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Dec 27, 2020
[ There are going to be some massive spoilers in this review as it’s impossible to criticize this show without giving away massive plot points]
Talentless Nana is a wasted potential if I ever saw one. It builds up everything in its favour in the first episode, only to discard it in the subsequent ones. Although the concept works, the execution and the characters, especially the characters, don’t.
The show is a murder mystery, but not for us. We already know “whodunnit” in the first episode, but the characters don’t. It’s set in a world where some children manifest superhuman abilities, and are sent to a
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remote island to train their powers to perfection in order to defeat the ‘Enemies of Humanity’; but little they know, they are the very force they’re training to fight against.
Yes, that’s right, the “heroes” are the “enemies”, and an assassin is sent to the island, by some government officials, to kill them off before they become aware of this fact; but little did the officials know that developing superpowers makes you dumb as fuck and all of the children would probably perish via the process of natural selection. The characters are literally dumber than kindergarteners. It’s like they left their brains at home before coming to this island.
Nana, the main character and an assassin, is talentless, i.e has no superpowers and has to convince everyone that she has one using her superb deductive skills. She masquerades as a person who can read minds. The premise is interesting, really interesting, but what drags this show down is undeniably the mentally challenged characters. They just don’t care. They don’t give two shits if someone dies, or if someone goes missing. One bullshit explanation from Nana is all it takes for them to channel their inner simp and believe her instantly.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the following scenario.
A transfer student arrives at your high school. She starts hanging around a guy. The next day the guy is absent. And the day after that, and the day after that too. Turns out he’s dead. Also, in the meantime another guy dies and he was also seen hanging around the transfer student. Another one dies, and this time the transfer student is literally caught with the dead body.
Now, using just 1% of your brain, who do you think is the most sus? The transfer student, right? WRONG! She couldn’t do it. Because how could she? She’s so cute and also the class leader.
I just described the first 5 episodes of the show and except one guy no one even suspects her. The only guy who does suspect her, Kyoya, is my favourite character and my hero. He managed to defeat his inner simp and bonk away his horniness for justice.
I kid but I really do feel like Kyoya is the only good character in the series. Nana is simply annoying at times and I’m not going to reiterate what I already said about the majority of the cast.
The mysteries themselves are pretty good. I could see that the author was especially inspired by Detective Conan as the show makes many references to DC. What bothered me most about the series, besides the idiot characters, is the show’s reliance on coincidence. Nana is saved countless times by sheer luck, or should I call it plot?
She accidentally leaves an incriminating picture of hers in a room, but Kyoya doesn’t find that very picture when he searches that room. Kyoya has been portrayed as a methodical and scrupulous person, but turns out when plot calls characterisation can just jump off a cliff.
Michiru, the dumbest bitch to ever exist, literally sees Nana in a picture killing a guy, but does absolutely nothing about it. Some stupid explanation from Nana about “how the picture is not true” is all it takes for her to believe Nana.
Seriously, when I say the characters believe in Nana, it's almost similar to how religious people believe in their God. Countless times in the series she’s not able to read minds, and even though it’s her supposed power, and no one bats an eye. She can pull some random stuff out of her ass about how “her power comes and goes” and no one thinks anything of it. Remember, this is a girl who’s been allegedly involved in 4 murders while having no alibi for any of them.
As I stated above, even though the braindead characters reduce some enjoyability, the actual mystery is really good at times. I especially like the whole arc when Nana kills the necromancer girl and how she would get out the events following that. The whole event was well planned out and didn’t feel forced. I was genuinely intrigued during the resolution of that case. This show could’ve done so much more if it had some better characters and the characters had better judgement.
We get some backstory for Nana, and it felt like the author wanted to make her story really tragic, but it backfired as the whole thing is narrated by Nana which felt more like the author’s attempt at fulfilling his obligation towards us instead of creating a compelling case for his character. Same thing goes for the exposition we get about Michiru’s life before she arrived at the island.
The animation and music are nothing special. The music was tone deaf at times.
Tl;dr
As I said earlier the concept is really good, but bad execution, dumb cast, weak character work really hurt this show in the worst way possible.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 27, 2020
Kaguya sama wa kokurasetai season 2 is the disappointment of the season. It has its ups and downs, the ups being the final three episodes, and the downs being the rest of the season. Only the final three episodes provide any sense of progression, be it for the characters or for the plot. Ishigami’s long awaited character arc was freaking fantastic, but the same can’t be said about the other characters'.
Even after 24 episodes have aired, many of the characters are as bland as they were in the first episode of the first season. I was able to overlook this in season 1, because I
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don’t expect the author to be able to completely characterize and develop the personalities of four main characters in the span of 12 episodes, but I do expect that, or at least half of that, to happen within 24 episodes. If I don’t even know or understand the characters, and if I’m not even the least bit acquainted with them, how can you even expect me to give two shits about their romantic feelings for each other?
