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Fear and traumatic experiences have always been causes for people not to go for greater things in their lives. It's like an invisible barrier that tells you not to go further. Even when you are doing what you love the most, sometimes it's never enough.

Shigatsu is a beautiful anime, which follows the extremely talented pianist: Kousei Arima. The story begins when he falls in love in a pretty unique way during spring, and both of them are musicians. Simple as that, we start to find out new things about pretty much every character in every episode, in a slow, but ver, VERY beautiful pace. You ... will laugh, you will delight yourself with amazing classical music played in very unique ways, you will smash yourself against the wall, and you will cry (?).

I don't really know where to keep going, but as of now, the thing that stands out the most, is its art, and not just the visual aspect. Sound and visuals were PERFECT for its context and pretty much every second was a delihtful joy of colors, full of life and movement. Every scene is crafted in such away that takes your breath in any way you could possibly imagine.

But of course, everything i said previously is only true if you are a BIG music fan, or a musician yourself. It is kind of aimed to a really "knowledgeable" music audience.

You have to watch this if you are a music fan, enjoy slow (but beautiful) pace drama, and (SPOILER ALERT), you are into tragedies.

Leaving the past behind and start over with your life completely can be a hard thing. I'm pretty sure everybody have found themselves in the need to leave hobbies, things and even close people behind. But we might as well rejoice as we remember them old times.
But, what happens when we are forced to it?? What happens when we can't remember any of these? It's as if we were not alive before getting at a certain point. There's just nothing.

Golden time is a drama that deals with the internal conflicts of mental illness, specifically the Amnesia.

The story follows a dude who gets Amnesia out of ... an accident right after finishing high school, and he pretty much forgets everything and everyone that has happened until that accident. After his rehab, he starts going to University, what could be better than a fresh start!

The story is mainly character driven, advancing its plot by inmersing into their relationships, building a close bond with each other and overcoming personal insecurities together.

Kouko's character is the strongest point of this anime, being one of the most relatable and realistic ones. She goes through a lot, and you really get to care for her.

Watch this if you want to watch a non-high school drama and realistic character development.

Mankind's extinction or extermination has been a thing for a while in all of the Sci-fi genre. The adrenaline of finding a way to escape or even face the threat to survive and prevale is what keeps us in a tension state, and you can only see yourself in that situation: "What would I even do if I was there?".

Shingeki no Kyojin inmerses in a world where humans are close to extinction, and they are forced to be confined within walls. These walls protect them from their biggest threat: The Titans.

The show's main hook is its pace, throwing at you lots of shock factor elements ... at the beginning, and brings exposition and exploration of its own world, ideas and mythology at the right moment.

The anime also holds a very high production value. Its music and animation are some of the reasons why this anime is so popular.

I would say that if you're curious, watch the first episode, and if it catches you, go on. It is a really intense experience.

Interpersonal relationships have and will always have some sort of difficulty. Depending on the person, these relationships (wether romantic ones or not) will be hard at certain points of it. Some will have trouble engaging and starting one, others will have a hard time facing and overcoming certain things, and well, others will even go through tough times making the decision to end these relationships. It is indeed a very difficult thing, and you can see people's "flaws" and acting irrationally when these things happen. The "right" decision is always easy to see on paper, but acting accordingly is harder than you ever thought.

Welcome to ... White Album 2, a romantic drama that focuses heavily on human romantic relationships, and accepting and embracing our own flaws in order to go on and grow up in an emotional and empathic way.

The story follows a high school guy who's trying hard to recruit new members into his music club, as the former members suddenly abandoned him, apparently because the lack of ambition and goals. Just about dropping his motivations completely, he starts roaming around the school, only to find two enormously talented and beautiful girls, who inspire him and give him back his hype, wanting to go all in for the music festival.

The story will find its course by showing you how they start spending a lot of time with each other, trying hard to give their best into the festival working together. And of course, creating close bonds.

The plot finds its peak when we can celarly see the characters true colors, having hard times making decisions that are written in their own morals, but are extremely hard to execute, as they would severely hurt their own happiness and desires. And this is, in my opinion, the strongest point in WA 2. It shows you clearly the kind of people we can be when our own desires are in danger, and deep inside we are all selfish at some point. The emotions are very relatable and you get to care for the characters, even when they do what they do.

I usually enjoy anime's that have this "dark" atmosphere and emotional tension a lot. And the struggle that you see in the characters was something we have all been through. I suggets you to watch this if you enjoy some realistic drama and relantionships (not character) development.

