Public doesn’t matter if the show can be fully appreciated to anyone.
Here is one of biggest classics and my first manga I have ever read and completed all volumes, Doraemon. While it's not being known well outside of Asia/Japan, it's a franchise that truly deserves its high popularity and reputation over the years. If Dragon Ball popularized the manga, Doraemon is also one of them and really close to it. Even nowadays, it still lives in as one of the greatest success as a manga franchise with about 50+ volumes, thousands of episodes from 3 anime series and a mass produced merchandise since 1970,
...
so more than 50 years ago.
You may first think that Doraemon is a kids show, and it's not good nor interesting, because it isn't made for us. What I can say about that, is sure, demographically, it's a kid show, but you're wrong. The art may look cute, protagonists are children and the story isn't much complex, but it's far more than what you may expect. I will explain it now with details, why this franchise rocks and I would recommend it to anyone.
Story: 8
The story of Doraemon can be easily described without few introduction and can be watched in almost any order, appealing to anyone that can start anytime, anywhere. Each chapter is one story, for about 10 pages, sometimes longer. That's why, it's easy and common to give fillers in this series, which is the reason why the anime is so long! Sadly, since the main author passed away, the manga serialization ended and focused more on the anime side afterwards, which is still running with a lot of chapters remakes and episodes. I will focus this review on the manga side.
The introduction is pretty simple. An elementary schooler, named Nobi Nobita is a lazy kid with almost nothing good, bad luck, bad grades and weak against others, until Doraemon, a Cat Robot(without ears) arrives from the 22th century with a time machine from his desk drawer, in order to fix his mistakes and change him. Although Doraemon isn't really competent than you might think, he has a lot of Sci-Fi gadgets that each have a special effect that will help him for any situation.
You may wonder that, well it's simple as that. However, what is really amazing in this manga is the amount and various degrees of themes, comedy and creativity. You may firstly expect something absolutely normal, but with the help of Doraemon, it turns out to be something completely different and surprisingly entertaining. If you are a fan of any popular known comedy show, such as Saiki K. and especially Gintama, you will definitely understand what I mean and you will find something that is really similar in your tastes, with its terms of episodic, funny, various and imaginative situations and characters. Just like those comedy series, Doraemon has some great classic parodies in the old era such as Star Wars, E.T., Ginga Tetsudou and Uchuu Senkan Yamato. It was rather ahead for its time for those ideas and it should be considered like the ancestors of many of the popular series nowadays.
The situations in Doraemon are diverse, fun and hilarious. Never in any other show I've seen, it will throw simple kids attacked from an extraterrestrial that doesn't exist and ending up contacting the prime minister to help them, sometimes even depositing money to a bank and going 100 years into the future to claim this money with 1000 times more interest, children paying taxes in order to buy a soccer ball, going back during World War II and saying to a Japanese War Officer that the Japan will lost, searching a dictionary for the specific homework questions and answers, or even a manga author that can't figure out to write about the rest of the story, which ends up buying his unwritten volumes in the future and criticizing himself for being a lazy author.
Enough said, those examples should be funny to you, the possibilities is so vast and creative that I can't describe all of them for about 800+ chapters. However, you only need to read a few chapters, if not, about 2-3 volumes to understand its strength and its potential. Some chapters can be unexpectedly emotional and heartwarming, that may make you cry or learn about some important morals and ethics in the society.
On the other side, there are some small flaws in the story. If you judge the story too much in depth, you may find some plot-holes or some inconsistencies, because this story is simplistic and the author forgets sometimes about complex, out-of-range details. However, that was already expected in my case, since it's not a story that you care for details but for fun and mostly as a slice-of-life/comedy. For those who may have concerns with that, just think like after every chapter, the world is back to normal and the characters won't age, even after hundreds of chapters. It's just like you try to think that RPG Games have some high-level of inconsistencies or almost no logic compared to the real world, so that shouldn't be something critical or disturbing.
Some may also find inconsistencies or concerns about the overall narrative of the manga, since it's an old manga. Just read a few volumes, and you will mostly forget about it. Fortunately, I didn’t realized much of a progressive drop in quality in this manga, so there should be no issues about that.
Art: 7
The art itself is pretty simple and works well as this kind of series. However, I faced inconsistencies during some chapters, where the tone didn't match or sometimes it lacked a lot of detail. Knowing that the author serialized a lot of series at the same time, it was also expected. Fortunately, it's rather solid overall and simple designs won't ruin something, it's not a story that need some complex details, after all.