All the female characters (and I do mean all) are basically reskinned versions of various “-deres”. Kaguya is a tsun-dere, Hayasaka is a kuu-dere, Iino Miko is a baka-dere and Chika is an annoying-dere. The female characters have no personalities of their own, but have inherited their dispositions, if you can even call them that, from stereotypes. Chika’s character is just to be “cute”; I prefer the phrase obnoxiously irritating but whatever. The entirety of Kaguya’s character revolves around Shirogane; if we were to remove Shirogane from her life all that would be left is an empty husk of a high school girl. Indeed, if this is what the anime intended for her character to be, then I would’ve had no qualms with that, but that is definitely not the case. She’s supposed to be one of the leads, and all we know about her is that she loves Miyuki and has daddy issues. Do we know what caused her daddy issues after two cours? Nope.
Hayasaka has been Kaguya’s maid since her childhood, and that’s her character done for the series. I did feel myself liking Miko initially when she was introduced, because she was actually given a purpose, a purpose that wasn’t relied upon any other character, until that very purpose was daddy-daddy-dooed into oblivion. She was an interesting character and her struggles – public speaking and isolation – were well established. These are complications that I’m sure most of us could related to at some point in our lives. I was invested. I wanted a resolution for her character, not some sort of catharsis but something that would be satisfying and relatable, but all we got was a 5-minute scene where she overcomes it all through nakama power. I wish I was making this up.
A small pep talk from Shirogane is all it takes for her to overbear her fear of public speaking, fear that has cultivated in her mind since her elementary school days, and all it takes for her to overcome it is a debate about why boys in their school should shave their heads in order to conform uniformity. Yeah, BS.
That episode made me question something. Does this show want to be a comedy with serious moments, or does it want to be a serious show with comedic skits; because neither of the two seem to fit the show’s agenda, yet the show still tries its hardest to juggle the two topics. The comedy is more or less hit or miss. The jokes are predictable, 90% of them rely on some sort of misunderstanding between the characters, and frankly, though not a chore to watch, were a bit out of place at times. The joke about Shirogane being not very good at volleyball, and Chika having to teach him tirelessly worked in Season 1, but here that very same joke is repeated two different times; once with singing, and once with dancing.
There would be a moment or two where it feels like the show is actually trying to progress the characters’ relations, but then out of nowhere S Y K E, nothing happens because someone walks in on them.
I can’t go on berating the show as it does have some actual good humour. For example, my favorite in this season is when Kaguya, Ishigami and Shirogane are in a Shoujo manga parody. Now that was hilarious. Taking an already oversaturated genre and saturating it even more created some hysterical moments.
The actual witty comedic timings of the first season were lost somewhere and almost all the comedic moments in this cour are either forced, or mountains made out of molehills. For example, Shirogane approaches Kaguya in front of her classmates and explicitly asks her to PREPARE A SPEECH FOR THE STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT’S ELECTION, but somehow the absolute donuts in the supposedly prestigious school for elites, mistake that for a confession.
The male main characters, are what carry the show because they actually have emotions and act like friends. The show WANTS us to believe that the main quad are friends but shows nothing to instate said relationship between the characters. Let me give you a rundown of how the characters treat each other –
1. Kauguya, with
a) Shirogane – lovey dovey
b) Ishigami – same joke about her being a cold af devil is repeated a million times
c) Chika – considers her a cancer to society and then immediately does a 180 and suddenly she’s her bff
Chika is the same with everyone because she’s got no personality. Shirogane and Ishigami are the only ones who show some sort of realism in their emotions. I know that it’s an anime and all and it doesn’t need to be that realistic, but what gets on my nerves is that the show tries to conceal the lack of depth in the characters and tries to swindle the viewer, using poorly constructed recurring jokes, into thinking that maybe the characters aren’t just ink droplets on a piece of paper.
There’s a scene in this season where the Student Council is disbanded and the characters may never get to spend much time together, but the only thing I could think about is how much I don’t give a shit. The author tries to employ various techniques in order for the viewer to feel sad, which include but are not limited to – crying characters, other characters joining in on the crying, walking into the sunset and more crying. The characters also keep reiterating about how “nostalgic” the past year was as if to convince the viewer to feel the same. If you need to explicitly ask the viewer to have a poignant feeling during a scene, then you need to redo that entire part from scratch.
Show, don’t tell. That’s one of the main philosophies in writing, but unfortunately the show believes in “Tell, don’t show”.
We are TOLD that Kaguya worked the hardest to defend Ishigami, even though we are SHOWN that Shirogane was the one to pull Ishigami out of his “darkness”.
We are TOLD how Kaguya planned something, but we’re never SHOWN how or when she did it. For example, we are told, through Hayasaka, that Kaguya planned for two of the students to go to different schools after they graduated from middle school, only for Kaguya to later state “masaka, I am not that cold”. Is this the author’s way of building up Kaguya? Or is this the author just trying to give Kaguya’s character some edginess? Because, neither of them particularly worked.
The highlight of this season definitely was the handling of Ishigami’s character. The way his character arc was structured is praiseworthy. All the foreshadowing for his character, in Season 1 and the first half of this season, are finally compiled into two episodes and they were magnificent. The resolution was fantastic, the build up was fantastic, everything was fantastic. If only the author cared as much about the female cast as he does about the male counterpart.
The animation is as fantastic as it was in the season prior to this one. There is a sense of fluidity in the characters’ movements which go hand in hand fantastically with the amazing lighting and directing of the skits. There is always something in motion, be it in the foreground or the background, and if we get a still shot it’s usually accompanied with ambient music and gorgeous lighting. In terms of animation, there are no corners cut and there is almost never a dull moment.
