Shitty writer turned pretend anime critic that occasionally comes on here and spews whatever is on my mind right onto my profile. Lover of metaphors. Zealous Mushoku Tensei defender.
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While you're here, go ahead and read my stuff and leave a comment telling me how good/shit my opinions are.
I'm doing blog posts now! Expect a unrevised stream of consciousness-like piece where I ramble about stuff whenever I get around to it. I want to do four releases a month, but I'm not going to hold myself to that. Check it out right here
I really wanted to write a Sousou No Frieren review, but I happened to get sick as a dog on the day I was supposed to work on it. I'll make a blog post detailing my thoughts soon.
Winter 2024 Final Ratings
1. Sousou No Frieren: Probably the most complete season of an anime I have ever witnessed. Everything from the story, to the characters, to the animation, to the music was pristine in a way that would be majorly praised as a standalone factor in any lesser anime. It’s a damn shame that I didn’t get the opportunity to write a review for this one, as this was something that I anticipated writing for a while. Quick side note, Frieren’s manga is pretty good, but it is nowhere near the level of excellence as the anime. This is the rare circumstance where the anime is notably better composed than the manga, which is something that I must give this series massive credit for.
Final Rating: 9.8 out of 10
2. Classroom of the Elite Season 3: A pretty standard season of COTE. Ayanokoji is still really cool and is probably the reason you are still watching this series. However, characters such as Ryuuen, Kei, Suzune, Sakaanagi, and Ichinose are becoming developed enough so that you can enjoy the characters in this story past Ayanokoji. While this show is still laughably pretentious, potentially generic with its issues with same face/body type syndrome, and, to some, boring, due to the absolute smorgasbord of dialogue, I still find this show really entertaining and worth a watch if you are already invested in the series.
Final Rating: 7.4 out of 10
3. Undead Unluck: An anime that simply just fell off. I was really invested in the initial arcs, I would say up to the cruise ship arc, but after that, my interest and patience waned to such an extent, that Undead Unluck was the last anime I finished this season, although it was the 2nd to conclude. I don’t really even have some sort of big brained explanation on why I found the latter episodes of Undead Unluck so un-captivating, except for the fact that the anime loses a bit of its charm by becoming more meta and more story focused towards the end of the plot. Although I don’t think I’ll ever consume a great extent of Undead Unluck content after this, I honestly hope to hear of something cool that can give me a bit of closure on this series.
Final Rating: 6.4 out of 10
4. Solo Leveling: All I can say about Solo Leveling is that it definitely didn’t go the way that I expected. I expected a high level action anime with SAO-but-good fantasy elements, at least based on the hype train circling this series. What I got was a decent at best anime that operates like an irony-less Konosuba or Eminence in Shadow. Edgy, self insert garbage with no characters other than the MC that is only enjoyable as a turn-your-brain-off type of action series. Was the action still good? Yeah, I would say so, although not DS or JJK good, but still pretty solid. What this leads to is that Solo Leveling is an anime without much of a positive identity, which led me to see it as pretty disappointing overall.
Final Rating: 4.4 out of 10
5. Mato Seihei no Slave: This anime goes in the box of “bad fanservice show” that fails to excel in either being horny or being compelling outside of fan service. The characters suck (honestly to a lower extent than in Solo Leveling but I digress), the story is underdeveloped, and the power system is stupid. Above all else, this show looks bad. From the fugly CGI to horribly animated fight scenes, this show just looks bad, giving it, unlike Solo Leveling, zero redeeming factors. I didn’t actually expect anything from Mato Seihei no Slave, so I honestly debated putting Solo Leveling in the last place spot, purely based on my disappointment for that series. However, logic won out and gave us the worst anime of the season.
