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Whether this movie can be considered good or bad heavily depends on your reasons for watching it.
Watch it if:
- You love KnB so you're always happy with new content.
- You kind of forgot what happened in S1 and you want to refresh your memory.
- You're not really interested in KnB, but want to know the main events.
- You want to skip a season for some freaking reason.

Other than those, I recommend you to watch the actual series instead, or don't watch the movie at all. After all, it's a recap of the first season, so as a 'stand alone' it's pretty crappy.

Stuffing 25 episodes in ... a little bit more than 1 hour, is not the easiest task ever. That's also a reason why I don't want to be too harsh on this movie. There are little series that pull of a decent retelling of their series in a movie, unless they change a big part of the plot. KnB isn't anything new when it comes to that. We get to see the most important parts, but the story loses a lot of its depth and character development due to a lack of time. Which is a pity of course, as one of the great aspects of KnB were the exciting characters. The original air of mystery around the GoM, was completely removed.

Some studios try to 'fix' their series in the movie, by correcting the animation or adding additional scenes. As I mentioned before, this movie was a total recap. Other than the opening scene, there wasn't anything new.

And oh God... The opening scene. What the Hell happened with the opening scene. The idea was great, the shots looked good and the song was awesome, but the animation looked so low budget it made my eyes watery. If you think I'm exaggerating, please take a look and judge for yourself: (https://twitter.com/AlphaMoku46/status/784133544117428224).
As I said, the idea looked really nice, but coming from a series that had some amazing OP's in the past, this one is a rather big... nay.

Nevertheless I enjoyed this movie. You know why? Because it gave me that nostalgic feeling. I love KnB and I'm happy with any kind of content the franchise gives its fans. At the end, I gave it an 8 for overall enjoyment. I just felt like writing this review to warn viewers who don't look at the movie the same way as I do.

Let's start off with saying I was really tempted to give these series a 10.

"Is there any evidence to prove your existence?"
It was something that was briefly mentioned earlier in the series, yet it wraps up the feeling I get from this series. Saying a series is confusing, can be positive and negative, as it can point out to a badly written plot or something with a lot of surprises. In the case of Shuangsheng Lingtan, I'm talking about the last one of course. I just couldn't predict where the series was going. It feels really refreshing, yet not too complicated.
But first let's wrap ... up the story a lil' (there will be some spoilers of the first episodes).

Story 9/10
So the story is about the twin detectives Xiao Tu and Xiao Hu, who hold a business that specializes in supernatural events. What makes this series interesting, is that Xiao Hu died a while ago. However, Xiao Tu is still able to see and communicate with his dead brother and they're always together. As a viewer, you start to get questions about the situation, as the series drops hints that there's more to it than just a guy that happened to see the ghost of his dead brother. As Youzi said: "Since you don't believe you have any psychological issues, how do you view your current situation?"
What if there aren't any ghosts but this series is about hallucinating and PTSD's?
These are all questions fired at the viewer in only the first half hour.
The series hasn't finished airing yet, but as where we are now in the story, I can confirm a lot of questions get a satisfying ending. The individual stories tie together nicely, without becoming predictable and a few jumpscares every now and then (that creepy baby... just... that baby...).
Yes, it's by far the most tightly written series I have ever seen, with obvious clues and kind of simplistic interrogations, but nevertheless it's enjoyable and good when it has to be. The best way to call this series is: 'Refreshing', even though I can't really tell you why.

Art 8/10
Hmm, maybe I was slightly too generous with my points over here, but I just really love this art-style? Yes, you could say the character designs are too plain, but the animation and art-style itself is really beautiful. I might be biased because it slightly (just SLIGHTLY) reminds me of the art in Kakumeiki Valvrave (mainly the eyes). Shout-out to Bing btw, she's gorgeous without being your average my-boobs-don't-understand-gravity-Miss-Fanservice.

Sound 7/10
The opening is beautiful and really reminds me of the typical detective series I used to watch on TV. Other than that I can't say a lot about the sound. It wasn't outstanding, but not disturbing either.
Compared to some other Chinese anime (including some done by Haoliners) the voice acting is better, by the way. A lot of people often shit on the Chinese voice cast, but I think they sound good in Shuangshen Lingtan.

Character 8/10
Nothing too special or unique, yet it doesn't feel like they lack character development. They're simple, likable and nice.