The music is great. I like the new Opening and Ending songs this season, though I wasn’t particularly a fan of the previous season’s OP and ED. The rest of the OST is good.
I said it at the start of the review, I’ll say it again, “Kaguya Sama wa Kokurasetai Season 2 is a disappointment”. It has its highs sure, but the time used up in the detours it takes and the meandering it does in order to reach said highs, could’ve and should’ve been used more deftly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 4, 2020
My hero academia, after having an explosion in its popularity while season 2 was airing, is arguably the most popular shounen right now that is not One Piece. And the hype is mostly deserved be it for having a well-balanced cast of characters, or for the fantastically animated and choreographed fights, the latter of which had a massive dip in quality this season. This entire season does not live up to the extreme hype perpetuated by the manga community.
The animation is very stiff even relying on still frames at times; the characters feel like they haven’t progressed at all since the beginning of season
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3 even though some of them went through huge developments; the main antagonist, Overhaul, isn’t explored through introspection, and the potential he had is lost when reliance on flashbacks is preferred for the “justification” of his motives.
Every season of MHA can be broken down into two sections, viz. the villains attacking UA, and the villains planning on attacking UA, and this season is no different. The season can be split into two parts – Overhaul arc, and the Cultural Festival arc. Herein lies the pacing problem of the show, the splitting of a season into two works for seasonal runtime but in reality, the actual plot, the story that it set out to tell, has been lost somewhere. It has been 88 episodes since the debut of the first episode and we have seen very little plot progression. The overhaul arc was unnecessarily long, eating up 17 episodes when it could’ve been truncated to 12. The said arc, though entertaining, did little for almost all characters, except Kirishima and Mirio, and was of even less import in the big scheme of things.
For me the characters in MHA have always been the highlight. The characters are quintessential shounen characters but are imbued with subtle nuances and traits, but after witnessing them in this season I feel like they’re slowly regressing back to being just your average shounen protagonists and sidekicks. Bakugo for example, who had a change of personality in the preceding season, is more or less back to his previously angry self for no reason. Sure, there are changes to his prior disposition, but they don’t seem to follow up. Midoriya had some interesting moments in S3, for example the aftereffects of his fights with Muscular and Bakugo were enduring to watch, but this season he has reverted back to being the character who says “I want to become stronger” a lot. Kirishima and Mirio get some good character work done on them and I’m thankful for that. Kirishima’s backstory with Mina did feel like a plot device as we’ve almost never seen them interact as friends on any prior occasion, but suddenly it’s revealed that Mina was in the same middle school as Kirishima? I call BS.
Sir Nighteye, Mirio’s mentor and All Might’s former sidekick is introduced this season, who had chosen Mirio to be the successor to All Might and was against the fact that All Might had passed on One for All to Midoriya. This leads to the development of some great character dynamics between Midoriya and Nighteye, which, unfortunately were only touched upon superficially. It had potential to lay solid groundwork for Midoriya’s development, but no such task is undertaken by the author.
One unfounded complaint I’ve heard about this season is that only a few characters get the focus while the rest are discarded which is a problem only if you see it as one. Other characters do get the spotlight at various instances in the previous seasons, but the seasonal nature of the show makes it seem like characters are forgotten at times. Take the Chimera Ant Arc in Hunter x Hunter for example. In this arc two of the main protagonists are not given any screen time for 60 straight episodes and no one batted an eye.
As for the main antagonist this season, Overhaul, was neither exceptional nor bad, he was just OK. He didn’t stand out as much as Stain did, but he felt like a rehashed version of him. I liked Overhaul aka Chisaki as a character, but his motivations are baseless and his ‘means justify the end’ scream hypocrisy. He proclaims that quirks are diseases and should not be allowed to transfer on the next generation, but at the same time invents drugs to increase the potency of one’s quirk.
Speaking of antagonists, it doesn’t feel like the main antagonist of the series, Shigaraki Tomura, has done much progressing since the beginning of the series. I really hope he gets some major role in the upcoming seasons, because I’m honestly starting to get tired of him. At least he’s stopped scratching his neck and being pissed about anything and everything, which is a plus, I guess.
One of the most disappointing aspects of this season has been the lackluster animation. The fights don’t have the fluidity they possessed in the earlier seasons. For the climax of one of the biggest fights this season, Mirio vs Overhaul, we get an amazing slideshow which anyone could’ve made given they had access to the manga, photoshop and MS Powerpoint. They totally made up for it in the succeeding fight, but the stagnant animation and lack of music towards the climax of the previously mentioned fight really takes away much of the poignancy off the payoff.
The animation is by no means bad, but it’s not what I’ve come to expect form My Hero Academia. I hope they’ll fix it in the Blu-ray.
The music is great as always. I wasn’t a fan of either the first or the second opening and ending songs, but that’s just me. Rest of the music, though misused at times, was great.
For me, this season of MHA has been the weakest season yet. I’m more disappointed in the writing and pacing in this season than I am in the animation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 29, 2019
[Paragraphs that contain spoilers have been marked]
I was hyped for Vinland Saga, more hyped than I’d been for any anime the whole year. I even waited for all episodes to air before binging the show because considering the things I’d heard about it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop once I started watching it. It definitely did live up to the hype and I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I did find few pacing issues among other problems.
