's a reason this season is among my favorite seasons of any anime, and frankly, even other seasons of Re:Zero simply cannot compare. It's the kind of fantastic experience I wish I could take in fresh again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 2, 2025
It's kind of hard to place this one. It exists at a strange nexus point between prequel/backstory and continuation from S2 and the apparent death of Cheng, meant to serve both purposes in the span of 6 episodes. That's a lot to handle, even with an extended premier, and I think it becomes pretty clear that the series struggles to manage that balance even when it's doing certain things well.
If anything stuck out to me as particularly effective, it was watching Lu Guang throughout. The show kept reminding us that what he was doing was unprecedented, not just trying to live his past with Cheng,
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but actively trying to change it to save his life later. That requires Lu Guang to break multiple self-imposed taboos that we've spent the last two seasons learning are carved in stone for a reason: the 12 hour time limit of visiting a photo (vastly extended) and the active if largely subtle effort to ensure that Cheng's life is saved in the future. The slow toll both of those efforts take on Lu Guang is obvious throughout, as is the tension in the scenes where he finds himself face to face with Vein and Liu Xiao.
The background also works decently well, filling in some gaps in the story as Lu Guang tries to relive events mostly as they happened. It's nice to see how much reliving these moments means to him, and there are some excellent moments that give us a lot of insight into how he feels going through all this again. There are a lot of little subtle touches on both these fronts that I would love to rewatch this to reexperience.
Where I think this season flounders is in its broader strokes. It spends a lot of time in these character moments and really takes its time moving the plot forward, only to go screaming ahead at certain points, particularly near the end. The pacing could definitely have used some work here, and while the second season also suffered from this in its own way, this one just seems to be of two minds about it as it tries to cover both sides of its material. To be fair, it still manages both pretty well, but it spends less time soaring than I'd like. None of that is helped by the introduction of new types of powers that appear, particularly in the final episode (everything involving Cheng's mother took a couple of watches to figure out and I still don't have it all down), leaving us with a confrontation that had me playing it back to find out what happened and still not being entirely sure, which was then capped off by a cliffhanger that is also pretty baffling.
In short, I like this season in its subtler elements, but not so much in its bigger, bombastic shifts. It's a nice change of pace from the first two seasons and an introduction to the next season that I'm sure will be worth the wait, but it falls short of what came before via some puzzling choices with regards to its pacing, power usage and surprises.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 1, 2025
These last four episodes are certainly a better capstone on the series than the end to the season was. There was a real sense of closure for many of these characters and, perhaps more importantly, for the central plot. The concept of the world dying and then being reborn with many of the same people being brought back (probably without their memories) is pretty good, and it might actually answer one of the questions I had: why would wolves just forget they're wolves? Maybe it's because they were reborn like this. I also think the ending visually strong and hit a lot of great notes.
The
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story unfortunately started to feel like the writer was playing too much of a role in the plot. I think the series had time to introduce elements earlier like the Tree of All Seeds, the First Mountain, the stone Darcia carried, and so on... or, you know, just not really use any of them. I wouldn't have had a huge problem with Cheza just opening up her path of lunar flowers, them following it to the end, and Kiba and her just opening the way to Paradise. They seeded that early and I didn't feel the need for any of this other stuff to be in here. Maybe the point was to involve more of Darcia and his family history in this, but it felt convoluted and unnecessary. I kind of liked Darcia as an antagonist, but he was also kind of baffling. I don't think it was ever clear after Homona died why he wanted to get to Paradise, yet he was driven there. Maybe it had something to do with the wolf eye he had, which seems to have some power of its own, but that never got explained and his madness in the end just felt kind of off. We also never learn what the whole deal was with the Nobles in the first place or why they came to this planet, so both sides of his remain enigmatic. I still struggle to have much buy-in to all this, even if I kind of end up jiving with the simpler elements of the plot.
It doesn't help that we're left with a lot of questions in the end about how things even ended up here. Whereas the end of the season kind of just left me with a box of unknowns, this one gives me a litany of things that don't make much sense given what we now know. Paradise isn't a location, it's literally the rebirth of the world... but the Nobles sent everyone to an alternate dimension that was a fake Paradise, and everyone seemed to believe it was another location where supernatural wolves live, so were they all just wrong? Was the lunar flower so important for coming out of the ice age that it had to happen this particular way? Why couldn't the world have been reborn without it? Where did the aliens go and why? What was this curse of Darcia's grandfather and where did he go if not to this other dimension? I don't want to nitpick but these were big plot elements that the series just didn't seem to care about at the end.
