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Jun 8, 2024
Right off the bat, Tokyo Ghoul's concept is inherently cool and interesting.
Regardless of how media has twisted its perception and how the anime made it seem “edgy and twisted”, the show’s core concept is really interesting: What would happen if “ghouls” existed in modern society. Not only does this pose countless philosophical questions, but its a fun take on how humans would react if such a thing were to happen, and the show goes to extremes to flesh the worldbuilding which I appreciate. However where my issue with this area lies is that some aspects weren’t reinforced and I ended up having to remind myself
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that they existed, eg: I actually forgot at one point that the core theme of: “ghouls needing to eat humans to survive”, was a thing because it just didn’t happen past the early chapters.
No shocker that the story is great, absolutely no complaints here, however I will outline one aspect that I noticed; the pacing was amazing. Chapters flowed into one another as if I didn’t turn the page and I never questioned whether the plot could’ve spent more time on certain areas of the story.
I honestly hate what the anime did to my boy Kaneki, he’s such an amazing catalyst for the reader to experience the world alongside him, assuring that he knows just as much as the us throughout the early chapters, as well as just being a great character period. His progression through the story is by-far one of it’s best qualities, especially during the second half where he’s all over the place; the story goes out of it’s way to make sure we understand his mental state.
This might be a personal issue, but I had massive issues trying to comprehend some of the art and panelling during the first half of the manga. I actually think the artist had a stroke midway through some of the fight-scenes because I swear they’re incomprehensible to mere mortals. Fortunately the fights became much wider-shot and more detailed during the second half - to the point I could actually understand what was happening.
Another - smaller - nit-pick I have is that all of the CCG character blend together. Obviously the main cast stand out due to the fact they actually get development, but sometimes “big-strong-guy #4” will take up the entire panel and I’m just left wondering who the fuck that is. My main issue is that none of them are distinctive enough from one another to the point its hard to tell some of them apart.
Finally. Would I consider this worth reading if you’ve already seen the anime.
No.
Don’t get me wrong; the manga is infinitely better, especially compared to season two. But if you’re not thirsting for more Tokyo Ghoul content - the anime served its purpose fine, and whilst its inferior, it scratched that itch we all have sufficiently. For me at least.
<3
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 25, 2023
The 'Second' instalment of Higurashi Rei is a massive step up in terms of characters, plot, and my general interest in it.
Before anything, I just want to give this credit for how accurately it depicts its characters. Specifically, Keitarou (Based), and just the cast in general, act exactly how I imagine myself and others would act in their incredibly specific situations, which is no small feat to pull off. Congrats.
Onto the actual review.
The people of Hinamizawa and Polaris can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, stuck together, yet so completely different that you can't tell. Oniokoshi-hen showed us the viewpoints of the
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people of Hinamizawa, with their biased perspective, Hoshiwatashi showed us the viewpoint of the people of Polaris, with an equally biased perspective. However, now that we've seen the perspective of both sides, it's easy - and even encouraged - to take a neutral perspective on their situation. This is the pinnacle of clever writing, as far as I'm concerned, and an incredibly rewarding experience.
Polaris itself was incredibly interesting and dynamic, showing us how these domestic abuse victims, a detail which was omitted in Oniokoshi, cope with their past and live together in their own cornered-off society. The culture and characters of Polaris were developed, similarly to Hinamizawa, except with this, it's completely new territory, meaning that it's being kept fresh and interesting just by existing.
This is almost everything I could've wanted out of a Higurashi sequel. My only complaint is that it's too short. I wish I could've spent more time experiencing Polaris and Keitarou's friends' opposition to them. Unfortunately, it does feel slightly rushed, which is why it's not a 10/10. Although its fast pace hardly got in the way of my enjoyment and appreciation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 18, 2023
The 'first' installment of Higurashi Rei is rather slow and uninteresting as a part of the wider Higurashi universe; however, it's very necessary as a setup for the next two arcs of Rei.
