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I will try to keep this review as succinct as the movie itself: this one-and-one-fourth hour movie is well-worth the time, even for those who were (like me) disappointed by Kabaneri's initial outing 3 years ago.

Unato Kessen is a direct sequel to the 12-episode season Kabaneri had in 2016, and as the title indicates, revolves around a battle at Unato. In terms of content, Unato Kessen breaks no new ground. What makes it a positive addition to the series is how it maintained the strengths of the series while being more deliberate in its storytelling. The art and soundtrack were both as impressive as ... one would expect with this series, and the many action sequences were fluid and entertaining to watch. Being roughly 3 regular episodes worth in length, the movie did not have a lot of time to work with, but instead trimmed away the hedges to squarely focus on the story and the development of Ikoma and Mumei. Frankly, I thought this was a massive improvement over how the 2016 season--which often felt a little out-of-focus--was handled. Nothing felt overdone or un-explored, it ended right when it should have, and it even gave us a very nicely animated ending song to boot.

In all, this was a content-packed movie and a must-watch if you enjoyed the 2016 season, but even if you didn't, there is still a lot to like about this continuation of Ikoma and Mumei's journey. Note, however, this is not a standalone entry, so those who have not yet watched the 2016 season should dive into that first.

This was surprisingly good, and I say this as a frank critic of SAO.

Before I start, I want to make clear that SAO: Ordinal Scale comes after SAO II, which of course came after SAO. If you have not watched either, obviously this movie is not for you.

To give Ordinal Scale a little context, SAO was first adapted in 2012 and its premise offered immense allure: a VR game series revolved around a battle of swords, set in a beautiful world with the specter of death. But the Aincrad arc failed to truly fulfill the potential of this premise--the author has essentially decided to retcon ... the entire arc through SAO: Progressive--as the arc came to an abrupt and early end. And since then it's sort of been like the McDonald's of anime: you consume it because it's cheap fun but you understand it's pretty trashy. In fact if you took Asuna out of the equation more than half the fan base probably would not have existed. To be fair, the writing is occasionally good. But SAO has always been held back by unnecessary fan service, static character development, and subpar story. Mother's Rosario was an exception. It was the only arc that actually felt worthwhile, not only because it was touching but also because it did a very, very good job exploring this grey area between "virtual" and "real," which was supposed to a core theme of SAO from the beginning.

And I think Ordinal Scale places just slightly above it. The animation quality is stellar. The artwork is crisp and you won't see the kind of frame and quality drop that happens in TV series. The soundtrack is great. This has always been one of the good parts of SAO and they did not drop the ball here, but you will have to get a listen for yourself. I'd also say this was the most enjoyable arc out of SAO. There were a lot of good action scenes--featuring probably the best action sequence in SAO--and there wasn't much of wasted screen time on pointless things. For instance, there was almost no harem-teasing and almost no fan service. It also helps that Ordinal Scale just consistently did pacing right: it spent time setting up when it needed to, and it pushed plot forward when it should've, so you will always be anticipating the next sequence.

Most importantly, the combination of characters and plot in Ordinale Scale was actually...good. Its focus is augmented reality rather than virtual reality, and the story revolves around a new device that basically allows people to play games with their actual surroundings instead of full-diving into a virtual environment. "Ordinal Scale" specifically refers to a AR game that turns actual surroundings into a MMORPG with a ranking system. Kirito starts off with reservations about AR, but not surprisingly is eventually pulled into Ordinal Scale (this is only a spoiler if any of you expected him to just back out and not meddle and let the movie end there). As per norm, the plot itself isn't terribly complicated and could be easily explained in a few minutes' time, but it lent enough weight to drive progress and action, and made for more than a few touching scenes. By not over-dramatizing, I thought Ordinal Scale also did a much better job than the first 3 arcs of SAO in portraying and getting the audience to relate to Kirito and Asuna's struggles as they face a whole new kind of threat to not only people they've once known, but also their relationship.

