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Throughout Higurashi Outbreak's lean 50 minute runtime, one thought kept coming to mind.

This... this is stupid, right? It's stupid. I'm pretty sure it's stupid.

So like, this gets praise because it's an edgy and dark OVA unlike the other Higu spinoffs which leaned more towards comedic sexy moe shenanigans. I say no, this is neither dark nor edgy. If anything it's the most sanitized and dull Higurashi has ever been. It's all haha violence go brrrr with none of the suspense and intrigue the series is known for.

Putting aside random developments like the idea of humanity's different cultures being a product of different strains of a ... brain parasite (????? this is brought up out of nowhere and is never elaborated on) none of the characters seem to know what story they're in. This is supposedly like an apocalypse scenario AU but everyone is acting like it's Monday at a boring desk job. For example, early on one of the main teenage characters very flatly states that their family was just moments ago lynched by a crazed mob. No one reacts to it and it's never brought up again. It's not even treated as a mild inconvenience, it's more like "well that happened, anyway let's move on". For a series so prone to high melodrama as Higurashi it's very jarring to see characters shrug off what should be major traumatic events.

Keiichi and Rena are reimagined here as hypercompetent action heroes who fire off quips and talk about the virtues of friendship while gleefully murdering several armed men like it's nothing. An actual CHILD is kidnapped and is about to be offered as a human sacrifice to appease the gods and she's just like cool with it. No biggie, happens all the time. Even Keiichi's parents barely blink an eye at a bloodsoaked Rena hacking away at a bunch of dudes right outside their door while Keiichi seems to be real casual about murder in this timeline. Everyone kind of is.

This tone of bizarre emotional disconnect continues onto the ending, which ends not on a dark nor hopeful note but one of total indifference. I just can't understand this approach. It's baffling. I felt gaslit by this OVA.

First things first, this is not a narrative-driven movie. This is, in fact, a 90 minute animated concert where CG models of the Utapri dudes glide around a very extravagant stage and occasionally banter with one another. If this sounds boring to you then it's an easy skip. However, if there's anything Utapri has had on lock since day one it's the music, so I didn't mind sitting down for this.

Starish, Quartet Night and Heavens all get roughly equal time in the spotlight here, with each unit having two songs each, one big group number at the end, and several shuffle unit songs in the ... middle. The songs are all immaculately crafted upbeat J-Pop perfection, which just comes with the territory. By the end I did feel the need to immediately rush to the nearest Animate and buy all the latest Utapri CDs which was the entire point of this movie so that's a job well done there.

Um, so yeah. If you're a diehard Utapri fan then this is worth a watch. If you don't care then this will not sway you. I kinda zoned out at a few points myself but seeing Ranmaru on the big screen made it all worth it.

I'm torn. First of all, this is a terrible ending to DR3. It renders pretty much everything that happened in both Future and Despair Arcs completely pointless and continues to undermine the events of SDR2.

On the other hand, it's dumb fun fanservice and I'm a sucker for that.

Soooo... 6/10 is a compromise? This is horribly written and full of deus ex machina bullshit, but... it's fun. If you made it through the rest of DR3, then... might as well.

It's kinda hard to write a substantial review for this because it's literally just 24 minutes of fanservice. Not the sexy kind, though.

lol hope

If I had to describe Danganronpa 3 in one word, it would be "unnecessary". That's ultimately what it all boils down to. DR3 is not a necessary part of Danganronpa canon, nor is it necessary to watch it. It's completely disposable, and altogether just pretty terrible.

It's pretty hard to write an in-depth review of DR3 Future without going into heavy spoiler territory, since exactly where the story goes is a big part of why it's so disappointing, but I'll try my best. Future sets itself up as another killing game, although this time it's more akin to something found in Zero Escape than Danganronpa proper. ... It remains a murder mystery, albeit one very different to those found in DR1 and 2. The mystery's solution ends up not only being lame, but also massively predictable. The big reveal towards the end was a total non-event since I'd already figured it out several episodes ago. The mastermind behind the incident is also a letdown, since it was so extensively telegraphed that it seemed almost too obvious to be true. The methods used, the characters involved, the narrative weaved between both this and DR3 Despair... everything is weak.