Now, I'm just going to talk briefly about how well it does as an add-on to the original. When it comes to this, it does well in some areas and terribly in others. It builds on the existing story strictly for Hinamizawa and Hinamizawa alone; this is obviously great, but the original cast barely appears, and the way we get most of our information about them is through dialogue by the new main
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cast - their children. It's not even established who certain characters from the original conceived these children with, and with the structure of most Higurashi arcs being 50% Slice Of Life, it was a missed opportunity to not give us at least a little bit of fanservice around the original cast. It was just a bit disappointing.
It felt like I was reading Onikakushi again but with a new coat of paint, which both works and doesn't considering its status as a story that takes place 40 years after the events of the original. It works because I could tell that, while it was a rather underwhelming in terms of characters, with there only being three that I liked, its purpose was to set up the next arc while introducing us to the characters and plot. It's not bad, just a bit underwhelming.
At least it's not Gou/Sotsu.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 17, 2023
"It’s not that hard to write a sequel, expand on characters and story in meaningful ways, and try to make it as good or better than the original. For most people, the standard was the original Deen anime from 2006-2007, and for a sequel to not even begin to reach the quality of that, let alone the original VN, is… well… maybe it just shouldn’t have been made in the first place.
Gou is unique in that, if you’ve consumed any Higurashi content before it, it will actively hinder your experience while watching it. Yes, you will have a worse time watching a sequel if you've
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already watched the original. I am not joking. A massive reason for this is the fact that half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap; the first three arcs are adapted straight from the 2002 VN with detailed differences and a changed conclusion to serve the new narrative. This is why, if you’ve consumed Higurashi in any shape or form before this, it’ll likely bore you half to death. The episodes add absolutely nothing of value to the characters and even trivialize their arc and development from the original, making them somehow less of a character. These arcs only exist to serve the new narrative and to make sure newcomers aren’t too confused… which is so… completely backward.
Promotional material is mostly harmless; it’s literally just advertising, and that’s what it should be. I can’t decide whether I love the trailer for Gou or detest it. On one hand, it was a decently funny bait-and-switch, advertising the show as a remake of a beloved VN to then be revealed as a sequel in episode 2, and on the other hand, it would’ve been much better as a remake. This isn’t even mentioning the swarm of first-timers to the series starting off with Gou, partially due to the fact that the original Higurashi has become rather hard to watch legally. The original Higurashi Deen anime was… good, I guess, but to say it was totally faithful to the original and used its time wisely is just wrong. I was so hyped for a remake because of this, so you can imagine my dismay when I found out it wasn’t.
Shock factor in place of depth and horror.
If you’ve ever seen the original, I should hope that you came to the conclusion that the “horror” of it came from the artistically crafted plot and impactful death scenes. Taking the beginning of the original VN as an example, it starts with an ambiguous, repetitive bashing sound over Keiichi’s inner monologue as he commits an atrocity we have yet to see. It’s insightful, it’s mysterious, and most of all, it’s impactful. Then we come to Gou, which throws all meaning out the window and replaces it with unsettling images and sounds. Sure, it’s more in line with the traditional idea of “horror = scary,” but it’s such a poor choice considering the themes of the original. I’m not even saying it did the unsettling images and sounds particularly well either; they’re not thought out or even scary, really. Most of the death scenes result in the entire room they're in being absolutely covered in blood, no matter what weapon they’re using, and even ignoring the blood, everything from the characters to the animation falls in line with your typical slasher, rather than the psychological horror it’s supposed to be. And that’s the one thing anime does incredibly poorly; slashers succeed in scaring their audience due to it being live action and therefore relatable to an extent. Anime can’t do that, for obvious reasons.
It’s just not scary. In any sense of the word.
I honestly feel bad for the voice actors, who continuously put up a stellar performance no matter the quality of the Higurashi content they’re featured in. They’re one of the shining stars that I got from scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of compliments to give the show. It’s astonishing how they can put up this good of a performance even after 14 years of voice acting for the franchise, and I have endless praise for all of them. Though when it comes to the new coat of paint the sequel got, I’m not so kind. I really, really thought about this, and I prefer the original art and animation. Intentional or not, the bad art and questionable animation definitively set a tone that matched the narrative of the show. Gou’s just feels so bland and basic; it doesn’t change to match specific tones presented by the plot, nor is it good (This does NOT include the EDs, which were amazing). It’s “good,” don’t get me wrong, but that’s all I can give it, and it links back into my argument about the lack of depth the show has, and I think the animation is a rather nit-picky example of that.
