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First off, read the most liked review. You'll be missing out if you don't. Onward then to my review.

Who would think to actually encounter a 1/10 show? Think about, how bad does something have to be, to have it rated the lowest you can? After watching this show I can tell without a doubt; this is the bottom of the pit.

You look around in the threatening darkness of this unknown chasm you fell into. Weak sunlight pierces this abyss, you see the frames of motionless bodies laying around you. These rotting corpses you knew from before. You tried forget, sure, but they etched themselves ... in the back of your mind. Unending recycling of tropes, merciless sexualization, deprived of all story and meaning. You know the list of such shows.

To be fair, at one point the majority of the popular anime shows reach into this same old trick hat too. But there's a difference between what you can consider 'borrowing ideas' and between not having a single unique, defining element in your show. If I had to summarise my problem with this show I think I would say:

"The problem with Sakura Trick is that it believes without second guessing that it came up with lesbians"

It is legitimately a 'trick'. It's a trick on you. To make you believe it will attempt to turn this around. It will become a good show eventually. Keep watching. It will change. You want to believe it. It's the family alcoholic in this unending downward spiral. But you already know how that ends. Not the way you wanted it to.

This show is a combination of these tropes that are like caffeine and nicotine. Refreshing in small doses, lethal in large ones. You will inject yourself with a deadly amount of Moe and Yuri tropes by watching this show. You will not survive. It's raw. It's concentrated. It's like you order a coke and they bring you the syrup it was made of instead. You want romance? Here's direct, non-stop, sexually overheated physical relationship between your protagonists and characters.

Sakura Trick is the definition of the 'now, kiss' meme. This is how far you can take sexual innuendo in anime without becoming hentai. But interestingly enough, it's not at the ecchi level either. It's this thing, that's just awkward sufficiently enough so that you keep looking behind your shoulder when you are watching it, even though it's not particularly explicit visually. It's that feeling of guilt that you get watching it. Do I like this? What's wrong with me? Why am I watching this? It leaves you in an existential crisis after an episode.

Sakura Trick is like locking yourself in a cage with two male, underfed Bengal tigers, who had been exposed to female tiger hormones for weeks and then throwing away the keys. It's like shutting off the water main and then lighting your flat on fire while your entire family is sleeping in it.

Sakura Trick is oblivion. Watching this show will shatter your soul. If you respect yourself or merely don't want to damage your mental health, avoid this.

Now listen up. Eromanga is no Akira and I want to be clear on that. This is not a new or original anime. But ask yourself this: Why in hell would you expect from a light novel adaptation to be the second coming of Hayao Miyazaki? What drove people in this community to the point where they can't genuinely enjoy anime for what it always was: perverted and weirdly funny?

Let me back up there and start over. You watched Chobits didn't you? You watched Chobits and Gurren Lagann and lots and lots of over top shows with lots of 'plot' in them didn't you? Did ... it not occur even once to you that it's over-sexualized? That's one of the things that divides anime from western cartoons: it's liberal approach to show sexual content. They even have a genre for it: hentai. And it's fine. You watch it if you want, if you don't like it, you don't watch it. However there's no denying anime always included more 'plot' than was necessary. And we loved it for it. In the minds of conscious people, there is a barrier between fantasy and reality. You don't expect or want the two to mix. You don't expect naked girls jumping on you in real life, because it would be messed up? Why are they doing it? Are they crazy? Is this a prank? Am I being recorded? Those would be things you would be asking yourself in those situations. In fantasy, it makes complete sense. That's how the story is set up and you suspend your disbelief - you roll with it.

Let me back up even further. Let's talk about this fake-sister incest bullshit that has been going around in anime and light novels too. Did you actually ever consider why this is a thing? And why people are attracted to this trope? Do you think people desperately want to fuck their relatives? Do you want to fuck your relatives? The reason why this pops up is Freudian. Simply put, from a story perspective as an author you want to set up an already intimate scenario between two young people. That's not something that normally just occurs in nature. You want them to trust each other and have a strong bond. So you leverage something that you know provides that bond. Family. It's an easy explanation that a human mind accepts casually for an answer to 'why are they comfortable around each other'. Why do they care about each other deeply? Why at all?