There's always a time in people's lives, when they have dreams beyond what's conventional. Dreams that could imply not going to the University to become a Doctor/Lawyer and similar, but only a few people will have what it takes to stand up and go for it! These dreams always shake the vision that our parents have about us. It takes a lot of effort and mental strenght, and you have to sacrifice a lot of money, energy and even friends and family. The journey is a rather long course of obstacles. And one of these obstacles, could be no one but a very close person ... to you, if not yourself. There can and will always be someone better than you at what you are trying to become, and guess what: that someone doesn't give a crap, because he was somewhat born to do it.

Welcome to Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. An anime that explores the rather introspective conflict of jaleousy and how people deal with this.

Sakurasou follows the story of a group of students who were, for a lack of a better word, exiled from their dorms because of their odd behaviors and activities, and thus, have to live at "Sakurasou" during High school.
Sakurasou is full of eccentric people who have a close bond to artistic and non-conventional activities, and they all want to be the best at it, but there's an exception: Our fellow Main character. He was pretty much cast away into Sakurasou because he adopted homeless cats, and the regular dorms couldn't accept pets.

Our Main character begins as a nihilistic person without ambitions or goals of any kind, but that changes as soon as he meets our female lead, a foreign lady who just arrived to Japan and has absolutely no idea of how to do everyday activities, but has an exceptional talent and is literally the best in the world at what she does.

The first impression that this anime gives could be a rather negative one if you are not into "typical" setups and clueless MC's, but the story telling and character development makes this anime an outstanding drama that you could relate in one or more ways.

I enjoyed this anime way more than I thought I would. The drama and the feels are really touching.

Watch this. It is a great experience!

What would you do if you had the chance to travel in time??
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of different answers to that, depending on the person. But there's always a particular thing that most people would do: "To fix a certain event of my life I'm regretting until now", or something like that. As life moves on and on, the decisions that we've made always have consequences that we may or may not have seen. Action-reaction patterns have always been a part of what makes reality to be possible. Time and Space are always built on our actions.

Before starting how about laying out the ... following paradox to ourselves:
Say, you want to go back to the past, and tell your past-self that if you do "X", terrible things will happen. It turns out that your past self agrees, and you can go back to the future in peace. Here's the most logical outcome: The reason that you went to the past for, isn't there anymore, and therefore, your mind should not have memories of going into the past for X not to happen. We are now in a different timeline.
If this concept makes you curious, you will absolutely love Steins;Gate.

The story follows an excentric, self-proclaimed mad scientist, whose lifetime dream has always been the possibility to travel in time at will. Just out of curiosity, he devotedly investigates all the steps to be followed, as if he was in some sort of a game. When he finds out that it can be done, and it's easier than what he ever thought of, he starts experimenting with all of the possible outcomes, changing the past, and thus, the world he has always lived in. The story also has a certain tragedy approach, as it tackles the topis of frustration, efforts that seem vain and people regretting their own lives and actions.

Steins;Gate has a particular hook that you may see in many animes that have some sort of psychological or thriller approach, building questions and curiosity whenever it has the chance. Due to this, the series feels the need to take its time, and the pacing at the starting episodes feels really slow.

Although the pace of the first episodes made it seem quite boring, it progressively got better as it advanced. Time travel has always intrigued me, and in this anime, it was all over the place. It was a really amusing and satisfying watch.

Overall, Steins;Gate is one of the best anime out there. It has everything a sci-fi lover would ask. And more.

Growing up and accepting changes can be a scary process. Many people could and will say you had it all easy, that you should do things differently or won't say anything at all, because you could be a lost cause. But there's always someone you can rely on, and you can reach for that someone in your darkest times. Even when you think you are worthless, when you can't do shit to get your life better and take a step ahead, there's many more pople than you think, who will join you in this hard process. The hardest of all things: Learning to live.

Guys, I ... want to welcome you all to my Clannad review.

Clannad is a very psychological, slice of life Anime that deals with the changes that life may and will bring, overcoming fears, taking decisions in order to move on with your life, and most importantly, realizing that the ones who you can rely on to do so, are closer than where you might think.

Note that Clannad uses some supernatural elements in order to explain some concepts and somewhat needed stuff to go into its sequel: After Story (I will not talk about after story).

The story follows Tomoya Okazaki, An outcast, lazy and nihilist high school student, who suddenly decides to give moral support to a girl (Nagisa) who's too shy to go school on her own and meet people. And thus, Nagisa starts to rely on Tomoya to do all kind of things that may seem trivial and easy to overcome for most people, but she has a hard time doing so, because of her shy personality. Tomoya quickly rejoices of the feels that helping Nagisa brings into his life, and starts to help a lot of other people in need, becoming a more pro-active person and starting to care about his surroundings, doing whatever he can to aid them to achieve their dreams or goals.
The anime gives a special and somewhat unique importance to family, wether it is in good or bad terms, Clannad always manages to leave you an impression of the reasons for the characters to be what they are because of their families and their relationships with them.

