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With a prologue arc strong enough to stand on its own as a very satisfying story, Oshi no Ko proceeds to smoothly transfer the remaining intrigue from this prologue into its subsequent arcs.
The depiction of the entertainment industry is a compromise between realism, exaggeration, and glorification, and each of these qualities adds a specific purpose. The viewer is made to be as simultaneously invested in the rise of the main characters in this industry as they are made to be in the painful answers and constant threat of looming tragedy in the future.
Aqua as a protagonist is a very nuanced blend that accounts carefully for ... the trauma he experienced in the prologue, his innate nature of his self from his first life as a doctor, and his new life reincarnated as Ai's child. Any given remark or action taken by him, often detective-like observations toward the tense show business environment he's in or comical gaps in awareness and concern, can convincingly be traced back to these three elements that constitute his character.
The animation is typically strong enough to carry the necessary human nuance of the characters in any given scene, and the show is full of visual character expressions with very dense story and characterization information.

The show is split into more or less 4 distinct story arcs. Not all of these arcs are of equal quality storywise.
The first arc develops a strong mood of youthfully challenging the world and the risks and rewards that go into this. A smooth arc of development for the characters results in one of the best episodes of anime of all time, being episode 8, where everything thematically discussed about friendship, responsibility, pride, and recklessness are all on display in the battle that results in Kamina's death.
The second arc follows Simon's struggle to take Kamina's place. This starts with some very strong episodes, as it ... depicts Simon's struggle in a multi-faceted way with a lot of nuance, but ultimately this arc devolves into drawn-out battles with simple solutions.
The third arc develops the consequences of peace, providing some good ideas about the consequences of endless growth, but ultimately the conflict is solved with excessively simple hot-blooded antics that feel somehow yet simpler than the battle solutions up to that point.
The fourth arc presents life and death obstacles that genuinely feel intense, but it's nothing more than an onslaught of the excessively simple style of conflict resolution seen up to this point.
The strong moments are strong enough to radiate a positive outlook on the work as a whole, but in general, the second half of the work is a far cry from the content prior and do very little to develop anything further.

The first Person 3 film does many good things, but it's primarily held back by a major weakness: the source material itself. Despite its reputation as a video game, Persona 3 in terms of writing quality is not at all what one should call good, even if what makes an overall enjoyable game experience for fans inspires them to look at the story and characters with rose-tinted glasses.
Fortunately, the film does what it can to make common sense improvments. The most noteworthy is giving the main character, Makoto, a firmly defined personality, which comes hand in hand with foreshadowing for his significance in the plot ... and tension in his relationships with the other characters. Impressively, it does this while keeping him true to the general aesthetic impression he gives as a silent protagonist in the game.
Many elements are rearranged to create for a more coherent and interesting flow, such as more careful introduction of Junpei's feelings of inferiority and scenes with Fuuka prior to her subplot. Fuuka's subplot, however, is only mildly improved from the trainwreck it is in the original game. The main intrigue added is Makoto's indifference to the situation, giving him something to reflect upon throughout the event. Aside from this, all the other problems with the subplot are present such as the ghost story and investigation portion amounting to nothing, Fuuka being abruptly rescued with no meaningful obstacles, and everything ultimately boiling down to a crude survival situation solved through simple brute force without lasting meaning or consequence. Fuuka's tension with her friend evaporates simulatanously with the simple "beat the boss" style conflict.
While the art is generally strong with some great cuts throughout, many scenes would benefit from more motion or more complex composition work, especially when many characters are present at once, as it would have given a more lively and convincing feeling.
Ultimately, the film is a good replacement for the main story of the game, but the problems with the game itself are not overcome.

Being a simple and short 70's manga, it's easy to assume that Devilman would be extremely easy to adapt and that the storytelling can only be improved upon. Somehow, Crybaby manages to make nearly every bit of equivalent material worse, often completely not understanding the necessary pieces to even make the content work in the first place.
Ironically, the more the show heavily departs from the source material, the more some good or at least interesting results come out. Sadly, this is not often. In addition, during perhaps the peak of story's intrigue in the middle turning point with the stadium scenes, the directing is moodally ... unfocused and doesn't give what could have read as a very brutal scene the impact it needed.
There is some content that longtime Devilman fans will enjoy, such as more action described during the final battles, including a bit of battling with Xenon. Overall, Crybaby is mostly only worth it for this reason.

