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Jan 23, 2022
Tatami Galaxy is the best anime that I've watched in my life. To be honest, I didn't find any significative flaw in this show; so, now, let's analyze the best aspects of the show and why I consider it a masterpiece:
1. The premise and its execution: It's a coming of age comedy about a university student who wants to live the ideal university life; nevertheless, he discovers this will not happen in reality. This is the point where he starts thinking about the decisions he can take in different situations to improve his university life, this situations includes trying to be part of an university
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club, get rid off anoying friends (from his perspective) and a romantic interest. The reason of why the dialogues are really fast (or the subtitles depending how do you watch the anime), is to represent the anxiety of the protagonist while he's thinking about the next decision he will take. During the show, we not only saw him accepting the fact that life isn't always rose-coloured, we, also, saw him taking important decisions instead of just think about them. The pacing was excellent and this allowed the evolution of the protagonist be organic. This is why the end of his character arc felt so satisfying.
2. The cast: Like I mentioned in the first point, the protagonist started having his expectatives about how his university life should be. Once he accepts reality, is where his character development reached the peak. Akashi is the ideal women in the eyes of our protagonist. She's usually a cold person with other students except the protagonist. Despite not being present most part of the anime since it's presented from the protagonist prespective, her appearances and actions contributed to the plot and, in addition, she always showed her caring for the protagonist. So, this wasn't a one-sided romance. Ozu is the most intriguing character of the cast. He's an specie of antagonist from the protagonist perspective despite he's the one who persuade and help the main character to improve himself. With his actions, he, directly and indirectly, showed that the "rose-coloured campus life" of the protagonist was just an utopy. This is the reason of why the protagonist had his differences with him big part of the show. The rest of the cast could look a like a bland characters as a first impression, however, all of them have a significant contribution to the main plot the episodes they appeared, they have their own agenda and issues to solve and a short but effective character development.
3. The animation and the use of symbolism: Absolutely flawless. Is not only the fact that both look beautiful, they complement the feelings and thinks presented during the scenes. Many people complain about the "time resets" presented in the anime, when, in my opinion, is one of these symbolisms. In this case, to represent the daily and repetitive routine of the protagonist (which is complemented with the oracle old lady), and his "what if" questions. I found extremely creative the idea of putting colours in all the enviroment and leave the characters with a white colour, also, these coulours change according to the feelings the characters feel during the scenes. All the characters have an unique design which is also a symbolism of how the protagonist percieve them (this is more eveident in the case of Ozu). To finish this point, my favorite symbolism was, undoubtedly, the protagonist horniness one. Really fun and original.
4. The soundtrack: Like the case of the animation, each soundtrack used in the show was to represent the feelings and thinks of the characters. From a very subjective point of view, the ending for me is a piece of art.
5. The magnificent ending: There was a point where the protagonist overthought so much about the different scenarios and decisions he could have taken. All of them came together to his mind during the last episodes and the anime presented all the connections between them making better the immersion and showing the events of the previous episodes weren't a random or stand alone stories. This was the moment when the protagonist finally decided to take action and solve the major conflicts he was facing during the show. Finally, the main conflicts were solved and the main cast got and excellent close of their character arcs.
CONCLUSION
Like I mentioned in the beginning of this review, Tatami Galaxy is a flawless work which used to the perfection all its narrative tools and it fully exploited the potential of its premise. Don't watch this anime is a sin. I highly recommend to do it, at least, once in life.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 1, 2022
Real is an inspirational manga about being better, overcoming adversity and redemption. It takes excellent advantage of its premise about disabled characters who want to show that they can be great wheelchair basketball players in their current state. This is only the iceberg peak of the stuff that this manga offers. Let's see some examples about it:
1) Characters: The manga made a great job focusing more on the psychology of them instead of the sports involved. For example, one of the protagonists made a mistake that nearly costs his life and left disabled her lover. The manga invested more time watching the redemption path of
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him, his internal conflicts, the steps he took to improve himself and the reconstruction of his relationship with the girl she loved who started the manga hating him for ruining permanently her life. I have to point that you will see him playing basketball rarely, so yes, this shows the strong psychological aspect that this manga offers. And this is not the only highlight character of this manga, we have, also a disabled main character who learnt what the true teamwork is about showing his struggles to accept this fact, another disabled character who spent big time of the manga in a hospital having to accept that he's now permanently disabled and the strong chemistry between him and another patients that share his condition, among others.
2) Multiple focus: One of the strongest points of this manga is that the approach is not only with one main character. During the reading, the manga presents the progress in the character development of it's main cast, and it's not like this stories are stand alone, all this characters have their connections and interactions with each other most of the time, so all of them grow together with the advance of the big main plot. Another important aspect and makes the difference between this and the other works of the author is the fact that every conflict and the main objective of each character in the show is different. Most of them are disabled, however, their stories and motivations are clearly differenced in the manga.
3) Realism: As the title of this manga subscribes, here are not Gary Stu type characters, miracle last minute points or convenient asspulls in order to advance faster the story and the character development. Instead, the result of the matches are consistent with the presented the previous chapters and the opponents our protagonists faced, the solution for the outcomes or the conflicts presented are really creative in several occasions keeping the internal logic presented in the manga and, ignoring the result of the matches, there's no inmediate character rewrite as a consecuence of the result previously mentioned, so the characters make a quick post-match analysis and then move on with their lives and their current conflicts.
4) Drawing: Excellent and the best part is the fact that it goes better with the advance of the chapters. Also, it complements very well with the topics and plot presented here.
Of course, I'm not telling you this manga is perfect. During the first episodes, the manga, actually, becomes melodramatic with the conflicts presented. Fortunately, this issue is solved progressively with the advance of the chapters to the point of becomes inexistent the rest of it. Another issue is that the pacing can be slower sometimes with the resolution of the protagonists conflicts, also, when this conflicts are not solved the manga can go in circles repeating some steps in order to make a new attempt of solve them.
