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Dec 24, 2022
"Society is too scary!" - Bocchi
This may not surprise you, but I suffer from some social anxiety. I have gotten better in communicating as I grow older, but the pain in my chest constantly worrying about doing something wrong never goes away. I am far from the only one who suffers from this, and some anime have noticed that too. Hitori Bocchi and Watamote come to mind. While the former is a cute comedy and the latter is... a comedy, in terms of a good representation of social anxiety is and feels like, anime hasn't quite reached that yet... until Bocchi The Rock.
Bocchi follows a
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social anxiety ridden girl who learned guitar to join a band and become famous, but when the time comes that she actually joins a band she quickly realises that it ain't easy being a social anxiety ridden girl in a band. We then follow the story of the Kessoku Band in their quest to become popular. Most of this specific what you expect from a high school band trying to get big, which is why this is only a part of the anime. Yes, Bocchi The Rock isn't really about the Rock: It is about Bocchi.
Bocchi is the show. We follow her POV most of the time, the comedy is mostly centered around her, it is her story, and she is amazing. She is incredibly socially anxious and constantly monologues in her own head as a coping mechanism. What makes a difference between Bocchi from Bocchi The Rock and other socially anxious protagonists from other anime like Hitori Bocchi and Watamote is that Bocchi is 1. she is hilarious (we will get to that) and 2. she is genuine about her dreams and thus you really empathise with her. While her instincts constantly want her to run away, there is always a sliver of wanting to change herself, even if she overexagerates that sliver in her head. It isn't just that the circumstances around her got her into where she is, but she pushes with the little will she has to do what she knows is right. She learns to talk to people, to look them in the eyes, to ask others to hang out. The character development she gets in this season is subtle but means so much following her story.
And she is only able to get that development with the rest of the cast, which is equally amazing as her. What makes the main four so compelling is that each does so well the represent different character types that you would realistically find in real life.
The yellow haired Nijka is the most dependable of the group. She takes the initiative to really get the band going, and she basically acts as the balancer of all the different personalities in the group (even if that means to tease others). She is just a bowl of sunshine in which we really see how deep her passion and dreams are.
The blue haired Ryou is the quiet loner of the group, by choice that is. She loves doing things by herself, and thus has little interest in other people. She is still able to deliver great comedy, with how she tries to hide how truly incompetent she is in certain life aspects by her cool exterior (especially in money). Even if she feels like a distant figure sometimes, you really come to like her for also her deep rooted passion and just goofiness.
Then we have red haired Ikuyo, the trendy lesbian (like seriously over half her jokes are about how she is down bad for Ryou). Out of the three, she has the most layers as even though she acts as a trendy extrovert with lots of friends, the social anxiety beneath it all slips through. She is still a very genuine character, wanting to support Bocchi not just because she admires her but because she wants Bocchi to succeed too.
The side characters are also amazing, with each of them bringing something unique to the table. Seika, Nijka's big sister, is the adult of the anime, being really blunt but still compassionate. Kikuri is the alcoholic bassplayer who I might relate a little too much with at times. The entire family of Bocchi is are also so eccentric, especially Futari, Bocchi's little sister. I love Futari for being such a bringer of chaos but always doing that out of a childish love for her sister. Her antics are some of the highlights of the show I swear.
Now let's get to the thing you have all been waiting for: the comedy and production. Much of the humor of this show revolves around Bocchi's extreme social anxiety and the scenarios she makes up in her head. It is the classic staple of taking something small and overexagerating it to ridiculous proportions, and the way they over exagerate here is to create some of the best animated scenes of the year, holy crap.
It is quite amazing how they are able to have a joke like "Bocchi is scared about making a social media account" and animate it into Bocchi having a panic attack on the ground with her glitching in reality which cuts to a Junji Ito-esque animation showing why she is scared to make a social media account. This is only one example of how wild Bocchi's imagination gets visualised. The best part about this is that they don't just get creative of how they represent Bocchi's imaginations, but also creative in what animation medium they present it in. It is close to Pop Team Epic how multi-mixed media they get in this show, and it creates some of the most visually impressive and funniest scenes of the year.