The series still had the things I loved from the first season and then some. The music is still excellent, the visuals even better, and that sense of closure means a lot to many of these characters, even if it feels like some of them are rushed out the door. It's just a shame that neither ending really satisfies me, with each being frustrating in different ways. The journey to get there still works, but not as well as it should given all this build-up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 1, 2025
This is a series I really wanted to love, and it certainly had the ingredients for me to love it, but due to a variety of issues with its narrative, I ended up just liking it enough to give it a recommendation.
So I'll start with the positives first. This series absolutely thrives on 3 elements: its soundtrack, its visuals and world, and some of its characters.
The soundtrack might just be the best I've heard in ages. Yoko Kanno has set a high standard in many of her shows and movies, and while I still think Cowboy Bebop is her gold standard, this isn't far off
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and joins the likes of Macross Frontier, Terror in Resonance, and Darker than Black as some seriously slept on tracks (yeah, I know Record of Lodoss War also goes hard, haven't gotten to it yet). If I was rating on music alone, this would be in my hall of fame with tracks that lend scenes exceptional gravity and truly make the emotional elements pop.
Pair that with some intensely powerful visuals and backdrops and this series just continues to wow, even if the OVA outstrips it slightly in terms of iconic moments. There's just so much to love about how this world is set up, and even though we don't get all the details, it's a detailed combination of so many things I love about post-apocalyptic environments. It evokes a lot of what I liked about Casshern Sins, Trigun and Metallic Rouge and while that represents a broad range of opinions from me and the community at large, in this case, it's all positive. This is what worked in all those series and it works well here.
And then there are the characters. I don't think this series would rate so highly with me if not for Hubb, Cher and Quint, all of whom are just exceptionally well-written. I'll go ahead and spoil it now: I'm not particularly into the wolfpack at the center of this story or their main antagonists, but this group of 3 has all the best banter in the story, some of the best relationships and remains the emotional core of the narrative throughout.
Quint's particularly interesting, driven by a hatred for wolves and the sorrow for his lost family while toting around a half-wolf he sees as his only remaining family. If all he was was vengeance personified, that would not be enough, but he has some of the genuinely funniest interactions with Hubb over the course of the series and often functions in ways that make events very unpredictable.
Hubb and Cher go together, so I'll talk about them that way. We rarely see this kind of complex relationship from a divorced couple in anime - I'm honestly struggling to think of one like this beyond Ryuzo and Fusa from Xam'd, and they are lowkey among my favorite couples in anime. I can't say Hubb and Cher's relationship is quite as deep (though it's nice to see the friction between them early on, something a divorced couple would most certainly display), but they have more going on individually for much of the run. Hubb just works as hard-boiled detective who is spending a lot of the series run searching for his wife and feels genuine. Cher is a little more mixed of a character, with Cher's drive to understand Paradise and the lunar flower being kind of just an element of her character rather than one that gets much exploration, and yes, I know she gets more depth as she learns more about Cheza and the wolves, but a lot of her characterization pre-plot still feels half-baked. Still, as Cher's understanding of Cheza and the wolves deepened, she became a much more investing participant in the plot and the one who often helped connect essential plot details.
As for the rest of the series, it unfortunately ranges from decent to frustrating, particularly when it comes to the narrative.
Other characters just aren't as investing as these three.
The antagonists largely come down to three Nobles, including Orcam - who basically isn't a character and dies due to the machinations of Jaguara - Darcia who is pretty interesting but largely enigmatic and largely is present to shake things up at opportune moments, and Jaguara, whose role in the plot seems largely to act as a last minute villain who has history with Darcia that just gets exposited at us. The idea of the Nobles as aliens is an interesting one and I think something could have come from these characters, but for the most part, their value to the plot is enigmatic schemes played out in proxy battles.
