- Last OnlineApr 29, 3:32 PM
- GenderMale
- BirthdayMar 8, 1987
- LocationGdańsk, Pomorskie
- JoinedNov 9, 2007
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Apr 29, 2024
Great start and even greater left down.
After rather long break from anime, I came back to this series and was pleasantly surprised.
Initial premise, mood, design, feel of the series was good, despite mediocre opening and very bad ending songs, which became premonition of what this series would become.
While story was still fresh, and little details were present about titular character - Freien, a thousand or so, years old elf who is lazy but talented as a magician - story was good. It kept bouncing between collage of memories and current events.
Despite indifferent, almost unpleasant or passive-aggressive nature of Freiern, the more of her backstory
...
was unveiled, the more this character became somewhat close.
And then it started going downhill.
Cliche, tired tropes, and eventually, more and more younger-lo0oking girls started to pop-up.
Frieren turned out to be god-like magician with One-punch man level of unrecognition, by most, of hers true powers.
Events began dragging worse than most uninspired side-quests in ancient RPG game.
Basically, series got boring.
Side characters are the same - purple mage girl is cold, antisocial idiot who can't read relationship or human face-to-face ques, besides polite, passive aggressive formalities. And redhead boy, who has no spine whatsoever, is also un-killable, godlike warrior trained by Freieren's former party member (just like purple girl btw).
So instead of slow paced, slice of life series, this cartoon drifted into action-comedy with scenic, long, dragging scenery and landscape shots, some action, some memories, some boring background characters, some more old memories of events which would become deus-ex machina to push forward very formulaic format of the episodes.
Maybe my fault was expecting it to be something closer to Aria or YKK, while focusing on the overall concept of how "eternal" character like Tolkien-like, long living elves are lonely because of their lack of concept of time and mortality of other races.
Or might it be that this adaptation just lied about being something else in the hook, first 3-4 episodes and then drifting into mediocre fantasy adventure animation lacking adventure?
Well, that said, I feel lied to.
Last time I've seen this level of "accidental" trolling was when I believed one weird guy and watched Haruhi Suzumiya season 2.
Anyways - I have my guesses about elf loli and "hero" after-death relationships, I'm tired of people shipping purple and red teens together, or even worse - Freieren and monk elf... Uh.
My opinion is a hot take because you people can't handle the truth. If a series is just a bit, initially, better than average product, you fall into trap of judging it highly.
Funeral March of Freiren is not bad, but the longer it goes, the weaker it gets. It lies, and have horrible openings and endings, and those, obviously, are the most important aspect of every cartoon (that's a joke).
First 4 episodes are 9/10
Later you can remove 0.25 point per 10 minutes of the show - I gave it 4/10 because it's not bad and had just a little amount of cheaper and quality moments. But story, despite initial quirk, is house of cards build without said cards. It's an illusion.
Final score: overhyped/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Mar 29, 2024
I've started reading TGWOK back when it was still going.
Revisiting it decade later was a mistake.
You can't enter same river twice, and you can't enjoy bad series when older.
As a kid, it was a silly time filler, and my taste in Japanese comic books was really bad apparently.
The story is that Keima, a young sociopath impassive in common life, just wanting to play his simpleton dating sims, bumps into Elsie - a bottom dreg demon from hell who's mentally challenged.
"Hilarity ensues" as the unconventional duo deals with shenanigans, dating "real women" (other teenage girls), and it just drags for ages instead of ending in a
...
maybe 2 volumes as it should.
Art is is acceptable. Characters are not. Gags are gagging with how boring and formulaic they are.
It's a product of its times, back when harems were still "hot", so not worth reading if it isn't 2010s.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Mar 29, 2024
One of those series that aren't really bad, but neither are good.
Izou is a high schooler and is facing his fate of dealing with medieval courtesan who cursed his great-great-grandfather and now returned as a demon to fulfill her unrequired love.
In short, it's like Urusei Yatsura but with ghosts and demons instead of aliens.
Art is heavily stylized but also chaotic. Tiring to read.
Story done a million times which is generic slapstick/ecchi/action/romance/whatever.
Characters are one dimensional, flat, and changing on a whim to allow joke or "drama action" to happen.
Felt a lot like an attempt to make series which could get a cartoon adaptation. Soulless.
...
Not the worst, but feels stale.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 28, 2024
Where do I even begin?
Whole premise is that one horny kid wants to sleep with another girl who's allegedly is selling herself out.
And after that series go full discord mod/redditor admin mode, and it just gets worse with every few pages.