But these visuals wouldn't work if the jokes weren't there to back them up, and they back them up. Despite most of the jokes surrounding Bocchi and her antics (which small critique can feel samey), they make them hopelessly relatable and develop them over the course of the anime. It is funny how the cast barely recognise Bocchi's anxious state in the beginning and gradually start to acknowledge and accept it until they get sucked into her anxious state too. Instead of constantly one-upping themselves, I always feel like the comedy in this anime gradually develops with the story and is able to branch out into other characters humor.
One thing I feel like is nearly not enough talked about is the sound of this anime. Holy fuck does this anime sound good, and that isn't just in the music.
Firstly, the voice acting is amazing. You really feel like the characters are talking to each other. Bocchi's voice actress Yoshino Aoyama is especially amazing, doing some incredibly impressive and funny screams of anxiety.
But the real star of the show is the sound design during the musical performances. Okay, the music? Really good, the tracks are pretty catchy and fun to listen to, but when the band performs them the sound design elevates their performances to god tier status'. Instead of just playing the song in full, the production went out of their way to make special performances of the songs. This way they can tell the story not just with the characters lines, not just seeing them visually perform them, but also listening to the mix of the songs. The way that their earlier performances sound sloppy with the intrustements being a bit off key but still hearing that glimmer of something special. This attention to detail in the sound design elevates scenes to a higher plane. Some of the best scenes I have ever seen and heard in anime.
Bocchi The Rock feels like the planets alligned to make this show. An extremely tallented team who were enormous fans of the source material coming together to share their crazy creative ideas to elevate the anime into something funny, memorable and special. I freaking love this anime. I can talk about the little nitpicks I have like the pacing of certain episodes or not all of the comedy hitting, but I don't care it is absolutely perfect. It is perfect enough for me.
This may not surprise you, but I highly recommend you to watch this show. I am sure you will love it too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 25, 2022
"There is nothing stronger then Family" - Vin Diesel
So you have this spy, right? He needs to save the country from going into war, to do that he need to get a kid into the academy. The kids he then gets is pretty stupid but also an esper. But to get that kid into the academy he also needs a mother figure, so he finds the women which, surprise!, is an assasin. So now these three have to pretend to be an actual family while trying to hide their true identities from the world and themselves. Then you have Spy X Familly.
For a quick plot
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summary, this is a pretty intriguing plot. It quickly got me into watching this anime in the first place. I was always gonna watch it while it was airing since it suddenly became the biggest new show on the planet. When I started watching it, I liked it at first but I still had some doubts, but the more I watched it, the more it just intrigued me into it. It has taken me a long time to put into words why I like this series as much as I do even with it being hyped to the moon, but I think I finallly got it: It is just great! Wait, let me explain that.
Let's first start with the obvious: The characters are freaking amazing. The main character, Loid, is pretty much your typical cold character, not making connections with others in order to not get tied down. Obviously, that changes as the series goes on, but what I like about Loid is that cracks are consistently shown. Despite him being very insensitive, he is still human after all and the thing that stands in the way of his mission is often himself with how caught up he can get in it, and seeing those hijinks are very entertaining. Then we have Yor and putting aside her amazing design, my god she is so fun. She is very much a pure soul at at heart (ignoring the murdering part) and she desperately just tries her best. She constantly tries to improve in her people skills and it is a joy to see her improve.
And then we have Anya. She is the esper of the main cast and pretty much the entire fate of the country is resting on her shoulders. Child characters are very hard to make since it is always a balance between either being so smart it is unbelievable or so stupid that they become annoying, especially with super powers which can tip towars the former. Anya is luckily able to tiptoe into balance by making her juuuust stupid enough. Her power is overpowered but she aint that smart in handling it. She is very much a child at heart, but not in the annoying little shit way but in the way a child would look at the wonderous world. All her actions are not only funny but very believable since, ya know, she is a kid. She got no real sense of the seriousness of a situation so she tackles everything with lots of boldness which creates some of the funniest jokes in the show.
Since we are talking about the humor, my god is this anime funny. It has a heavy emphasis on creating comedy out of the characters. It doesn't go completely in the sitcom direction like konosuba did since it still keeps a foot in the drama. This makes you feel like all the jokes come from putting the funny characters in wild situations but the writers still have the freedom to make well constructed gags. The boldness of Anya, Loid's obsessiveness with his missions, Yor's constant anxiety of being a good wife, just the very fact how ridiculous this plot is, I love them all. There a very few duds and even when there are these are usually pretty quick.
