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May 18, 2024
The first season of Log Horizon gave as a fresh world with a new spin on the typical Isekai stories. It had interessting characters, problems, solutions and was rather grounded for the kind of story it was, which allowed the political plot and the peril of our heros to have some weight behind it. It may not have been a masterpiece, but it was highly enjoyable.
The second season was a step down, with limited animation, a plot that was all over the place, the ideas and new concepts were going nowhere and everything felt just so disconnected and lifless.
This season was the point for
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me to take my leave from this francise for good. Not that it was this aweful experience or anything like that, it´s just so unremarkable and such a drastic step down from season one. Log Horizon: Entaku Houkai has all the problems of season 2 and there is no sign that it will get better any time soon. Let me explain.
The story:
And here starts the problem. What story?
The first episodes were focused on the Round Table of Akiba and how one of it´s members was about to destroy the organisation to force a new order on the region. So far so good, sounds like a season 1 conflict, right? Sadly not. The great change, that took half the episodes to reach was that the Round Table was now declared as a government, with absolutly no changes to the political side of things, no changes in the city, no conflicts within the city, the antagonist just leaving the region for good and just two faces changed in the organisation.
The middle part is a complete side story of Krusty hanging around in the China server with Kanami and the final few episodes were focused on a new ,,Genius" that was attacking the city AGAIN and forcing the adventurers into a Raid. But don´t worry, the kids swept the floor with him on their first try.
All in all it was just three very loosly connected stories, that changed nothing about the status quo or had no real weight on their own.
The character:
Well, maybe it was good for the character side if things? No. Not at all. We got Rayneshia standing up to the aristicrats and her parents AGAIN, with little development. Aside from that we also got the girls still having crushes on adult men, adult men having crushes on women who look like little girls and that´s about it. Oh, some people miss Krusty.
Let´s say, there was little change and little to like this time around.
Animation:
The animation is sadly rather limited and lowers the enjoyment even more.
Sound/Music:
This can be considert to be the saving grace of this show. Pretty good most of the time and the OP is nice too.
Conclusion:
Log Horizon: Entaku Houkai juggles with ideas, concepts, characters and plot lines, but has problems to keep the balls in the air. It has the exact same problems as the previous season and at this point we shouldn´t expect much of this series anymore.
It´s a weak 5/10 and that only thanks to the music, that saved it from falling even lower.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 3, 2024
This season was a huge disappointment. Hataraku season one was not a masterpiece by any means, but it was good at what it was trying to be. A nice mix of reverse Isekai, Slice of Life and a Mystery, all strung together by a charming cast, grounded humor and a wink of the creator.
Like this they were able to mask the problems and focus on the strong aspects of the show.
The problem with this season on the other hand is simple. Nearly every positive aspect of before is gone and replaced with a new negative one. Sadly this way, there is little left to
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hold the pre-existing demerits in check anymore, resulting in this disappointing product.
But let me explain it in a little more detail.
Anmation:
The very first thing you notice is the massive drop in animations quality and designs. Everything is very simplyfied, while the models are melting and limited to no animation is topping things off. It looks like a 10 year old Hentai and not a good one at that. Below average would be a compliment here.
Plot:
Out of thin air our heros get involved with a new plotline, that litterally materialized out of nothing and lands right infront of them. Introducing a ,,cute baby character" that just so happend to be related to 3 different main plotlines.
- One that comes out of nowhere and is completly irrelevat to the story
- The twist one that comes out of nowhere and isn´t expanded on
- The main one that comes out of the blue and isn´t explained
Even the Slice if Life episodes weren´t able to shine. With the mass of new, mostly pointless characters taking up screentime, the overload of established characters and annoying filler material, there is little place to place the fun part in.
On the surface it looks like something in season one would happen, but with no interconnection or heart in any of it.
Character:
The changes to the established characters were rather odd. At times it felt like the reactions were coming out of the wrong persons mouth, as if they simply had mistaken one for another. Or the emotions towards others amplified, but in an unexpected direction.
The stated motivation, background and their doing weren´t realy in line either.
It felt very off, more than once.
Humor:
Gone. None. Nada. Not a single joke or ,,funny situation" landed. Which isn´t great for a comedy.