Characters: 9
The characters are really simple, distinguishable and well-defined with their purpose in a slice-of-life, adventure, comedy, Sci-Fi and episodic series. You can find a lot of these stereotypes in recent comedies series, so you should be familiar with them.
Doraemon and Nobita are primarily the main characters of this story. Mostly always together, they explore various situations. Even though sometimes they are not the focus, they are always related to the focused characters and always appear in the story as usual.
Doraemon is the cat robot and his personality is often similar to a human one, or something like robot or even cat one, which is rather funny and absurd. Although he is a robot, he is somewhat of a defect and because of that, he is inferior to other robots, and a bit like Nobita, which is weak against others. There are some surprisingly touching chapters that represents him and most of them explore its gadgets and develop amazing and creative situations.
Nobita, on the other hand, is a weak, lazy and sometimes bad behavior, but in the end of the day, he is a highly likable and relatable character that represents a great impression of a failed guy. Still, he excels his skills in a few areas and he remains really entertaining to me.
The rest of the main characters represents mostly their friends or their family, most notably 3 others, which are Shizuka, Suneo and Gian (Takeshi). Shizuka is the only girl of the 5 and Nobita's classmate and love interest. She appears in most chapters, in a really good, or sometimes accidently bad ways in multiple situations.
Suneo, on the other hand, is what defines a stereotypical rich guy and somewhat tricky behaviour. He is one of the biggest Nobita friends, and also one of his 2 bullies at a time. Since his family is rich and Nobita's family is poor, he represents often the reason why Nobita wants to outstand him.
Gian, is primarily Nobita's biggest bully and sometimes an amazing friend (Watch a movie for fun, you will know what I mean). He is the kind of guy that "Your things are mine, My things are mine." What I find really funny and entertaining in this character is when his behaviour change greatly at times and when he sings or cook something, things get interesting and stressing at the same time.
What is also really funny in the manga, is that no matter where you go in time and place, you can always find someone like Nobita (weak one) against other bullies which looks a lot like his friends/bullies. Also, (almost) every character doesn’t have a perfect personality and they have a lot of strengths and weaknesses, giving them many possibilities during various situations. They may seem linear, but they are more than that.
A bit on the other side now, there are some characters which I see a lot of time, but they aren't much explained, like their name or don't have much some distinctive connections between the main characters. Again, that's not much of a thing, but as a slice-of-life series, expect yourself to see a lot of characters that may appear one or two times in the entire manga.
Enjoyment: 9
I highly enjoyed it most of the time and I was impressed for its comedy, creativity, episodic storytelling, high variety of emotions, likable characters and unique situations. I can definitely agree that as for its genre and demographic, Doraemon is clearly above average in this aspect too. The chapters are really memorable and you will remember them for years to come, sometimes as a morality lesson.
Although not every chapter was a hit for me, since it has various themes that I wasn't interested much, such as romance. Of course, with more than 800 chapters, there can be some weak ones, but also stronger and much more memorable ones.
Overall: 9
A true classic and a must-watch, despite its demographic that may turn off some people. Give it a chance for a few chapters or volumes, you won't regret it.
Recommandations, references!
Gintama (A lot of similar aspects, like its episodic nature, plus a lot of Doraemon references)
Jojo (Stand abilities are similar to Doraemon gadgets and some crazy, funny situations)
Saiki K. (Psychic Powers are the substitute for Doraemon gadgets, likable characters)
Seto no Hanayome (A few gadgets, species jokes and similar kind of humour, really funny. Also some references to Doraemon)
Dragon Ball (Serialized about in the same times, was a bit inspired on Doraemon’s Sci-Fi settings)
Osomatsu-san (Similar artsyle and narrative, even though it's not the same author, lot of Doraemon references and similar comedy situations)
May 20, 2022 Recommended
Public doesn’t matter if the show can be fully appreciated to anyone.