But it's not the destination, right? If the journey is enjoyable, then the answers we get at the end don't make and break the whole series, right? Sure, but DR3 Future's journey isn't enjoyable in the slightest. Most of the episodes feel like filler, with pointless characters acting out pointless subplots that don't go anywhere, and they end up pointlessly getting killed. They could've easily told this story in half the number of episodes with how completely unnecessary most of them are. Aside from a select few, most of the characters also only exist to get killed. Not to further the plot at all, but simply just because people will expect a lot of deaths from this series. Both new and returning characters are largely one-note, with only Kyosuke Munakata and Juzo Sakakura showing any kind of depth. None of these other people, including the DR1 survivors, are interesting at all. Even Kirigiri, one of DR1's driving forces, is reduced to a glorified extra.

Production value-wise, the animation is slightly better than DR3 Despair's, though not by much. The music and voice acting however are, as always, top notch.

Was DR3 Future a completely miserable experience, though? Sorta, but not quite. The most fun I had was discussing theories and just how stupid the show kept getting every week, and if you can't have that experience then I say skip DR3 entirely. Skip if if you've played the games, absolutely skip it if you haven't played the games, just skip it. It's a waste of time.

(Spoilers for the Danganronpa games) As half of the Danganronpa 3 anime experience, Side Despair's purpose is to provide backstory for Side Future as well as fill in Super Danganronpa 2's blanks. Neither should should be watched without playing the first two games in the series, but with Despair's final episode over with I can in good conscience say that they shouldn't be watched at all.

Side Despair's problem is that it's boring, safe, predictable, and pointless. As a companion piece to Side Future it does its job fairly well, but in every other regard it's an absolute failure. Danganronpa and Super Danganronpa 2 left several ... questions unanswered, mysteries left up to one's interpretation. DR3 Side Despair aims to solve these riddles and provide answers to what exactly happened to Class 77 before SDR2's events.

This was a terrible idea.

Class 77's backstory is largely shoved to the background in favour of crossovers with Side Future and an insider's view of series antagonist Junko Enoshima's infernal machinations. When the time finally comes for their big defining moment, none of them have had the development to warrant it. Instead, aside from outliers Nagito Komaeda, Chiaki Nanami, Ryota Mitarai and the Ultimate Impostor, all of them are mushed into one entity. Class 77 is no longer a cast of different characters, but one singular plot device the series has been chained to. Most of the Class 77 segments is spent building up to the demise of the one student missing in SDR2, and when it finally hits it's neither impactful nor entertaining.

Junko Enoshima herself has also lost all of her charm. In the games, she appeared only at the very end of DR1 and SDR2. Now she's a main character in Side Despair, and it really hammers home the point that she's best used sparingly. In short, she's just not a very interesting character when you get down to it. She's evil because she's evil, and every single one of her evil plans always goes off without a hitch. What she ends up doing to plunge the world into despair is also incredibly stupid and hokey. The charismatic supervillain who capped off both games on their victory laps is now an omnipresent, transparently evil mwahahaer with little to do or say except ensure that all of SDR2's major backstory beats are hit. The one shining beacon of hope is one of the new anime-original guys, Juzo Sakakura, an excellently written character with a compelling and tragic arc. However, most of his big moments happen in Side Future, though vital setup occurs in Side Despair. Juzo is one of the best additions to the series yet, and his presence alone saves the show from being scored even lower.

In the end, I liked SDR2 better when I didn't actually know what happened before it. Every answer we get in Side Despair is far lamer than what I'd envisioned, and just about every character is cheapened by the Persona 4-esque herd treatment. Just about the only character who escaped mostly unscathed was Komaeda, and even he, who was THE defining driving force of SDR2, ended up underutilised and mostly there to provide context for Side Future's events. This show not only fails on its own, but it serves to also make SDR2 a much weaker story once you know just how uninteresting its backstory is.

