By halfway through, I originally decided to go ahead and mark this one "dropped," but honestly dropping a show like that drives me nuts regardless so I decided to go ahead and finish it. My biggest problem was that the characters and story were all pretty shallow, and seemed to count on some of its shock value type moments to grab the viewer emotionally rather than really building up an emotional attachment. It just felt like "oh, some stuff's happening to some guys," basically. It does improve eventually though, enough that I suppose I don't mind having finished it after all.
I think for the story,
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Jul 14, 2016
It's always awesome to see a good mecha series that doesn't bank on flashy fight scenes. The bipedal weapons here are presented as being very new technology to the battlefield, still very limited in many ways but much better suited for urban combat than tanks. Where the show really shines is in the story itself that it tells. It was deep and complex in itself, however the amount of time spent on any individual detail relevant to the core story wasn't quite enough to really drive it home all the way. It left it feeling like they just touched on most of the key points
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Jan 8, 2015
Clannad: After Story
(Anime)
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After Story carried some stuff that really hit me more than the original series did. I can't possibly disclose what hit me without risking an unjust spoiler, so all I can say is that particularly episode 17 hit me in ways that probably nothing else I can think of has. I've hit a point quite similar, is all, and so it carried a lot of personal meaning for me. This show overall, though I resisted watching it for so long as I figured anything a little too "slice of life" just wouldn't be entertaining, motivated me in some really good ways.
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Jan 8, 2015
I avoided watching this show for a long time. I just had the impression it would be everything I hate about the slice of life genre. Thankfully someone managed to convince me to give it a shot. It has a few elements of what I expected to dislike here and there, but they are pretty rare. Overall, it does really well at portraying relatable characters and situations (though of course with dashes of anime humor thrown in the mix). It's hard to adequately lay out what I liked without spoilers, though, so I would just have to sum it up as deep situations, relatable characters
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Aug 19, 2014
From the start, it kinda felt like basically all the basic shows about exceptionally powerful kids playing hero (FMA, D.Gray-Man, etc, without regard to which came out when). That's not to say I held that against it too bad, except to say it does kinda imply a rather straightforward structure. Still, after getting through some of the earlier episodes that set things up in a relatively familiar way but throwing in some originality at least, it does become pretty exciting and I was definitely quite entertained. The character depth is fairly typical considering the general age group I'd imagine this was intended
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Aug 15, 2014
Byousoku 5 Centimeter
(Anime)
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About ten minutes into the first episode, I was already confident that this would be painfully dull. A direct narration of the show's themes, done here through Takaki's inner monologue, set over nothing but a sort of montage of day-to-day activities with some bits of actual dialogue thrown in is hardly impressive to me. Instead of leading the viewer through events that show them connections between things and allowing the viewer to see connections between things, it's all just spelled out as some metaphor the character giving the monologue at that moment spits out. This largely illustrates what I hate about risking
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Aug 14, 2014
3x3 Eyes: Seima Densetsu
(Anime)
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Diving right into probably the only two loose ends from the first OVA series, mostly just kind of implies at first what's been going on since the last episode until a little bit into the first episode of Seima Densetsu. It takes very little time though before a minor twist or two is thrown into things, then keeping up the skillful balance between story telling and excitement, you get your first taste of some conflict. I enjoyed the music in this one as well, the characters still have some pretty good depth (as before, actually some great depth considering how little time there
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Aug 14, 2014
It all starts off with a good amount of intrigue, some good music, and a bit of excitement before really going in-depth, so getting hooked isn't difficult at all. From there, it moves rather smoothly back and forth between more intriguing story development and more action, maintaining a pretty nice balance between the two. The progression of the story all seems relevant to the overall point, which is especially nice since it was only four episodes. My slightly lower rating for character is perhaps a bit unfair since it only had four episodes, and it still did portray characters I liked for
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Aug 13, 2014
I do allude a bit to the quality (though not the content directly) of the main series' ending in this review.
Right from the beginning I had a strong suspicion that nothing good would come from watching this OVA. The original series was just disappointing, after all. Of course, I didn't realize when I started watching that it was called "Red Knife Wielder," which would have pretty much let me know that it would do nothing to actually tie up any lose ends left in the original series. Worse than not completing anything that was started in the series, it didn't even provide ... 
Aug 13, 2014
Deadman Wonderland
(Anime)
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In the first episode, what appears to be an attempt to portray Ganta as "in shock" after the massacre of his class-mates seems a bit weak, and everything following that until the show's namesake feels rushed through. As a result, the events of the beginning don't really deliver much impact. Assuming what seems obvious, that this wasn't meant to be a major event so much as it was a necessary stepping stone into the actual story, I merely hoped that the show would come to deliver a little more. As things went forward, continuously introducing new characters and giving them only minimal
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