While superficially sharing many of the traits of its genre and fellow Kirara works, the show is in many ways more driven by competitive elements of music creation and performance, and the show never lets the viewer forget the stress of these elements even if it's just implicit at times. This gives the show a very unique and kinetic feel despite being able to include many daily life antics and non-functional character-driven scenes. There is however less room for the supporting cast to develop and characterize compared to other great CGDCT shows, as Hitori takes the focus at nearly all times, and the work primarily ... uses the rest of the cast to contrast with Hitori or provide a means for her to develop further through conflict or friendship. Thankfully, Hitori's character is so complexly realized that little feels missing ultimately.
The animation is mostly very consistent and strong, which allows for a constant stream of visible feedback for the various anxieties and mental narratives Hitori carries the audience through.

While almost perfectly paralleling a film that already suffered from extremely amateur writing, Kimi no Na Wa, in structure, style, and even plot concepts to a large extent, Tenki no Ko manages to strip even what little was substantial out of Shinkai's storytelling.
Nearly all dialogue is based on paper thin cliches derived from TV dramas and mainstream film one-liners, almost as if AI generated it in the most generic way possible. Characters are given nearly no significant backstory or establishment of character traits with some exceptions of pitiful attempts, although those traits and backstory never relate to any kind of main theme or other characters ... in any way.
The plot itself is too abstract for the lack of development it's given, and the final climax drags extremely long and barely makes sense even on a logical level, as supporting characters do illegal things to help the protagonist in a way that isn't even clearly necessary and with no clear established motivation. There's even strange details like emphasis put on the gun that the protagonist happens to find, but this ties in with neither plot nor theme in any way, as if the concept was generated at random.
Ultimately nothing is achieved in the hyper simple "rescue the heroine" style plot even on an emotional level due to the underdeveloped magical plot elements and extreme lack of characterization. If it had been compressed into a 30 second commercial to advertise the McDonald's burger oddly emphasized early in the film as the reason for the protagonist and heroine meeting, it would have had far more substance simply by virtue of having less time to make a complete fool out of itself.

The film takes a layer of focus off the tension that carried the second season, emphasizing the calm of the final days leading toward graduation. Because of this, rather than character-specific emphasis, the growth and state of the K-On club as a whole is emphasized, particularly in the way their performances pace the work and what each performance tells about the history of the club up to this point. The notable inclusion of London as a setting change for the middle portion highlights the more idyllic qualities of their home in Japan by contrast, and the club members' awkward interactions with the foreign culture gives ... a new perspective on the innocence and femininely ideal qualities of the main cast, an idea reiterated at the end when their performance is contrasted with Sawako's aggressive high school performance. In general, thematic focus is less tight than the TV series, but the constantly strong characterization and statements on the identity of the club as a whole never wane.

While beginning with continuing the train of light-hearted daily life antics, this season quickly moves into more heavy statements regarding anxieties relating to the fates of the main cast with Yui at the center of this focus. Yui's character becomes less emphasized for her comedic and mood-lightening personality and more for her incongruity with the expectations of modern society and problems staying on page with her peers. This element is interwoven tightly with all the daily antics and subplots, with episode 9 providing the most explicit and heavy address of Yui's friction with others as she finds herself alone and ironically connecting more to her ... old woman neighbor while her peers are focused on school tests. This tension is also interwoven with the music, as both the entire last school live performance and the song U&I provide a bitter sweet pathos to Yui's character and situation.

Similar to the first film, the story presents itself as led by mystery-driven intrigue. However in the same fashion as the first, it quickly gives the majority of the information the story will work with and spends the remainder of the time treading water with barely any significant plot-moving events until an underwhelming action-driven climax.
The main advantage this time over the original is that there are personal stakes in the matter for at least one of the main characters of the police squad, although it amounts to essentially nothing as Shinobu's character plays no significant proactive role to distinguish herself from the rest of the ... cast. There is also some thematic development, most of which is presented explicitly through some awkwardly injected dialogue, although it amounts to nothing beyond some very superficial pondering about the nature of peace in modern Japan's situation.

The film is structured with an emphasis on mystery, the first third establishing the mystery, the second third developing the mystery, and the final third providing the action-centric climax. However, the obvious problem is that the mystery itself is hyper simple, underdeveloped, and without thematic nor character-relevant significance. Despite this, the film uses every chance it gets to state and even restate details about this weak plot intrigue with nearly no development to the cast nor introduction of events with consequence the entire way through.
The entire destruction of the arc facility in the climax proceeds smoothly, with Hoba's crows interfering being the only "twist," which ... has no ultimate consequence. Finally, the face off with the TYPE-0 simply serves as a life and death threat to Noa, a character who received very little screen time and very little characterization or significance throughout the film, and the scene serves no complement to the overarching plot whatsoever.