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Dec 12, 2017
Update: I initially wrote my review after having watched the first 6 episodes. In the time since then, I went and finished the anime. While I do think I was perhaps a bit too harsh at the time, I stand by the issues I complained about. The first 6 episodes of this are rough due to being a blatant copy of many story beats and character traits from the original series. There is significant improvement after the first 6 episodes, and that quality is maintained for the rest of the series, but the first half of this season does hurt it significantly.
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This review includes spoilers
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up to episode 6, as well as various parts of the original Love Live series.
After watching and thoroughly enjoying both seasons and the movie of the original Love Live series, I was excited to start Sunshine and experience a new setting, characters, and story. Unfortunately, after 6 episodes, it has become very clear that there is nothing new to be experienced here.
First of all, the characters. They have different names and faces, but make no mistake - they are clones of the girls from the first series. Chika is Honoka, You is Kotori, Riko is Umi, Ruby is Hanayo, Hanamaru is Rin, Yoshiko is Nico, Dia is Eli, and Mari is Nozomi. The only one I can't comment on would be whether Kanan is a Maki clone. She hasn't been shown in much detail up to this point, so it's hard to say. I would be very surprised if she ended up NOT being a clone, though. I could go into detail about how each of these characters end up being a clone of another, but I think if you watch even one episode it will become very clear that this is the case.
Next, the plot. Guess what, it's just copied and pasted from the original series yet again, only done worse. The series starts out with no actual motivation for the girls to become school idols - they just want to. That's weak and uninteresting, but in episode 6 it's revealed that the school is set to be closed due to lack of interest from students. Hey, at least they addressed the lack of motivation for the girls, but they did so by literally reusing the same plot as before!
Another thing that really rubbed me the wrong way in the plot was the girls' first concert. If you remember μ's first concert, the curtain opened to reveal that no one showed up. It was a powerful scene that served the purpose of telling the girls that their goal wouldn't be easy to achieve, and they wouldn't be instantly successful. In fact, this scene is probably my favorite scene in the entire Love Live anime. Sunshine attempts to copy this scene, but it messes it up to an incredible extent. Instead of leaving it at no one showing up and using that to show the girls that it will be hard, it turns out everyone is just late to the concert! It sets a precedent that the girls cannot and will never fail, unlike μ's who actually DID fail on multiple occasions and grew from it. If you're going to copy a scene, at least do it right instead of completely undermining the entire purpose of the scene.
I know some people might be upset because I only watched 6 episodes, but it became very clear to me in those 6 episodes that I was in store for nothing more than a clone of the original series with much worse execution.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 11, 2017
Assassination Classroom is an enjoyable, if overrated, series. It's one that started off merely okay, but it certainly improved as it progressed and I read more and more.
First of all, the premise is certainly unique. A super powerful creature threatens to destroy the world, yet he wants to teach a middle school class? It's a concept that will leave you wondering what's going on, and this is something the series uses to keep you going: What are Koro-sensei's secrets, and when will we discover them? And I can say that while you do have to wait quite a while to find out everything, it's certainly
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worth it. There's a drip feed of information that we get throughout the story, and I do think this was the correct way to do it, rather than dump a ton of exposition on us all at once.
Aside from Koro-sensei's backstory, the series mostly focuses on Koro-sensei helping his students overcome various challenges they face in their lives, which helps to develop both the students and Koro-sensei. We get to see Koro-sensei acting like a real teacher, helping the students deal with real problems. Things do change up occasionally to something a bit more serious, such as an elaborate assassination attempt that the students have planned out, or the students having to deal with something the school principal has planned to sabotage them.
Now the story is definitely not perfect. In the beginning, I found myself not enjoying this series as much as I thought I would from the hype it gets. The main problem I feel the series had was consistency -- it would fluctuate between exciting and mundane. In the end, it created the feeling that every time it would start to get really good, it would immediately lose all of its momentum as it drifted back to something much less interesting. This problem is gradually reduced as it goes on, but it was a huge issue that kept me from really getting into the series for a while.
And what is the story without characters? And oh boy, does this series have a lot of them. It's extremely challenging for a series to develop a large supporting cast without making pacing drag or getting formulaic (i.e., a pattern of each character getting a story all in a row). The story calls for an entire classroom of children, their teachers, and more. Unfortunately it just wasn't possible to flesh all of these characters out in any sort of reasonable amount of time while also moving the story forward. Instead, most of the attention is placed on just a few characters: Nagisa, Kaede, Karma, Koro-sensei, Karasuma-sensei, Bitch-sensei, and the school principal. While most of the other characters are at least touched upon, they are mostly relegated to the background. What was nice was that even though most of their development was unseen by us, they would continue to appear and have consistent traits, so clearly the author had personalities for all of them. That all being said, the characters who do receive the most attention are all very interesting and well-developed. They each have different motivations in the situations we find them in, and it's never really unclear why a character is acting a certain way (barring when that mystery is a plot point).