[Story and World]
Vinland Saga is a show about Vikings. You know those horned helmets wearing, axe wielding, wine drinking badasses who discovered America?
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Considering anime now-a-days usually follows the formula of having cute chibi characters and tossing them into dangerous situations, Vinland Saga was a breath of fresh air. It’s been a while since I saw adults as the prominent cast in an anime. The last good anime with a mostly adult cast, Golden Kamuy, aired way back in January 2018. Not saying that anime having a main cast comprising of children and teens is bad, but I’m getting off topic.
Vinland Saga has a great cast of characters, a great story interweaving personal and impersonal, political and non-political, religious and non-religious narratives, amazing world building, great writing and awesome animation as the icing on the cake. We follow Thorfinn, son of Thors, as he is on a quest to fulfill his vendetta against Askeladd. That’s all I can say about the plot without spoiling anything.
The story is set in 1000 AD during the English invasion of Denmark. The show does an immaculate job of portraying the environment of that era. The attention to detail is astonishing. From huge ships with heads shaped like dragons to the smallest of details on a coin everything is proof of the love and care that was put into creating Vinland Saga. You can feel the author’s passion for history in the veracity of the architecture, in the aerial view of cities and battle camps, in the clothes and jewelry that people wear and last but not least in the politics and the characters who are derived from historical figures who existed in the same era.
[Characters]
Superficially, Vinland Saga may seem like a story about the violence, atrocities and other events that took place due to the war between the English and the Danes, but it is first and foremost a character drama. We have a vast array of extremely well characterized cast which does not limit itself to the main group of characters. Thorfinn and Askeladd’s dynamic is one of the best, if not the best character dynamic, I had the pleasure witnessing in recent years.
This happens pretty early in the show so I wouldn’t consider it a spoiler, but if you’re the kind of person who wants to go into a show blind, then skip the next paragraph.
------------------------------------------------------Spoilers Start----------------------------------------------------
Thorfinn’s father, Thors, is called by one of his old comrades to join the war and he reluctantly agrees. During their journey to the battlefield Thors’ ship is attacked by pirates led by Askeladd, who was tasked with killing Thors. Thors is murdered by Askeladd in front of Thorfinn and thus starts Thorfinn’s quest for vendetta.
Thorfinn, 6 years old at the time of his father’s murder, sets out on his goal of killing Askeladd despite his father’s best efforts in his last moments to try to steer Thorfinn away from the path of revenge. But Thorfinn, driven by instincts and emotion and wanting to quench his thirst for vengeance, disregards his father’s words.
Thorfinn joins Askeladd’s group of pirates in order to earn a chance to duel him and Askeladd, while at first exploiting Thorfinn’s anger and using it for his own merit, slowly but surely starts to respect Thorfinn’s determination. This is how one of the best character dynamic starts developing between a boy and his father’s killer.
------------------------------------------------------Spoilers End----------------------------------------------------
Thorfinn is a good character but he may seem pretty one-dimensional at times as his motivation for all he does is to gain a chance to duel and kill Askeladd. He doesn’t receive much development this season and that’s perfectly fine. I’d rather have a character develop slowly and persistently rather than having him change in a few episodes. We do see Thorfinn’s struggles and thus growth as he transforms from a sweet little boy into a vicious killer even though that’s the farthest thing from what his father would’ve wanted.
Askeladd is the most interesting character to come out of any anime this year. He’s ruthless, plunders villages and kills the villagers for food and money, he’s a shrewd scheming bastard and yet I couldn’t help but like him. He has a kind of mysterious aura to himself to which we get insight later in the show and when you consider what kind of person he is and the life he’s led you can make sense of why he treats Thorfinn, a kid who’s out to kill him, with respect. Askeladd thinks he owes a debt to Thors which he can never repay directly and thus tries to repay it vicariously through Thorfinn.
There are many other characters who play a pivotal role in this season, some of them include: Thorkell; Canute, the prince of Denmark; Floki, one of Thors’ old comrades and few more.
Canute is the prince of Denmark, but he’s quite effeminate for a prince. He is a pacifist despite being raised by a Viking and he is a religious Christian. All this changes drastically however, after certain events unfold and he turns into a figure much reminiscent of a prince; but I thought the development happened too quickly and was rushed. I’m not stating that he shouldn’t have undergone change, but a steadier change would’ve been less jarring and would’ve had a larger impact on the audience in the long run. Still, watching him become more sophisticated after witnessing war and being imbued by a philosophy which was very different to his own was goosebumps material.
Thorkel is a character whom I, at first, thought of as Goku because he loves is eating and fighting strong opponents, but he turned out to be a much more introspective person. The characters are great and are a great addition to the already rich world of Vinland Saga.
Another aspect of what I loved about Vinland Saga was the portrayal of religion. Episode 14 is probably my favourite episode of anything that deals with the faith that people hold on to in desperate times and the message the episode was trying to get across was depressing but beautiful at the same time.
[Music and Animation]
The animation is absolutely fantastic. There is some weird use of CG here and there, but the character animation and the backgrounds, especially the backgrounds, are magnificently animated. The picturesque scenery portraying all mountain ranges and the snowy landscape of Iceland was breathtaking. The hilly areas and the mountainous terrain of Wales was aptly displayed for maximum immersion. The titular world – Vinland – seemed like it was something out of a Ghibli anime.