I’ve held off talking about the main issue of the first season so far, which is undoubtedly the story and pacing. The pacing is so incredibly inconsistent in the worst places. Take, for example, the first 13 episodes. I know I’ve mentioned them a lot, but I cannot stress enough just how bad they are, and I will keep talking about them until I’ve convinced you. As I said before: “half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap.” This by itself isn’t a bad thing; however, none of it is cut. Despite being a sequel, it goes out of its way to explain almost every single thing we should already know by this point. And as a result, it just feels like you’re watching the original Deen anime again. This isn’t even contained to the first 13 episodes; parts of Sotsu and later in Gou we get Matsuribayashi-hen recap when plot should be taking place.
In a post-episode 13 world, the plot does actually happen, and the story makes meaningful progress for the first time in 4 hours. It arguably gets worse. The pacing goes into overdrive to the point where major character development is cut down into 4 episodes. It gets worse. Out of those 4 episodes, only roughly 2 of them (2 halves of 2 episodes put together and 1 good episode) have any meaning, while the others are relegated to padding and murder scenes. The murder scenes in particular could’ve been done well; all they would need to do is portray Rika’s active thought processes and mental deterioration in a meaningful way as she was being killed, but all they gave us were a few lines of dialogue from her each scene, most of them being completely irrelevant.
Funnily enough, Gou’s peak was when it was acting as it was meant to be from the start, a sequel to the original. The main characters get nice development, and the story that ended from the original is directly continued.
The second half of the arc is where the actual answers are revealed to us, and most importantly, we get to see one of the best characters from the original go down a dark spiral called bad writing. Some of the decisions made here are so bad and frankly disrespectful that I couldn’t take any of them seriously. It also clearly shows that the writer has no understanding of human emotion, with many events that should’ve at least put a strain on the main character's mental state just further fueled their questionable motivation for their even more questionable goal.
Now I have no doubt that the higher-ups at studio Passione had some influence in how this was written. Considering the general outside perspective of Higurashi, especially the anime, being along the lines of a murder-thriller with lots of gore and violence, they likely pushed the people actually making the show in that direction because they thought it would make a decent profit.
Overall, this show is really bad; I hate it from the bottom of my heart, and nothing is likely to change that.
Remember: It’s not canon if you don’t like it; just forget it existed and move on with your life. - Me, when this first aired."
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 9, 2023
There is SO much wrong with this manga. I normally don't read things I don't like, but for some reason I thought it would get better the more I read, it SEEMED like it would get better the more I read... I was wrong.
Every character HAS to have a tragic backstory. This goes beyond the concept of the show because ALL the relevant characters have a tragic backstory in some sense. Not only is this a massive overload with the story's massive cast of relevant characters, but it seems to stop there. Next to none of these characters get any meaningful development outside of their
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backstory in the entire 140 chapter length. Obviously, this makes it less impactful and made some chapters really tedious. The only character with actually decent development is the main character, Aya. She goes through a character arc throughout the entire story, and it's pretty compelling. However, all other characters only exist for the plot.
I don't normally have an interest in paneling; it's much like animation and game graphics to me. If it's good, well, that's pretty good, and if it's bad, it won't impact my enjoyment too much. With this manga, however, it's sometimes impossible to keep track of what's going on, especially with the climax where so many things are happening, and the sheer scale of them. I found myself re-reading some panels over and over again and still not fully understanding what happened. The art is pretty good, though.
Conceptually the plot is amazing, it's paced well enough that it keeps getting more interesting the more you keep reading and has some cool idea that I haven't seen before. It had its highs for sure, but the lows were insanely low, and the aforementioned pacing and story composition were so off at points that I sometimes went back chapters to make sure I didn't accidentally skip one. Just to give an example: a big battle happens, a character dies, the next chapter abruptly starts a 20-odd chapter long side-story for characters we've never seen. For this example in particular, it's a literal cliff-hanger, It cuts all tension from the previous chapter and focuses on something else entirely. Another thing is that the author wants you to take this seriously, but at the same time comes up with the most ridiculous plot developments known to man. Most of them don't even serve the narrative in a meaningful way, and I can only imagine they're there because the author suddenly thought it would be a good idea.