I found the art to be pretty standard. Certainly not bad, but nothing that made me sit back and truly admire a page or panel. Unfortunately the large supporting cast combined with the limited colors available to a mangaka can sometimes make it difficult to figure out who's who, at least for the background characters. The main characters are all visually distinct and you'll never find yourself mistaking them for anyone else, but I often found myself saying, "Wait, who's that again?" when it came to some of the lesser characters.
Overall I think Assassination Classroom is a series that, while flawed, is still an enjoyable ride. The story really gets going toward the end when a lot of things are finally revealed to the reader. It's just that getting there can be a bit tough at first.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 3, 2017
Hirohiko Araki is of course incredibly well-known for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but after getting current on that, I decided to check out one of his earlier works -- Baoh. This is a manga that I feel suffers from simply being too short. I think the idea has some potential, but it fails to ever become anything great, simply being "just ok".
The story centers around our main character Ikuro, who is forcibly given superpowers by an evil organization. Thus he is able to transform into Baoh. He escapes with a young girl and then the organization hunts them down until Ikuro eventually makes his way to
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their headquarters for a showdown. The concept is nothing special, but it's not particularly bad either. The problem lies in the fact that we are overall given very little explanation of the world and characters.
Baoh pulls his powers from nowhere with little to no explanation of them. For the most part, they are self-explanatory, but the problem is we never really know just what Baoh is capable of. It's hard to feel suspense during a fight when we know the character could very well just unveil some new power that we've never seen before. Every fight is like a deus ex machina because of this.
Second, the characters aren't explained very well. Who are Doress, and why did they create Baoh? To use him as a weapon, but for what purpose? The pacing is extremely tight, which ends up being detrimental since very important things like the characters' motivations end up getting kind of brushed over in favor of more fight scenes.
Speaking of the fight scenes, they are, again, nothing special. Araki's art is of course very distinct, and we see something close to what is seen in his other early works like Part 1 of JoJo or Mashounen BT. They're nice to look at, but when it comes to the content, they're certainly lacking the cleverness and creativeness that his later series JoJo has become known for. Rather, these fights are usually fairly straightforward, but then Baoh uses a new power to win. Having the hero develop new powers can be nice, but there's little buildup and it gets old.
Overall, I can't really give this a strong recommendation. If you're a fan of Araki like I am, you might enjoy this. However, between Baoh, Mashounen BT, and JoJo, Baoh is without a doubt the weakest of his works.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 25, 2017
Bakemonogatari is a series where I feel like I'm missing something crucial that everyone else appears to see. The series is applauded by many as being clever, creative, and entertaining. However, to me, it was none of these.
The concept of the show is that our main character, Araragi, became involved in dealings with the supernatural after an incident involving vampires. After this he meets various girls in his life who are haunted by supernatural entities, and Araragi must help them solve both their personal and supernatural problems. An interesting concept, but the execution completely falls flat.
To put it simply, this is a boring harem show.
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Araragi has the harem protagonist cliche of just having all of the women in his life throw themselves at him for no real reason. In fact, I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to feel about Araragi here. It's extremely hard to sympathize with someone who does things like sexually harass an elementary school age girl, but at the same time he's not downright evil enough for me to truly hate him. He comes off as simply a pervert, jerk, etc. without any truly redeeming qualities.
The other big issue I have besides the poorly handled harem aspect is that the show is just plain boring. I hope you like talking, but this show is about 95% characters standing around and just talking. When I was reading about the concept of the show, I expected to see the characters actually, you know...dealing with supernatural creatures. Instead they drone on and on about both the creatures and tons of other irrelevant stuff. When they do finally shut up, their "solution" to every problem is always the same: go see Araragi's friend Oshino so he can tell them what to do. I'll admit that there is sometimes a good payoff, such as the climax of Kanbaru's arc. However, it's not even remotely worth the pain of everything that came before it for a few minutes of something that actually turned out to be entertaining. Had I not heard such praise of the show, I would have dropped it during the second arc, when one episode was almost entirely three characters standing in a park just talking about Mother's Day. Seriously, 22 minutes of boringness.
It's not a show completely devoid of positives, however. The art is pretty unique and quite nice. The characters all have a "soft" feel to them that I liked a lot. The show does do some pretty strange things visually, such as flashing "Red Scene" and "Black Scene" text up on screen seemingly at random, sometimes throwing up giant walls of text that you can't possibly read without pausing, and sometimes showing real photography. And of course, sometimes the characters are shown in very strange and exaggerated poses (the "Shaft head tilt"). It's all just weirdness for the sake of weirdness, not adding anything to the show.
The music, however, is good. I enjoyed a lot of the soundtrack and the openings. It's nothing outstanding that I'd download and put on a playlist, but it works well and I liked it. Not much to say about this.
Overall, Bakemonogatari was an absolute bore. The characters talk about doing things while rarely actually doing anything. It looks and sounds nice, but no aesthetics can save the horrible pacing and boring harem setup of this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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