In conclusion Real is a great sports manga that doesn't limit itself presenting just the sport referenced, it goes much further with its messages, characters psychology and its well made drama. Highly recommended.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 31, 2021
Jujutsu Kaisen was, basically, the seasonal hyped shonen, in other words, top animation with a poor story unfortunately. Let's analyze the issues that this anime had and then it's positive aspects:
ISSUES
1) Characters: Like in many fighting shonen a new "good" character appears, he/she meets with the main group, they became friends for the sake of it (because the script demands it) and, finally, most of them become irrelevant thanks to the power scale. The problems don't end here, their characterization is, also terrible. Most of them are plane characters with a lame motivations or they just follow the motivations of other people. For example, Sukuna
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saved Itadaki because he considered him interesting, like the first big asspull of Boku no Hero Academia, Itadaki with his one episode motivation after his grandfather's death (he didn't care or remembered list after that episode). I understand the anime, or at least this is what I think, tried to be a style over substance; nevertheless, putting plane characters and introduce new of them for fill the cast makes this anime a mindless spectacle. It's not impossible to be a style over substance having, at least, a decent characterization for your cast. We have Gurren Lagann, Jojo's and the manga of Akira. In those cases, you remember the show not only for the action choreographies but, also, for the charisma of several characters (like Kamina, Joseph Joestar and Tetsuo), this, also, helps with the inmersion to the anime in much less time.
In order to avoid potential characterization, the anime set missions for the main cast. With this, the characters didn't have to be worried about anything else. I remember the show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Here we got, also, different missions for the main cast every episode with the huge difference that the characters here had a character development with each passed mission thanks to the analysis post-missions. Here, they complete a mission and pass by. This was unfortunate because the anime had the potential to make a character development, but it was really conformist in this aspect.
There are, also, contradictions or cognitive dissonance with some characters. For example, Nobara spoke, in many moments of the show, stuff like women can be strong too and can achieve the missions on their own, just to be saved for the male characters when she got in real trouble. Another character constantly criticized the woman taste of the other characters just to reveal, later, that he was saved by one. The few moments where the anime tried to had substance and characterization, it made things worse, like the allegories of the human hearts and the proper deaths. Now I understand why the writer limited itself with the characterization.
Itadaki is treated as a potential martir because he wants to save people exchanging his own life, practically. We hope this doesn't end being a meme like the case of Code Geass.
2) Deaths: Anybody can die permanently in this show, however, this is not the case for our protagonist. Is not only the strong plot armor for him, also, it makes extremely predictable the possible outcome of the show. Like the case of Boku no Hero Academia, where since the 1st episode the anime told us clearly that the protagonist, in one way or another, will end defeating all the villains, here we have, indirectly, the same.
3) Power System: By far the worst and contradictory aspect of the show. They introduced a enemies power scale and, later, the protagonists defeated the stronger enemy of that scale without so much problems. And this is not the worst, there's no training or justification to increase the power of the cast, like wtf. We had fighting shonen like Dragon Ball, Naruto, HxH, among others where they included entire arcs to show the training of the main cast and their progress. I'm not saying that all of these arcs were, at the end, good or memorable, but, at least, the writers showed that they had a little care about the growing of the power and experience of their characters, at least there was an attempt unlike this anime. Sure, many people could say that the power depends on the cursed spirits the character poses, however, this directly would contradict the sorcerer grades introduced. How can I difference a sorcerer from another knowing that they don't have a proper training or a inexistent one? Natural talent I guess.
4) Fights: Despite being one of the strongest aspect of the show, it's still having his problems. The characters explain their powers and abilities in the middle of the fights. Is not only the fact that this is anticlimatic, also, the writer can introduce the ability or power that the character needs to defeat the turn's antagonist, fucking convenient. Also we have the classical last minute saves, overpowered good guys who helps our protagonists when they feel doing it (when the script needs it) and unfinished fights to keep alive the main cast.
5) Pacing: Like the case of several anime in the last years (not only fighting shonen), the anime presented a lot of concepts and information the first episode. After that, the pacing got slower until the anime arrived to the second half where the pacing was completely dreadful.
POSITIVE ASPECTS
- The animation is amazing and very fluent, the soundtrack is very enjoyable (the ending in particular is an absolute banger) and the fights looks spectacular if you ignore the substantial part of it.
CONCLUSION
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Jujutsu Kaisen is not different than most of the generic fighting shonen that came out the last years. I don't find any merit of it beside the soundtrack, animation and part of it's action. For this reason, I have no choice but to give it a score of 4/10. It could have been definitely better; nevertheless, the fighting shonen writers have been really conformists with their stories during the last years.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 25, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
Where should I start? Sonny Boy was considered as one of the hidden jewels of 2021 and the "new" Serial Experiments Lain or Ergo Proxy. Well, the only things that I found watching this anime were a constant improvisation, expectatives manipulation and meaningless symbolisms for the main plot. Let's find out together the issues that this "deep" anime had:
1. Beginning: Unknown forces transport our protagonists to an alternate world giving them superpowers, how? I don't know, and here is when the problems begin. There's no explanation about the limit of the superpowers given to our cast, so this opens the possibility
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to create plot holes, convenient power ups or abilities in order to advance the story. A clear example of this is the power of Nozomi that by chance has the ability to see exits in this alternate world. Apart from this, the show tried to gave us information and the backstories of the cast in two episodes. Is not only the fact that the show gave a lot of information in a very few time, also the fact that it's more hard to connect with the characters becuase we only know their backstories and very few about their current characterization in the present timeline of the show. At this point, it could be argued that this bad start can be justified by the complex plot, the character development in present timeline of the anime and potential messages that the work can offer. Let's find out how true that is in the following points. As a side note, in two episodes, the improvisation of the writer began to manifest, and this will be more notorious with the advance of them.