Art is average with better or worse moments, but it gets actually almost all right trough few later volumes I've regretfully checked.
Story, again, is just horny kids doing intercourse/petting, and the "hilarity" following that. Characters are one dimensional without any positive traits - everyone is scum or degenerate, just like everyone involved in publishing this trash.
If this was a series about adults, sure. There are
...
things like Henzemi, but it's about 13-16 year old children which someone invented, someone else read and agreed on to pushing forward publishing, so more people would read it.
I mean, come on? It's not even subtle - later on there's literally a scene where a kid is proceeding into intercourse with older, sadist girl, and ends up with his own cum covering himself. And it even gets worse later on.
It is just pedo porn, and there's no excuse or walkaround about it.
Disgusting trash, author and everyone involved should be locked up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 12, 2024
With the advent of an anime coming for the series, I finally mustered my self hate, and finished this comic series.
This review dances around major plotline events, but doesn't contain major spoilers. None the less, I mark it as one with spoilers.
I'm not a huge fan of Asano Inio, but would lie saying I did not enjoy "Goodnight, Punpun" and especially "Solanin".
Coming to "DeDeDe" I was expecting either deep dive, psychological exploitation, emotions or just captivating story, and was met with product, which I believe, is impossible to experience as not only non-native, but not as an experienced citizen of Tokyo.
In this work Inio welcomes
...
the reader with a promise of supernatural, coming of age story. But that's just a wrapping.
In reality story is dealing with author's urge to make something hyper-realistic, ugly, strong, while it is poorly made comedy with romantic and action elements.
Whole premise of two highschool girls being friends, going trough earliest stages of adulthood in a world, where there's a huge UFO hovering over the capital city of Japan is a big lie.
Of course, as a seasoned author, it's not just some unexplained deus ex, narration pushover. Mentioned UFO mothership combines elements from films like "District 9", "Independence Day" but also the 9/11 events, making people to deal with the trauma of losing their loved ones in an unpredictable tragedy, but for the most parts, it is just a catalyst for general dissatisfaction, government critique, conspiracy theories and such.
If it all did come and unravel some deep questions and answers for the reader, it would be great piece, but in the case of "Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction" author tried to reach the heights of Hideaki Anno's Shinseiki Evangelion, but it ended more like "and it was all a dream, and they lived happily ever after" kind of climax.
Biggest gripes are twofold for me.
First, being that on the photorealistic backgrounds there are cartoonish-comedic characters with more and more deformed heads.
It worked in "Punpun", it was bad decision in "DeDeDe" because none of the characters seemed serious, even when dealing with some... serious decision making or events. And even worse, those events mostly turned out to be pointless drama anyways, making each additional one just being a reason to roll eyes and take a break from reading rather than emotional or shocking experience for a reader.
Second is that beside main narration and storyline, there's complementary "Doraemon" parody, and further the story, the border between those got more blurry, switching from realistic with cartoon characters comic book, to same but looking like children's cartoons.
For me it was off putting. Bulgakov pulled it amazingly in "Master and Margaret", and ever since so many, especially Japanese manga authors, are trying the same with at best, tolerable results.
Anyway, reader is following the events of childhood friends, weird and most likely mentally challenged Ouran and her bestie: Kadode, who really got her eyes on a teacher, and thank god it ends at it like that.
Ouran is very close to being NEET gamer trash, but that role was filled by her creepy brother. Kadode is just weird because her mother is mentally ill and her father was workaholic, and she seems to not give much to it.
At this point I really am regretting I wanted to make some "New Yorker" grade review, but will try my best without delving into spoilers.
So at first, girls are teens, than young adults. They go to an university, met other people, fall in love, get jobs, party, drink, the works.
Supporting characters are introduced, and author sure did think about some more exposition and backstories, but editor probably hinted that the series would take another 30 years to finish with how sluggish, meandering and lost the narration is in this series.
So for good 60 chapters there's some slice of life, comedy, exposition how advanced aliens with great, doraemon-grade tech are actually powerless and defenseless against brute humans.
Now, and this was the moment I flipped my table, jumped out the window and howled like elk with broken leg, time travel concept is introduced.
During these events, everything reader was forced to go trough, goes into bin. Vsauce Jake Chudnow's - "Moon Men" music chimes in, and it goes: but if I told you that all of what just happened, is not real? Or rather, could not be real... for Ouran! What if Kadode could go full ret... Madoka on her, and selfishly try to protect her, by... sacrificing self, because Ouran did the same earlier, or rather, in paralel reality, which actually, is the REAL real reality... ?!