The main protagonists are better, but not particularly investing. Kiba remains kind of a black box to the end beyond the role he has to fulfill. We eventually learn his background, but it doesn't give us much insight into him. He's mainly just a classic impulsive protagonist, and the rest of the wolfpack largely fulfills tropes as well: Tsume, the loner with a past that explains his distance from others who comes to see them as a pack; Toboe, a more timid ally who eventually learns to fight for himself (against a giant ancient walrus for some reason); and Hige, the one with a troubled past who seems to have something going on and draws attention while trying to form bonds. That's all a little basic, they have more to them (particularly Hige), but none of them are very interesting. Cheza's kind of interesting and I like the little elements of her backstory we get, but she's also less a character and more a vehicle required to make the plot happen (she even seems to acknowledge that), so it's not easy to get invested in her as a character.
And finally, that narrative. There was a lot going on in here and the search for lunar flowers and the path to Paradise was interesting if nothing else, but it never invested me. Everyone felt too distant from the desire to find Paradise, yet it became the all-encompassing thing they were searching for. Especially after Darcia lost Homona, it's unclear why he even cares about Paradise anymore, and Jaguara doesn't really have a reason to be there beyond just wanting to be alone with Darcia. The wolves all seem driven to go to Paradise, but there's never a clear reason why. The world itself seems to drive them towards it with a lot of lore about the need to go to Paradise, and while some theories are espoused as to why, it's mostly nebulous as well.
None of this is helped by a plot that just seems to end abruptly. I get that the OVA continues it, so this is necessarily a preliminary review, but they don't get to Paradise. All they find is a Noble's version of Paradise, one that is clearly false, and then they leave it. There's no payoff on the central plot of this series, leaving a lot of plot threads dangling, and even the reasons why the protagonists win are kind of just thrown out there in the end.
I'm willing to give it some benefit of the doubt, and I'm more of a journey over destination guy these days anyway, but the production issues this season that led to 4 back-to-back recap episodes that did almost nothing of worth only to lead us to a pseudo-ending here do not do the series any favors. It's a testament to how much I liked other facets of this series that I still recommend it, though the narrative isn't bad... it's just abruptly cut off and kinda nebulous, which dulls its impact.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 27, 2025
There's a set of anime that exists that are meant to pull at your heartstrings and, let's face it, will either live or die on that hill. That leads to a wide variety of opinions on shows like Your Lie in April, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day and Clannad. Throw everything Makoto Shinkai in there, maybe some Violet Evergarden, and you've got a lot of the commonly referenced series that fit into the "sad romance that will divide fans of the basis of how well they jive with it" subgenre. And yeah, my mileage varies with the series/movies above that I've seen. They
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don't always hit for me, particularly when the tears they try to wring out of you feel manufactured, but they all wring tears out of me.
So, how did A Silent Voice work for me? Honestly, it exceeds even the best of these, and that's despite a couple of these being among my favorites. There's excellence and then there's this movie.
I'll start with the basics. This movie is gorgeous. The animation is just beautiful and particularly whenever it's going full bore on the sakuga, especially underwater, this movie just soars in its visuals. The particular standout among its visuals is the choice to depict Shoya's inability to look at others using the "X" symbols over their faces. That sense that he feels so ostracized, so awful for what he's done, that he doesn't even deserve to connect with people on that basic level is excellent as a show, don't tell method of showcasing his mindset after his childhood, and that sense of alienation comes through in full. His focus on body language, which becomes the only way he really knows how others around him are feeling since he cannot look them in the eye, even becomes the basis of his reforged connection to Shoko, who, as a deaf person, literally bases her language in her body movement. And cementing this as one of my favorite cinematographic choices in any show, the camera actually cuts Shoya's face out of the frame for many conversations, furthering that sense of separation between him and the others he's speaking to.
Then there's the way this movie plays with sound. I know scant little about music theory, but perspective in a story is everything to me. It's part of the reason why Frieren hit me on so many levels: it's a distillation of so many perspectives done in a way that beautifully weaves itself into the narrative. A Silent Voice is more intimate in how it portrays perspective, but it does so on so many levels. It's not just the visuals or the subtle gestures, it's woven into its music as well. Yes, the use of My Generation really frames the attitude of the early movie well, but where its musical choices become genius are when it becomes so much simpler... or, at least, it seems to be. If you have the time, boot up the song Ivs when you get a chance. Kensuke Ushio made some very interesting choices with this song and it sounds kind of... off. The whole thing sounds muffled, and that's by design: it was recorded inside of a piano. That symbolizing of Shouko's experience, the ambient, unintelligible sounds of the world around her that she can barely hear even with her hearing aids, just keeps playing in my head. And the movie plays with silence as well, but also in a unique way: with a single piano note. It highlights the absence of sound around it in a way that absolute silence would not. I've never had a single note resonate so deeply with me, but it cut me to my core by the end of the movie.