That isn't to say Ordinal Scale is somehow a masterpiece. It has a lot of plot holes that you will inevitably notice as you watch it. You may not like that your favorite characters got sidelined. You might not even think the story was all that good. But Ordinal Scale was a satisfying ride, and if you've followed the series up to this point, there's no reason why you shouldn't watch it. It's a fact that Kawahara Reki has been getting better and better, and maybe, just maybe, SAO will one day stop being the McDonald's of anime. I am only cautiously optimistic, but Mother's Rosario followed by Ordinal Scale can only be taken as a step in the right direction.

"If the length of my life has already been determined, how would I face it?"

Set in a futuristic world where androids called "giftia" have become a vital part of people's lives, main character Mizugaki Tsukasa is a high school graduate who has just gotten a job at SAI Corp's Terminal Service, where he becomes part of a team that's responsible for reclaiming giftia whose lives are about to expire. All giftia, you learn early on, have a limit to their lives.

Which would include Isla, Tsukasa's giftia partner.

Thus, from the outset, we know where Plastic Memories is going. The question is how we get there ... and what happens when we get there. And this focus on the process is why I think Plastic Memories is worth recommending. The characters aren't anything impressive. Each of them fits into a relatively well-defined cliche. The drawing and soundtrack for this series are pretty good, but far from being so good that they'd carry a series. But if you're willing to indulge in Plastic Memories for a moment, you'll probably find something endearing and redeeming about this story that revolves around an attempt to answer that question of how one would deal with life, when he or she (and everyone else) knows that its natural term is approaching. It's more than a mere philosophical question, and Plastic Memories managed to touch me a few times--and I think it'll touch you too, when you witness that the characters truly struggle with it and do their best to face it as the clock ticks on. It's not an amazing series. But it's a decent series that truly tackles life and death in a way that's more nuanced, realistic, and human than almost every other series I've watched.

All things considered, though, it's hard to highlight the merits of this series with words alone: the polarized opinions over it is pretty much due to the fact that some people simply can't resonate with the characters, so this is definitely one of those series that's more subjective sentiments based than average. If after episode one you can't find yourself at all interested, waste no more time and look elsewhere. Otherwise, this series will be well worth the watch.

Magi: The Kingdom of Magic is the second season of Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic. For those of you who have not watched the first season, I highly recommend it unless you have zero interest in the fantasy-action-adventure genre. For those of you who have watched the first season, the good news is that Magi II does not disappoint. Everything that you enjoyed and liked about Magi, whether it be the diverse cast of characters, the battle orchestration, or the plot development, Magi II delivers.

Magi II begins with the night after the battle at Sindria, after Sinbad and his people repelled the attack from ... Al Thamen and after Hakuryuu obtained Zagan. Alibaba, Aladdin, Morgiana, and Hakuryuu then left Sindria and went their separate ways. Hakuryuu went back to Kou Empire, his intent revealed shortly into the season. Alibaba went to Rem Empire to work on his control over his djinn Amon. Morgiana went to find her fellow Fanalis people so she can learn about their past. Aladdin went to Magnostadt to investigate the origins of dark metal vessels and learn magic. Although Magi II spends some time on Hakuryuu, Alibaba, and Morgiana, most of the screentime is (rightfully) dedicated to Aladdin's time in Magnostadt, as the main plot develops from there. It takes a lot to carry a grand plot with a diverse cast of characters and still maintain layers of complexity that are only slowly peeled back as the story progresses. But Magi II manages to do just that. While the pacing might be a bit slow to start, I personally thought it to be one of the most satisfying series I've watched as things came together at the very end.

In addition to how the plot evolved in Magi II, it builds on Magi I in at least a few other respects. The way battles play out, for instance, are much more impressive with Alibaba, Morgiana, and Aladdin all becoming more powerful. But I think what's made it such a memorable season 2 is that by cutting away time from Morgiana and Alibaba, Magi II gets to spend a lot of time introducing new characters and portraying them in detail. This is an especially encouraging sign because by revealing more about each side, Magi moves away from the conventional good versus evil paradigm and gives us a little grey area. By the end, you really will find the entire cast having grown on you.