2. Third episode: At the beginning of the third episode we noticed that the students had, apparently, adapted to this alternate reality, how they achieved this adaptation? No fucking idea. This part broke the sense of continuity, which will be broken again at the beginning of the following episodes. After this, we recieved a boring explanation about the existence of alternate worlds by Rajdhani where, by the way, we noticed how longer was the time skip since the last episode. What was the purpose of this? Well, later we discovered that Nagara, purely by chance, had the ability to transport into different worlds and Hoshi can read the script in the middle of the episodes (someone tells him the future), wow this escalated very quickly. It's incredible that even to show and ideology conflict (faith vs reason), the show had needed to force things up to this point. At one point of the episode, there was a reference to the capitalism where the show presented that in order to obtain money in this island, you need to make some type of work, and what does this work consist of? No fucking idea. Therefore, we can only assume the measurement of work through the use of the powers of the cast, that is, what the script needs to establish in those moments. Nagara noticed this plot convenience and start a confrontation with Mizuho, confrontation that lead up nowhere because he finally accepted this capitalist system.
3. Fourth episode: And the episode starts with a random Tennis game, out of all things. Apart from this obvious bad change of the show tones, we can notice that the loose ends that were left from the previous episodes are still pending to be resolved. Next, we had another boring exposition, this time, with Cap about how the monkeys are indistinguishable and, nevertheless, they can pursue a monkey who doesn't fit in this group. This concept was presented to complement the Blue's backstory. How the anime solved this paradox? Actually it wasn't solved, in fact, made the things worse. At the end the monkeys not only stop watching Blue with bad eyes, but, in the end, they saw him as a specie of demigod, contradicting Cap's exposition. The worst part is that the writer invested nearly half of the episode presenting this concept. I understand the main idea of this episode is to present the concept of the blind devotion (with Blue in this case), however, this came out after an contradiction showing, one more time, the improvisation level of this anime. The writer could have used the monolith concept presented in 2001: Space Odyssey for this episode. Not only this would have aligned with the idea of blind devotion presented, also, it would have complement the change of hatred to devotion by the monkeys. Finally, while this happened, Nagara and Mizuho improved the usage of their powers because... why not.
4. Fifth episode: The opening scene was a fight between Pac-Men and mouses. This looked like something out of another anime and, again, it showed the writer's improvisation. Our cast tried to save the mouses because... again, this wasn't explained. So let's assume that they felt compassion for the mouses. Next, we had another boring exposition about the alternate worlds with another time skip included. Damn, the writer really enjoyed use that trope. We are given a hint that Mrs. Aki had some plan in hand by causing division among the students. To complement this part of the story, the anime introduced some concepts about gender and racism in a superficial way showing that them anime got more in it's mouth than it can chew, wasting time and without enhancing the already damaged narrative flow that the series had at that moment. Also, in this chapter, Nagara got a "character development", which it was forced because the script demanded him to be less distant with his friends for this part of the story (this change didn't felt organic). In adittion, the anime revealed us that now Nagara can literally modify the reality. Holy shit, this was, by far, the worst plot twist of the show killing any tension and causing a lot of plot holes from that moment. Also, this episode showed the message that a simple person can change the world, which is very bad and childish message when you acknowledge how the world truly works.
From now on, the anime made the same mistakes over and over again, so I'm just gonna mention the new ones presented in the second half.
5. Second Half: The anime continued with the focus about reality changes and the 5th episode main message. The main antagonist was revelaed and it was the mysterious voice that accompanied Hoshi (a divinity). Why it was with Hoshi? Mystery. What are it's motivations? No fucking idea. The arc of Yamabiko and his "love" relationship with Kodama were interesting for some moments. I'm gonna give credit for the decent ending that both had in their conflict against War. In the next episode, the Mizuho's cats were introduced and they can populate the infinite parallel worlds, contradicting that only the students can populate that worlds. Later, we had the Sakura's arc where part of her development was thanks to Rajdhani (in a flashback). If the anime does not make time jumps, it has to resort to flashbacks, being that in both cases it damages the narrative flow and, for the umpteenth time, shows the improvisation of the writer. In the twins arc (Sou and Seiji), it's really convenient that their time manipulation abilities only affected to each other, otherwise, this, practically, could have ended Mrs. Aki's plan. It was already bad enough having one ability to change reality, but, present one that could have drastically change the plot and make the main cast unaffected by it? What a mess up. Later, War was reintroduced to the story and some contradictions were introduced with him. First, he was rewritten if we compare him to his version in the Yamabiko arc, second, after War "death", we haven't had knew what happened with Nozomi. Third, an ability of read minds was introduced as if we don't have enough convenient skills anymore. We can assume, for now, that Nozomi is dead. Also, there was a theory that states that War and Hoshi are the same person, but we never got a concrete hint of this.
6. Final episodes: To this point, we can assume that the anime could end in two ways: Or it will tries to fit all the loose ends or it will show an ending adverse to what was anticipated and presented in the show. It started with the Nozomi's funeral. Next, the main plot about escaping this alternate world was retaken, but only with Nagara and Mizuho. Why only with they two? Well, we already know that this show didn't care about having logic. I had forgot to say Mizuho can wish whatever she wants. Yeah, this alone could have solved many issues from the previous episodes, nevertheless, I have to mention this here because this was the moment where this ability was fully used. And well, at the end, my first statement ended being the ending of the show. The writer explained what happened to the rest of the cast in a few lines for each of them and it have left several loose ends. Improvisation one more time. And Nozomi ends up being alive, even if this didn't make sense.