And at this moment I knew, author went so far into his head, that made a full circle, and forgot he had an idea, making previous hundreds of pages pointless masturbation of how detailed backgrounds could be and how little actual substance a story could have.
Also: in this story Trump also was a tool for foreign nation. What a comedy. And American weebs.
Haha. What fun.
In the end it all felt like a very elaborate critique of Japanese society, bound by strict rules, expectations, social ladder, and so on... Which could be done with finesse and not with cornflakes made out of concrete and asbestos, dipped in sewage water.
This is the reason I think non-natives will not really get it, because, a social critique of a society I am not a part of, and I am aware how flawed is in the first place, doesn't get me.
Comic book narration is messy. Art is both overdone and undercooked. Parallel narration is tiring. Tone of jokes doesn't resonate, events don't intrigue, drama doesn't grip and mentioned finale is weak attempt at mentioned "Evangelion" or perhaps even "Akira".
I'm not a smart reader who'll enjoy "Ulysses". I'm also not someone who'll read "Demon Slayer" or "One Piece" for 400 chapters with glee. But this manga somewhat insults me on both levels: pretending to be intellectually stimulating while throwing cheap gags and jokes, and trying to fix poor storyline with quirky events and "action", without being quirky nor having action events beyond some pointless gore and disrespect for series built around it, like "I am a HERO" for example.
If I could go back to a parallel universe, and prevent myself from reading this series, I would do it as many times I could.
But I can't, that weak fantasy and poor narration. And so is "DeDeDe".
A tiring, mostly boring story which when almost at the end decided to go 270 degrees on the spiral-axis, trying to be smart, and being just annoying and flat.
I don't believe it I am going to write this, but seriously, whatever author tried to do here, Madoka did better, and I hate Madoka with a passion.
TL;DR
"Hey and welcome to Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction, where everything's made up, and the storyline don't matter! Yup! The storyline here is like cancer caution warnings on the pack of smokes - no one cares, not even the smokes makers!"
Basically, go read "Solanin" from Inio, or if you like space aliens and gag comedy, just read "Urusei Yatsura".
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 12, 2024
Boy oh boy, do I like some campy romance? Yes I do!
Tomo is a girl! is light hearted, simple and comedic romance high school story.
Whole story and gag source is that titular girl is brutish, karate tomboy, and her love interest, Jun, a childhood neighbor, is also thick, sporty, karate bloke. And they know each other since childhood.
Supporting characters are Tomo's best friend, a machiavellian sociopath flat goth-loli-like Gundou, cute airhead, but actually cunning emotionally closed imported blondie bimbo Carol, her love interest and cousin (sweethomealabama.mp3) Kousuke, who is girlish, blonde weakling, and Tatsumi - a happy-go-lucky pushover to fill the gaps, and is hinted
...
viewers should ship him and Gundou.
Rest of characters are: two basic bitc... girls, some hoodlums, and carbon copy mothers of main cast, plus young, less feisty Heihachii as Tomo's father.
Show starts with Tomo confessing to Jun, and Jun, an average teenage boy, totally thinking a girl confessing to him is a declaration of mutual, ever male bond friendship. You know, the regular and normal interaction of normal teenagers around the world.
Later on hilarity ensues as Gundou plays with socially inadept Tomo, and she is so thick, she takes it as helping, because Tomo is a girl! but also: very bad at reading people.
Like in most high school rom coms, pacing and avoid progression to check all the tropes of the trope list is getting painful. Adding how quality drops between episodes 4 and 12, with a huge bump in some scenes, makes it harder to swallow.
There's beach, clothes shopping and clothes shopping for a total makeover, needles exposition and backstory flashbacks, lots of deus ex and out of character turns of events, just to push the story to redo the sins of filling the show with checklist items and fillers, and again.
If it were not 13 episode series, it would suffer a lot, but as a reasonably short series, few things can be looked over. It does drag a bit in the finally though.
The worst part is pointless drama at the finale.
It does not serve a purpose, there was no build up, and there is no reward.
Strongest part of the series is voice work of Rie Takahashi as Tomo.
Personally, her screaming is on par with Hina Kino as Honda Hanako from Asobi Asobase, and there were few scenes I kept on rewinding to just listen to that beautiful, husky yelling in character.
Other voice cast is good to proper. They overdid a bit Carol and her mother, I understand it was conscious decision to push the trope and exploit it, but it wasn't over the top, and not really parodic. Just bit too much and not in a fun way.
Weakest parts were music, very safe and sounding like it was taken from dozen other shows, and quality of animation.