And yes, there is the narrative. I won't pretend I'm not a crier. I'm 38 years old and I still devolve into tears on the regular. When an anime hits me squarely in the feels, it rocks me to my core. The last time this happened was when I was watching Fruits Basket Prelude, and while I won't spoil the scene, I'll say that I watched this a few short days after a friend of mine committed suicide and I lost it watching this. A Silent Voice had me like that multiple times. I won't spoil the specific incidences (if you know, you know), but part of what made it so effective was that, much like the characters themselves, I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride. This movie has such incredible highs and watching Shoya and Shouko's journeys through it made my heart soar and drove a knife through my gut in equal measure. It's a story of bullying that enraged me, one of alienation that I empathized with deeply, of crawling out of the pits of despair and falling back into them, of both external care and love and self-care and self-esteem.
It's a triumph a movie that somehow balances its themes without feeling overly rushed. And yes, I know there's more to this story from the manga, but I can't bring myself to nitpick this movie. It's so much of what I love about this medium, about what romance and slice of life can be, and it tells a realistic and devastating story that I just cannot help revisiting over and over again to this day. It's my favorite anime movie and one of my favorite movies of all time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 21, 2025
I struggle to describe what makes this series so special to me because it runs deeper than its content. I could go through it and describe what makes each episode effective at conveying something about the characters and their circumstances, I could go through the various arcs and explain why each of them hit. I could praise that beautiful animation and all the settings and excellent fight choreography, the still superb OP, ED and its incredible OST in general, the voice acting that continues to impress decades later, or just give a deep dive into what makes each character somehow more than the sum of
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their parts...
But I don't think that would do it justice because the whole series is more than these elements.
I watched this series when it aired on Toonami in 2001. I was 15 at the time. I definitely wasn't well-versed in anime, though I'd seen a fair few series up to that point, most of them Shonen, so I was looking for some epic fight scenes and space battles. And, this being Cowboy Bebop, I got a fair few of those, some of which remain among my favorite examples in anime or any genre.
And then I grew up with this series.
I rewatched certain episodes. I've never really committed to a full rewatch (though I really should), but I've run back over and through random episodes of this series. I've retraced arcs to follow each of these characters along their paths. Spike has long been among my favorite characters, though the reason for that has changed as I've grown to see him less as the debonair badass and more as a tragic character who couldn't leave the past behind him. I've learned to appreciate Faye as more than just a femme fatale who screws over the crew, seeing more in both her desperation to get out of debt and in her struggle to recapture her past. Jet's arc is probably the one I least understood on first watch, and the shift of his episodes into noir with a matching color palette as well as his difficulties dealing with corruption in the police force are something I can appreciate far more now. And then there are Ed and Ein, who... let's face it, I largely love for the same reasons I always did. They're not terribly complicated beyond some bits of their origin stories, and that's part of the beauty of them.
And yes, the plot meanders. The central plot involving Vicious is essential, but I would never suggest that anyone just skip the other episodes to get through this faster. All the side-tracks the story takes have their own points. Hell, arguably, they are the point. It's a story about people and a dog forming a found family of sorts and trying and largely failing to escape their pasts, but it's so much more than a short description could really cover. It's an Alien parody involving something disgusting and hyperactive in the fridge. It's a crazy fight with a balloon-like clown of a man with the mind of a toddler who might just be the most terrifying thing in the show. It's about an impromptu sprint up a building racing against another cowboy bounty hunter because you hate that he's stealing your thunder while ignoring the demolitions expert turned terrorist. It's about a mushroom-fueled drug trip, a chess game played against a dying master, an immortal child, and a space trucker. It's about syndicates, ecological terrorists and hard-boiled detectives. It's about love and revenge, death and revival, the past, the present and the future.