7. Production values: I saw many people comparing the animation with the Yuasa's one, however, in my personal opinion, I don't find anything special about it. The soundtrack was something average too, without counting that it was absent in several moments during the emision.
CONCLUSION
After watched the constant improvisation in the plot, the pretentious level and the average production values, I have no choice but to give Sonny Boy a 2 as a score. My final conclusion is that put a complex plot and a lot of symbolism don't make you a good and/or intellectual anime. And this show is the living proof of this.
PD1: If a character was not mentioned in this review it is because it was irrelevant to the plot or did not have a characterization as such.
PD2: Improvisation was the word I have used the most in this review, showing a perfect summary about this anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Dec 18, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
The Summit of the Gods it's about many things, beyond the sport of climbing and the mystery presented at the beginning of it. It's about perseverance, until what point the human obsession can arrive in order to achieve our dreams, inspire others to be better and so much more. For this review, we gonna analyze, first, the positive aspects and, then, a few negative aspects that this manga had. So, let's begin:
POSITIVE ASPECTS
1. Fukamachi: He was a photojournalist that was asigned with the mission of collect the disappeared George Mallory's camera with the evidence of his conquering of the Everest Mount
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in 1924, in order to proove that he was the first climber that conquered this legendary mount. Later, he discovered that Habu, the other protagonist, took position of that camera and then, suddenly, disappeared. From that moment, he started to investigate everything about Habu.
He started just reading articles and newspaper about Habu's life and his achievements, next, with not enough information, he asked close people to Habu about him obtaining the possible location and the current activity (climbing) that Habu was, possibly, realizing and, finally, he climbed the Everest mount with him to collect the evidence that Habu climbed it succesfully from the southwest face. As we can see, The charisma and competitve spirit of Habu inspired Fukamachi to keep researching about him. At one point, the other journalists from Fukamachi's company told him to stop and look for another case, however, Fukamachi was already inmerse and determined to find Habu's location and solve the mistery of the camera. What started being just a searching of a camera ended being a challenge to collect the photos with the evidence of the conquering of the Everest mount in a way that had never happened before, in other words, being part of history.
I really enjoyed the organic and well executed character development and obsession of Fukamachi. He even risked his own life in the Everest mount climbing being him warned from the risks before start it. At the end, despite obtaining what he was looking for from the beginning of the story (Mallory's camera), he still wanted to continue climbing with Habu and also understood the philosophy of the climber which includes the continuous improvement (if you reached the summit you can reach it in a more difficult way), satisfy the human wish to be a better version of ourselves everyday and, indirectly, inspire others to reach your legacy.
2. Habu: He was a climber who was been reported as a dissapeared many years ago until Fukamachi saw him with the Mallory's camera. Usually, in sports anime, we have a rival that helps the protagonist to improve himself and with his character development. In the first volumes there was a "rivarly" with Fukamachi for the Mallory's camera. Next, we knew his backstory thanks to Fukamachi research, where we discovered that after conquer the difficult demon wall in winter he met with his human rival, Hase Tsuneo, another climber that have conquered the demon wall, but he did it alone unlike Habu, overshadowing him and taking the fame that he had obtained to this point. This was the moment where we saw his character evolution and the growing of his obsession of being the best climber to the point of turning in someone extremely arrogant and, thanks to this, none of his friends wanted to accompany him in the climbing of the wind walls; nevertheless, a young climber, Buntaro, showed his intentions to be his company in this climbing after being inspired by the perseverance and challenging spirit of Habu. At the end, Buntaro died by a accident in the climbing, transforming in a trauma to Habu and making him decide to climb alone since that moment. I really liked the messages that this little arc, particularly, left to us like the inspiration, the fact that this type of accidents happens and we don't have to look for a guilty and the value of forgiveness.
After losing against his climbing rival and, the death of the last one after trying to conquer the southwest face of Everest, he decided to took this dangerous challenge. Early in this part I've mentioned that Hase Tsuneo was his human rival, and this is because, since that moment, Habu had to compete against his biggest rival, nature itself, the creation of God itself. When he noticed that Fukamachi tried to accompany him to take photos as an evidence of the conquering of the mount he rejected this thanks to his past trauma, however, thanks to the big determination and willpower of Fukamachi he decided not only let him to take that photos, also, he gave the Mallory's camera to him. Despite his arrogance and the Buntaro's trauma, when Fukamachi was bout to die, Habu rescued him and assured that he can return to the bottom of the mount alive showing his respect and humanity that he had, apparently, lost to this part of the story.
The challenge of conquer the southwest face of Everest was extremely brutal. A challenge against the limits of human endurance, the amount of weight the body must carry climbing such a high mount, the difficulties of reaching it without an oxygen mask in a certain height, the way the cold seeps past all protections until it becomes part of you, in your skin, in your bones, in your mind, to summarize, an environment made to be anti-human, hostile to life as we know it. Now you understand why Habu showed a tremendous respect for Fukamachi after seeing his determination to climb with him and, also, what was the obsession level of Habu to take this deadly challenge. Despite people told him it is a impossible challenge he, at the end, conquer it paying a huge price, but, at the end, achieving his biggest dream. Definitively an inspiring character that immerses you in his history and his philosophy of life. In the end you understand his motivations and his reason for being.
3. Art: Simply outstanding. Not only looks incredible, it's also complementary to the plot. For example, during the climbing of the Everest mount, we saw how the author represented the tiring of Fukamachi in a terrorific way due to the situation in which he was involved at the moment. Another example is when Habu had his accident during his rivalry against Hase, how the author shown graphically him nearly dead and completely frozen before being rescued. There are more examples of the greatness of this art during the reading. Don't miss them.