The character animation is just as good. Expressions of anger, sadness, regret are properly encapsulated. The fights are fluid and flow like water with not sudden jump cuts or weird framing.
The music was also good. I especially loved the first opening and the first ending songs. The second opening and ending tracks are amazing, just not as good at capturing the tone of the show. The tracks used during the episodes were well suited for the show and properly conveyed the emotion in a scene.
[Cons]
1. As I explained, Canute’s development was a bit too quick.
2. The pacing was a bit slow in the middle segment of the show. It didn’t drag, but the change from the earlier parts of the show was noticeable.
3. Now, this is my biggest problem with the show. Some of the fights are so unrealistic that it feels like a power fantasy at times. I can already hear the distant, “It’s an anime so it doesn’t matter” argument, but it does matter. Why? Because it breaks immersion.
You feel like you’re watching a show grounded in reality but then suddenly appears this huge dude who yeets an axe across the battlefield killing 4 men in one strike. This guy, Thorkell, throws a spear as far as 500m and impales 5 guys without the spear losing any momentum.
I mean I understand that Vikings were tall, sturdy and strong, but a guy picking up what seems like a 200kg boulder with ease and yeeting it at ships is pushing the realm of believability.
4. The language barrier is portrayed weirdly. This didn’t really detract from my enjoyment but was a bit confusing at first.
So, there are two prominent language spoken in the show, Nordic and English, and both are spoken in Japanese. So, in this one scene Thorfinn is talking in Nordic (in spoken Japanese) to some French soldiers and the soldiers can’t understand him because they only speak French. Then, the French soldiers reply in Japanese which is supposed to be French and then it all develops into a convoluted mess. As I said it’s not a major problem, just a little confusing.
[Tl;dr]
Vinland Saga is definitely one of the best anime among those that came out in recent years and is probably the best of the year but that’s up for debate. It’s not a show that shies away from ever looming feelings death and despair that people deal with during war. Nothing is sugarcoated or hidden under a veil of hopefulness, but the brutality and viciousness of war and the effect it has on people is laid out in plain sight.
But it’s not the murders, rape or the atrocities committed by the warring factions that hit the hardest, what hits the hardest is the poignant reality of how a child treads the very path that his father tried to steer him away from. What hits the hardest is the sadness a mother feels after being betrayed by someone whom she treated like her own child.
What I think this season is, is a prologue to a much larger and much grander tale; what the Golden Age Arc is to Berserk, this season is to Vinland Saga. Is it perfect? No, but then again, nothing is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 27, 2019
Fire force is a story about people with fiery hearts fighting fire with fire. Set in a world where people spontaneously combust and turn into mindless burning zombies the Fire Force is responsible for controlling the damage caused by these “infernos”. Many people in this world are bestowed upon by Solomon the ability to control fire. After watching the first two episodes I really thought I would be able to enjoy this, but shortly afterwards the enjoyment I found in the bombastic nature of the first two episodes was burnt and tossed into oblivion.
This is probably the worst directed and worst framed show to come
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out this year. Riddled with sudden cuts, weird framing, stupid fanservice and soulless jokes and characters every bit of potential that the show held was thrown into the nether. Plot elements are pulled out of the author’s ass at very inappropriate times with characters making a sudden appearance and then disappearing just as quickly. Characters are brought into the show and thrown away for the duration of 5-6 episodes until they’re needed again to exposit about the world or the plot.
The characters are, quite frankly, shite.
“Gone are the days when authors wrote personalities and traits and then implemented those traits and associated mannerisms onto the avatar affiliated with the personality in question thus birthing an actual character instead of lazily creating an empty husk decorated with cliché.” – Douchebag Chocolat
The above quote perfectly describes the characters in this show. Instead of giving the characters a personality, they’re provided with certain traits and stupid mannerisms in order to deceive the audience into thinking that each character is somehow different than the next. Unfortunately, except maybe two or three every other character is basically the same. Even the protagonist, Shinra, has a certain habit of “smiling in the face of danger because his face muscles tense up”. There’s another guy who calls himself a knight just because his name is Arthur and he wields a sword. Seriously, this guy is so obsessed with the idea of becoming a knight that his power will literally increase if he even thinks that he’s riding a horse and has a duty to protect someone. The cat girl, Tamaki’s only purpose in life seems to be to get her boobs or ass in someone’s face “accidently” and then to call them a pervert. Iris almost does nothing but blush, the lieutenant is always grumpy and scaring his subordinates. There’s also Maki who can only utter the phrase, “Who are you calling a gorilla cyclops” even when no one has addressed her as such.
The characters don’t have much drive to do anything. Only Shinra and the commander of the 8th division are given any motivation as to why they do what they do. As for the other characters’ motivations and goals, the show usually gives us a half-assed backstory and is done with it. Most female characters like the dark-skinned girl, or the cat girl are used for fanservice. At one time the show almost tuned into a harem as every girl at whom Shinra even looked at started to fall for him.
Personally, I don’t care about the characters, except Joker, he was pretty cool, but it’s a shame that he only gets about 2 seconds of screen time in the whole show. I like the Joker cause he’s cool, not because he’s a well-constructed character. He’s brought in to tell Shinra about the main events that concern the plot and then he disappears.