As a Visual novel adaptation, It is a must to understand and embrace the fact that the characters are your archetypical ones. Most of them get a fair ammount of screen-time and you could become completely emotionally attached to any of them them before you realize it, as the plot-progress in this Anime is mainly character-driven.
I consider the interactions between the characters to be a little cartoon-ish when they first meet each other, and this extends to a couple of more times that they meet for each one of them, but once these go further than sharing a small talk, they start developing a pretty realistic paced relationship that slowly becomes closer and closer. The realistic aspect in these relationships, to my taste, is the priority that these characters are given among all of them. Say, if you are in a rather large group of friends (about 8 or more people), chances are you will be closer to 2 or 3 people at most, and the rest are pretty much left behind in terms of what role they play in your life. Clannad does this in a pretty convincing way, making you even more attached to the characters and their relationships.

When it comes to the art, I'd like to start with the character design, which was one of the things that bothered me the most. Girls are cute, but you will hardly be able to distinguish several of them by just taking a quick look at them. You see, Clannad is one of these anime that you recommend no matter what to any person, even if the person hasn't watched or doesn't even like anime at all; If you don't have much "experience" watching anime (such as myself when I first watched Clannad), you will not be happy when you know there are 3 people with the exact same hair color. However, the movements, face expressions and even postures for each character managed to fit their personalities, but I think this credit goes to the animation, not the character design.
As for the animation itself, it was fair and standard, for the most part. There are quick times when the anime wants to show you its supernatural elements, and this is where the animation goes deep into the limits and shines. A lot. It is truly noticeable, but it does not feel out of place what so ever.

As for the sound, I usually skip most anime's Openings and Endings. And I skipped the opening, but I could not skip the ending. The ending is such a magnificent song that is actually repeated several times by a character in particular in the anime itself, but it is so catchy and well-crafted. It has a nostalgia feel to it that you will not be able to ignore.
Background music always manages to fit the atmosphere and will intensify the feeling of what's happening by a lot.
Voice acting was, like the characters' design, very Moe-infected. It was somewhat exaggerated in some characters.

This anime was way beyond my expectations, and I got really invested in the characters and their feelings. It was a truly moving piece and I think I will never, ever forget it. Clannad is a show that will make you attached and care for the characters, and most importantly, their relationships.

Overall, Clannad is a very well executed slice of life, but it is only ok-ish as a romantic drama, which is what it was supposed to be. Different from what I said above, Clannad is not all perfection (Spoilers ahead). Clannad tries to get us attached and invested to the characters, by putting big emphasis into the one who's the main focus at the given time. However, this makes the show to put itself in a position where it can only push away everyone else. And this includes Nagisa, the romantic interest. At the end of the show, you'll find that Nagisa and Tomoya end up being a romantic couple, but their relationship was somwhat lacking in development. It seems like Tomoya only chose her because he thought she was the cutest among all of them and she was a "nice person". The depth to this bond and attraction between them is never actually explained nor developed in a realistic way.
However, Clannad executes pretty much everything else in an emotional, moving way that always keep us coming back for more of this crowd's journey into their lives. And of course, After story...

In art, there are many branches, and each one of them represent a way of expression in particular. And as times advance, we could get a lot of other branches to express ourselves through influences or inspire us to create a new one. In other cases we could have a node made out of branches, wich could represent more of an eclectic point of view, gathering what we think is the best of every world.

Enter Mirai Nikki, an anime that became just as popular as it is, because it gathered every single element that makes any series a successful one in terms of popularity and ... hype. And what are these elements? I thought you'd never ask! Well:

Mirai Nikki follows the story of Yukiteru, a lonely and extremely shy and passive boy who enjoys spending his time writing down everything (and im serious about the "everything", it's literally EVERYTHING) that happens around him using his cell phone as a real-time diary. These writings will soon attract the supreme god of the Universe, "Deus ex Machina (I know what you are thinking :D)", to give some kind of special powers to his diary thing. He will soon realize that his diary has no need to be written anymore, for it is being written by itself before everything even happens. In other words, he can predict the future. And this is where shit gets real. As he's reading, Yukiteru comes to realize the fact that he's being chased to be murdered, and he is saved by our female lead character, Yuno; And she used to do the same thing Yuki did, with the difference that "Everything" is swapped with "Everything that Yuki does". She's completely romanticly obsessed with him. As Yuki is safe, Deus grabs him and explains "the plan" he has to select his successor. He gave a handful of -special- people the power to enhace their diaries with super powers similar to Yuki and Yuno, and they have to kill each other. The last one standing, earns the right to be Deus' successor.