Here is one of biggest classics and my first manga I have ever read and completed all volumes, Doraemon. While it's not being known well outside of Asia/Japan, it's a franchise that truly deserves its high popularity and reputation over the years. If Dragon Ball popularized the manga, Doraemon is also one of them and really close to it. Even nowadays, it still lives in as one of the greatest success as a manga franchise with about 50+ volumes, thousands of episodes from 3 anime series and a mass produced merchandise since 1970, ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 2, 2021
Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings
*** This review contains no spoiler ***
Rom-Coms are one of the most common genres in anime. Many have a preference to them but at the same time, most use a lot of common tropes and cliche in order to provide something decent in an unoriginal manner. It often tries to play heavily on emotions rather than developing the plot, which can also be said melodramatic. Despite its high popularity and its self-distinguishable aspects, in the case of Sakura-sou no pet na Kanojo, I can say that those notions often apply. Honestly, I expected more from this show and from what it tried to do, but due ... to several issues, it failed to meet my average expectations progressively throughout the show. This is a non-spoiler review that will review the entire season of Sakura-sou, even through I don’t know what will happen next in the light novel, but here it is. Story: 5 Now first the story. The story in Sakura Sou is a bit slow to start in the first few episodes but gradually introduce the plot and the characters. The story itself establishes a decent, distinctive and a nice premise about a coming-of-age story, portraying the hardships of life and how weak, problematic characters can become strong and achieve their objectives and success in their life with a mix of slice-of-life, school life, romance and comedy. However, the problem lies a lot in the execution. For several episodes, it was more like those themes were not that much the focus of the story. The story looks way too fun and stupidly annoying as for a story that takes story and drama seriously a lot of time. Because of that, the balance between the light and dark tones is often mismatched and weird. Several times, it switched serious drama with stupid, light moments immediately, in a transition of less than 1 minute. This is a problem that is noticeable most of time, and even more in the second half, because it takes more an heavy approach on drama and still had way too much unnecessary comedy and fanservice. I know that many won’t have much problems with it, but in my case it was. Fanservice and comedy were also an issue to the plot. Although it’s ok to include some of those in this show, Sakura-sou had way more of them that what I expected and most of them felt just weak and unnecessary. Sometimes, it was alright but other times, it looked like the author tried to use mostly every opportunity for ecchi, comedy situations suddenly because he felt like his fans would like it, even if it’s clearly not the best moment for that. As for the comedy, it was clearly not its strongest point and is mostly what you would expect for the situation. While in my case it worked a bit at the beginning, but later on, it became weak and it was simply annoying to watch. It may still work for many people. Also, there was some noticeable adaptation issues. Compared to the original LN, this adaptation exaggerated the tone and the characters much more in favour of comedy and appeal. I personally didn’t liked this approach, because the plot was supposed to be more serious and represent the main theme of the anime, not the comedy. It was also really annoying at the same time, sometimes I bothered myself if this was necessary and would change something positively. Other than the tone, there was also pacing issues, which were more noticeable at the end of the anime. The anime wrapped up the elements too fast, too sudden with the lack and skip of several explanations that explains precisely about what is going on. Maybe the show could have been better if it didn’t have these adaptation flaws, just like most of the light novel adaptations in the market. As for the writing quality in general, it can be decent at times but nothing really groundbreaking. It still had its good moments and some nice situations, interactions, plot points and I enjoyed some episodes. However, many times, the plot deals with too much plot points and struggle itself to shift its focus along with the various themes and elements of the story. A lot of times, main characters get involved into a lot of situations that they must surpass during the anime and those are skipped or simply not shown. I wanted to see how characters would tend to accomplish the obstacles they would have but unfortunately, it just shows the beginning, very few or not into the details and then the outcome, almost always accompanied with heavy melodrama that tries to deals impact. The plot also lacks progression, because the story has many unnecessary episodes, and the plot is often repetitive and predictable. After a few episodes, I could mostly predict what would happen in this show. Basically, It was more like the story did not accomplished much things for its length of 24 episodes, and because of that, the story is far from good and memorable. The writing was more or less mediocre. Just like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this story’s drama tries too much to deal with emotions rather than the plot, which is my definition of something melodramatic. Drama appears at times very conveniently, and it is often exaggerated, overused and forced in a too sudden and brief matter, only to make something impactful. Not only the drama, but the romance itself was pretty weak and really forced near the end. I didn’t really cared about romance in this show even through it gets a high reputation for being a rom-com. Heavy situations were sometimes resolved in only some minutes, without consequences and with the help of 180 degrees turn and sometimes nothing really matters because of the melodrama and the plot armor. The ending itself felt forced and was executed too fast. Too much things got resolved with too much end. It was more unrealistic in my opinion. Overall the plot can be nice at times, but it was weak most of the time in the most crucial areas with all those issues, and that’s one of the reasons why it didn’t met my expectations. Animation: 