What can I really say about the production values? It is Wit Studio! Ofcourse all the character designs are clean and cool. Ofcourse the aesthetic mixes the 1920s spy movie style with a more timeless flair which makes the anime feel so universal. Ofcourse the animation is well done with many clean action cuts and great anime faces which surely are gonna be used in a million memes. Ofcourse both the OP and ED are absolute jammers. It is freaking Wit Studio
For the last thing to talk about, I think this anime is incredibly consistent in its quality. The biggest downside the anime does is that it can sometimes stretch its narattive to wide which can lead to some small plotholes, like how Yor and Loid never question how both of them have basically super human strength and agilit. But even with things like that I was able to ignore it since I was just enjoying the story, the character and the comedy. I am also happy with how friendly this anime is for newcomers with how there is a lack of presence of anime's usual quircks, it just is a feel good show through and through.
In conclusion, this anime is fantastic! It doesn't reinvent the wheel and it will guarantee you to leave you with strong emotions, but it also really hard to find the flaws in the anime without getting to the point of Cinemasins nitpicking. The characters are great, it looks great, the comedy is great, the story is intriguing, it is a good gateway show for newcomers, it is just the whole package.
Give this one a watch! You won't regret it!
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 22, 2021
What can I even say about isekai at this point? The genre, topic, setting, whatever you want to call it, has been thoroughly been discussed, analysed and complained about. There have never been signs of this thing stopping so at this point everyone has given up at talking about it at this point and just hope that isekai shows are at least watchable. And I am not going to say here that Tsukimichi does anything to shake up in this tiring landscape, but it is still a damn fun show.
The start of Tsukimichi plays out like a sort of parody of isekai. Makoto Misumi, our
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protagonist, gets forcefully summoned to the new fantasy world, but the goddess who summoned him thinks he is ugly so Makoto gets the useless ability to understand any language except human language and gets thrown into the edge of the fantasy world, a dangerous place. But this funny misery is short-lived, because Makoto power capability is a lot bigger then previously thought, thus the anime turns more into a Slime Isekai-esque anime in which our protagonist with his incredible powers tries to build a home while meeting people who help him along the way.
I really like the story. There is a good suply of challenges our character cast has to face and the constant way-more-powerful-then-the-opponents gimmick that is also used in Slime Isekai is being handled well here, being able to stay fresh throughout this whole first season. It also isn't afraid to get dark, but is still able to handle that darkness with grace. My only real complaint about the story is the pacing that often jumps around in years, thus you sometimes feel like you are missing parts of the story, but this isn't too big of an issue in the end.
Then we get to the characters and let me tell you, these characters are the best part of the anime. Makoto is like your average isekai protagonist loser but he has great comedic timing that makes him really likable. Both Tomoe and Mio, despite being the "harem girls", have very strong personalities that often clash in funny ways, with Tomoe being a heroic otaku while Mio is a scary crybaby. All the other side characters are fun too, with my favorites being the dwarf Beren and the stoic-faced goofball Eris. This anime does a really good job to establish these personalities and create great dynamics between them. I just wished that there was a little more character development with these characters besides them gaining more character traits as the show goes on.
Then we get to the production values... they are average. The last episode has some good animation highlights but for the most part it is nothing out of the ordinary. That kinda stinks because imagining these fights being given the S+ treatment is way more fun then watching the fights themselves. I do love the character designs tho, Tomoe especially is great. The music is nothing to really note, but the song of the opening is my crack. Everytime I hear that OP I want to run across the country for how much energy it gives me.
Overall, this is a really well-rounded isekai with very little issues, but it also doesn't go anything beyond that. It is probably the most solid isekai this season, with its low points being way above the low points of every other isekai this year. This anime is not revolutionizing the tiring reputation that isekai has, but for anyone who is willing to give this a shot will have fun with it. Check it out, it is pretty dang good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 21, 2021
This is going to be a review of the entire second season, thus including part 1.
How far we have come from season one. The first season was a joy, it took the concept of isekai and brought it down to what made it such a fun genre to begin with. A really positive tone, tons of likable characters and a constant feeling of progression. It wasn't without its flaws, especially the arc with the kids was quite the borefest, but as a whole it was fun.
Now with season 2 here... yeah, the positive tone is basically gone. The anime has completely steered into "oh shit"
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territory, with Rimuru facing some actual challenges. The positive tone is still there in some form, but most of this anime is misery and politics. And this change... it has some mixed results.