Such a big waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and skip this season. Just pretend the story ended in season one, that´s probably the best you can do.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jan 4, 2022
If you have ever read an Isekai, you basicly know what this is about. This one is, without much exaggeration, the most generic and uninspired one i´ve read to this day. The story is a bunch of trophes, story lines and elements mashed together, sadly without a single new idea or proper execution of any part of it.
The start isn´t too bad, just not very original. A boy get´s transported in a fantasy world where he starts of as a baby of a noble family and is send away into a isolated large mansion after his father finds out about his predetermined jobs. You see,
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this world runs on the logic that the abilty of people is greatly defined by their job(better role or character class, since the actual jobs have little to do with it anyway) and him having the worst possible ones is shamefull for his entire family. He is considert to be something between a disabled person and human scum.
Luckily for him, he has a literal goddess as his inner voice, who is basicly a comic relief cheat code, that warns him of danger and tells him things he shouldn´t even be able to know. But his luck doesn´t end there either, since he is so talented and ,,smart" that he is able to master powerful magic by using two basic beginner magics at the same time or simply immitating the moves other classes use. These are supposed to be some unique ideas and something unheard of, even if it´s basicly the very first thing anyone would do.
So we have this noble out of a rich family, with private teachers, a goddess as a cheat engine, immense power, talent, but he is treated as the underdog?
To be fair, at least the privilege of his family is something he(temporarily?) looses, but he is still the overdog posing as underdog trophe with not much to add.
The world is this fantasy place 438. A bit medival astethic with RPG elements and some Elfs and Orks for good messure. The land is ruled by a monarch and there are adventures and gildes. Not much else to say about it.
It´s all just so generic at this point and the fast pacing is forcing the story to rush from one plot point to the next and is killing all emotional impact in an instant. Our MC doesn´t seem to care too much about the few hardships he had to face too. So if he doesn´t care, the story doesn´t care, why would we as the reader?
This is the point where uninspired goes to bad. When not even the few things we care about a little matter, what is even the point of this story?
The artwork is decent. Not bad, but not impressive enough to compensate anything.
This manga so far is underwhelming. It brings nothing new to the table, isn´t working properly as a story, has little to no emotional impact and it´s world could be replaced with 25 others without any changes to the story.
On the other hand is it SFW. Here is no shock content, nothing explicit sexual or provocative. Which is at least worth some points in my book.
All in all a weak 4/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Oct 24, 2021
Mieruko-Chan so far is basicly a run of the mill slice of life Anime with a creepy backdrop. It´s not realy horrific or disturbing, and doens´t feel like a horror series at all. Creepy, yes. Horror, no.
The danger and the rules of the world so far are rather unclear. That wouldn´t be that much of a problem normaly, but there isn´t much else thats happening. So not knowing if anyone is even in danger at any given time or how this danger looks like, doesn´t help much either.
On the positiv side, it´s at least kinda entertaining watching our protagonist doing her best not to react
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to the ghosts around her and at times there is even some tense athmosphere, i just wiched there was more of it.
The production is okay. Animation and music are functional, but the character and backgrounds seem flat at times. Nothing impressive but not offensivly bad.
All in all a 6/10. Mildly enjoyable, but nothing special.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 13, 2020
This manga is something different. It is constantly walking the line between qrotesque, fetish porn, light hearted comedy and just pure insanity.
In one scene one of the girls is puking in the main characters face, while being forced to dry hump him and the next is a discussion about racism. You realy have no clue what to expect of it at any time.
At first i thought this could be something like a satire of ecchi and hentai manga in general, with clear references to story beats and imagery. After finishing it i can assure you, i still don´t know what to make of it.
The
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character are crass versions of the typical character models you can expect in a franchise like this. We have a hyper sexuel and unsympatethic main character, a nice oppai girl, a narcissistic beach with a superiority complex and a dysfunctional and racist try hard.
The artwork is fine for the most part. The character look pretty decent and sometimes even good if they are the focus of the scene, but you can see the limits of the art every few pages.