Side Despair is woefully written and dreadfully directed. The animation is also clearly low budget, with the excellent music and voice work, as usual for the franchise, being its only saving graces. You probably already watched this if you're a hardcore fan of the series, but I recommend everyone else give this a skip. Side Future is undoubtedly the stronger show of the two, though even then it'd hard to recommend that one either.

It's been five years.

I've been ready, you've been ready, everyone's been ready. It's been five years, but only now are we finally making that return trip to Ikebukuro. Question is, is it still as fresh and special as it was the first time around?

The answer is no. Strangely enough, however, I wasn't exactly disappointed.

2010's Durarara!! is pretty much my favourite anime of all time, so expectations for its long-overdue return were, to say the least, pretty gosh darn high. To put it briefly, x2 Shou is not as good as the original. The huge cast of characters returns (but not all of them are given ... stuff to do), and it's added to with just about every passing episode. A common problem with big casts is that they're often poorly managed, and Shou is absolutely no exception to that. The worst example of this has to be Ruri Hijiribe, who shows up for a brief storyline in the first few episodes, only to never be seen again afterwards. Ruri's story ends up seeming completely pointless in the grand scheme of things, as do a lot of things and characters brought up this season.

Shou seems to be mostly focused on buildup and introductions, which is both a good and a bad thing. Later arcs are where shit seriously starts to go down, and Shou lays down the groundwork for those. However, by the end of Shou, we are 36 episodes into the Durarara series. That should be waaaaaaaay past the buildup period. There's no shortage of things happening in Shou, but nothing is given a satisfying conclusion, since we're still in buildup mode. As a result, the whole season feels like it doesn't really matter. Many important characters also spend these 12 episodes not really doing much of anything, which gives the whole production a feeling of complacency. In terms of story, this is not a big "welcome back" after five long years of wait.

The show actually tells us as much in its opening minutes. We're assured that not much is going to change. And it doesn't. Not yet, anyway. Shou fulfils its purpose as a buildup season just fine, but the problem is that it doesn't make for a compelling story of its own. There's a few great new additions, such as the fabulous Vorona, but the show's considerable faults can't all be carried on her petite Russian shoulders.

Despite all of this, I can't say I was especially disappointed with Shou. Maybe I was overcome with such nostalgic glee that I was more than ready to look past its flaws, but I ended up enjoying the season more than a fair bit. Was the five year wait worth it? That remains to be seen.

All in all, it's just good to have Durarara back.

Also, the animation got worse.

[No one can escape time.]
[It delivers us all to the same end.]

The latest effort in animating this esteemed JRPG series is finally here, aaaaand it's a movie series. This means the release schedule will be hell to endure, but the payoff is definitely worth it so far.

First things first, the animation is beautiful. Anyone let down by the Persona 4 anime’s low quality should breathe easy, for the P3 movie looks stunning. The backgrounds looks great and the characters are sharp and on-model at all times. That movie budget is showing. The Dark Hour in particular looks great, with a muddy painting-esque look differentiating it ... from the daytime sequences. It works very well in making it look all otherwordly and creepy.

As for soundtrack, here’s where this follows the P4 anime’s footsteps. Most of the OST is lifted from the game, and occasionally slightly remixed, with some original compositions in here and there. It works, even though they liked using the main battle theme just a bit too much. (Several scenes opened with the iconic chant of BABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABY.)

The 90-minute movie covers the game up to and including the Fuuka Yamagishi arc, which is well over 10 hours of game time. There was a lot of daytime fluff scenes cut, much like in Persona 4, but here it didn’t really end up making the story or characters suffer at all, nor did it make the movie feel rushed. The fluff scenes were important world and character-building in Persona 4, but entirely superfluous and sometimes even badly written in Persona 3, so it’s more like they just trimmed the unneeded fat. What we have in its place is a more tightly paced, suspenseful story, which is more in line with what I expected Persona 3, the game, to be before I played it. The social links are relegated to background props and one-scene extras, but I never liked P3's social links, so I've no problem with that.