Final Rating: 2.6 out of 10
1. Sousou No Frieren: TheRealist68 has slowly begun to discover that he has an admittedly strange love for fantasy anime that do not suck ass, as two out of his four anime of the season awardees for last year happened to be fantasy anime. I totally expect Sousou No Frieren to continue its excellence from the previous season, with my only admittedly small concern being that the next arc seems to be a tournament/test arc, which might not reach the levels of nuance that the series has been living off of. Still, you should definitely check this one out if you haven’t already.
Predicted Rating: 9.4-9.8 out of 10
2. Undead Unluck: 12 episodes into this one, I’m still having the loads of fun that I described in my preliminary rankings, however, that’s lessened to an extent as this series continues to try to take itself more and more seriously. That’s perfectly fine, but this series’ “serious mode'' is currently not as strong as its “relaxed mode”, and since it really hasn’t committed to either story style, instead kind of straddling the fence on both, there are times where neither style is remarkably impactful, which leads to a segment or two of an episode not being particularly impactful. This isn’t too big of a deal, but it's something to watch for as this series enters its second cour.
Predicted Rating: 7.4-8.6 out of 10
3. Solo Leveling: I’m going to preemptively cast a wide net for this one, because from the trailers, it seems to be a fairly traditional shounen-style romp of the main character starting from nothing and gaining power, but the level of hype for this one suggests the opposite. I will note, it's a bit interesting to have a Korean comic animated and voice acted in Japanese while being localized and subtitled into English.
Predicted Rating: 5.5-9.2 out of 10
4. Classroom of the Elite Season 3: COTE is entering an interesting stage of anime development, as most of the initial goals that the series set out to accomplish have been completed. This is sadly where a majority of series drop the ball, but I have a decent amount of confidence that COTE will at least uphold the standard of the previous season. Still, I will air on the side of caution and give this a large rating scale to cover my ass a bit.
Predicted Rating: 6-8.4 out of 10
Fall 2023 Final Rankings
1. Sousou No Frieren: TheRealist68 has slowly begun to discover that he has an admittedly strange love for fantasy anime that do not suck ass, as two out of his four anime of the season awardees for this year happen to be fantasy anime. I consider Frieren to be the Yin to Mushoku Tensei’s yang, as they both are fantasy adventure anime with brilliant story beats, strong main and side characters, strong implementations of fantasy elements that are often muddied, and brilliant animation and sound design. In fact, the only real differences these anime have from each other are their thematics in character and story beats, as well as the state of the world during the adventure. That tangent aside, definitely check this one out for a beautiful fantasy experience that won’t get you weird looks from the people you try to recommend it to.
Current Rating: 9.6 out of 10
2. Zom 100: Zom 100 goes in winter as I never got to finish ranking it due to its unfortunate delays. I hope that doesn’t affect the odds of 2nd season being made, as that was some of the most fun I’ve ever had watching anime. This series is just so freeing with how the characters really have no overarching goals and are just outside of having fun. When a central friend group has a Konosuba or Toradora-level dynamic, you know you’re in for greatness.
Current Rating: 8.7 out of 10
3. Undead Unluck: 12 episodes into this one, I’m still having the loads of fun that I described in my preliminary rankings, however, that’s lessened to an extent as this series continues to try to take itself more and more seriously. That’s perfectly fine, but this series’ “serious mode'' is currently not as strong as its “relaxed mode”, and since it really hasn’t committed to either story style, instead kind of straddling the fence on both, there are times where neither style is remarkably impactful, which leads to a segment or two of an episode not being particularly impactful. This isn’t too big of a deal, but it's something to watch for as this series enters its second cour.
Current Rating: 8.1 out of 10
4. Jujutsu Kaisen 2nd Season pt. 2: For the 5 updates to this ranking, I’ve pretty much echoed the exact same sentiment for this series: “as of right now, it's pretty good, but I’m still waiting for it to hit that peak everyone told me that it would hit.” At the end of it all, it never truly hit that peak, and for some reason, I actually value Shibuya less narratively than every arc that came before it. Of course, Shibuya is where the series peaks in terms of action, but the actual storytelling felt sloppier and the massive character cast implemented actively lowered the value of some of the side character interactions; the latter is seen the strongest in the deaths of some side characters. All of this resulted in me becoming more and more disconnected from Jujustu Kaisen as a series: I’ll probably still watch the next season, but I’ll probably treat it as a more sporadic watch, mainly focusing on the action.