4. Messages: There are a lot, all of them correctly executed. For this reason, I'm gonna focus in the main two. First the "never give up" message. This was shown not only with Habu with his obssesion to achieve his biggest dream, but with Fukamachi's persistence to obtain the camera and, eventually, try to obtain the evidence of the legendary conquer of the southwest face of Everest. For the second one, I remember the main phrase of the 2012's olympic games: Inspire a generation. Well, this manga is the pure embodiment of this. The unique charisma and determination of Habu made Fukamachi, Buntaro and myself try to follow his steps and reach such great heights like he did at the end.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS
1. Mystery: Unfortunately, the execution of the mystery, in my opinion, had it's issues. For example, during the first part we saw that when Habu showed himself, magically, people forgot what happened during that time. The reason of this unnatural event wasn't explained and, thanks to this, Fukamachi had to start his research from scratch. It's extremely convenient that all the characters contacted by Fukamachi gave him the information as if nothing. Couldn't one of them give Fukamchi false information to increase the tension and sense of mystery of the manga? I don't know. Also, During his stay in Nepal, he raised a family, which, conveniently, seems to care little or nothing about what could happen to him. I understand that it's extremely difficult to deal with the obsession of Habu, however, is his fucking family and, also, they didn't have a significant contribution to the plot since most of the important information was obtained previously.
2. Non-continuous narrative flow: Most of the time during the first arc was summarized with the backstory of Habu. The issue here is that this made Habu a distant character and, also, the writer skipped some important parts of his character development thanks to the time skips during each part revealed of this. Despite all the positive things that I've talked about Habu, it's true that this mechanic to explain his backstory was something awkward to read in some moments, specially when the time skips were several years.
CONCLUSION
Despite the flaws previously mentioned, my conclusion is that The Summit of the Gods is an incredible manga that can and should be considered as a cult work with a lot of messages about life, determination and self improvement and I recommend to read it, at least, once in life.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 8, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
Vinland Saga was, undoubtedly, the best anime from 2019. The main topic aborded here is about revenge and how this can affect in a bad way the life of people and, fortunately, this message and the plot had a satisfying execution. Let's analyze the positive and negative aspects than this show had:
POSITIVE ASPECTS
1. The historical plot: The plot is about the constant invasion and attacks of Denmark against England. In addition to this, the king of Denmark (Sweyn), wanted to kill his younger son in order to keep the order in his country and guarantee the next heir to the throne.
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Thanks to this attacks, one of the main characters (Askeladd), wanted to kill the king in order to bring peace to his country and prevent new tragic stories like his mother had. On the way, Askeladd meets with Thorfinn, the son of a very famous and dangerous viking named Thors. After kill Thors and foiling Thorfinn's first attempt to kill him, he decides to raise him and use him for his main objective in the story. This is not only a very interesting and really accurate story about this period in Europe, also, it show us the dangerous consequences of follow or be part of an endless revenge chain.
2. Askeladd: Definitely the best character of the show. We saw from detail his backstory and the reason of why he wanted to go against the king. His relationship and chemistry with Thorfinn was quite interesting. Despite the second wanted to kill him most of the time, he continued to raise him and act as his mentor to the point to tell him and Canute his main motivation and the darker moments of his life in addition to making use of him in his plans and when strong enemies appeared.
Talking about his backstory, we saw the constant mistreatment of his mother, characteristic of the time in which the anime is set, the initial indifference of his father for being, practically, the son of a one-night stand, how this father-son relationship was built after they finally meet each other, why he decided to kill his father and his motivation behind his mother's dream for their country. Thanks to this backstory, he, with the advance of time, turned into a charismatic, analytic, cool and badass character. Contrasting with the frenzy Thorfinn personality.
His conclusion in the show was brilliant. Following his mother's dream, he decided to sacrifice his own life his own life so that Canute could be the next person on the throne and, in this way, end the attacks against his country. A very noble ending for someone who had been machiavellian, liar and opportunist, especially with the temporary alliances that he made. All of this was constructed in a very organic way and greatly nourished the characterization and personality dimensions of the character.
3. The support characters: Well characterized, each of them with their own motivations and contribution to the main plot. Since Thorkell, a strong viking who not only limited himself to being this, but he also had a strong sense of honor that greatly influenced the decisions he made during the show. After noticed that the conflicts not are solved only with brute force, we saw his evolution turning into a more frustrated person for having to accept this fact. The king Swayn who, like I mentioned before, wanted to kill Canute to maintain the order in his country. Unlike other antagonists who are cruel or want to kill for the sake of it, the king had his point in trying to realize this atrocious act. Thors, who wanted to live a peaceful life after had being a dangerous viking who participated in a lot of wars and killed a lot of people in the process. His death was a representation of his karma even though he felt regret for the actions he did in the past with his new lifestyle and gave way and greater meaning to Thorfinn's revenge arc, or at least this was initially the purpose that wasn't fulfilled for something that I'm gonna mention in the negative aspects. There are more examples, however, they were, in my opinion, the support characters that stood out the most.
4. Main message: The fact that, at the end, it wasn't Thorfinn the person who killed Askeladd, helped a lot with the message's presentation because we saw the little adolescent completely shocked and not knowing, at the time, what his reason for living was since he had invested most of his life in completing his revenge. In adittion, we recieved from this final the message of life doesn't always give us what we want and we have to know when to turn to the next page of our lives.
5. Soundtrack and animation: Decent most of the time. The soundtrack is the appropiate for the historical context of the show and the animation, despite having clear issues with the use of CGI, it doesn't end up being something invasive or that has greatly affected my experience watching anime. The action and the choreography of the fighting movements was great and complementary to the messages proposed and the impact of the cast characterization from the most part.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS
1. The beginning: The show begins to be a kind of Slice of Life, which, in the end, did not have a significant impact on the main plot. Many people might believe that, at least we met Thors, his background and the rationale behind Thorfinn's revenge; nevertheless, this could've been true if Thorfinn had recieved a better characterization, which I will talk about in the next point. After this, the show finally entered to it's main plot.