Almost forgot, there’s also Shinra’s brother, Sho, who was separated from Shinra at a very young age and now he’s a bad, bad guy working as the Evangelist to bring about a third impact and Shinra must pilot th-… oh, wait, wrong anime.
The comedy is… there. The “comedy” usually consists of - a girl slipping out of her clothes for no apparent reason; Shinra and Arthur threatening to kill each other; a girl showing her tits or ass; Arthur claiming to be a knight but being ignored and a girl being molested. All these three situations are used to provide “comic relief”. The comedy also includes Maki shouting about someone calling her a Gorilla Cyclops. This joke was funny the first time, but after a 100 times, it became pretty annoying.
Watching the first episode, I remember thinking to myself “Man, this show is sure going to have some fire fights”, but only the first episode has any good fights. The fights that occur after the first episode are so badly choreographed that neither you, nor the characters can figure out what’s happening. I, in most fights, had no idea as to the spatial relations between the characters who were fighting. One scene they’re having a stare down, the next scene they fly towards each other, the next scene we see Shinra’s feet and then the fight is settled. After that the camera focuses on someone’s face for a bit too long and then abruptly cuts to another fight happening somewhere in the vicinity.
I never gave directors the respect they deserved for properly framing the characters until I watched this show. The camera either lingers on a particular subject for too long, or abruptly cuts to some other subject too quickly. This weird camera work usually happens after someone cracks a joke or when someone pisses someone off and was probably intended for us, the audience, to realize the awkwardness the characters were put in; but all it did for me was make me aware of the fact that I wanted to fast forward through the episode.
Not every fight is awkwardly animated. Some of the fights are really good, like Benimaru, the strongest fire bender vs a demon; Shinra vs the red-haired guy from the 1st division; Shinra vs a demon, but starting from the middle of the show the fights became pretty hard to follow.
The music didn’t appeal to me, but that’s subjective. I did like the first opening and the first ending, the second OP and ED were horrible. The music was tone deaf at times and sometimes the choice of music didn’t fit the scene it was being used for.
Should you watch Fire Force? I’ll leave that judgeme(n)t up t(o) you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 27, 2019
I used to be an agnostic, but this anime has turned me into an atheist. Seriously, look at this abomination and tell me there’s a god. Where did we go wrong? I had just started forgiving JC Staff for OPM S2, but now my anger and disappointment, mainly disappointment, have been rekindled.
Okaasan online which is better known as “Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desuka” which roughly translates to “This is a light novel adaptation”, is an anime about a guy being transported to another world. You might be thinking, “OK, it’s another one of those”, but don’t
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be hasty because there’s a twist – it’s about a boy who gets transported to another world along with his mom. What a twist, right? This new world is made for a mother and her child to embark on an adventure and become closer to each other in the process. Ergo, the protagonist and his mom are transported to another world in order for them to reconcile and appreciate each other’s presence more.
It’s an OK premise, but the execution is absolutely horrendous. Filled with clichés, insipid comedy and your usual harem setup, whatever enjoyment could’ve been found is lost. The plot heavily relies on oversaturated tropes and fanservice. The characters have no personality of their own and their characterisation relies on the setting instead of being the other way around. I will not be getting into the fanservice aspect of this show in this review. All you need to know about it is that it is probably a degenerate weeb’s Milf fantasy.
The main cast of characters consists of your quintessential unsophisticated harem protagonist and his mom, a tsundere, a loli and another weird character all of whom don’t contribute anything to make the setting interesting. There’s one more annoying recurring characters called Shirase who makes garbage puns for the sake of dry and bland comedy.
The characters really get as banal as they can. The tsundere girl, Wise, is basically a tsundere girl, nothing more, nothing less. The pink haired loli, Porter, basically annoys you with her Helium infested voice. Medhi is a pathetic excuse for a character. It feels like no character has a free will of their own and are just following in the footsteps of their ancient counterparts that have been seen about a billion times in other anime.
Masato is practically a useless character as he’s only used for slapstick comedy and for worthless virgins to project themselves upon; and he’s the protagonist. Mamako, Masato’s mom is just an irksome heap of tits, ass and seizure inducing voice. Speaking of seizure inducing voice, the voice actors try their best to produce the most painful voice that they can. Every character sounds like someone scratched a blackboard with their fingernails. The voice acting is pure cringe. Whenever I don’t like a character in a movie or anime I express my anger on the character as I know that the actors and voice actors are just playing the roles they’re given, but, Mamako’s cringy af voice makes me want to punch the voice actress in the face. But, then again I should perhaps direct my anger towards the writer.
The comedy is deplorable. The author probably watched a bunch of harem and isekai anime and tried to parody them but utterly failed. First of all, let’s talk about the most annoying character in the anime – Shirase, whose name means “to inform” in Japanese. After hearing the puns she makes on her name, it required an enormous amount of effort from my side to not punch my laptop to death. After hearing those puns, I regret learning Japanese because I understood the puns in more detail than I would have had I not learnt Japanese. Rest of the comedy is situational which requires a good line delivery, but there was nothing of that sort. Felt like the voice actors just gave up and uttered the lines just for the sake of uttering them.