I can't say I had a great time reading this. The climax sucked, the characters sucked and the plot was decent yet underwhelming, but I did end up finishing it for better or worse, so it obviously did something right.
The meme is just over halfway through chapter 103.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 17, 2023
I started reading because I looked at the top review for the manga and it read "this damn manga made me laugh SO MANY TIMES, and made me cry EVEN MORE times." -AIIpha. I decided I had nothing better to do and coupled with the fact I'm a romcom junkie, I just had to give it a go... Wow. I genuinely can't accurately describe what this manga did to me over the course of 2 months of reading.
-To start off the story/plot is really good... surprisingly. You wouldn't think a stereotypical romcom would have a decent plot but I really liked this one. It moved
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at such a slow pace to allow us to enjoy the superb characters and comedy without it feeling pointless, yet not so slowly that when it was time for the main plot to kick it felt jarring and unnatural. Not much to say here as it has virtually no depth to it as it's not the focus of the manga for 75% of the time.
-The comedy is incredible, I laughed so much I lost count, even when I didn't laugh I appreciated the attempt and that alone made me smile. I actually believe this manga has some of the best comedic moments in the form of visual gags, they were all fantastic and nearly all of them had me laughing. Obviously not all of it was gold, there were a few repeated jokes that got really annoying but listen I'm trying to be biased here.
-Characters... Holy shit there's 16!?!?!? AND I LIKE ALL ALMOST OF THEM!?!?!?
A common troupe in long-running romcoms and just manga in general is what I call "character padding", basically the writer for one reason or another feels the need to add pointless characters to the story to keep us entertained, this normally ends up poorly; as the characters feel poorly written and just not-meant-to-be. This is not the case here (thank god I was so worried at the time).
All of the characters are incredibly endearing, even the later ones that showed up whom I sighed at, at first turned into characters I actually love and kept me reading along with existing incredible cast.
When it comes to character quirks it's extremely hit or miss, they can either be incredibly funny and entertaining or make me want to skip the chapter. Yeah all but three... 13 characters with incredibly funny and personalities and I got to enjoy up to 150 chapters of them all.
-Art. It's overall good, no complaints whatsoever and it shines especially with the character designs.
I can't describe this manga any other way than happiness, I felt pure bliss for almost the entire duration of me reading, possibly partially because it's one of the most wholesome things I've ever read, it's the definition of light-hearted entertainment with the FIRST cliché tripped into boobs scene being at chapter 150. There were mildly erotic scenes leading up to that which did annoy me at first but that quickly turned into insanely funny comedy as soon as Rin was introduced and after that all I could do was smile at the pair of tits instead of being annoyed at their existence. (This is not a joke, I had to take multiple minute-long breaks between reading because I was laughing too much at these)
At around episode 145 characters start getting conclusions to their progression, this is also when it stops being so light-hearted and the story begins to speed up a lot. Almost every character I care about got a satisfying conclusion to their aspirations and love interests which plays into the feeling sheer happiness I mentioned before. I can't even say the story is bad after it picked up pace, it's nothing ground-breaking but it was interesting enough to grip me and after spending a month and a half with some of my favourite characters of all time I hardly cared about the story despite how good it was, I just wanted to see everybody happy at the end.
I went into this show with the promise of tears, I can confidently say that might've happened; but not for reasons I expected. This manga had so many character arcs going on at once and it tried to conclude them in a manner that had impact without taking too many pages. As a result the author unfortunately used a LOT of teary eyed characters to try to replace the impact felt through thorough character building, unfortunately this meant that I came to expect tears from characters and happy scenes all around, this expectance obviously prevented me from getting too emotional as I could so much as predict what was gonna happen. Don't get me wrong some of these pages are still fantastic and contained great writing, it was just the expectation and the pacing that prevented emotions from me...