All in all i would call this one a guilty pleasure at best and only suitable for someone who isn´t easily offended or disgusted. If you can look at this like a satire or a fascinating trainwreck, you could be surprised by the at times actually pretty good comedy and have a blast with it. Everyone else shouldn´t even waste a single second on this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jan 25, 2020
As a big fan of studio Shaft and the original Madoka, i realy wanted to love this one. Not seeing Gen Urobuchis name anywhere near the project had a little red light going off in the back of my head, but i thought Shaft would still handle it in a decent way.
The structure is odd and switches from a fast to a very slow pacing, seemingly at random. Heavy dramatic scenes are followed by parts that seem to ignore the moments before, sometimes with the same characters in new locations, a light hearted feeling and nobody even mentioning the dramatic stuff that happend just
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happend seconds before. It feels heavily disjointed to say the least.
We know little about the characters, relationships, feelings, history or motivation, but that doesn´t stop the drama nor the story from demanding that we care about them anyway.
A good example would be an argument early on between two girls we have seen about 3 minutes on screen who start to insult each other and it is ending with them ending their friendship. ,,So they were friends. Good to know." I thought right after the fight was over.
We learn a bit about some character later on, but the very most figures of the rather huge cast get no love at all and these who do get their time in in the spotlight are still pretty underdeveloped.
The worldbuilding has a rocky start too. You get a monolog explaining the core elements of this world in the first episode, but even with knowledge of the original series you have way more questions than answers of why things are happening or what these things are. They introduce new, often times quite interessting ideas constantly, but instead of explaining anything they purposely hide things from you and not in a suddle way like the original Madoka, where everything made sense on it´s own and new informations just changed your viewpoint.
Here they stop explanations by just ending the scene, or they establish something to break the established rules moments later, or explain something with great care just to forget about it completly.
The mystery story at it´s core was promissing and some of the character are still enjoyable, even without being fleshed out at all. It´s not a disaster or anything but it isn´t on the same level as the other Shaft anime you can find not so suddle references to either.
The core problem of being a Madoka spinn off doesn´t help either. The name, setting, cover art, character arcs and even character and whole conversations are ripped out of the original but without the good writing or built up of it. What is left is a confusing work with no emotional impact, a story that goes nowhere, mysteries that were either not resolved at all or just got explained with -she is smart, she invented it-, characters you couldn´t care less about and references to better Shaft productions.
It was probably supposed to be something between Madoka and Hanamonogatari, sadly they pretty much butchered it.
Don´t bother with this and rather watch the original Madoka, the movies or Monogatari if you want to see a story like this made competently.
If you liked the stil and want to scratch your head in confusion you could also watch Fate/Last Encore, which has a lot of similar problems but at least something like a conclusion.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 1, 2019
This is an odd one. Some parts of it are actually very well done, like the bodyhorror and the tension in the beginning, the expressive art styl or the constant evolution of the danger, but so much else just didn´t work at all.
This manga tries to mix survival horror, with heavy ecchi elements, a highschool drama, light hearted comedy and a battle shounen protagonist in one story and fails so spectecularly with it that i just can´t stop reading.
We have emotional and dramatic scenes, that are built up for multiple chapters intercut with stupid sex jokes, that kill all tension and it´s leaving a
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taste of utter confusion behind every time.
Other times the cast is acting so irrational and straight out stupid that i actually can not stop me from laughing and i don´t talk about the discussions between characters in the middle of a zombie attack(and trust me these are so common here). I mean so stupid, that you wouldn´t belive it if i wrote it down.
The character are all over the place. Some are dense as a brick wall, some are straight out evil, others change their entire personality in just 2 pages without a reason, but if the character is a cute girl they will probably try getting it on with the MC. So of course nearly all female characters talk or think about the MC every time they are able to.
The odd thing is that you can actually see decent or even good written characters later in the manga, with nice characterisation and motivation, but even here they start to loose 50 IQ points the moment the MC shows up or something bad has to happen and that is the most frustrating part for me.
The story starts off as a more ore less classic zombie story and evolves over time into somthing vaguely resembling Parasyte or Sweet Home, just without the good writing to back it up. Sadly unnecessary highschool drama dominates even life or death situations for the most part.
To be fair, there are nice stories sprinkled in, but they are few and far between.