Enjoyment 10/10
When I watch a show, all I want is to be surprised. Shuangshen Lingtan didn't fail on me on this one. I couldn't predict where the story was going for, yet it didn't follow some kind of illogical path in order to be unique or creative. It was just fine.

Thanks for surviving my bad English, and I hope you give this series a shot!

(Warning: English isn't my native language)

Before you assume I am a SB69 hater, please check my MAL. The first season is listed as my favorite and I truly love this franchise.
The reason why it scored this low, is because of my disappointment.
Yes. I am very, very disappointed in this season. Heck, even the specials had better writing.
Sanrio could've done so much better. I wasn't expecting a solid or deep story, but Show By Rock # was a true trainwreck imo. The plot was all over the place. Whereas S1 had a very clear premise, it seemed like the creators themselves didn't really know where they ... wanted to go with their story in S2.
So we have this issue with the Dark Queen, then Dagger jumps in again, Tsurezure are plotting on something and there's also ACAREAFACT boycotting Shingancrimsonz. Oh, we also get Bud Virgin Logic's personal struggles as well. And some backstories (which were mostly really nice btw).
But honestly, that's a lot for a series with only 12 episodes, especially if you consider they still managed to add some episodes where the story had little to no progress.
Then again, the story itself felt like a carbon copy of season 1, except we got a lot of new characters, that had barely screentime.
What disturbed me the most is how the series seemed to make a big deal out of certain events, that were solved in a few seconds. Evil characters turn into cinnamon rolls after they realized their love for music.

I think it'd be a better idea if the series sticked to the games canon. It had so much potential... I know I was expecting too much, but the beginning made me expect those things. It seemed like they took a little bit 'too' much plot and weren't able to handle it.

Look. This series wasn't bad. Just disappointing. There were a ton of great things too! As I said earlier, I was really happy to see some character getting backstories. As usual, the music was amazing too! I loved the song at the end btw! I also thought it was great how we got to see a lot more of the in-game bands! Every time one of them appeared, I was so happy! And I'm also really thrilled that my hc's about Ailane turned out to be canon!

Even though I'm bitching a lot about this series, I hope (but doubt) they'll make a third season. At the end I still love the characters, artstyle, music and general idea.
Yes this series was disappointing, but I still love it somehow, if that makes sense.

First of all I want to clarify that I’m writing this review after watching Movie 1. I have no clue how the story will develop. Maybe I’ll throw my final conclusions at the page of the last one. Who knows.

Also, I apologize for every single spelling mistake I make in this post. I’m not really good at English.

So. I think an ideal word to describe this series is ‘simple’. But not in a negative way. If something is simple, yet catches your attention, it means there must be something good about it. I have a hard time paying attention to video’s that exceed 20 minutes, ... so I decided I would watch a part of this movie, to see if it was interesting or not. Before I knew it, it was over. It didn’t felt as if I watched such a long episode. The story was very interesting, imo. Yet, there are several reasons why I use the word ‘simple’.

First of all, let’s talk about Rygart Arrow, the main character. He’s 25 years old (god bless every 18+ mc in anime) and is one of the only people that can’t use magic. Yes. It’s an averted trope. Whereas most anime throw mc’s at your face that happened to be able to unlock some kind of badass power, Rygart is the only one who can’t. Indeed, the story is about a ‘normal’ main. It’s something refreshing to see. I won’t say I never bumped into this trope before, but it is definitely nicer than the most special of special snowflake mc, that happened to be the chosen one and saves the world even though they’re less than 18 years old and have no experience in life or whatsoever. Yet, you could argue about how ‘unique’ the plot actually is.
But oh well, since I’m only at the first part, I can’t tell how the story will develop, but making the main this ‘normal’ compared to the other characters, could eventually push the story towards the ‘special snowflake’ trope. If he’s the only normal character, he’s still the ‘only’ one, making him more special than the others. But I guess we’ll see once I continue watching.