However I did cry twice. Once was at the end when something completely unexpected and a frankly masterful and incredibly emotional conclusion to one of the more troubled characters. The second was interesting... I cried when I closed the last volume. I was finished and I just sat on my bed and started crying.
This is the hardest case of black-hole I've felt in years and I hope this conveys how much this manga means to me and how incredible it is.
Thank you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jul 10, 2023
I came for incestuous garbage instead I just got regular garbage.
I hate to admit this but this show made me laugh... A lot. It's got an incredibly perverted sense of humour with a few characters in particular saying some variation of "I want to suck your dick", it's not afraid to cross the line in the slightest which plays into the humour nicely and makes it unironically funny.
The characters were all boring, I liked the blonde haired girl because I find sadistic anime characters entertaining and funny; and the silver haired girl was the main source of raunchy humour so I couldn't hate her too
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much, but other than that they all were pretty boring.
Plot is also boring on paper, however I enjoyed the character interactions and scenes when they're not just sitting in the guy's room were fun to an extent.
Overall this show is really funny when it wants to be, but when it's not you can feel the boredom setting in fortunately it's funny a lot of the time so that's good.
Edit: Also the first scene made me cry
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 7, 2023
I think this show really emphasises the importance of pacing and characters.
The plot is obviously great, it's well-crafted and most everything makes sense by the time you're done watching. However. It is heavily brought down by the break-neck pacing, something is constantly happening and the show gives you almost no room to breath whilst watching, not only does this make you extremely exhausted while watching and trying to figure out the mysteries but since the plot's constantly moving forward it leaves no room for characters to be developed; which indirectly makes the storytelling worse.
The characters all suck... Apart from the totally-not-incest side plot and arguably
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busty lady all the characters are under-developed, bland and only exist to serve the plot which lead to me not giving a shit about any of them. This meant that the heavy moments like X dying permanently really didn't hit as hard as they could've.
Comparing the episodes of the anime and the chapters of the manga, I imagine they cut a large amount and it likely included the character development the anime lacked, it could also explain the insanely fast pacing.
The art and animation are both good, nothing outstanding, just good. The show had a few good OSTs here and there, both OPs and EDs did nothing for me, the visuals for both were insanely bland and conveyed no deeper insight into anything. They were the most anime, anime OPs ever.
*Spoilers*
I really didn't like Ushio. I was prepared for a strategic battle where the main character and his friends had to overcome a seemingly invincible enemy, and then Ushio came in with the power if a literal god a few episodes later and absolutely killed the tension. I don't hate her as a character, I hate her for existing because she made everything predictable.
Overall I had a good time, The mysteries were well written and when they were solved they always made something that happened previously make sense. The plot was good apart from aforementioned issues.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 26, 2023
This manga has the weirdest premise out of any I've ever read and it't not even close, I mean, this man's tapeworm burst out of his body alien-like and turned into an anime girl, it was funny shit.
It has the most basic plot I've ever seen: "monster/alien girl comes into introvert/unlikeable guy's life and makes it interesting and honestly I'm a sucker for that, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself and while the it's far from a thought provoking read, it's incredibly short and it's turn-your-brain-off fun to be honest.
So yeah, if you're bored and don't know what to do
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for the next hour and a bit, try it. (Or you could like go watch a film or do literally anything else)
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 11, 2023
Subversion of expectation for the sake of comedy.
I really hated the first 3 - 4 episodes because of this really annoying troupe in comedy anime, lemme give an example: As thank you, uncle gives tsundere a ring, she misinterprets it as a marriage proposal, after misleading visual effects it's revealed that uncle actually meant for her to sell the ring for insane amounts of money... Then we're supposed to laugh. It's a troupe that's only funny around -1 times if you've seen it before and the show really relies on it for it's comedy in the first few episodes.
I'm happy to say that the show
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DID get better and they strayed away from the formula I mentioned.
Instead of this they relied mainly on character gags and interactions as the crutch of the comedy which worked extremely well as all the characters (apart from religious girl) are funny and unique.
Uncle was also funny to an extent, I found it funny at first but it started getting old towards the end of the show's runtime.
So in summary: Yeah, it was good. If you're a fan of comedy/Slice of life I recommend highly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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