Visually, I think Magi II sometimes looks like it's on low-budget. But I think that has less to do with its budget size than the style of the manga (the artist is notorious for sometimes drawing sketch-style art). Magi II, like Magi I, has almost zero CGI involved. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you to decide, but I think that stylistic choice continues to work well for this franchise. Sound-wise, Magi II features a good enough soundtrack. The first OP and ED are somewhat average, but the second OP and ED are very good and in my opinion makes up for the first ones. Unfortunately the music is otherwise decent but unimpressive. The soundtrack is indeed one of the weaker points of Magi II, but at least does nothing to make it less enjoyable.

Magi II picks up right where Magi I ended and immediately delves into an amazingly well put together adventure. For fans of the series, there's no reason to not continue with this second season. As for those who're scouting for something new to watch, both seasons of Magi have great entertainment value and it’s a franchise that shouldn't be missed -- which the ratings also attest to.

[Note: there are some minor spoilers contained in this review, but none that aren't already glaringly obvious as one watches this special. I've marked it so you know where to skip if you want absolutely no spoilers.]

For some parts, Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road can be considered a decent series. But at the end of the 90 minutes, I came away with the feeling that it was a work where much potential went to waste.

Let's start with what makes it potentially a great series. Bushi Road is set in a world where humanity, while warring amongst themselves, was threatened by monsters called the shinobi. Princess Ame, ... the main character, lost her country to a massive shinobi invasion. Along her journey, she met Suou, who descended from an ancient lineage known for its exceptional combat abilities. She then decided to find and revive Giga Lord, a lost ancient mecha, to destroy the shinobi once and for all. So far, nothing special. However, given that there are a lot of good ideas that can be explored (for instance, a lost continent that remains mostly untouched), Bushi Road holds a lot of promises. Not to mention that the setting of samurai-era mannerism mixed in with modern mecha combat (complete with flying castles) makes it pretty entertaining to watch.

But as you can expect from my opening, things also went downhill from the beginning. First, it's not difficult to tell that a lot of things were cut out just to save time. In fact, this special adopts a method whereby it cuts off right at certain scenes, shows the aftermath, and uses brief flashbacks to fill up the missing parts. This method isn't an issue in and of itself. However, the number of times it's used makes it clear the director is basically attempting to cut as much time as possible just to fit the 90-minute mark. And it takes away significantly from the immersion experience because as a viewer you constantly get lost as to what happened and end up looking for explanations that aren't there.

Second, the character development not surprisingly becomes an utter trainwreck. [Here is where some minor spoilers are.] Near the beginning, Ame had her key to the Giga Lord (an inheritance from her mother) taken away from her. At that time, the person who took it from her asked her whether she had the resolve to protect her people. Later on, to no one's surprise, she gets it back. Presumably, she should've already matured from the events that took place in between. But no, when she came across the shinobi again, she went on full revenge rampage mode again, as if she basically remained as she was at the beginning of this 90-minute special. [This is where spoilers end.] Throughout the entire special, neither Ame nor Suou seemed to have grown. That would've been fine if character growth wasn't necessary. But it was, at least where Ame was concerned. Under these circumstances, it's hard to feel for the two because the viewer ends up seeing them as essentially static entities. Perhaps even peculiar ones, since change should've taken place.

Moreover, there are just so many plot holes in this special it's hard to justify a lot of what happened. The final sequence in particular came off as being pretty nonsensical. In all honesty, I simply don't think that Bushi Road worthwhile given the flaws that it has. Sure, the animation quality is decent, and so is the soundtrack, but at the end of the day, the plot and the characters simply fall short of what one might have expected, as charming as the interaction between Ame and Suou has been at times. If you have extra time to kill on your hands, be my guest. But if you're looking for quality work, I don't think Bushi Road is one. Maybe it could've been if it was serialized, but this special pretty much killed the chances of that as well. A shame, really.

Kokoro Connect begins with a pretty ordinary setting. 5 friends belonging to the same club with an absentee adviser, spending almost everyday loafing around. Then everything took a downturn when a mysterious entity named Fuusenkazura appeared and forced them into his game so they could entertain him. His "game" involves abnormal phenomena that often take place at random intervals. The first arc features body-swap, during which the 5 may switch bodies at random, and every arc that follows has them deal with other similarly bizarre situations.