With the fluff scenes cut, the main story sequences are relied upon to give the characters depth, which works wonderfully. The movie’s version of the protagonist, Makoto Yuki, manages to show great amounts of depth with very few lines. Just like with P4’s Yu Narukami, the shift from silent protagonist to actual character has gone swimmingly. Other characters I felt gained a lot from the movie were Yukari Takeba and Fuuka Yamagishi. Yukari’s interactions with Makoto are very different from the game, and definitely make her come across as much more than just “designated love interest girl”. Fuuka never got much attention in the game, but her struggles here are played up a lot, which is only a good thing. Other characters, like Junpei, Akihiko, and Mitsuru, aren’t given overhauls that big, but we’ll see how the other movies handle them.

My main complaint is the action sequences. It’s nice to see the party make use of weapons, which was missing entirely in Persona 4’s anime, but the action sequences themselves are very static and awkward, with competitors often just standing around, waiting to get hit. I suppose that’s accurate to the movie’s source material as a turn-based RPG, but it doesn’t make for compelling action scenes.

I’m not used to hearing the cast in Japanese, so that was a semi-new experience for me. It was weird, because the game’s dub was how I first experienced P3, so I’ve come to associate the English voices more closely with the characters than I do the originals. Nevertheless, the Japanese cast is, as is typical, stellar. I particularly like Mamiko Noto’s Fuuka, who projects a whole different image than whoever her English VA is.

I wouldn’t recommend Persona 4: the Animation to someone who hasn’t played the game. The opposite is true here. Despite the limited time, Persona 3: Spring of Birth is a very good adaptation of the game’s opening hours, and many scenes I’d argue were even improved a lot in the movie. There’s a lot to see for P3 veterans, too. Basically, everyone should watch this. You should watch this. If you’ve already watched it, rewatch it.

That is all, dismissed.

I had my share of problems with Persona 4's anime adaptation. Actually, I had a truckload of problems with it. Scratch that, I was finding stuff to complain about every single episode. And yet, I look back on it and think "oh wow they actually didn't do that badly, considering they condensed a 70-hour RPG into 25 episodes". Indeed, Devil Survivor 2: The Animation served to put Persona 4 into perspective for me. In spite of all its issues, it really didn't do that much wrong. The story was well developed, the characters all got their moments to shine, and there was still time left ... over for fluffy social linkage.

Yeah, uh, DeSu 2 doesn't do any of that. What we have here is the boring parts of Mirai Nikki with the basic premise of Neon Genesis Evangelion tacked on, infused with Megami Tensei lore. P4 wasn't exactly a paragon of originality, but the tricks it played to stay above the typical worked well. Here, however, everything is strictly by-the-numbers. Chosen one, blah blah blah, pointless friends, sexy rival, blah blah blah, end of the world, boss battles, mysterious otherworldly ally, this has literally all been done before. Even worse, this show is as predictable as it is boring. I could see all the plot "twists" coming, -especially- the ending. Oh, wow, the ending. Don't even try to pretend you were shocked. It was so, so obvious.

One of my biggest problems with this is the cast. If your name isn't Hibiki Kuze, you're shit out of luck. This show doesn't care about you, and you won't get to do anything, ever. The only other characters to get any screentime are Hibiki's two friends, his sexy rival, and the mysterious otherwordly ally. Everyone else is mere decoration, which is extremely sad, because the minor characters happen to also be the most interesting ones. I was charmed by Jungo and Airi from the first moment they appeared, but "Jungo = chef, likes cats; Airi = kind of a bitch" is the only thing we ever get to know about them here. This is a huge problem, because when the show starts killing characters off and treats it as a huge deal, I was unable to care. They weren't killing -people-, they were killing concepts. None of these characters were developed enough for their deaths to have any sort of impact. Speaking of development, though, not even Hibiki gets that. Indeed, his only privilege is the vast amounts of screentime. He starts the show as a generic, personality-free protagonist, and ends it the exact same way. The protagonist, Yu Narukami, was one of the things the P4 anime did extremely well, so seeing them utterly fail here was kind of sad. Perhaps 13 episodes just wasn't enough for such a large cast of characters. Wait, perhaps? There's no "perhaps" here.