Troughtough the series Jun goes from thin boy to lean or even bulky middle aged man within few scenes, and fashion choices of mostly polo shirts really aged him weirdly. It bothered me a lot.
And not only Jun, but in the finale episode, both him and Tomo looked more like 20-40 year olds in few scenes rather than teens.
It was uncanny and certainly, made the finale episode less rewarding.
Background art was good but few shots were overused, most likely due to budget cuts.
TL;DR:
Tomo is a girl! surely is light hearted and silly show, many probably know trough "rawr X3 uwu" voice over the manga panels meme. But in the end, it is flawed production. Problems and resolutions characters are experiencing makes this series a bit retro, and if not for gaming handheld and wireless ps controllers, one could tell me that action took place in late 80s or earliest 90s and I would not have a reason to not believe them.
It is enjoyable show to a degree, but like I said, you need to just be very ok with how unoriginal and tired the genre is overall.
Was this to be your first romcom show ever, I would rather advise to watch something else, but not sure what actually since too many shows are just pretty much same these days...
I enjoyed it, but it is 5+/10 show. It's not mediocre, so a bit stretched 6/10 because Tomo's voice is perfection (and they didn't turn her into brut klutz, just slightly thick-ish idiot). Still, it feels like a bit of a stretch of a rating.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 7, 2024
To be honest, watching just the 12 episodes of the original "Wonder Egg Priority" wraps the series enough.
"My Priority" feels like weird, over budgeted short saying "we know series was weird, psychological and psychedelic, but please, buy the merch and subscribe for more ". That's how I feel.
It doesn't close any plot lines beyond what was already said or hinted, it is mostly a recap, and as stated in first sentence - it feel a bit unnecessary.
Production value meets bar set by the series, all is good in the sound, art, acting...
It is just pointless story wise.
Watching this months after finishing the original 12 episodes
...
feels weird. Everything feels touched, turned and spoiled somehow.
Like prequel or sequel to already tired franchise, "My priority" made me feel as if watching the original series was a waste of time somehow. What was the point of living trough episodes, drama and so on... when it is wrapped like "I was sadge, but now am stronk!!".
I am just baffled - why was this made?
For that reason, and only that, it is 4... no, perhaps 3/10.
Now I understand why people were mad with this series, and why few others said to ONLY watch 12 episodes in the first place.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jan 7, 2024
A very forgettable story popular just because the prepubescent characters are doing things maybe late teens should be doing.
Unless this is some sort of untold narration aspect, that this is hell or limbo, and main male kid is cursed for eternity to live his 4 year old mind in 12 year old boy's body, being teased and laughed at by everyone.
Animation is not horrible, but source material character design demands at least 3 heavy drinks to stomach how this thing looks, and I don't drink.
Voice acting is adequate, music is safe, backgrounds are not the cheapest, op and ed songs aren't terrible.
It's just a weird
...
series. A safe corporate product to peep and watch children doing weird things. But it's not an deconstruction meta-concept like Girlfreind-X. It's just... boring?
Of course, I am way too old to understand this series, but that's even more why it amplifies all the oddities and quirks, irks and... I'm just inventing nonsensical phrases, because there's not much to be said about this series - you either like 12 year old children acting weird, or you are normal.
I'm normal, so this production feels off. It's same grade as Nagatoro - but while Nagatoro progresses and have some idea and story hidden under 7 tons of dung and trash, Takagi is just 10 hours of brown noise.
Basically, unless you are child or very young teen, you should feel bad watching and even worse, if you were to enjoy this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Dec 29, 2023
Flawed manga adaptation. A mess actually.
My initial score of 7 is too much.
Spoilers ahead.
I will try to emulate the chaos of the narration within this review for your pleasure. Strap in, and smell the soup!
Just finished this series two days ago, and I already forgot how it began - which is a bad sign. Good series have good and memorable start, and like in a proper thriller, the tensions or interest, should just rise. But in the case of Heavenly Delusion, screen writers and producers tried to put every interesting hook from the comic book in the series while forgetting the fishing lines and rods
...
in the process, or in other words, to make something coherent. Unless source material is same mess, which is possible in weekly published comics.
Show follows teen-looking girl who is actually young adult, and teen-looking boy who is a bit younger than what he looks like... It is vaguely hinted that girl is meant to bodyguard and because characters weren't all that well though off, roles quickly switch.
In the series, main pair is travelling trough post-apocaliptic Japan, but there are some sort of supernatural monsters few times, so uh... the protagonists will get spooked when confronted with a bear, when they can execute rapid whip-wielding thunder-chicken or water covered "handy" fish.