7 As for the art and animation, nothing really special, but overall nice. Character and other designs were forgettable but decent for this anime. I can’t describe it much, but it was quite colourful. Sound: 6 For the sound, it wasn’t really memorable overall, but the opening and ending were decent. Still, it matched well the show’s serious and light tone. Character: 5 As for the characters, it was slightly better done than the story. Still, I always expected more character development along with the story. Probably the best point is the high amount of screen time and the variety of the main characters got, few exceptions aside. I must mention first also that the characters were even more annoying than the story, due to their frequent over-reactions, immature actions and personalities along with a lot of stereotypical tropes that stay the same. The main character, Sorata is an average student that has a main objective with lot of issues and problems that he need to deal with. Although his character was slightly developed than the others, he was still a mediocre character. The author tried to give him some plot, but it was mostly weak and limited. His situations and issues got really repetitive over time, and he was mostly memorable, because he was screaming countless times. The other main character, Mashiro was much more interesting to be honest. She starts as a mysterious person with issues and gradually gets moments and developments over time. However, in the second half, she suddenly become more-like a plot-folding character, because the story decided to focus on the other characters. I wonder why she isn’t constantly the main focus of this show, knowing that the title of this anime is The Pet Girl of Sakurasou. If I had to decide the most annoying character in this anime, eh, that would be Misaki, closely followed by Sorata and Nanami. She was highly annoying, screaming most of the time, more than anyone else and came like suddenly after the most serious and dramatic situations. Her character wasn’t really good either. I understand that it’s important to vary the characters and to create cool situations with them, but as I said in SakuraSou, this approach is way too much overused and over-exaggerated for its genre. As a result, this was a minus for me. As for the rest, I won’t talk much about but there was some less annoying, more serious characters among them, such as Ryuunosuke and Jin. Some of them were decent or fine at least. There was also some unnecessary characters to the plot that get only brief screen time such as Yuuko, which don’t really add anything to the show except for fan service and cringe moments. Overall, the characters in the show were average. None of them was exceptional, but not that bad either. As a slice-of-life genre perspective, the characters were alright, but when there was plot, the developments were lacking. Enjoyment: 5 I personally enjoyed the first half of the show much more rather than the dramatic and the weaker second half. There was some nice, entertaining episodes and there was also some, really boring episodes that was more a chore to watch. It was more of a mixed bag in this aspect and could have been better again. If at least the show wasn’t primarily annoying with its characters, fan service and comedy tone, I would have probably enjoyed it much more, decently. The drama didn’t really connected me emotionally due to the melodramatic and weak nature. This show was a mixed bag and mostly forgettable for me with all these issues. The best way to enjoy this show is if you don’t analyze much the plot and characters, you get invested into the melodramatic elements and you like the usual comedy and fan service animes. It might not well worked for me, but you can still give it a try. At least, it’s not at all something that is terrible or almost unwatchable, just don’t expect some high quality drama or something close to my expectations.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 25, 2021
Yakusoku no Neverland 2nd Season
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
What a disappointment to one of the most anticipated anime of this season.
Hello, this is my first Anime review ever and today, I will review The Promised Neverland S2, one of the most underwhelming sequels in anime. When this season was announced, I had high hopes that this will be a great season and it will beautifully succeed the great first season of the series. After Covid-19 came, this season was delayed to 2021, and finally, the time came for its airing. Then, my hopes were collapsed and utterly destroyed in the middle. When it was finally over, I was left in such a disappointment, being ... one of the worst seasons I have watched in anime ever. I was so disappointed that I decided to write a full review on it. I know there are a lot of people who enjoyed more or less this season even if it was really criticized from fans. I will try to respect all of you and to be honest and argumentative in order to explain why this season was such a disaster for me. Hope that you will understand and enjoy it. Story: 2/10 Let’s start with the story, the main reason why I did not like this show. First of all, the story in the first season was really good to be honest. There was a lot of action, mind games, horror, mystery, psychological and thriller elements. All of them worked well so it was able to establish a great and an interesting start to the series. Then, in this season, in the first 2-3 episodes, the story continued to follow what the first season established while introducing and developing some new elements, which it was quite nice and interesting as usual. However, later in those episodes, the story started to be a bit different compared to the manga’s storyline. Changes include some removed speeches and scenes, including the disappearance of a certain character who was supposed to be important in the later parts of the story. I started to question myself if the story was properly following the manga or if they tried to make some changes to improve the anime storyline. Then in episode 4, it turned out the be the worst case I would have expected, a different and an extremely condensed route compared to the manga plot line. Starting from this episode, the story advanced at full speed, skipping some of the best arcs in the entire series, including Goldy Pond Battle Arc and Seven Walls Arc, and then it became a complete mess. It was even worse than Tokyo Ghoul Root A in my opinion. The quality of these episodes were awfully paced compared to