I suppose the show being short kinda starts making up for it being incredibly boring. Hey, let's be positive some more! Electropop magician kz of one-person music "group" livetune composed the opening, and he has, of course, delivered a total jam once again. It may not be a complete banger like his other op of the season, OreImo's Reunion, but more kz is good kz. I cherish kz's compositions. On a similar note, the ending song (Be by Song Riders) isn't bad, either. Both songs eventually found their way into my playlist, where they both got their heavy rotation. Oh and the animation is kinda nice I guess.

Let's have a bottom line, a line at the bottom. Devil Survivor 2 is boring. Really boring. Uninteresting and bland, even, and I can't think of this as anything other than a failure. I suppose it's a bit better than Mirai Nikki, one of my least favourite anime of all time, on account of this just being dull, as opposed to face-breakingly bad.

Although, technically, isn't making a bad impact better than making no impact at all? Mirai Nikki -did- have some absolutely fantastic stupidity...

Er, yeah. To close this review, I can't recommend this to anyone. To fans of the game, this is a shitty adaptation. Don't bother. To fans of the genre, Evangelion is there for a reason. To fans of SMT, just rewatch Persona 4. To everyone else, this is one boring piece of work. I suppose the best way to describe it would be "mediocre", but it's -so- mediocre that it crosses into being god-awful. After all, aren't the worst shows the ones you can't even enjoy for their badness?

Your anime's death clip has been uploaded. This outcome cannot be avoided. Have a nice day!

Oct. 9, 2011:
Mirai Nikki's anime adaptation begins.

--DEAD END--

A mess. That's probably the easiest way to describe Mirai Nikki. From beginning to end, it was simply a total mess. The story begins as an apparently simple battle royale between a bunch of varyingly crazy people who can predict the future. By the end it's a dimension-hopping cluster of ridiculous plot twists and some veeeeeeery half-assed writing.

I wouldn't want to spoil this... unique series for anyone, but I'm just going to say that it involves stuff like one character killing and impersonating herself, a gay guy pooped out by GOD who sends texts while getting his head ... chopped off (yes, while), and a crazy bitch with a bomb fetish who can fly and has babies that can also fly. Around the final arc it has completely ceased being about the survival game and has degenerated into Dragon Ball Z-style energy beam fighting. Yes, really.

And, really, most of it comes out of nowhere. Whole plotlines are dropped and brought up very suddenly with alarming frequency. Character arcs are usually resolved in an extremely hasty manner with some form of contrived ass-pull excuse. This is just a very poorly plotted story, not that I've read the manga it's based on. Maybe that fared better? Probably not.

The protagonist is beta as fuck, too. I sympathised more with the 'villains' (using that term verrrrrry loosely) of the "Yukki's daddy issues" arc, as they had a genuinely sad, yet heartwarming backstory. Yukki is just a pussy and Yuno is a crazy bitch who makes no sense half of the time. Best character is Minene, though. She's cool. But her hair in episode 2... honey, no. That look is so not you.

The nicest thing I can say about Mirai Ball Z is that the opening songs are both fantastic. Particularly Dead END by the lovely Faylan, which I loved before I even started the series. The lyrics don't make any sense at all (The girl with the sharp thorn in her flesh, I met you at your story...?) but it sure is catchy. The first OP with its dramatic choir and counting up in German (EIN ZWEI DREI) was also very memorable.

It was fun, though. This is the kind of series you make fun of with friends. It was all just so ridiculous and stupid that I couldn't help but kind of like it.

If you want a solid "so bad it's good" series, Mirai Nikki will prolly satisfy your desires.