So. Simple series. What do I mean by that except for the fact that Rygart is ‘normal’. Well. The story isn’t all too complex. In my opinion, it was ideal. I don’t really like to watch anime movies, as the pacing is often odd. It’s either as fast as a mad bull running through an arena or as slow as Windows 8 doing a ‘minor update’. The pacing in Broken Blade, was great though. The conversations don’t feel too long and stretched, yet it’s not all too hard to understand what’s going on and everything is clear and well-explained. It’s an interesting storyline, yet, it’s not too confusing. And this is something that counts for pretty much everything in the series. The character designs aren’t all too complex or outstanding, but they aren’t boring either. And in fact, I didn’t mind the lack of music. Sometimes, the silence created a special, idk how to say it, ‘aura’. And the songs that played were nice. Some of them felt like ‘typical’ background songs, others were just very beautiful.
Honestly I loved how ‘classical’ orientated the music was. You could easily play some of these songs at a classical concert and nobody would note it was supposed to be music for a movie.

What I found rather disturbing in the beginning, was how Rygart happened to be best friends with the king and queen themselves. I thought he was supposed to be as simple as possible, making him childhood friends with them, didn’t seem right. But after thinking this through, I realized the purpose of this relationship actually is supporting the series it ‘simple’ vibe. It’d be really hard and unrealistic to come up with some kind of story to how King Hodr found out about Rygart, how they need to gain each other’s trust, Zess’ part of the story and the relationship between Sigyn and Rygart (I cover that one later on). Making the four of them friends, made the story better, in my opinion and I’m curious to see how things will develop in the sequel.

Okay. So about Sigyn. Honestly, I’m not all too keen on the RygartxSigyn hints the first movie gave us. She’s married to Rygart’s best friend. It’d be highly disturbing to see her cheating on him for no good reason. And no ‘Rygart is my true love’, isn’t a good reason to me. As I enjoyed the plot for so far, I really hope they won’t ruin the series for me with some half-assed love triangle.

As last but not least. The art. The freaking art. It’s beautiful. The animation is really well done, even the mecha fights were great. The bots had interesting designs as well. Not too weird, yet not too similar to the other ones I already saw.

Overall I think this was a really enjoyable movie and I’m really looking forward to the next part!

This is the first time I write a review and since it will be the first one for this manga, it won't be that easy to me! So please bare with me!

So Wakabaryou de, Kimi to is actually a manga featuring 3 short stories about several characters in an all-boys school. Honestly, I have to say that I'm not such a big fan of BL. The reason why I picked up this manga, was because I really liked the cover. It didn't take me too long to figure out this was shonen ai, though (on a side note: on mal it's tagged as yaoi, which ... feels kind of tricky, imo, since there's little to no nsfw in this series).

Apparently this manga, was Sakumoto Ayu's first one and I think she did a good job. The story wasn't extremely unique or memorable, but she still managed to give us some decent relation-development in such a short time.

One thing I really appreciate about WDKT is that I felt it sort of 'broke free' from the stereotypical yaoi stories. Seme hunting after uke, uke denies he's gay untill he gets semi-harassed at one point. This manga (especially the first story about Higuchi and Hidaka) is more easy-going, less dramatic and slow. Since these are short stories, there wasn't many time for character-development, yet Sakumoto was able to pull off some more realistic and better written characters than some other BL artists. After reading many one-shot manga, I came to the conclusion that sometimes, explaining a simple plot in a short story without giving off the feeling it's rushed, is harder than coming up with a complex plot if you can take all your time to explore your story.
Another positive thing about the core of the stories, was that I didn't feel like the 3 stories were repetitive. Sometimes (especially in yuri and yaoi with a high school setting), you get the feeling you get the same love-story several times, just with different characters. 'Everyone happens to be gay and fall in love with each other, preferably their roommate, at the same moment.' In WDKT we get two room-mates who knew each other for a while already (also props to the logic of Hidaka, it's nothing special, yet rare to see in BL), a transfer-student and his new room-mate and an alumnus and student, that start off as friends with benefits. None of the characters feel like a carbon-copy of another one (unless you count Shima's ex, who looks a lot like Hidaka tbh).

I can repeat this a thousand times: Don't expect something special. After all they are still short stories. Every couple gets one or two chapters to develop their relationship. Which isn't a lot. Yet, for a short story, this was really well done.

I don't think I will remember this manga for long, but I do believe it's enjoyable to read if you're bored and feel like reading something light-hearted (again, there's little to no nsfw).

At last but not least, shout-out to the beautiful art. I know you shouldn't judge a book, cough, manga by it's cover, but it's surely more enjoyable when you look at pretty drawings.