Current Rating: 7.4 out of 10
5. SpyxFamily Season 2: This season of SpyxFamily is completely defined by duality. The first 4 were just episodic comedy inspired by spy themes. Some of these episodes were really interesting and funny, but most of them were fairly uninteresting and dare I say boring. However, after this, the series just decided to pop off with the most interesting arc of the entire series, where both Yor and Loid got the opportunity to show off their abilities while Anya provided an acceptable amount of comic relief. Following this arc, the series reverted to what it normally is, which was notably more irritating the second time, after I had just witnessed the mid-season masterpiece. At times, this season felt like a 4/10, other times, it probably would have cracked a 10. This variation in quality admittedly worries me for the immediate future of the series, as I’m pretty sure that as time goes on, we are going to teeter = more to that episodic comedy and not the cool shit that happened on the cruise ship. Regardless, I still hold out hope.
Current Rating: 6.8 out of 10
6. Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Season 3: Welp, Shield Hero had to redeem itself following the disaster that was last season, and I can’t say that it did that particularly well. This was a “development” season so obviously rushed that it wound up crushing the intended development of the characters. Thoroughly squandering the potential within the other Cardinal Heroes, rapidly introducing new side characters that don’t receive the necessary amount of development to really even be called characters, neglecting to further develop the characters that the audience actually cares about, and actively cheapening your best villain’s best trait by making it only feasible if she has mind control powers will definitely do that to you. Add all of that onto a boring at best and nonsensical at worst story, and you get the worst anime of the season that may ruin the chances of another season being made.
Current Rating: 3.4 out of 10
Allow this analogy to serve as my rating scale
1- Chocolate milk expired by 8 years that has turned into a gnarly chocolate cheese that shows early signs of molding. The carton was mistakenly sold to an 8th grader at a slightly run-down private school cafeteria. Upon opening, the worst stench imaginable filled the cafeteria, resulting in a couple of kids getting sick and throwing up. 25-dollar visa gift cards were offered to the students as an apology for gross negligence, but this action was viewed as an insult and led to 60% of the affected students withdrawing from the school.
2- Sour strawberry milk aged about 6 months found behind a dumpster near a recently shut down gas station 40 miles southeast of Crescent Valley, Nevada. The milk is consumed rapidly by an elderly man with severe dementia who broke out of his assisted living facility 36 hours ago.
3. A mixture of plain milk & orange juice concocted by a group of 6th graders during lunch. They do a rock, paper, scissors tournament to decide who drinks it, and the kid who was just at the table to fit in losses. He chokes it down with a couple of gags here & there while an underpaid teacher looks on in disappointment.
4- Pre pumped & bottled breast milk from 2 weeks prior that is lacking key nutrients due to the mother being fairly malnourished as a result of an eating disorder that arose from her trying to lose the weight that she gained during pregnancy. The milk is administered by the father who is only awake due to heavy caffeine intake after completing a 16-hour graveyard shift where he earned 325 dollars + overtime.
5- Whole milk begrudgingly grabbed at the grocery store after a middle-aged man spent a little too much time looking for milk with an earlier expiration date. He was fairly disappointed to discover that all of the milk had the same date; being a week and a half from today.
6- Almond milk poured into a protein-rich cereal, prepared by an athlete whose coach recommended he made some subtle lifestyle changes to lose a bit of weight. He is then irritated by his uncle claiming that “technically almond milk is just crushed almonds mixed with water and it can’t be actual milk since nuts don’t have nipples."