The premise's concept is somewhat unique and truly hooking. It is a really great start if you ask me. From there on, the plot progress is an over the top carnage that goes on non-stop. It contains large ammounts of gore.

The characters are all somewhat emotionally broken and quite unsatisfied with their own lives, and that's the thing they all have in common. They all want to take this chance to be the next God, to fix their own terrible past. And this is what makes this series what it is, its cast is mainly composed of the most cruel and threatening people, and these crazy ass dudes and dudettes are the ones who keep the show going and going on. While this is entertaining, here lies the main problem that I have with Mirai Nikki. Given the dark, crazy, over the top and non-stop nature of the premise and the anime as a whole, it also falls into the abyss of trying too hard to make the next event more and MORE and MMMMMOOOOOORRREEEE crazy than the one that just happened, and at some point, it backfires hard. It is entertaining in the sense that it will keep your morbid fascination fed and satisfied, but there are so many events, that honestly it turns into an awkward and rather embarassing watch.

The art and animation in this anime is pretty consistent, for a lack of a better word. It was good, but there was never a moment where I was shocked by it.
Character design is somewhat unique and fits the context perfectly, giving really distorted and excentric looks to every character without falling into the "clowny" feel.

When it comes to the sound, I have to admit that this show has one of the few Openings that I could not skip because it was awesome. It had this "escape and survive" feel, and whatever your musical taste is, it will hype you and make you feel like boiling water.
Background music was something that reminded me quite a lot of teen-horror american movies. It was good, but i kept feeling that it was too fast paced for the most part. It could have gotten a much more suspense-oriented feel to them.
I don't really know what to say about the voice acting.

Back to the plot, I'm gonna warn you that right now there will be some spoilers.
When it comes to the plot progress, as I stated when I talked about the characters, I consider it a ball of fire that pushes any limits beyond imaginable and eventually explodes. But the gore and killing stuff is not the only thing that Mirai Nikki is about. Mirai Nikki also has its bit of love and character development, which, to my taste, was executed rather poorly. And this is mainly due to the plot twists presented nearly at the end of the series. The stuff that happened there make you so confused that you will not be able to answer the questions by yourself at your first watch. Specially if you are paying huge ammounts of attention to the plot instead of the gore and shock-inducing elements. There are many things unexplained, but if you turned your brain off and enjoyed all the action, gore and others alike, you will fully enjoy this without much to worry about.

I enjoyed Mirai Nikki quite a lot, despite its flaws. The premise was simply spectacular and I couldn't help but have fun watching this until the last second.

*And yes, I did NOT talk about Yuno in depth AT ALL! :D Sorry fans, but I like the neutral point of view.

If you have feedback for me, let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is always well received.

There's nothing that appeals me more than a good science-fiction space opera. The inter-galactic war is a classic and the many other elements add some spice as well.

Aldnoah zero is set up in an alternative present (yes, "present", because everything happens in 2014) where humans are in a historic conflict with Mars. And who else could be better to stop this, than Mars' princess herself.
And here we have a dramatic and fast-paced sequence of events that lead us to the final trigger to the war declaration from Mars towards the Earth. All of this in the first episode. It is a truly hooking ... start, and it never ceases to amuse. The rest of the episodes don't dissapoint either.

Story: 9

Given the context, I was really intrigued by the fact that the plot progression is not focused on the characters, but the war itself. And it really fits in such a realistic and human way. Trust and betrayal are back and forth, and all the events give you kind of a dark feel to the series.

Another notable aspect is the "neutral" side that the series take. The different points of view never try to root for one character in particular nor one side either. There's this original feel that releases you from the "good vs evil" thing and many times our characters are put to the test when it comes to their morals vs survival. The reasons every single one of them are fighting are also well taken care of.

I am warning you right now (spoiler) that the season leaves many questions unanswered, and it is practically a door-opener to a much larger universe, creating space for more ideas and progression. This was just the tip of the iceberg. And last, but not least, it is a tragedy.

Art: 10

The art is simply spectacular in all of its aspects. Everything is well detailed and executed with an amazing precision and beauty. It is one of these few animes that pretty much are worth it to watch in HD.