The lines are insipidly delivered with no regards to the characters’ emotional state. Makamo always sounds cringy, Masato always sounds like a basic bitch, Wise is always stuck up, Medhi has as much personality as a white board and I don’t really know how Porter sounds because I had to lower the volume whenever she spoke as I don’t have the mental or physical strength to endure her Helium infected loli voice.
The music is bland and I was really pissed when they didn’t play Sweet Home Alabama even once. The animation is basic.
I don’t even know what I expected from this show and I’m shocked and disappointed in myself, mostly disappointed, for having finished this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Aug 9, 2019
Dr. Stone is one of those anime that try to look smart but end up looking like pretentious Instagram models craving for attention. I know it’s a shounen and all so it doesn’t need to be the most believable of stories, but when you put “Science” into the equation, the characters and their actions need to be pragmatic. Dr. Stone tries to put refreshing stuff on the plate but soon after starts following the same generic formulaic quintessential path most shounen are loathed for.
The plot is pretty ingenious, I’ll give them that. Strange green light turns all of humanity into stone and after about
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3700 years humans start, for a lack of better word, thawing out of their petrification. Nature takes over and the civilisation built over hundreds of thousands of years is lost. Quite a thought provoking concept is turned into ashes thanks to lame characters and ostentatious presentation. We've yet to see the entire consequences of the petrification, but it is what it is right now.
I stated the anime comes off as pretentious, let me explain why. Senku, one of the main characters is a scientific genius and manages to count the passing seconds for 3700 years which is absolutely and scientifically bullshit. The anime is classified as Sci-fi and not fantasy so I’m under the assumption that no magic is involved. Let us find out how many seconds there are in 3700 years, shall we? 3700(years) * 365(days) * 24(hours) * 60(minutes) * 60(seconds) = 116,683,200,000 seconds. There is no way in hell that one can retain one’s sanity for more than 3 and a half millennia doing the same thing over and over again for over 116 billion times. Moreover, Senku’s friend, “Big Oaf” aka Taiju stays conscious because of his resolve to confess to his crush. Yeah, I don’t really see anything scientific in that. Also, Senku’s “10 billion percent” phrase is fucking annoying af. It just sounds so stupid. A simple 101 percent would suffice, but NO, big number means big brain time.
Also also, Senku has Einstein’s most famous equation, E = mc^2, written on his jacket. A little science lesson, E = mc^2 works only for stationary objects and when the object is viewed from a non-inertial frame of reference, for relativistic motion (which is the only type of motion in the universe), it doesn’t work. I would think an anime delving into chemistry and mechanics of various compounds and chemicals would at least get this equation correct.
The other characters are nothing special. Yuzuriha is just a girl that Taiju has a crush on and until now we haven’t really seen her do anything except get kidnapped. Tsukasa is the main antagonist and the “World’s strongest high schooler”, so strong that he can punch a lion to death, wrestle three wild boars at once, catch a bird mid-flight, destroy boulders with one punch and catch an arrow travelling towards him at a speed of 200 km/h. I was starting to wonder why he wasn’t bald and why did he not have a cyborg sidekick. The plot armour is strong with this one.
The major conflict in the story occurs when Senku is trying to revive humanity while Tsukasa is convinced that if all of humanity is revived then nothing would change. People who were powerful before the petrification would still like to remain powerful in this new age and a new hierarchy would be set up. It’s a really compelling argument, but it’s Tsukasa’s actions that make no sense. He says he’s only going to revive the younger generation and kill the older gen. How in hell’s name would he be able to differ between the two? He can’t make a prognosis about the consequences of him reviving a person who would not agree with him. I hope this is resolved in further episodes.
The art is great and all but why does Senku’s hair look like a white radish? Was he pulled out of the Earth? The background art is vivid and detailed. The character designs are generic and dry.
I don’t like the music. No piece has stood out to me.
This show is 5 billion percent okay and 5 billion percent mediocre. The setting is great and I hope the characters are more built upon in upcoming episodes lest it turn into your typical shounen.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 28, 2019
[Spoiler Warning]
I am a fan of JOJO, a big one at that, but this part, i.e. part 5 is kind of overrated. Now, before you guys unleash the 7-page Muda on me, let me address this first - overrated does not mean bad, it just means that while the show is good, people put it on a pedestal reserved for the greats. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
JOJO Part 5 aka “Golden (Experience) Wind” aka “How does King Crimson work?” aka “Araki flexes on you with his awesome taste in music” aka “Girono’s piss drinking adventure” is the fifth instalment
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in the Jojo franchise. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is one of the few shounen that does something which most other shounen don’t, that is, it’s actually manages to be interesting. This season we follow Giorno Giovanna as he has a dream in which he pledges to become a gangster and kill the reigning mafia boss. The plot is as simple as it gets but the way it is crafted is what makes Jojo an amazing series.
The characters are colourful and flamboyant as has been the case with previous instalments of the franchise and each character brings something new to the table. There are many characters that have been introduced thus far in the series and no two characters feel the same. They all have their unique personalities and powers. That being said, many of the characters in this season are quite boring. Comparing the characters in part 5 to those in part 4 or part 2 makes me feel like there’s something missing with the characters in this part.