--HAPPY END--

Greetings, commoners. It is I, Emilie De Rochefort the Great. Due to the informal situation, you may call me Lili.
As many of you have no doubt noticed, Namco made the very questionable decision to omit me from the CGI feature "Tekken: Blood Vengeance". Instead, they offered me to watch and review it for this particular website, an offer I graciously accepted.
Now, many (or all) of you may find my omission from this movie to be highly alarming. After all, I am the main character of the Tekken franchise, and the entire plot revolves around me and my exciting exploits. But I suppose that some ... fans of the series would enjoy seeing the side characters get 93 minutes in the limelight.
Now, without further ado, let us get to the bottom of things. Sebastian, bring our guests some chairs. We'll be here for a while.

The story revolves around some high school girl I don't know being hired by some evil corporation to spy on a strapping young lad named Shin Kamiya, whom you may know from the hit Tekken spin-off: A Certain Ridiculous Plot Device. Hm? What's that? Shin wasn't actually in any of the games and was just created for the sole purpose of being a generally unimportant non-character to fill empty spaces in promotional images? O-of course I knew that! I was just testing you. And you passed! G-good job!
Sebastian, shut down the Tekken Wiki for feeding me false information!
Anyway, none of this is actually important, as it is simply pointless build-up to a highly ridiculous finale where a father and his beloved son turn into dragons and start firing laser beams at each other.
And no, it doesn't make any more sense in context.

The main flaw of the story is that plotlines are frequently picked up and then unceremoniously dropped mere moments later. Was Shin Kamiya actually relevant to anything ever? Was there a point to the whole Xiaoyu and Alisa friendship story? Was the convenient ancient power buried under some castle ages ago that the villain used to fashion a giant mecha made of wooden statues ever explained or given any foreshadowing whatsoever?
The answer to all of those questions, children, is no. None of the characters have their personalities fleshed out, and none of their motives nor objectives were ever clearly explained. Indeed, my presence would have greatly improved this vulgar display of plotting incompetence. I might even go so far as to say that I would have come up with a much more satisfying story.

But enough of that. Did I ever mention that I have a beautiful singing voice? In fact, my debut single, "I Am Wonderful (And You Wish You Were Me)" is available for download at bTunes right now. I do believe your life would be greatly improved by purchasing and listening to said work of musical art.
Speaking of voices, that is something I found myself to be mildly delighted with in regards to this production. The English cast (I did not feel like forcing myself through this a second time to form an opinion on the Japanese audio track) includes a plethora of well-known names, many of which did a very competent job on conveying the very flawed script.
The soundtrack was more or less what one would expect from my humble franchise, with generic techno and rock pieces playing over the fight scenes.

Ah, the fight scenes. Indeed, one of this movie's greatest strengths is the animation. The fight choreography is elaborate and the CGI is, in general, very pretty. Obviously, my very graceful fighting style would have worked wonders in attracting moviegoers, and I would of course have won all the fights. There is no fighter in this world who would even hope to stand a chance against fabulous moi. Would you perhaps like to watch a demonstrative film of my eloquent fighting moves? Sebastian, prepare the projector. We must make sure to entertain our loyal audience.

Getting back to the topic, though I would rather not do so, I suppose this feature could be described as "all style, no substance". The action is fast and stylish, but the storyline is, to put it in vulgar terms, an absolute mess of biblical proportions.
Actually, everyone who has already watched this movie is in agreement that me taking on the star role would have made the entire production at least eight times better. I know it's true because I read it on the "inter-web". As a modest lady, I cannot flat-out state that I think the same, but let it be known that I do, and that the primitive minds at Namco have committed an act comparable to inefficiently slicing off their own heads with wooden spoons by refusing me a role in this utter travesty.

Sebastian, get Producer Harada on the phone and tell him that I will not stand for any more of this nonsense. I think it's time that he learned his rightful place in the world.

Oh? You're still here? I advise you to stay away from this sordid trainwreck, as it is nothing but a load of nonsense peppered with occasional overblown battle scenes. Namco seem to have realised their mistake, as they are now preparing a full TV anime series by the name of "Magical Fighter Lili II: Saving The World With A Smile ~A Tekken Story~". I am certain that it will be the most popular show of the Summer 2015 season.

It's time for my afternoon tea. Farewell.