Let's talk about what I really like in comparison with the season 1 first. The politics in Season 2 is something I really enjoy. It expands the world and it makes me constantly crave to know more about what is going on this bizarre isekai world. What I also like is that the highlights of this season are way bigger then in season 1. While progression is fun, only progression and little result can get stale quick, and this season finally shows those results and it feels amazing. It really makes putting your time even through the more frustrating/boring parts more worth it in the end. The climax of both parts are especially a joy. Lastly, I think the character additions this season have been fun all across the board.
Now let's get to my biggest problem with this season: The story is incredibly flawed. It is probably the worst part of the entire anime since it fluctuates in quality so much throughout the season. Part 1 is probably the worst offender with this, in which the entire middle really drives home how much misery there is. At this point the drama isn't well constructed enough to pull these kinds of misery arcs, thus the entire middle of part 1 is frustrating as hell. Not to mention, part 1 has many episodes that are just bad. One episode a huge plottwist happens, but by the second half of the episode the emotional impact of the plottwist is completely ruined. And the episode after that, which is supose to be the aftermath of that plottwist, it is largely devoted to flashbacks.
But with my gripes with part 1, that doesn't mean that this part 2 comes of scott free. The entire first half of part 2 is basically exposition. Exposition, exposition, comic relief doing something funny, exposition. It does feel like it is constantly building up to the climax, but so much building tires even the best workers out, letalone an anime watcher. I binged part 2, but even I got a bit exhausted by the end with the amount of exposition, so I can't imagine how people who watched it during its airing felt. Besides that, I also noticed a drop in animation quality towards the end. It seems weird that they split the anime in two parts so that the animators could catch some breath but they still produce poor animation. Feel bad for the animators.
Overall, I still liked season 2. Despite my many complaints I have about the anime, I think my love for progression and the characters is what kept me going back to this anime. The characters are still all so lovable and that makes all the difference in how much I care about the anime. I also prefer part 2 over part 1, that's for sure.
If you like season 1 then season 2 is still worth checking out, just be aware that a lot of episodes are worthy skips and that the tone is a lot darker from season 1.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 1, 2021
I love watching anime. I have a deep passion for watching, discussing and critiquing anime. Nuancing my opinions, sharing love for shows and discovering new experiences is what keeps me continuing to watch anime. It is a passion that is hard to really express to people who don’t watch anime, but I sure try to share that deep-rooted passion with others who are willing to listen. I can see this sort of passion in Yuru Camp.
Yuru Camp is a show that means a lot to me. Back in 2018 Yuru Camp was one of the first anime that I watched and I loved every second
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of it. I listened to the soundtrack on repeat, I tried to let my friends watch it, you could almost say I was obsessed with it. But as the years went by and I watched more and more anime, I started to forget that love that I had for YuruCamp. Now that Yuru Camp season 2 is done, I did not only relive that feeling of love for the anime that I forgot for a time, but also have that love amplified by a thousand. I fucking love Yuru Camp, and there are so many reasons why.
Firstly, the anime is just genuinely great. It is Iyashikei at its best. With a simple premise as “Girls go camping”, the anime really gets a lot out of it. It not only shows multiple ways how to camp, but also shows the dangers that come with it and the extra work you have to do for certain trips. The creators of these anime definitely know what camping takes and you see that back in the anime.
The characters are great too. Rin and Nadeshiko are the definite highlights of the cast. Both have amazing designs and personalities that work well off each other. Rin, the cold but sweet camping fanatic, interacting with Nadeshiko, a bowl of marshmallows and hot chocolate, are some of the best moments of the show. The rest of the character cast is not as strong but still really enjoyable. Aoi is a nice onee-san type that loves to tease others. Ena might not have much as a personality but she compliments Rin well and her dog is adorable. Chiaki is probably the weakest character with how she is often a comedic relief and her comedy tends to have lots of hits & misses, but she still has some great moments. The rest of the characters are mostly made up of chill adults. What makes this character cast work so well is that these friendships feel real. They joke with each other, but also look out for each other and help each other when needed too. They don’t suddenly fall in love, they don’t have exaggerated manners, they don’t go through significant emotional arcs, they are all friends/family that bond over love for camping.