the previous 15 episodes of the series. It was so fast that I could not have understand everything and most of the things were not at all explained properly. Every episode had this problem since even through most of them was following the original manga plot line with some major changes. While the first season adapted about 37 chapters of content from 4 manga volumes, this season ended up concluding the story, so about approximately 145 chapters from 16 volumes, with more than 80 chapters of content completely skipped. This is truly terrible. Other than the pacing, the writing was also changed a bit from the manga and in general, the writing was significantly worse and inconsistent compared to it with tons of never-explained plot points, useless and cringe moments, plot-holes, plot armor, plot conveniences and random events that came out totally from nowhere. Sometimes whole important sequences were not shown even if it was important in order to understand what is going on. Some plot-points were added and they were forgotten immediately after that for no reason, too. It was even worse as much as I progressed in this show, being a complete train wreck up until the end. To summarize: + Nice first episodes following up the 1st season - After that, Pacing is abysmal, extremely fast most of the time and all over the place - Sometimes it is just like the manga but more than 10x faster - Lot of great arcs, moments and characters completely skipped or skimmed - Terrible writing quality overall, one of the worst I have seen in anime - Pacing and writing were even worse as the show progressed Characters: 2/10 Now with the characters, another big reason why I did not like this show. I will explain this section without too much details to some specific characters, because this review is spoiler-free. Season 1 has a nice cast, especially the main trio, Emma, Ray and Norman. They were great characters, full of potential, intellectual with different personalities, motivating me to watch and enjoy the full first season. However, as the story became bad, characters became bad too. Emma remained completely one-dimensional, without any development or investment. She was acting constantly like that, just to progress the story. Her decisions were really predictable and too simple, often mindless, resulting her personality literally destroyed during this season. Same things apply for Ray. Except for the first episodes, I don’t remember a single scene where Ray used his intellectual abilities to progress the story and give some great entertainment to the viewers. Plus, he acted exactly like Emma most of the time, without any problem or contradictions or whatsoever. As for the other characters, very few were expanded to them due to the poor pacing. Mainly, the kids were handled this time like a single group, without any moments or uniqueness to them. They were more like plot devices than being themselves. There was even some of the worst cases I have seen to some important characters later in the show but I won’t talk about those cases due to the spoilers. To summarize: + Great characters design and basic settings (That’s expected, lol) - Some characters got their personalities destroyed and became useless - Many acted as a full group and not like individual ones - Very few characters got their moments - Plot devices everywhere - Motivations or characters’ events are not properly explained or expanded Art: 6/10 So the visuals were okay, a bit like the first season. It was not messed up so much and nice as usual. However, there was not enough animated moments compared to the s1 and lot of the horror aspects in the art were missing compared to the previous season or the manga, which is a real shame. Especially during the last episodes, it was obvious that the studio cut the corners for the sake of their budget. Not as problematic as the story or characters, but could have definitely been better in my opinion. Sound: 7/10 For the audio, it was good. There was some new pieces added during some scenes and the opening, ending were both good personally. However, the season 1 did it better to be honest, in every aspect. Enjoyment: 2/10 Mostly, I enjoyed this show primarily because how much it was bad and not for great reasons. I was laughing and disappointed by how bad the plot and the characters were, even through it was not supposed to be funny at all in the story. The enjoyment during the first episodes were good as usual, however everything collapsed after it. Most of the time, I seriously did not enjoyed the quality of the show and I don’t remember any impactful or memorable moment that was handled out acceptably. During the middle, there was a lot of pointless, skipped events explanations without any form of visual, which I found it really boring to be honest. The story was especially predictable due to the writing and pacing so I did not have any interest of what is going to happen next. Also, I would not consider this season as a Psychological/Mystery/Thriller like the first season. It was more like a cheap Sci-Fi/Action/Shonen season so it failed to deliver similar themes and entertainment. To summarize: + Enjoyment is subjective at least - Lot of pointless, unmotivated and boring speeches and unrelated moments - Not interesting, more like a chore to watch when compared to s1 - Unexpected comedy (Not for good reasons) - Things pass too quickly so it is hard to watch Overall: 2/10 Well, so even with the manga events and some acceptable visual and sound, it can’t cover the score by much, that’s how terrible it was. I could literally drop this season anytime since episode 4 but I didn’t wanted to give up my hopes so I tried my best to stick and endure it. From all the shows I have watched in my life, if I can count this season only in place of the series, it would be seriously the worst anime adaptation I have seen from them. I’m glad this season is over now. For most people who did like the Season 1 and wanting to know what will happen next, go read the manga instead of watching this terrible season, like everything was handled poorly and many missing explanations are found in the manga, which I ended up reading immediately after the route diverted. I would not recommend this season for anyone except if you expect or wanting to see a real mess instead of the sequel to the story. I hope it helped you to understand why this season was poorly received, thank you for reading my review!
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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