2. Thorfinn: He started out as a normal child, however, once his father was killed, he transformed into a edgelord whose only goal is to avenge his father. The problem here is not only the fact that he's the main protagonist, but, also, this is the only reason this character is remembered in this season. I know he gets better characterization and development in the upcoming season, however, speaking of this itself, his character development was really limited, adding the screen time that he got, this affected the quality presented of the anime.
3. Canute: He started the anime being quite reserved and secluded under the tutelage of Ragnar as a consecuence of his religious beliefs. Once the previously mentioned died, Canute was rewritten as a determined and more manly one even if this attitude goes against what is dictated by his religion. This changed was clearly forced and it happened because the script demanded him to be more competent for the rest of the show.
4. Ending: A cliffhanger basically. There were loose ends such as Thorfinn's obvious impact and character development after Askeladd's death and the impact of the characterization of the rest of the remaining cast after the king's death.
CONCLUSION
It's a great anime that accomplished most of the things it set out to do, leaving great and important messages, showing an important part of the European story and characters that will hardly be forgotten because of how well characterized they were.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 27, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
Citrus is a Girls Love story where we learn about Yuzu and the development of her romance with Mei, at least this is what the premise tells us. Unfortunately, this show quickly lost all the attributes that could have made it different from others Girls Love stories. Let's analyze the main problems that this program presented:
1. Yuzu's development: During the first episode, we saw her enrolling to a new institute becuause of her mother's new engagement. The rules of this place were strict and very conservative and this constrasted with Yuzu's personality. To this point the story sounded cool beacuse there
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was a lot of potential with how Yuzu can adapt to this new lifestyle in the institute and, of course, with the new members of her family. Well, this potential was thrown away in the same episode. Despite that she was warned about her current clothing, she continued going to the institute with the same clothes making a contradiction of the rules of the "strict" institute. We saw her being a carefree girl when she spoke about her priorities at her new institute. We saw, also, this attitude reflected with her interactions with her classmates and the student council director. Later, Mei was introduced and she decided to touch some parts of Yuzu's body and this characterization started to fade away. It is revealed to us, later, that Mei would be Yuzu's new stepsister, yes, fucking convenient and, after that, Mei decided kiss Yuzu and, from now on, Yuzu was rewritten as an one dimensional girl in love who only want to bed with Mei and a fan service source. Are you seriously going to tell me that by a kiss all of Yuzu's characterization was modified? Couldn't she ask herself, in the first instance, her doubts about his sexual inclination and, progressively, fall in love with Mei as in any real life romance, especially if it is this type of GL romance? No fucking idea. In adittion, the show clearly indicated that Yuzu was a straight girl seeing her bad reaction to knowing that she was going to an all-girls institute, so the fact that she fell in love with and obsessed with Mei for a simple kiss, without rethinking her sexual orientation for even a few minutes, makes things even worse.
2.Conflict avoidance: This show, I don't know why, tried to avoid any type of conflict that can have lead to a good character development and, instead, made worse the quality of the same. For example, Mei's grandfather was introduced as a character who strongly opposed a possible relationship between Yuzu and Mei during the second episode, however, minutes later in the same episode, he simply forgave her by lifting the penalty she had received and this conflict ended. The worst thing is that, after this, the grandfather had no relevance to the plot. This formula was repeated during the next episodes. A new random character was introduced in order to interfere with the relationship between Yuzu and Mei, the conflict was resolved in the way that suited the script best and Yuzu and Mei ended up without making any progress in their relationship, even, in many cases, it seemed that they ended up hating each other even more. Also, the random character introduced disappear from the scene permanently and the cycle repeats.
3. Mei: She's just a manipulative edge girl that tried to torture Yuzu because her dark past with the abandon of her father. This doesn't have any type of sense. To begin with, Yuzu is a person she has just met, there is no need to escape her anger and repression with her, did she not think of going to a psychologist for professional help? Mystery. Mei's family had a lot of money, so paying for a professional shouldn't have suppose a problem if you ask me. This show, also, gave us a terrible message about toxic relationships because while Mei treated Yuzu worse, the second, for some illogical and stupid reason unknown to me, falls more in love and gets more horny for her. It is not that the series tries to criticize or point out this type of relationship as something negative since it focuses more on the fanservice scenes and that the viewer inserts himself into the character of Mei in this case, telling us that while we treat the couple badly and we give him/her a simple kiss, he/she will fall in love and he/she will be much more faithful to us. Terrible.
Another aspect that I really disliked about her is the fact that Yuzu always apologize to her for... nothing, because most of the time the problems are Mei's fault by not doing anything for the relationship unless a third person was involved, so yes, she had no real interest in Yuzu. It's an one side romance that didn't go anywhere thanks to the inexistent character development from both sides to this point.
4. Ending?: After the first episode, the show limited to be an episodic one with the formula presented in the second point, trying to force the viewer to watch the manga to see if they are finally established as a couple in one point, aka, cliffhanger. The worst part is that none of them had any significant development, Yuzu kept making the same mistakes without learning from them (like dressing inappropriately at the institute), Mei was still an edgy girl who tried to justify her behavior with her past. So, it's very hard to find hope that the manga (in case you haven't seen), will be able to solve this basic flaws in the characterization.