7- Chocolate milk made at home by adding a squeeze of Hershey Chocolate Syrup, then mixing it; prepared by a middle-aged 1970’s era woman who is trying to convince her children to drink more milk so that their bones get stronger.
8- A Chick-Fil-A cookies and cream milkshake to go with a couple of sandwiches. It tastes pretty good, but it’s soured by the 20-minute drive-thru line that was so long that it caused a potential traffic hazard for any drivers looking to visit any other business in the area. It’s made even worse when the clearly overworked 16-year-old working in the hot ass July sun forgets one of your sauces, but you just leave because you are not in the mood to go inside to beg for another one.
9- A vanilla milkshake with two shots of bourbon added, topped with pointlessly expensive whipped cream and a Maraschino cherry. It costs like 14.99 and you know it's a clear rip-off, but because you’re on a date and your significant other asked for one as well, you get one to match. It tastes really good, probably because of the bourbon, but not 14.99 good.
10- A drink made of milk, sugar, heavy cream, vanilla abstract, and cream soda prepared at 3 am by a woman in her mid-forties at a 24hr diner. She didn’t have the materials to make the coke float that you ordered, so she gave you the next best thing she had. The drink’s taste helps the pain from your break-up earlier melt away. Coupled with a long, uplifting conversation, a couple of drinks, and a stack of pancakes, you leave the diner better off than before the breakup. You show your gratitude with a 30-dollar tip.
1. The Cleveland Browns: I consider myself a fan of this fuckass football team and they somehow disappoint me every single year without fail. It gets kinda stale being the poop-deck of football world every year, but you can bet your ass that from September to January, I'll be spending 3 hours every Sunday cheering this team on just to be disappointed once again.
2. HiDive: Fuck HiDive. The business practice of buying up anime from other streaming sites is scummy as all hell, but what irritates me the most about HiDive is that their business practice doesn't even work. It's basic business to know that buying up marketshare from other businesses in an attempt to establish yourself seldom works, so all of the bullshit they are doing will likely be for nothing. They don't do anything well. When the Crunchyroll v Funimation war was still a thing, Everybody brought something to the table. Crunchyroll had simulcasts. Funimation had a dub for damn near every series it had. But HiDive? It gets like 1-2 seasonals per season of hit or miss quality and a bunch of older series. Their flagship titles are Food Wars, Akame Ga Kill, No Game No Life, and now Oshi No Ko. Aside from that last title, all HiDive winds up doing is making it where it is harder to rewatch series' that are 5+ years old. I don't know anyone with a HiDive account that doesn't also have a Crunchyroll account. Someone please, give me an explanation for this. Why is HiDive still a thing and is there anyone out there who is actually buying that shit instead of Crunchyroll or piracy?
3. Shitty Subtitles This reddit post perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the subject.
4. MAL's Review System: I don't hate the entire thing, but it does need a decent amount of work.
A. Rework the reactions/helpfuls. People who just hate on a series for no well explained reason always get top reviewer because people use the confusing tag as a downvote. Just revert to a simple upvote-downvote, like-dislike system like every other social media platform and make the reactions a separate thing.
B. Make the review window open after 1 hour after a series has concluded. The current system just promotes people not watching the final episode as people drop reviews the second the episode releases. I'm guilty of this too. I went to go post my Oshi No Ko review at 11:07, 7 minutes after the final episode dropped, and I just laughed when I saw like 20 other reviews out before me, filled with people who damn well didn't watch the final episode either. Just move the window back until a hour after the episode drops; this way, you can encourage people to actually watch the final episode and make any changes to their review based on the content presented.
C. Let people keep both prelim and final reviews out at the same time. I don't really see the harm in this, the message you get when you try to post a final review with a prelim review out seems to target people that intend to drop new prelim reviews as episodes of a series come out, but if you specify that one is final, I don't really see the problem here.