But most of all, it's about jazz, and that's not just in the music. It's about the rhythm of the show, the improvisation of its characters and plot, and yes, the emotions it elicits throughout. Whether the chords it plays are simple or complex, I vibe with it now more than ever.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 18, 2025
There's something magnetic about a true mad scientist, someone who is willing to do twisted and terrible things to their subjects (and even to themselves) and does it, truly, for the love of the game. These characters can easily come off as Nazi-esque, inflicting torture on the basis that they didn't see their subjects as humans worthy of consideration to achieve scientific advancements, but it's eerie and somehow more disturbing when the character does recognize and care for their subjects... or at least, they appear to do so.
Bondrewd is distinctive even among other mad scientists. I'm a big fan of Kurotsuchi Mayuri from Bleach who
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I would consider another quintessential anime mad scientist for a lot of reasons, but the two are cut from very different cloths. His interactions and history show a real affection for Prushka, so even knowing that he's responsible for everything that happened to Nanachi and Mitty, you get this sense that he has a special place for his adoptive daughter, and she believes it as well. Maybe that's just misplaced optimism, but she seems genuine in her trust of him.
But there's so much going on with this character that only becomes clear the longer you sit with him. For all that he seems to find wonder and excellence in so many of those around him, he wears a mask almost constantly, covering any actual expression of his humanity. His pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the abyss has resulted in the physical and emotional loss of his humanity, and what remains is pasted on like a parody of a human being barely covering the monster underneath, a monster he is all too quick to reveal when the chips are down...
...except even that seems wrong. Bondrewd doesn't come off to me as someone putting on a front or carefully orchestrating a guise. He's genuine in his love for his daughter, genuine in inviting Riko, Reg and Nanachi to stay with him, genuine in trying to recruit Nanachi back onto his research staff, and even genuine when he's actively trying to murder them. They're all him, but they're all just surface level. None of them go deep, and any associated concepts like morality and empathy that might play into these choices are absent. He really loved his daughter, and likely not just as a means to a gruesome end, but had not trouble pulling that trigger when the time came because his love for her meant nothing to him. For him, inviting them in and treating them like guests doesn't clash at all with dismembering and dissecting them. Nanachi's pain and torment from her time there shouldn't impede her willingness to rejoin him because it doesn't matter to him, so why should it bother her?
I discuss Bondrewd because he's central to my love of this movie. Sure, our central cast get moments to shine and there's plenty of dark and depressing moments including a berskerer fight scene from Reg that looks amazing, but this would not work with a standard villain, someone who was evil for the sake of it. It probably wouldn't work with someone who had relatable motivations, either. Bondrewd represents the twisted nature of the abyss in a way that characters up to now, even Ouzen, can't fully display. He's not just representative the lengths a scientist will go to in order to understand an alien and impossible place. He has become a thing of utility, sacrificing his very humanity on the altar of progress even when he's lost the capacity to understand why that progress truly matters. It's the kind of brilliant villain writing that I rarely see, and it makes this movie an incredible watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 12, 2025
Made in Abyss is hard for me to recommend. That's not because it lacks for quality - there's a reason this series is among my favorites - but rather because of the clear and obvious ick factors. This is a series that puts its young lead through hell, as well as many of the other kids around her. Torture, abuse, rape and experimentation is done on very young kids, and I've quit shows for doing far less before...
...so what makes Made in Abyss so special?
Maybe it's because it really leans into the darkness. There's a sense of forward progress and momentum from our leads, but
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that comes with a refusal to let them (or us) sit comfortably. The abyss itself only becomes more horrifying the more we learn about it. The creatures within are certainly dangerous, as are the various relics they find in its depths, but it's the Curse of the Abyss that that makes descending itself feel like insanity. Why would anyone willingly choose to subject themselves to it, knowing that every step they take down is going to be much harder or even impossible to take back up? Those effects are portrayed in horrifying detail through our lead, who spends so much of the early series feeling drawn to explore its depths and, especially given the excuse of finding her mother, plunges in head first knowing the costs full well.
If that's all the series did - mangle its characters in innovative ways on their doomed adventure - I don't think this series would have nearly the audience that it does. This would just be a physical horror show where you shout at the screen not to go in any further, to just go home.
...except there's a reason that Riko, specifically, is the one we're following on this mission. A reason that cuts to the core of what makes both the abyss itself, as well as the items, creatures and people in its depths, so terrifying. I'm going to avoid spoilers, but this is some of the best psychological horror I've seen in anime and far more brutal than the bloody mutilations we see.