CONCLUSION
It's a terrible anime that wasted all the potential that it had after the first episode focusing more in the fanservice and the cheap melodrama instead of make a proper character and romance development.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 13, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
Serial Experiments Lain is a vanguardist anime that predicted a lot of things about what will happen when the internet would be fully expanded around the world. For this reason, I'm gonna divide this review in three parts: The show's accurate predictions, other positive aspects and the negative aspects. So, let's begin:
SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN ACCURATE PREDICTIONS
1) The interconnected world: The show did an excellent job portraying what people who use technology on a daily basis would look like, how real is friendship with people you only meet online and how the globalization would impact on the psychology of people involved.
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A great example of this is how Lain progressively loses her sensitivity to the events in the real world as she gets deeper into the internet. It's really ironic on how while Lain was more connected with people in the net, she was more disconnected with people irl. The bigger example was her downfalling relationship with Arisu. I have to point how the anime did a flawless job showing the double personality of Lain developed during her immersion in the internet.
2)Surveillance of government entities and big companies through the internet: With the knights and the agents of black, the anime showed us how these entities can abuse their power invading the privacy of people in order to pursue their objectives, even if this isn't morally right.
3) The distinct uses of the internet: Also, in this anime we saw a lot of different uses (for good and for bad), that the internet currently have, like the drugs traffic, sell private information, create rumours about other persons, etc. Which is a reality nowadays with websites like Pirate Bay, the Deep web and similars.
4) Multiplayer mode: Lain, also, predicted how the multiplayer mode of many video games would impact in their players, like, for example, the scene in the video game Phantoma wher the murder presented here, also, happened in the real life, showing how many addict players can distorsion their minds believing that the reality can be like the video game they are playing.
5) Escapism inside the internet: The show made a good job showing how many people uses the internet to escape from their realities or to pretend to be other persons. Also, how, in some cases, it keeps people stagnant and prevents them from developing their potentials.
OTHER POSITIVE ASPECTS
1) Good handling of ambiguous topics: It's true that many topics addressed in this anime are, finally, free for the user to interpret, however, many of this topics don't have a concrete answer or an unique solution like, for example, the life sense, which is the most realistic between the real world and the virtual world and the deities topics. If the show would have tried to give concrete answers to them, it would have failed as a pretentious one.
2) A complex, but well made plot: All the predictions previouslty mentioned are a integrated part of this plot, which is about how our protagonsit Lain is inmersed into the virtual world and how this impact not only in her behaviour, but also, in her closest friends. We see also, dangerous entities like the knights and the agents in black, who tried taking advantage of the virtual fame Lain had acquired at that point for their own purposes, the objective of the Professor Hodgeson with the kids project (PSI) and the fact that someone took the information of this project to create the video game Phantoma and the truth behind Masami Eiri and what was his objetive with Lain. I really enjoyed how Eiri's escapism proposal was portrayed very well and how Lain, after getting all the information from him, categorically rejects it, giving a great anti-escapist message in passing.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS
1) Weak characterization: Despite being a very complex character, Lain felt as a distant character consider the amount of time that she was present during the show. Most of the time invested in the show is in exposition, for that reason, the show had issues in this aspect. I have to point out, also, the same with the secondary charcaters that, having a much less participating time than Lain, were more affected for this problem.
2) Some flaws in the animation: Most of the time the animation is really good and fluid, however there are moments, like the discussion between Lain and Eiri, where the animation was really static.
3) Deus Ex Machina ending: We have to be realistic here, the ending with Lain restarting the world erasing her existence to the rest and solving, magically, the current problems at that time was a plot hole that didn't have a logic or explanation even with all the sci-fi elements introduced to this point in the anime. It was, also, anticlimatic for that reason.
CONCLUSION
Serial Experiments Lain is a great anime that, thanks to the mastermind behind it, remains one of the most important to date due to the large number of messages about the future of the internet, which are practically a reality today. Sure, being this a complex anime is not for all the audiences, however, if you like to watch a mature and revolutionary show with a lot of sci-fi concepts, I highly recommend watch it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 4, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS
This anime is constatly praised for the emotional aspects that offers, however, this is something superficial if we analyze it in terms of writing, where it fails in everything it purposes. Let's analyze together the issues that this show had and/or tried to hide using the emotional manipulation:
1. Tragic pasts that goes nowhere: Arima suffers from PTSD for the constant punishment that got from his mother, while Miyazono had an incurable disease. Why the mother constanly punished Arima? Mystery. How it's possible that he, just, forgave her without a concrete reason or a signal of her regretting what she did? This
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one is a fucking nonsense. Not only shows a wrong message about bullying, but, also exposed the cowardly of the writer to solve conflicts in the show. Another issue with Arima is the fact that during the development of the anime he didn't achieve anything. The writer invested more time in another aspects that I'm gonna mention in the next points.
Talking about Miyazono, she's, basically, a plot device hidden in a cute girl with a dissease. She introduced Arima a new style of music and convinced him to play the piano again. The problem starts with the fact that without her, the plot, literally, can not advance, also, she doesn't have a characterization neither personality beyond its function as a plot tool. Even the author tried to give a background to some secondary characters, unlike her case. What is the dissease that she had? Mystery, it was never explained. There are also contradictions with her. If she was planning to cheer up the protagonist and help him with his PTSD disease, why she forced Arima to relive his traumatic experiences? No fucking idea. Why did she constantly make insinuations that she wanted to have a romantic relationship with his best friend? I don't know. The worst part is that this relationship ended being a reality. Why she constantly bullied him each time that he made a mistake to this point of physically assaulting him? It's all a fucking nonsense.
2. Slow pacing: It was really necessary to have internal monologues that didn't go anywhere in each fucking episode? I don't know. Is a wasted time that the writer could have used to make a proper characterization. Also, we had some side stories from the other characters that didn't contribute to the main plot. Wouldn't it have been better to focus on solving in the main story instead of putting these stories that also got nowhere? No fucking idea. Why the writer put a lot of flashbacks instead of showing what's happening in the present timeline? Mystery and a cheap way to avoid a proper storytelling.