Main girl Kiruko holds a peculiar photon-gun with plot-important bird symbol. It have 3-5 shots per battery charge, and is a gimmick ex-machina.
Maru, the boy, can touch and kill those weird abomination monsters for unexplained reason, and is serious airhead.
Kiruko and Maru later on switch their roles. It is also revealed that Kiruko is actually his sisters' brother's brain inside hers body...
Interesting part of the series is parallel story about facility taking care of some weird, supernatural teen and younger kids who end up kissing and having sex, and producing offspring, because this is Japanese series, and there must be equation consisting of "children" and "sex" in one line. Before that Maru almost got lucky with child-manager of a hotel they were staying in, because "plot".
Anyway, Maru and Kiruko meets people, fight people, plot goes on. There's a lot of dumb bs and plot dead-ends.
Whole story tries this "Master and Margaret" thing, steals from "A boy and a dog", totally doesn't tries to take from "Darling in the Franxxx" and a dozen of other things. No, nope, not at all!
Series ends with an amazing, I mean, shakespearian and Tolkien-like idea of Kiruko finally finding his hero, Spike Spiegel,... I mean "Robin", tells him his story, and Robin decides "Eh, but you look like your sister, so whatever, I'll rape you for 3 days".
Than someone attacked the facility with the children of the corn, some escape, plot is happening, action as well. Maru decides he is big sadge for Kiruko abandoning him for 3 days, rescues him, Kiruko goes "well, lol, guess I was raped, let's travel some more!".
And this is it.
Good things about this series is being loyal to the art of the original comic book, good backgrounds, proper animation.
Odd things is, switching between Kiruko and Maru being 3D animated characters in few scenes, going FLCL in one episode, and generally speaking, being a mess.
Absolutely bad thing was putting 8-12fps of CGI in some scenes. Production IG is old, rich and well established studio, and they still do this corner cutting when they obviously did had the time and effort to render characters properly...? Eh??
What works in weekly or monthly published comic book, doesn't necessary work in animation.
Heavenly Delusion is well acted, properly animated, despite mentioned issues, series BUT I think they tried to chew a grand bite of story, instead of going slower and more in depth with what they done. Maybe if this was 20-36 episodes, it would work, but than again, would it work? I have a strong feeling that to really appreciate and correctly judge this series, I need to go back to the source material, and just for that, it is flawed adaptation. A messy series for those, who aren't interested in reading it after watching it.
Every part to create a great series was here, but the engineer constructing the "masterpiece" was drunk and arrogant, and did half-witted job.
For all of those reasons, my initial score of 7, drops to 5.
I don't regret watching it, but can't really recommend it either as this is a very bad adaptation in the first place, with very weird art and direction choices along the way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 29, 2023
29 billion year old lolis, the series. Also, HAHA, she screams and camera shakes while showing a building, what a funny comedy!!!1
This series is so bad and bland, but also boring it gave me migraine.
I tried it because there's a lot of right winged/cringe memes with it, and some of my online people share it constantly, so I was just curious what flat brains are enjoying so much because honestly - this series looks like something your dog leaves on the ground after eating moldy salsa from the trash bit, and I absolutely regret being curious. This is just another loli-big tits-screaming-fanservice-slapstick trope cart filled
...
with jokes which are as funny, as getting your leg amputated by speeding lorry.
Titular Jahy is second in command demon from hell, but off-brand Sailor Moon comes in, breaks some power stone and, watch out joke worth the series: hell broke lose.
Than Jahy and everyone else is sent to Earth (????) for some reason, is a loli, and transforms into her previous-bimbo-self to work as waitress.
I mean, if Tolkien were still alive, he could use some of the power writing like here to enhance his stories. Or Cameron should take some lessons from this amazing show to enhance his sub-par film making. - still better joke than average one from the series.
Strongest part is art and sound design, which both are very cheap, uninspired and crappy.
Worst part, apart from static noise for a plot, is characters. You get big booba airhead, angry 1000 years old loli, another one, smug ass-hat, another idiot, another eternal loli, and dunno, tatami mats in Jahy's flat seem very interesting. Also looking trough window at snow, and waiting for it to melt seems so interesting when compared to this series characters and their motivations.
If I were 13 or sheltered discord mod in my mid 20s enjoying anything "nihongo ramen kudasai", I'd probably like it same way I liked this kind of crap when I was younger. But I am not, and this series is waste of time.
Rarely series is so bad with story and characters that it brings perhaps 3/10 score to a solid -1, but since MAL have no negative score values, I selected the most appropriate rating of 1/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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