Before anyone starts watching, all of this might sound pretty entertaining -- except each of these games that Fuusenkazura ... brings them into produces big waves in their lives. Just imagine for a moment that your deepest secrets and darkest thoughts are dug out and exposed for your closest friends to see. Everyone needs to have a little privacy sometimes, but the games Fuusenkazura brings out always end up destroying their psychological defenses and put them in the spot to be honest with their friends, and also themselves.

Through the challenges the 5 of them face, the vulnerabilities of each person are shown to everyone else in the group. From there, the series soon turns into an emotional roller coaster that produces some serious drama. For the record, the drama doesn't feel forced at all. These characters are just what you'd expect of some regular high school kids who haven't had a firm grasp on their own identities. And it's the way they overcome each of these games and bond in the process that makes this series endearing.

Kokoro Connect is also no ordinary rom-com. There's romance and comedy, but the emphasis really ends up being emotional development more than anything. If you carefully chew through some of the things they say as they walk out of their slumps, you'll find nuggets of wisdom here and there applicable for just about everyone. The animation is decent and consistently fluid with no break in quality. The characters, while not necessarily coming out of unique molds, collectively form an lively, entertaining, and endearing cast. The plot is refreshing. The script is strong as well. Even though I personally found the soundtrack weak, it's a minor shortcoming in the face of everything else -- the story, the enjoyment, and the uplifting moments where they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

To close, I think Kokoro Connect is one of the most entertaining series I've picked up thus far, and I had a great deal of fun watching it. Simply put, it was a satisfying run. Although the format of struggle-then-triumph gets overused sometimes, the characters and the plot drive the series too well for that to interfere with the experience. True, it's a bit heart-wrenching and depressing sometimes. At the end of the day though, it maintains a positive message throughout and is in my opinion a very well-crafted series that deserves almost everyone's attention.

[Note: Although MAL separates the first 13 episodes of the series from the 4 episodes of "Michi Random" arc aired later on, the 17 episodes together feature an unbroken sequence of events and this review covers all of them.]

K is sometimes difficult to dissect. On first glance, it looks like it has the potential to be a masterpiece. At the same time, when you really get down to it, it's nothing exceptional. K is overall a decent series and it has its strong suits, but it's certainly not worth your time if you're looking for a great series to pick up and here's why.

What first drew me to K was the background of the story. The series is set in a futuristic world where Japan is essentially dominated by the 7 kings of color. Each of the kings has a different power according ... to their colors. For all intents and purposes, their superiority over the rest of humanity is absolute. On top of that, they're assisted by their clansman, who essentially pledge their loyalty to the kings in exchange for superhuman powers. The balance of power is carefully maintained until story is set in motion by a murder case. A man who self-identified as the Colorless King shot one of the Red King's clansmen, and the entire thing was captured on the camera that clansman was carrying. It just so happens that the supposed Colorless King looks exactly like the main character, who's an oblivious and sociable high school student living in school. And the search is on for this killer.

So far so good. What went wrong then? Well, nothing went wrong, so to speak. It was just that the plot unfolded at a pace so slow, people were literally asking "so what exactly happened in this episode" on the discussion boards. A typical episode features at most 3-5 minutes of actual plot explanation and the rest is devoted to character interaction and the occasional battles. To their credit, the animation quality is great. I liked the art style and every action was incredibly smooth. The battles themselves were quite entertaining and you can clearly tell they weren't trying to cut corners there, but quite frankly, the plot was simply lacking. It started with some momentum in the beginning, then dropped off a cliff for at least 2/3 of the season, then picked up again in the last 2-3 episodes. That's something you'd expect from a fan service series -- not K, which clearly strives to play itself as a serious piece of work.