That alone would be sufficient to elevate this series, but Riko and Reg aren't the only ones we explore. Nanachi, a strange rabbit girl with a mush-like friend in the form of Mitty has some of the most powerful moments of the season, and they connect with the existence of some of the most powerful and dangerous players in the abyss: the white whistles, a group of legendary and largely human delvers who have been twisted by their experiences to the point that they become largely inhuman. That can yield results like Ouzen, my personal best girl from the series who has had to transform herself but retains some of her humanity, or Bondrewd, a scientist whose willingness to subject himself and others to experiments have made him decidedly inhuman. Competing interests cause many of the interactions in this series to become tense and gripping in their own rights.
And I haven't even mentioned my favorite parts of this series yet: the worldbuilding and the music. The backgrounds in this series are absolutely jaw-dropping, the menagerie of creatures incredible and diverse, and each layer in the abyss brings several things to marvel at. This is easily one of my all-time favorite worlds to explore and I feel like I get dragged into it as thoroughly as any of its characters. And yes, the music by Kevin Penkin is amazing. The man set a new gold standard here as this has risen to become my favorite soundtrack in anime. I play these songs on repeat and Hanezeve Caradhina alone is among my top 5 songs in anime.
Just a gorgeous series top to bottom. If you can stomach some of the more disquieting aspects and push past accusations of pedophilia (I get where they're coming from, I just don't think it's a fair read), this is a must-watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 10, 2025
It's kind of crazy just how great this series is.
This story starts with the premise that everyone in this world is an anthropomorphic animal and the characters barely mention it. This isn't like Beastars where the world is built on the premise that everyone is an animal and that certain complications arise from them living together. It's not even like Bojack Horseman where the fact that they are animals is largely just window dressing, but nonetheless is clearly acknowledged fact within a world that still seems built for humans. So from the first moment these characters appear on screen, you're given a mystery.
And the
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mysteries pile up as the series goes on. Odokawa talks to someone in his apartment who we never see. The way the narrative progresses leads us to believe this has some connection to a missing idol from a group called Mystery Kiss, potentially tying Odokawa into another plot that has been playing out. And all of this interweaves with a plot involving infighting between criminals, a fishing scheme involving Eiji, an interesting relationship with the nurse and capoeira enthusiast Miho, a long-standing comedy duo fighting to achieve relevance once again, an effort to become Internet famous, and... a gacha gamer who loses an opportunity to get a rare pull?
This all feels so random, like an amalgamation of so many different ideas that could maybe work independently, but should be a mess when put together. There's just too much going on, too many characters to keep track of, and all the plots and schemes can't possibly work as a cohesive whole.
And yet, somehow they do. Better than that, they're all enhanced by working together. Some have compared the dialogue of this series (which is a master class in its own right) to that of Tarantino movies, but if we're doing the comparison, I'd say the best one is comparing this to Pulp Fiction. It doesn't have the same tendency to show things out of order, but like Pulp Fiction, there are a lot of characters and independent plots at work that interweave over the course of this series. And unlike that movie, Odd Taxi gets the chance to tell its narrative over a much longer time, giving us downtime with these characters to get to know and understand them on a deeper level. Odokawa quickly became one of my all-time favorite characters for so many reasons, but he's hardly alone in getting the kind of attention and care that make him a fleshed out hum- I mean walrus.
But this series wouldn't be such a crowning achievement if it didn't stick the landing. Ignoring the follow-on movie, I love virtually everything about how this series ended. In particular, the reveal of why Odokawa sees everyone around him as animals, borne of past trauma, and the cross-over with the idol plot in the waning moments of the show are just excellent. Sure, it left us on a cliffhanger, but it was the kind of cliffhanger that I just reveled in, and I don't think giving away what happened after this scene improved on the material. If anything, it felt too abrupt and jarring to appreciate after a series that paced itself so deliberately.
Odd Taxi is damn near perfect. Whip smart dialogue, incredible characters, and a plot that dragged me along feverishly from start to finish. Just a masterpiece of a show. Not every plot gets to be rounded out as nicely, and some of the characters come off a little frustrating, but there's way too much to love for that to dampen my enjoyment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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