Then you want to make that a romantic scenario and that's the difficult part, because normally this is not romantic at all. Is it romantic that a father cares about his son? Is it romantic that a mother tucks her daughter in at night before going to sleep? Is it romantic that two young siblings bathe together? Or is it just practical? Not making it a 'weird thing' to have siblings bathe together as otherwise you would have to pay two tubs worth of water. Listen, I know this may sound difficult to comprehend, but men and women aren't ALWAYS sexually attracted to each other. So this is where the 'cheapness' of Eromanga comes in: it pretends just by not being blood related this can be romantic. It dismisses the point: you either focus on a brother sister relationship and build on that, which is difficult to show as romantic, or you drop that plot and say 'they have loved each other for years and lived together as well' and then it becomes plain bullshit. You have to force your characters not to destroy this scenario. Two young people living together for years and loving one another, with no supervision whatsoever - and not having sex like every day? We all know that's bullshit. So that's why the brother-sister thing is introduced. To RESTRAIN it, not to ENHANCE it. However subconsciously people tie the two stories together, the love and being related and they end up with this guilty of being attracted to a relative. And they enjoy it, never realising that it wasn't the relatives part that they were attracted to in the first place. By itself, that doesn't mean anything.

They were attracted to love and caring for each other. And I think Eromanga delivers when it comes to this. There's great attention on the Kirito (sorry I had to) and Rei (again, sorry) being shown as actually discussing things. Things that aren't always their relationship (I'm looking at you every other slice of life bullshit). They speak about work, other people, their past. It's actually really believable at that too.

I think it's also really important to emphasise: people in Eromanga seem to be attracted to each other for realistic and right reasons. They love each other because they impressed them with their writing, with their motivational speeches, with their enthusiasm for their passion (writing or drawing) and so on. They are not empty sexual objects, they all have their reasons for liking either the protagonist or others. The protagonist isn't empty either: he puts a lot of effort into preserving his way of life and following his dreams. He also cares deeply about others and interacts with them well: he does not shy away from criticising people but nor from taking advice.

I'm sad to see we got so posh and elitist in this community, that we don't accept who we originally all started of as: obnoxious, masturbating Naruto and DBZ fans. We obviously progressed from there, however we don't acknowledge that the genre didn't change fundamentally: we did. Anime like Eromanga is and always was a big part of Anime. We just stopped saying we liked it. We started watching YouTube videos with self-proclaimed critics cutting our passion and interest apart and criticising anime like it was the fucking Mona Lisa. Anime never was just about having a deep message or excellent drawing or philosophical story. It was about having fun too. There's always the disclaimer at the beginning and the end of those reviews; if you like it - good for you. But that's bullshit too, isn't it. If you like, 'good for you' but 'feel ashamed, because you're just not ready for higher quality'. I like this series because it reminds me of times when we had smaller problems and weren't so self-conscious. I can have fun watching this and so can you. Stop feeling ashamed for liking a show and start trying to understand why you like it in the first place. You might realise that your reasons aren't always as dark as they first seem. Hopefully these reviewers will also arrive to a point where they start to explore their own taboos and prejudices and understand what they are afraid of. Then, we can criticise Eromanga for what it truly does wrong.

The only good thing about Nisekoi season 2 is the animation quality. I'm serious. This season is on the level of Naruto / Bleach anime originals (filler) and bad even at that. It might be the adaptation of the novels, but hell, this is what timeskips are for!

Let's summarise without spoilers:
IMPOSSIBLE TO SPOIL ANYTHING BECAUSE NOTHING HAPPENS. AT ALL.

12 episodes of badly combined fanservice and literally story-stasis. There is no relationship / story progression on the main plot (which, to be fair wasn't that exciting anyway even in the original series) and you get a completely new cast of uninteresting and irrelevant characters, like:

- A ... second hitman girl who has 2 eps dedicated to herself and literally contributes nothing to the main plot
- The little sister of one of the main heroines, who is essentially used as an excuse to freeze the main plot again (she steals the pendant and keeps it for multiple episodes - not like it matters, because even if that keepsake is around, no one cares about it in this season)
- The mother of Chitoge who has 2 eps dedicated to her and yet again, has a miserable attempt to push the relationship / story forward in her last episode, however the directors / writers do their best to erase all of that immediately in the next episode (essentially it's retconned out / never spoken of again)

They also increase the bust size of the hitman girl from season 1 with at least two sizes, coz why not, no one cares about story anyway?

This season is sort of insulting to the series as well as the fans. Don't waste your life / time watching this, you will not be missing out any story, it's essentially a really long OVA at the beach / pool with revolting amounts of fanservice and not much else.

Let's wait for season 3 (if that ever happens after this) and hope they can at least move 1 inch forward in that.

There are some spoilers here and there, so read the summary only if you plan to watch.

Now don't get me wrong - I think SAO is one of the worst animes ever made. Why a 5 then? Ok, so here's the deal: I think if you look at this show as a homogeneous topic, it could not be better than a 2.

Why give it a 5?

The premise is really good - VR MMO is an interesting topic to explore and it seems the show in the beginning does not shy away from showcasing who and why would get into a VR MMO - you can ... see both sides of the coin, giving it a unique flavor - compared to other shows or novels with the same material, I did not see that much exposition/care for the 'human' world, only for the MMO. (Naturally, they ruin this later)

The show looks good. Detailed backgrounds, good character design, but to me it did not look nowhere near good enough a high production quality anime (like Haruhi).