K is a weak series for another reason. Instead of being plot-driven, it's mainly character-driven. In place of plot, you have a number of characters with strong and some would say memorable personalities that draw the audience in. The problem is that K doesn't even try to ease the audience in with the characters. Although you find out a great deal about each major character over the course of the series, it's mostly 30-second scenes here or there that make up for scattered pieces of information. Take Fushimi, who is the third in command of Blue King's clan. Although we're shown that he was originally a subordinate of the Red King, we end up never finding out just why it is that he decided to switch sides. Perhaps the directors of K want the audience to fill in the gaps, but it feels quite insulting to the audience who has no idea what the full history is behind most of the characters. There is a line between trying to be subtle and not really explaining anything. K's crossed the line just too many times.

Personally, I dislike the analogy but K feels just like Guilty Crown. It looks great from the outside, but when you look closer, you can see that it has somewhat of a hollow core. The promise is there. It's just that potential isn't enough to make a series great. Although I personally enjoyed watching most of the cast interact and doing whatever they do, when I got to ep. 13, the ending felt bland and somewhat anticlimactic even. And the glaring plot holes here and there make it hard for me to fully recommend this series. Bottom line is, if you're not totally into plot, love flashy animations, and just want to watch cool character say and do cool things, K is something you'd enjoy a whole lot. If you demand serious plot depth on top of all that, though, kindly move on.

I'm going to be straight up about everything and concede early on that SAO deserves almost all the criticisms that have been thrown its way. However, I think it is still a very enjoyable series despite every flaw it has.

Let's start with the negatives.

The perhaps most glaring problem with the series is that it's tried to compress too much material into 25 episodes. In total, it's adopted 4 volumes of the light novel. What that translates into are gaps in character development and plot explanations. While it's not all that difficult to follow the story, pacing suffered quite noticeably in the first arc, especially ... because the anime tried to present everything in a chronological manner when the LN itself used more of a flashback progression. The second arc might've been delivered enough story without rushing anything, but the directors could've hardly expected anyone to stay for the series if they didn't like the 14 episodes of first arc.

All that would've been fine if SAO had a great plot and a great cast. The only thing I can say about the plot is that it's as linear as anything you'll see. Details aside, the endings to each arc should be pretty clear from the outset. As for the characters, we have a main character who fits the ideal nice guy mold. Next to him is the ideal girlfriend female lead. Then you have the supporting cast featuring some more stereotypical good friend, lonely genius, pathetic nerd, and bitter villain types. Little else needs to be said here.

So why watch this series then? For me, the real beauty of SAO comes in when you try to immerse yourself in the world the series tries to create. And for all it's worth, the world invites your imaginations to run wild.

Plus, even though the LN was written some time ago, the concept is still a decent one -- people trapped in a virtual reality MMORPG where hp = 0 means death in real life. As linear as the plot is, over the course of the series there are still some legitimate depth in the questions it raises. For one, when people can practically live in the virtual world, how would you differentiate between virtual and real? It seems like a rather trivial question, but it is eventually something society will have to address when technology reaches that point. Maybe we'll even see something like SAO in our lifetime.

And as bland as the character molds are, they make for a fun and likable cast. Though some people make the character out to be just another Gary Stu, he is far from all-powerful and suffers from a number of flaws, as he often admits. The female lead may be quite flawless on the outside, but the insecurities she expresses as a typical obedient daughter are not only real but pretty relatable. The series doesn't try to paint everything over with a gloomy brush, which means even while the cast struggles with the difficulties ahead, they remain generally optimistic and forward-looking. The ending featuring their interactions is heartwarming, even, as they've probably grown on you by this point.

One short comment each on the miscellaneous components. The action sequences are short and very, very sweet in this series. Even though on a couple of occasions the art quality drops somewhat, it looks great across the board and is probably one of the most pretty looking this season. The sound is nothing astounding, but it's definitely ahead of the pack. The opening and ending for the second arc deserves particular praise.

SAO can be a hit-or-miss. If you're an optimist with an open mind and some appetite for fantasy, action, and adventure, SAO is definitely for you. If you're on the other hand someone who prefers out-of-the-box ideas and intricate plot progression, then SAO is probably not the best idea. Anyone in the middle should at least try this series out. It has its flaws for sure, but from my experience, it's been an entertaining and satisfying ride.