Sound: 10

Here's the part where I say that I usually skip Openings and Engins. And I did skip the ending lol, but the Opening was just amazing. It pumps you with an enormous hype right from the beggining, and gives you this "Come on, get up and fight" feel.

The background music is truly amazing as well, and it reminded me a lot of Shingeky no Kyojin's music. Every event shown is just completely perfect with the music, and never fails to complement the animation and visual style.

The sound design was also a score. It reminded me a lot to Starcraft, which is a well crafted sound design.

Character: 7

From the beginning, you can tell this anime is not character-driven. It is not supposed to achieve a great development and the interactions between them are concise at "best". However, the pace of the development for each one was really on spot and was never forced. Most of the characters are not what you see on every anime and what appealed to me the most, was the decisions that people took out of fear, desperation, or even traumas and personal morals. Vengeance, betrayal and promises are broken when you least expect it, and you really can't tell if you deeply know at least one of these character. Of course, we are at war, everything can happen.

Enjoyment: 9

Although I don't really enjoy Mecha anime's that much, I found Aldnoah Zero to be an outstanding experience from the beginning. It has everything you could ask for if you are looking for an action-packed experience, as well as good technical execution and an unexpected end.

Overall: 8

Given that the final was not a "final", we have many questions unanswered, but this adds up a lot of spice when it comes to intriguing and suspenseful story-telling. You should definitely give it a try.

Thanks for reading my review, and don't hesitate to give some feedback if you have something to say about it :D

Date a live is an Anime that tries to do many, MANY things at once. It wants to bring us hot girls, a large ammount of explosions and action in general and some romantic drama.

Date a live is setup in a Japan where beautiful female creatures, whose are identical to humans, are capable to create huge black hole-like explosions (or should I say implosions). And thus, every now and then, a whole ton of people is threatened to die, along with many other life forms in its way. Enter Shido Itsuka, a typical main character. Long story short, he's the chosen one to stop these ... catastrophes.

Here's the deal; I have no problem with the story trying to accomplish these many things at once. My problem with this is the execution they chose for the story to progress. Whenever you are watching you just cannot help but saying to yourself "I have seen this, and that, and that too..." And you just go on. Don't get me wrong, it's fairly entertaining, I laughed a lot and I liked the girls and stuff, but the harem concept and its execution is a fairly overused one.

Moving on from the harem stuff, there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered, like why is Shido the chosen one, and a lot more (I will not ask them here, since they would be considered spoilers) that you cannot help but asking yourself, since this anime takes its plot pretty seriously.

I must admit, that some revelations were actually well done, even if the plot twists were certainly predictable, the exact moments where these twists are revealed adds some shock value (if you could say it that way), not to mention these are the elements that peek your curiosity and make you wonder how these will turn out. However, the lack of direction of this anime didn't really let me realize what was happening or what exactly it wanted to achieve. And this is noticed right in the first arc, when Shido is told that he's the chosen one (Minor spoilers ahead): When he goes to stop the girl from being a massive destruction weapon, the anime changes its identity and suddenly it wants to become a romantic-comedy one. Next episode we have a fan service oriented focus, and we could go on forever. And this is the big problem with Date a Live. With a well articulated story telling, this could have been THE anime to watch, but certainly they chose to aim for a different appeal.

The art is kind of the strongest point of this anime, and I would say it is what it keeps you watching for the most part. The characters are simply beautiful. I'm personally not "attreacted" to anime girls, but I have to say that there were a few girls in this anime that kept my mouth open. Guilty pleasure confirmed! The backgrounds are also full of life and colors, and the animation is really well done when it comes to the battle scenes as well. It was a really good job.

When it comes to the sound, once again, I have to say that I usually skip openings and endings, but I turned out to listen to it accidentaly, and I really liked it. I also liked the way they present "the story thus far" thing, right when the opening song is starting, and being such a well crafted orchestral begginning, it gives a dramatic and epic feel. It really gets you hyped, no matter how simple the story has been until that point.
However, as a sound engineer/musical producer, I have to say that the recording could have been better. Specially on the drums. They literally have no impact at all. Could have been better, but it's fairly good and achieves the impact.

It's really sad that most of the background music is simply forgettable and dull. Does not complement the visual atmospheres at all.

Other aspects like sound design and voice acting were really well done, specially the voice acting. Nothing much to say, tho.

This anime was really entertaining, and it kept me going until the end, almost hiding the fact that pretty much everything was executed in a cliché way.

Although this anime has a really good technique quality and is really entertaining as well (art-sound), it does not redeem that the plot is mediocre. I will give this an overall 5.

Let me know what you think about this review :) Any feedback and constructive criticism is always well received.