The characters in part 4, along with being awfully stylish and making me self-conscious of my own image, had their own distinct personalities and received immense characterisation which helped solidify their place in the overall narrative, but Golden Wind decides to not have as much depth to the characters and instead gives them some kind of unique trait, which, when applied to minor antagonists works to some extent but, when the same strategy is used for main characters, it falls flat.
There are 6 main characters this time, viz Girono, Buccellati, Mista, Narancia, Abbacchio and Fugo. Girono is a great main character and so is Buccellati. Both are well characterised and I really enjoyed their backstory, I really wish I could say the same for the rest of the characters. Mista is a character who religiously believes that every person in this world has a destiny set out for him and a man cannot deny his destiny no matter how hard he tries. He believes this because he was sent to prison and then got out. That is all it takes for him to follow his religion of fate.
Abbacchio is a dick to Girono for some reason and only trusts Buccellati because he has “lost faith in humanity” due to him, with his own volition, receiving a bribe from a criminal which ultimately resulted in the death of his partner. Can you find the logic in here, because I surely can’t.
Fugo and Narancia can be described as 150 IQ and 50 IQ respectively and that basically sums up their character. Any attempt to flesh out their characters via backstories felt cheesy and banal. Instead, I would’ve preferred if they’d developed throughout the show’s run. I am admittedly shitting on the characters but I can’t deny the fact that watching these characters’ dynamics with the plot and each other was a Golden experience (heh, see what I did there?). Anyway, I don’t hate the characters, but I don’t LOVE them either; I just wish more care was put into the characters.
The main antagonist, Divolo, is great. His end goal is to completely erase his existence so that no one can trace him, but he acts in pretty questionable way in order to achieve his target. Questionable not in the sense, “Oh boy, that was a pretty evil thing to do”, no not that, but questionable in the sense, “wtf is he doing?”. The next few lines have to be spoilers in order for me to explain my statement.
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He wants to kill his daughter Trish with his own hands in order to protect his identity as she could be a mean to uncover his past, and thus he cannot entrust this job to anyone. So, Girono and the gang take his daughter to a secluded island and are ordered to take the girl into an abandoned building accompanied by a bodyguard. Why didn’t he call his daughter in by herself? I’m pointing this out because this is the crux of the second half of the show. Had Buccellati not gone with Trish, he never would’ve found out about the true nature of Diavolo and the second half would’ve been about 50 episodes long or maybe would’ve never happened.
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Now, let’s get to the two main appeal of Jojo which is the fights and the stands. Araki really let out his creative genius in this part as almost all the stands are unique and have a very specific set of abilities which give rise to some great fights in the series. The stands in this part are my favourite as even though there are a ton of characters in this part who posses a stand, no two have the same abilities or even remotely feel the same. Girono has a stand that can give anything life, Bucellatti has a stand that can create zippers on any material, Abbacchio’s stand can replay any past scene etc. There are many great stands in this part; I can’t explain them all due to spoilers but trust me when I say that the stands are absolutely majestic and better than they’ve ever been, at least when viewed through a creative perspective.
Now, the fights. The thing I like about fights, especially stand battles, in Jojo is that no matter how outlandish or cheesy they get, they are never boring. Battles are won through wit and shrewdness, not with “nakama” power and boy are there some great fights in this part. Since every new minor villain our heroes encounter has a different stand than the last, the Jo-Bros have to come up with new tactics every time in order to ensure their victory. No two villains are defeated in the same way and the stakes are higher than ever.
All the fights in this part are great…, which is what I would say if they were. The stands themselves are great and utilised to almost their full potential, but the same is not true for the users’ brain. I could feel myself being irritated during some fights especially the one in which Narancia’s tongue was replaced with a stand and he was spewing nonsense. Instead of realising that they’re under an enemy attack, the protagonists start an argument among themselves. This shit goes on for two whole episodes until the enemy is finally defeated.
I said that the stands in this part are my favourite, but there is a stand, an important one at that, which is just ridiculously overpowered and admittedly was an asspull. Gold Experience Requiem is Girono’s Gold Experience evolved and it comes out of a shell like any other non-mammal baby and that stand’s abilities are more broken than the shell it came out of. Before good old Gold Experience evolves, the protagonists are being overpowered, then literally 2 seconds after the appearance of Gold Experience Requiem they have the upper hand. I might be nitpicking, but it did take away from the overall experience of the boss fight.
The art and animation are godly. Even though I prefer Diamond is Unbreakable’s art style, the art of this part has gradually grown up on me. The background art is fantastic and the whole show is vivid and vibrant. Every colour palette chosen for a particular scene is probably the best it could’ve gotten.
The music is amazing as well. The first opening, Fighting Gold, is just pure epicness and the character themes are pure perfection. The sound that the stands make while doing stand stuff is well suited for each stand. The voice acting is great and there isn’t an insipid moment.
What I like about JOJO is the fact that it does not try to be something that it’s not. The characters adopt the Robin-hood ideology but it’s not forced upon the viewer as is the case with many other anime. The characters simply are the way they are, they follow their own philosophies and are not brought down by or question the ideals or morals of others. Most of the fights are great, the stands are amazing and even though the characters do fall flat at times, it’s still an enjoyable ride and has probably the best villain you’ll see this year. All in all, Golden Wind is another great addition to an already great franchise.
Tl;dr
Go watch it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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