What really sells this anime for me and loads of other people are the production values. The art of this anime is gorgeous. The animation may not be impressive, but the character designs are great and the backgrounds are jaw dropping. Some of the composition also enhances the experience a ton. One of the best things about this anime is the OST. This OST makes me melt into my chair of comfort. It is quiet and meaningful when it needs to, jolly and upbeat when the scene is funny and during down times the relaxing sounds of string instruments make you feel at ease. Even if you decide to not watch the anime after reading this post, please just listen to the OST on Youtube. It is amazing.
Those aspects are already great, but after watching all 25 episodes of this anime, I finally realised why this anime means a lot to me: the way it conveys its passion for camping. I am not a camper and the times I have camped have all been a mixed experience, but I can still feel what joys camping can bring in this anime.
Without any lazy running gags, without any distracting drama, without any sort of moe yuri-bait, this anime shows that camping is about enjoying the quiet beautiful nature. Reading a book while eating self-made dinner in the cold is a healing experience that is hard to get anywhere else, but camping isn’t just solo. You can share this experience with multiple people. With that, even if you screw up, you screw up together and fix things together. Watching the sunset go down or staring at the night sky full of stars becomes an experience you can share with the ones you camp, an unique experience you then only have with those ones.
I mentioned that I have a deep-rooted passion for watching anime, but it is a hard passion to really share with others. While not really that equivalent, camping is also not a hobby that is easy for people to really get, but this anime knows how to let people get what camping is all about by combining all these amazing elements I mentioned previously in a passion-filled 24 minutes 25 episodes total. Watching people that I love doing things that they love in a fashion that doesn’t challenge me and just wants me to have a good time is an amazing healing experience. This experience especially hits hard after going through an exhausting 2020 which brought me enormous distress and loss of motivation, so the comfort of an anime about people doing what they love brought genuine tears to my eyes with the first episode of season 2.
Also, regarding how season 2 compares to season 1, from my perspective, I think it improves enough on things to make it a great second season. With how in season 1 introduced the characters and the setting, this second season now puts its focus on the girls going camping instead of learning and preparing for it. You also see some genuine progression in the series: In season 1 most of the girls were really amateur and had to discover a lot of things, and now in season 2 they already are more experienced and you see that by seeing them enjoy camping more instead of having to deal with the difficulties of it (but don’t worry, there is still a good amount of problem solving in season 2). It is also nice to see the relationships between characters thicken: They get more comfortable with each other and can comment more on each other's personalities.
I fucking love Yuru Camp. It is an anime that I can recommend with all my soul, especially after how heavy 2020 was.
So yeah, watch Yuru Camp you dingus.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 28, 2021
There are so many wonderful ways to screw up an anime, and in the course of my time watching anime I have seen a lot of those ways. From anime that are completely ruined by weird directional choices, to anime that completely misunderstand how to tackle a subject, to the anime that are just plain boring. But Ex-Arm is new to me, because this anime was destined for failure since these words were uttered out: “What if we hired a director that has no experience in anime to make an anime?”
Yoshikatsu Kimura is a director who has directed several low-budget action
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movies. Most of these movies range from mediocre to outright boring, but all of them at least have some impressive action scenes. Before the airing of Ex-Arm, Yoshikatsu seemed confident that he could make an anime, despite having no experience in anime whatsoever. He was so confident in fact that in the trailer of Ex-Arm he “declared war on all Sci-Fi series”, one of the many declarations of war this season. That enormous amount of confidence would come back to haunt Yoshikatsu, because Ex-Arm has now become the laughing stock of not just the anime community, but the anime industry as well. But if we look past all the weird facts, tweets trashing the show and the memes, how bad is Ex-Arm actually?
Ex-Arm follows Akira Natsume, a highschool student who dies in a car crash in 2014. Jump 16 years later, and Akira awakes in a robot brain in a post-apocalyptic society. He is awakened by Minami and her robot AI companion Elma. Akira discovers that he is in fact an Ex-Arm, a machine type which grants the user using its supernatural powers. The fact that Akira exists means he is a threat, but he and his new friends convince the Ex-Arm crew to let Akira join them to let Akira catch more Ex-Arms to prevent other criminals from using them.