I did not care much for the sounds / music (to be honest I still can't remember if there was any interesting music whatsoever in it). I can remember SAO ending songs were actually better in my opinion than openings.

Characters are straight up insane. Motivations and actions don't correspond with their original introductions and character development takes 180 multiple times (like that fairy guy that loves Kiritos sister - he's displayed as useless, then he becomes useful and important by spying on the enemy, then he becomes useless again when meeting them at the tree, then he becomes useful again inside the tree and sacrifices himself /something that btw no one else though of throughout the entire series, but could very well be the easiest way to win/ and then the guy is never MENTIONED AGAIN. wtf) Yet again, the setting would be good, you have a couple anime archetypes and actually multiple tsunderes (why?) who are all really friendly with each other for some reason, but use their masked personality with the protagonist only (?).

So then what did I enjoy?

I guess the potential of the story and this world. If you like MMOs or just entering games as a sci-fi premise, it is really easy to get into. Furthermore sometimes I felt there is so much more in the show than what they brought out. If you start watching it with set expectations (e.g. be a shounen, be a romance anime, be an OP anime like one-punch) then I don't think you can expect more than a 2/10 overall end result. It's none of those. And what it does it generally does inconsistently and that messes up the quality.

Here's a couple examples on what I liked (all of them are merely temporary):

I liked really that they did not shy away from showing a healthy relationship in anime, and originally tried to make it an equal relationship, where both are equally contributing in fights and are not heavily reliant on either (show throws this out later, though). They seem to shed their tropes as well (no tsundere bullshit when they are just between each other).

I also liked how they tried to explore the psychological effects on the characters. This would have benefited from showing real-world side stories though, contributing to a grittier, heavier atmosphere for the show (I think ultimately that's why they didn't do that). E.g. showing how the families are handling this, how their friends realise that they were into MMOs or that families even break apart due to comatose members. Nah, this doesn't happen but you can sense the empty story branches for it.

Against public opinion I really 'liked' they Asuna scene from the ALO arch. Under liked I mean I hated it, but I only felt like that back with Berserk. That scene has nothing to do with the overall feeling of the show, but I think it's a great scene in itself. The conclusion of it is really bad, but the way it starts off contributes again to a deep psychological thriller-like feel (it ruins it, with OPing Kirito and overcoming the situation, whereas it should just really go with the story and get to the point where they will need to bring that scar back to the real world and sort it out there).

Here's a couple things that I thought could've made it more interesting:
- They could've explored the reality-bleeding more (I think it shows up in one of the OPs, or maybe the last EP, that they see their avatars in reality). That had huge potential.
- They could've compressed the story into 12 episodes per season and that would've made it 2 points better. It's just way too tedious.
- Cut back on the harem. Why the fuck does everyone love Kirito and why are there no other males to like? Give more male protagonists / introduce relationships between girls and NOT KIRITO. Klein is only oil to the fire.
- Kirito to be GANTZ-ified. Make him a legit asshole instead of a secretly kind person. Get him to actually enjoy cheating and using exploits and have him overcome his facade to character development. He can still be OP, but he would at least be a person. This is just unrealistic. As long as he spends helping others, other people could have spent way more time leveling and easily passing him by.
- This is an MMO. Show me GRINDING! Could have made some really funny scenes when they go out to grind and chat meanwhile.

Right, let's finish this; SUMMARY

Altogether I don't recommend watching this show. For all these fun 5 minute pieces I just told you will suffer through 25 episodes of Naruto filler quality story and no catharsis whatsoever. There is no feeling of risk and thus, there is no reward either.

However I can't say I didn't watch it through. I mean I would still watch it the first time. I would not rewatch it, but it was just interesting enough to keep me from stop watching it. That's already a 3 to me. 1 for the story, 1 for the graphics and 1 for the characters (but rather just some parts of those). I'm adding one more for the sometimes good scenes to story and one for breaking some traditions (Kirito's relationship not unravelling within 2 episodes - although not because of him, or some key people not dying or going insane due to things they experienced - I'M LOOKING AT YOU BERSERK!!!!)

I'm not gonna lie, it was sort of gratifying to watch a wish-fulfilment anime for once. I mean that genre is really easy to get wrong. I don't like major characters dying or relationships breaking apart for artistic impact only. I watched a couple romance animes recently and all end on a vague or bad note. I'm not watching these to break my own heart FFS.

Yeah so to me, solid 5/10. Don't watch it. Watch the others instead with less episodes about the same topic, done well. 50 episodes of Naruto filler is not worth your time. Get this into a movie or 10-12 episode serious and I would recommend watching it as a 7/10 (even with the plot holes, etc.)