3. Melodramatic and edgy scenes: Most of the emotional scenes presented are forced and overreacted. The "redemption" of the mother, each time before an important concert, each time that the protagonist wanted a new partner, the scenes in which Tsubaki was involved, when Miyazono tried to convice Arima to play with her and being a pianist, the physical aggressions of Tsubaki and Watari against Arima, Watari crying because his team lost a soccer match and many more.
4. Plot: The plot was, basically, four episodes of 22, that is the total amount of episodes thanks to the wasted time in the internal monologues and the irrelevant side stories. And, what was the objective or purpose of the main plot? It was supposed to be the growth of Arima, however, the focus was on the dying phase of Miyazono that I'm gonna explain in the last point.
5. Comedy out of place: It is not only the fact that the comedy was introduced at inappropriate moments, but also, in many cases, the program parodied the illnesses of our protagonist in those scenes, which I also found offensive. Wasn't this show supposed to try to take the diseases featured seriously according to the presented at the beginnning? Mystery. Also the comedy involving Tsubaki was awful to watch. Main mention to the final episode where after the major plot twist of the anime, the writer had to perform a chibi scene with her in a scene that supossed to be the most dramatic and sad of the anime. One of the biggest anti climatic moments that I've ever seen.
6. Music: A wasted element during the show. The writer could have focused on the development of the pianist career of Arima instead of the flashbacks, monologues and the irrelevant side stories, so, yes, this element wasn't fully approached here.
7. Romance?: The reasons of why Arima liked Miyazono was because she played a violin and her pretentious inspirational speeches (that contradicts her actions during the show). And from the side of Miyazono, the showed revealed that she liked him in a very forced way during the last episodes. Before that, she only showed interest for him becuase his performances and nothing else. The change didn't feel organic in any sense.
8. Ending: If Miyazono wanted all the time to be with Arima, why did she involved the best friend? It wouldn't have been better that she, on her own, tried to make the first steps? I don't know. Wasn't it extremely cowardly of her to confess this to Arima late knowing that she is dying? This was not only a terrible plot twist, also it gave an awful message about escapism and, also, bullying to be honest. And the worst part is that this ending could have easily been better if the show gave her a better characterization, in order to, at least, have greater empathy with her and showing her regrets of being unable to confess to Arima before instead of being something that came out, basically, out of nowhere and being really edgy for the double suicide proposal.
CONCLUSION
Despite having a good animation and soundtrack, that are the only positive aspects that this anime has, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso fails at everything else. It's a shame that, having an interesting ideas and premise, the anime took the worst way possible and ended being a complete wasted potential.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 29, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS:
Before start the review, I'm gonna say that the title of this show is a complete "bruh", because this isn't neither a comedy nor a romantic story.
Back to the review, we gonna analyze the main issues that this show offered us through it's duration:
1. Hachiman: Is basically a cynical and a social withdrawn. His character development during the anime was... true, he didn't have a development, a huge mistake in any type of story if you ask me. Having a character with a huge potential of character development, how it was posible that he didn't have a significant change? I don't
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know. Why the writer used the same joke about the schoolar life during all the episodes? Didn't he have another jokes instead? Mystery. Why was the necesity of constantly show pretentious and edgy monologues? No fucking idea and it makes more hard to watch the show if you ask me. Knowing that Hachiman stayed in his archetype, this monologues were, basically, wasted time. Another thing that really annoyed me about this character is the fact that the rest of the cast, directly and indirectly, supported his cynism. This is a terrible message that, at least this season, left. Wouldn't it have been better than the writer have the decency to, at least, explore the other side of the premise, where he shows the school life isn't necessarily something bad? No fucking idea. In addition, having this cynical attitude, how it's possible that some friend or his family didn't say or do anything with him for having this attitude? This is a fucking nonsense. I see many kids being punished or, at least, having a bad reputation for having this type of attitude, also, with this, the anime didn't show any type of consecuences, so this makes that the message that the anime tries to deliver be even worse if you ask me.
2. Yui and the secondary characters: They are basically a plane characters. They don't have their own motivations and/or purpose to be part of this show. Their only function it's to cheer the cynic of the protagonist. Talking specifically about Yui, wouldn't have been better that, knowing that she was the potential love interest for Hachiman, was the keyword to change the attitude of the protagonist? Mystery.
3. Yukina: Basically, a typical Mary Sue that can do everything she wants including the attitude of look down on everyone. Wouldn't have been better try to change this type of behavior like many anime with similar characters did? No fucking idea. Also, this is the main problem with the "perfect" characters, most of time, it negates any chance of character development. Despite the attempt of this between the relationship of her and Yui, she's still being a Mary Sue and, thanks to this, hard to empathize with her.
4. Romance?: It's incredible to me that in the 13 episodes there was not the slightest approach to a potential romance between the protagonists (like I mentioned with the case of Yui). Isn't this dishonest with the premise, title, and purpose of any rom-com? I do not know. Despite that Yui showed some interest, the issue is with Hachiman, which stayed in his initial archetype to the end. So, in effect, there was no real progress in the romantic aspect if you ask me.
5. Soundtrack and animation: Both were below average. Personally, the opening and ending turned out to be quite unpleasant to listen to.
6. Plot: There's no plot here. It has the slice of life format. It was an attempt with the backstory of Yui, but it ended being that without a conclusion. Why the writer tried to put a sub-plot if he doesn't gonna end it? Mystery.
CONCLUSION
With all the points mentioned before, we can conclude that this anime didn't bring anything new to the rom-com genre. Instead, it show us how important is the character development and a good plot in any story in order to not finish as an empty and boring experience like this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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