For a story, it is honestly not that bad. The world is detailed well and every case the Ex-Arm crew tackles goes into a different part of this post-apocalyptic world. It has a nice sense of mystery and it has quite a lot of good ideas. But the story still has major problems. The powers of Akira and other ex-arms are often not that well explained, feeling like the ex-arms do either jack shit or are overpowered. The characters also don’t really help the story. Most of them are fine and the voice actors give waaay better performances then this anime deserves, but a lof of them feel very cookie cutter. The backstory they give don’t always make sense and the “secret” villain is especially annoying, even if his backstory is fine. Overall, the story aspect has interesting aspects, but it is boring most of the time. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that the story can be called uninspired in context of series like Ghost in the Shell. But honestly, it is really hard to focus on the story or the characters of this anime, because I am constantly distracted by what is in front of my eyes.
Ex-Arms' most infamous aspect is its animation, which is g o d a w f u l. This anime was made by a director who has never made anime before and. It. Shows. The anime is in CG, which is already a bad sign for many, but that doesn’t immediately make the anime look bad. Many anime have developed and improved CG in anime, like Houseki no Kuni and Beastars, but sadly Ex-Arm put CG in anime back to the stone age. The 3D models in Ex-Arm are terrible, with many only looking good from one angle. The animation on the models are laughable. When characters talk, they only move their jaw up and down. There is only one motion for talking, so when characters talk, they look like puppets. The environments aren’t incredibly empty and uninspired, but they are also 2D sometimes?
This brings me a major issue in the animation: Visual clash. This anime features 2D and 3D animation, which can look fine if it is highly stylised like Beastars, but in Ex-Arm it is not, so it ends up looking baffling. The 2D animation sucks by the way, barely any movement and the quality of lines range from fine to drawn on paint. This all isn’t even mentioning the action scenes, the weird visual effects, the inconsistent character animation, the fact that the anime hides moderately difficult things to animate off-screen or on-screen but with censoring, and the many, many bizarre animation mistakes. Ex-Arm is a visual cluster fuck that is hard to look away from.
Ex-Arm is an anime that perplexes me. Every episode there is some new animation fuck up I can’t believe. While its story is pretty boring, it is hard to focus on it with its entertainingly bad animation. I will admit that I had some fun with watching how bad this anime could get, but after this watch I will never watch it again. It is boring, uninspired, has one-dimensional characters and its animation is nothing short of baffing.
Ex-Arm is less of anime to be enjoyed, but an experience to learn from. It is a case study on what people can create when they get the budget but don’t have the necessary skills. It is a lesson on what you should not do while making an anime.
It is an anime that deserves its reputation of one of the worst anime of all time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 1, 2020
Forgiveness is overrated. You have the big bad villain that killed the whole town, wanted the world turn into darkness and fucked the protagonists wife and the protagonist doesn't kill villain because "that would make him just as bad as him". And everyone is fine after it all and go on to get some mcdonalds or something. It is boring to see a peaceful end to everything. That's why I am happy Yuukoku no Moriarty exists.
The anime is an adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes story we all know, but this time it focuses on the antagonist. James Moriarty is a professor in good ol'
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victorian england, also being a crime consultant as a side-job. In this world there is a clear divide between the rich class and everyone else. Due to the rich class being so priviliged they began discriminating agianst the poor. James Moriarty not being able to live in this disgusting world, he takes matters into his own hands: Trying to take down the rich class and helping out the poor.
The series is episodic so far, each episode deticated to a mystery/problem the protagonist James has to solve. In this way it follows the Sherlock Holmes style closely, but where it differs is in the resolution of each mystery. While Sherlock is on the side of law, James follows his sense of "Justice", which in this case is helping out the poor, even if that means helping others to steal from banks or even helping to kill aristocrats that are commiting crimes. So Sherlock is more about solving crimes, James is more about revenge.
The story and message this anime goes for meshes well with the tone. The anime is incredibly dramatic. Heavy shadows, red-black filters, epic music, dramatic one liners, it has it all. Even if you don't agree with the message this anime is trying to say, it is impossible to not be swayed by its excellent use of tone.
The rest of the anime is what you would expect. The artstyle is clean and nice, the animation is clean and smooth, the characters are interesting, the music, like i mentioned, is epic, it is all just good stuff.
So in short: If you want to watch a myster anime about batman sherlock holmes, I can't recommend this anime enough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 3, 2020
I have a soft spot for short anime. Even if they don't give mindblowing experiences, they can be fun times that are quickly done so they don't waste your time. Joshikausei is an example of a short anime I really enjoyed.
Sadly, Ninja Collection isn't a good experience.