The manga is full of clichés, is unfocused, the characters are inconsistant, the story is somewhere between predictable and stupid and the dialog isn´t something to write home about either. I would never say that this is a good manga, but i realy do enjoy it for the very few competent parts that come to the surface from time to time and especially for the incompetent wrinting.
If you can enjoy something like this, you will probably have a blast with it, but if you expect a decent horror manga or something you can unironicly appreciate, don´t bother with this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 1, 2019
Kimetsu no Yaiba´s strong side is without a doubt the production value of Ufotable. It can shine with good music, fluid animations, decent artwork and nice character design.
The problems seem to lay just under the highly polished surface. Especially the story, worldbuilding and characters are sadly quite lacking.
Before i go in deeper in my reasoning i would like to make a comparison to make my problems with the series so far a bit more clear.
KnY is basicly Claymore, just with the problems inverted. Instead of a focus on the character and world building, Kimetsu is showing of spectacle.
Both anime are about a child
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that loses it´s family to dangerous humanoid monsters, joins a shadowy organisation, is given a special sword and is send to take out said monsters. The similarities don´t stop there, but the rest isn´t realy necassary for my comparisson.
The main reason i even make this comparision is that i can see how amazing KnY could have been.
I was wondering about the way this world, this organisation or even the skills work, why the characters even do what they do and so on. Are ghosts normal in this universe? Why does Tanjirou think he should spend over 6 month training in the mountains instead of searching a cure for his sister? Why did his scar change and why didn´t anyone in universe reacted to it? How can it be that the people of the land don´t believe in demons anymore, when our MC can´t even make two steps without finding one? How can a demon slayer afford food, medicine or an inn if the organisation doesn´t even pay them? Why would anyone even listen to them after reciving his/her special sword? How does the magic work?
These problems and questions aren´t present in Claymore and other anime like it and it is so disappointing for me to see such a good looking take on the historical dark fantasy setting, falling over problems that were already solved over a decade ago.
It is sadly not the masterpiece i was hoping for, but it´s entertaining enough for anyone who is solely looking for eye-candy and spectacle.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 2, 2019
This sorry excuse for an Isekai is so shockingly bad that i was actually speechless watching the first episodes. For the most part it feels like a parody of itself, but sadly without any sign of understanding the trophes and elements it is using.
Story, setting, characters and even jokes seem to be heavily ,,inspired" by popular isekai animes of the last years, but without the charm or imagination to do anything worthwile with it. It feels like a clusterfuck of clichés to put it bluntly.
We got discout versions of Kazuma and Aqua from Konosuba, an overpowered main character from any run of the mill isekai,
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a Sword Art Online video game world(but without the danger of dying), incest bait like we see in masterpieces like Conception, a surprisingly strong slime like in Tensei Shitara... well you get the point.
And i normaly wouldn´t bring that up in a review like this, but the soundtrack and the sound design are just so bad. It´s like a toddler heard a Undertale song once and tried to copy that as quick as possible.
I could go on and on like this, talking about how the character and story don´t make sense at all, or how purely written the dialog is, but i don´t want to waste any more time even thinking about this series.
Just skip this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 29, 2019
As a fan of the original manga i was pretty enthusiastic when i first heard about this. Tensei Shitara was and still is able to shine with excellent world building, it´s characters and a story that may come of as generic at first, but is handled so well that you just can´t stop yourself from enjoying it.
Mamono no Kuni on the other hand doesn´t have any of these qualities. It is basicly a lifeless fanfiction with a mary sue author insert character as it´s lead. These words are sadly not an exaggeration. Every character knows her or want to know her, she has an unique
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skill and can do whatever the plot needs her to do. Characters of the original manga get thrown in your face on nearly every panel of every chapter so far and are mostly there to tell you how great this new character is. It´s rather frustrating to read.
Another quite irritating point is that this spin off is leaning on the light novel and not the manga and starts months or even years after the current arc of the manga. This means it shows characters that haven´t appeard in the manga adaptation and can even spoil some plotpoints for people who haven´t read the novel but do read the manga at the moment.
The artwork is the only thing that is at least tolerable, but nothing to write home about either.
All in all i can´t recommend this spin off to anyone. Just skip this one and save your time for something you can actually enjoy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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