5. Searching the web for a release date: Googling something like "when is the next season of Oshi No Ko coming out" is completely useless because the top 10 results will be sham websites that provide nothing of substance and fail to answer your question because, truthfully, they know jackshit about when the new season comes out, and so do you. BUT, despite their lack of knowledge, they still need to have a webpage to run google ads off of, so they will put utter bullshit on the webpage. The general structure of said bullshit is as follows.
"The second season of the emotional roller coaster that is Mushoku Tensei just ended and fans are eager to see more of the series. But this begs the question, will there be a season 3 and if so, when will it release?"
The next paragraph is just the fucking synopsis ripped off of MAL or Wikipedia, with maybe like a couple of sentences containing subjective compliments of the series
"So, will there be a season 3? Well, nothing has been confirmed yet, but the series is immensely popular so it is possible. Follow our twitter page for possible updates."
99% of the time you click on one of these websites, the content listed is completely useless and is a complete waste of time. And this doesn't just pertain to anime. A couple years back, I was looking for my fucking Ap exam scores and I ran into one of these websites. It's one thing to be useless, its another to also be an complete waste of time.
6. Passcode Requirements: Not all websites have google/apple passcode where your able to copy and paste saved strong passcode into the prompt and all it a day. Realistically, nobody is going to remember the bullshit that apple/google recommends for you, and since apple/google passcode is hacked almost twice a month, your probably better off just having a traditional passcode. However, with all of the variations in passcode stipulations, and considering that I have like 2 different sets of passcodes circa 7 years ago, trying to figure out which one is which is kinda bullshit. I'm going to provide examples. No, these examples aren't actual passcodes I have, fuck you.
First is a standard passcode with no stipulations.
SloppyKisses
They ask for a number: hence,
SloppyKisses69
They ask for a special character: hence,
SloppyKisses69*
They ask for 2 different special characters and 3 numbers (yes I've seen this before)
SloppyKisses420$*
This of course doesn't account for a root passcode change for whatever reason. That gives you 8 different passcodes for you to fumble around with. The only way to make a truly secure passcode is to just do whatever bullshit that google recommends, which would be a half good strategy if you could implement google passcodes into every account. But seriously, relax passcode restrictions. I guarantee you that whatever hacker wants my shit can get it pretty easily, whether it takes them 2 weeks or 2 months. And with companies' databases getting leaked every other week, they probably already have my shit. Making me struggle for seemingly no reason just feels outdated now.
very well-made review for Chained Soldier, Brother. But that's how it is. To get the good, we have to always take a gamble to brush through the bad and unpolished, just so we can find what is worth watching. Chained Soldier was another one of those abundant series where I paid more attention to the voice actors than the characters themselves. If you have to look at one character, and the first thing that comes into your mind is the voice actor or the tropes they are going to play, it's pretty much proof that the character is really, really bad.
hi, man : hope you're doing fine.
I advice you to watch Kingdom (available on Netflix)
I think you will really enjoy it if you can handle the trash animation of season 1.
Why ?
1 - Based on a true story
2 - It will change the type of anime you watched recently. The tones and emotions are quite different.
3 - Because you liked code geass and fma.
4 - It's more based on strategy then Shonen type of fights.
Sure it's a long ride, but if you likes it, you will love every episode of the anime.
PS : It becomes really good when the MC goes to his first war alone (around ep 10 i think )
Heya person! I stumbled upon your account through your review on Mushoku Tensei Season 2, which had an oddly specific first paragraph but funny as shit. Although not thoroughly, I read all of your profiles and blogs. Glad to see someone else who writes random stuff on blogs which no one would probably read. I felt that I was the weird one.