The anime follows a group of ninjas (I guess?) that defeat evil spirits (I think?) in an episodic fashion. The plot is incredibly simple but it is still confusing as hell due to a lack of explanations and just weird events in general. In the first anime a fog is turning students into zombies, the
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next episode there is a devil, the next one ghosts. And the explanations of what they do, where they come from, what the reason is for doing the things in the show or even just why they exist? No explanations, just random "creepy" shit happening. And I put "creepy" in quotes because it is not creepy at all.
The reason why it is not creepy is because of the horrible production values. This anime is a spin-off of Yami Shibai and that had limited animation, but that was clearly an artistic decision since the artstyle was really good with some great lighting effects to go along with it. With Ninja Collection the limited animation doesn't feel like an artistic decision but a budget cut. The drawings themselves are ugly and the lighting effects are nothing to write home about. When things do move characters just slide across the screen. I once noticed that they forgot to draw the rest of an arm since it slide too far into the screen.
And then the voice acting. Did they just pull random people of the street? Because the voice acting is noticeably bad. Lack of emotion, awkward dialogue delivery and just a general feeling of unprofesionalism makes the voice acting not good.
When I first saw the 3.59 MAL score I was shocked. No way it could be this bad! But it was. If you actually want something similar to this but actually good, check out the original Yami Shibai. That anime will actually frighten you while this anime only will make you feel bad for it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 26, 2020
Most of the time you can see what is genius and what is stupid, but when you go to the extreme of both terms you get a sort of horshe shoe theory which makes it incredibly difficult to seperate these two terms. I thought about this while I was watching The Misfit of Demon King Academy, one of the hottest anime this season. For the last couple of weeks I have trying to figure out if this anime is a genius work of art or genuine stupidity, and I still havent figure out in what camp it falls.
But lets first talk about
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the story. The Misfit of Demon King Academy is an anime about a demon lord who after his death gets reincarnated 2000 years later. He goes to academy that trains people into demon lords, but because of his incredibly powers giving the entry test a stroke, he is marked as a misfit. Now he tries to complete school, figure out what happened in the 2000 years he was gone and pick up waifu's.
From the get go, the set-up is simple and ridiculous, and the main character fits perfect for his main roll. The MC is called Anos Voldigoad and he is incredibly cocky and has no regards for his environment, so socially he doesnt do well. Also, he is an incredibly OP character. Not like shounen OP, but One Punch Man OP. My entire enjoyment of the show stems from Anos being OP and destroying everyone. In just episode 1 he destroys a guy with his heartbeat and completely wipes his enemy from existence with a finger snap. And as the series goes on it only gets more ridiculous. It gets ridiculous to the point it becomes silly and hilarious. But unlike One Punch Man, this anime 100% serious. There are never jokes that use subversion of expectations to its advantage, it all played straight. This is why every time the anime tries to be awesome or emotional, I just laugh, because I can't take it seriously. Lots of aspects of the anime are pretty mediocre, but these mediocre aspects only add to my enjoyment, because I laugh at how mediocre they are.
If all this ridiculousness was intentional, then this might be one of the smartest anime ever made. If it wasn't, then this is one of the best "so bad it is good" anime ever made.
But one thing is clear: this anime is damn entertaining and I heavily recommend it. Watch it if you want a popcorn action show about an OP character.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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May 8, 2020
Short anime aren't apreciated enough. Most people shrug them of as time wasters when in actuality they can be sometimes better then full 24 minutes 12 episodes long series. Given, lots of these short anime are either kids shows, softcore porn meant for women or Isekai Quartet, but there are so many gems that people not check out because they are so short. This is one of those gems.
This anime is about a grandpa pretending to be old and fragile just to charm his wife. That's it. It is short, easy to understand and has lots of potential.
This anime is pretty darn cute.
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While it is one of those "one joke" comedies, its short length makes its humor not feel stale (or atleast, it is not yet stale). And to give this anime credit, it has some pretty creative moments.
The anime has quite the nice artstyle. It doesn't have lots of animation, but there is definitely effort placed into this anime. Also, the ED with the humming grandpa is cute.
Yeah, this anime is a fun time. Every episode is only one minute long and there are five episodes out now. It takes longer to read this review then watching one episode, so get out there and watch this show. Even if you end up hating it, the episodes are so short the pain will be brief.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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