I definitely respect the position. I don't wholly disagree that the series isn't for everyone because, of course, nothing is. Most people who like this series and watch it are those who knew what they were getting into, likely from the start. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the score for the anime comes from those who already read the manga and rushed to support the adaptation, and for good reason. I think your review covers many of the anime's good aspects and shows that you're paying attention and absorbing all it's trying to convey. So, there's nothing wrong with that. The line you pointed out definitely comes off as the most pretentious, but you've already acknowledged and recognized it, so it doesn't matter. I think what good storytelling needs is support, so it doesn't go unrecognized and isn't shoved under the piles of garbage that most recent releases are. I guess I felt that I wanted the story to get more recognition, and a positive review for a positively received show was the fair conclusion. You are not wrong, though, in suggesting that those expecting a generic fantasy would be disappointed, and I wouldn't recommend it to them either. But they probably wouldn't bother watching it past the first episode anyway.
Thanks for the review, though. It's well-written, and I do appreciate anything that celebrates the series, as I would agree that it's actually the first thing in a while that I felt was worth watching (or reading, for that matter).
I feel like I understand your review of Frieren, or at least what you were going with when writing it. But I have to ask, isn't it a bit pretentious? Instead of simply celebrating and pointing out the depth it really has in its writing, you refer to it as something the average commoner wouldn't be able to enjoy because it wasn't "hype" enough. It seemed more akin to a long stroking session with yourself than it being a compliment and analysis of what Frieren is actually good at. Instead, wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone and express why you want more people to watch it. Giving a mixed recommendation because you think that people would find it comparatively bland because it's "written well" seems a bit presumptuous. Of course, I may just be misinterpreting it a bit; I just found myself feeling annoyed while reading it initially.
Frieren review was great and I agree whole-heartedly, I really like the show but I have friends who've only watched Shonen and action and disliked it so I can see why it would be unappealing to some 👍. Also W Echidna for favorite character
Why is your Frieren review marked as "mixed"? You gave it a 9, i'm seeing a ton of people giving high scores and marking their review as mixed, since the review layout changed.
I have mixed feelings for you. Your reviews are nice but you are too arrogant I think. Be more humble brother you only get to live once make people happy with ur words.
what other people said . Absolutely great review on MT S2P1 .Especially this part- "First of all, the op works like that for the first 5 episodes, fuck you".
Just Lovely. The OP is actually great , especially the part where he's about to hold hands with the girl but it disappears and he wakes up , that part had meaning.
Regarding MT S2P1's animation and production part - Its definitely true that due to the nature of the content we got a low effort standard production. But I would argue that since MT is so delicate, especially age 13-16 Rudy, it still needed the charm of S1 Bind to carry the fact that anime can't adapt every single line from the LN. S1 Bind were so masterful that every single character truly felt real and that they were living in this 6 sided world. the integration of plot points was 10/10. But don't you feel like the middle of S2p1 did noticebly suffer from this integration and execution? Cliff, Julie, Linia, Pursena, Zanoba, Badi all got one scene individually and due to lot of cut content and without S1 Bind level of integration and execution, almost felt like props? They were essentially pngs (both visually and thematically) after their scenes unlike S1 where every character truly felt real. Thats the execution difference between an 8/10 show and a 10/10 show. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
All Comments (21) Comments
> " I'm glad that the child in chained solider wasn't lewded because that's not ok "
Lol
I advice you to watch Kingdom (available on Netflix)
I think you will really enjoy it if you can handle the trash animation of season 1.
Why ?
1 - Based on a true story
2 - It will change the type of anime you watched recently. The tones and emotions are quite different.
3 - Because you liked code geass and fma.
4 - It's more based on strategy then Shonen type of fights.
Sure it's a long ride, but if you likes it, you will love every episode of the anime.
PS : It becomes really good when the MC goes to his first war alone (around ep 10 i think )
Anyways, thanks for accepting my friend request!
Thanks for the review, though. It's well-written, and I do appreciate anything that celebrates the series, as I would agree that it's actually the first thing in a while that I felt was worth watching (or reading, for that matter).
Just Lovely. The OP is actually great , especially the part where he's about to hold hands with the girl but it disappears and he wakes up , that part had meaning.