Back to pluvia33's Profile pluvia33's Profile

To put this out front, I just finished this series after mostly watching it week-to-week and it largely left me with a feeling of emptiness. The few reviews that I tend to write are pretty well planned out if nothing else, but this time around I'm going to just write this as I go to use it as a way to work through my feelings on what I just watched. So, yeah.... To that end, I'll still keep my usual category breakout format and get right into it:

-----Story - 3 out of 10-----
Magatsu Wahrheit is an anime based on a mobile game which takes place ... in magitech setting, fusing industrial age modern esthetics with classic sword and sorcery fantasy elements mixed in. The main plot centers on how a normal truck driver gets mixed up in a resistance organization while a bunch of political intrigue concerning a magical disease and experimentation goes on in the background. To its credit, I felt that the story structure of the series went really well at first! They drop you into an interesting situation without spoon feeding you a bunch of backstory. Things for the most part naturally come to light and seem pretty interesting. But then, the series just kind of loses focus. They're setting up a bunch of "stuff" and I'm watching wondering if any of it is going to actually go anywhere. There are a few sparse bright spots, like a subplot that takes place with a small village in the forest that I thought was genuinely interesting and touching. But it mostly just meanders along until I absolutely lose all interest in the story. And then finally, they committed the dreadful sin of a grand exposition dump with took up the entire first half of episode 10, betraying the previous more natural storytelling structure. It was so frustratingly bad that I would have been pulling at my hair if it wasn't for the fact that I shave my head. Then the ending came.... Now, I don't really mind a non-conclusive ending, but the final "and the story continues...." crap that they pulled at the end of this left me wondering what the point was in all of this?? I mean, I assume the point was to advertise the mobile game, but still. Could they not have done better? It felt like this was originally supposed to be a 24 episode series, but it wasn't doing all that well so they decided to make it half as long. I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe this story will appeal to an audience that is more into political intrigue than I am, but man, I just thought the story was an utter mess.

-----Art - 4 out of 10-----
If I had to describe the art and animation of this series in one word, it'd be "inconsistent". Yes, having some inconsistencies in the production for a weekly TV anime is to be expected, especially when also dealing with COVID-19 leading up to and during its production. But this is some pretty bad stuff. First thing is the hilariously bad opening credits "animation". The first few episodes had a temp-opening which was little more than a Windows 95 screensaver with some text over it. Then, they eventually got a "finished" OP together which was barely better, mostly consisting of the series' central artifact floating around with silhouette action animation mostly consisting of scenes from the show itself. Oh, and then the ending credits didn't even bother with trying to do anything as it was just text scroll on a black screen. Anyway, so what about the look of the series proper? Well, there were some actual good points to this as the animation of the big action sequence in the first episode looked pretty cool! And the look of the series was unique and interesting enough overall; not your typical fantasy look for the most part so it can act as a bit of a breath of fresh air. But then, some of the character designs just look weird and there is a plethora of off-model faces that began to make me laugh constantly at one point. Again, I don't know how fair this criticism is when this kind of thing isn't particularly rare in anime, plus dealing with COVID could have been a factor, but man this largely sucked.

-----Sound - 6 out of 10-----
The highest score I'm giving goes to Sound! And it's just an "it's alright" 6-score in the end. I felt that a good amount of the music was really nice. I was especially a fan of this one particular recurring little ditty that was in damn near every episode. And the voice acting overall wasn't bad, but wasn't particularly memorable either. Honestly, this might have gotten a better score if there was more music, but they did re-use a LOT of stuff. But hey, overall, not bad.

-----Characters - 5 out of 10-----
One of my biggest personal things in fiction is that I can still enjoy a series with a weak story as long as I have some nice characters to latch onto. Unfortunately, this is largely a plot-focused story so there is only so much that good characters can do. And sadly, when it comes to the characters in Magatsu Wahrheit, as a whole they were mediocre at best. I did find our lead Innumael to be enjoyable/interesting for the most part, although he did legitimately get annoying at times. Spunky little Irma was probably my second favorite character in the series, but she wasn't in it enough to make much of an impact. Aside from that, the characters didn't do much for me. I thought the series especially had a major villain problem. One of the best antagonists was a psychotics military commander, but he was pretty much just generic pure evil dude with little real motivation and once he was out of the picture there wasn't much to fill the void since all of the other bad stuff was being worked "from the shadows" or whatnot.

-----Enjoyment - 4 out of 10-----
So how was my personal enjoyment of this series? Well, that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out. I ended up giving this series a personal score of a "4", something that I don't do very often with my broad tastes and largely forgiving critiques of entertainment. But with how empty and pointless the whole experience of watching this felt, it definitely fit the "Bad" label that a "4" holds in the "Your Score" dropdown on MAL. While I was enjoying myself and interested in the series for the first few episodes, I then began to enjoy it less and less until it became a legitimate chore to sit through around the 8th episode. But at that point, I was in it for the long haul and just watching it once a week wasn't PURE torture or anything. But man, in the end I just couldn't grasp what the point of this all was. Innumael kind of seemed to have grown throughout the series, but also mostly felt the same. The main promo image used on Funimation's page for this series shows a 2-halves look at Innumael and Leocadio, one half of them as they look at the beginning of the series and the other showing more badass versions of them sometime in the future. But in the scope of the anime, these fully badass versions are never seen, with the only part that's truly realized being the cut across Leo's face. Again, it feels like this was originally meant to be a 24 episode series that got cut short, or you're just expected to move from this to the mobile game. Who knows. But whatever the reasoning is, I felt fully unsatisfied with this series in every way and it hurts all the more because of its earlier potential.

-----Overall - 5 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
In the end, I'm going to go ahead and bump my overall review score for this series up one point from my personal enjoyment score. I admit that a major reason for that is me being influenced by the fact that prior to me writing this review, the lowest review score given was a "6" and the literal majority of reviews posted are 9s or better. I MUST be missing something, right? Did I just "not get" this series? Again, I'm generally rather kind with my critique of anime as I have pretty broad tastes. Usually, if I don't like something that others do, I can recognize it largely as a matter of personal taste. And granted, the average score for this series is not great (6.60 at the time of writing), so maybe it's mostly just people who enjoyed the series that are inspired enough to review it, while those who didn't like it simply didn't care enough to write a review? I don't know. I guess there might be something here to enjoy if magitech and political intrigue are things you're REALLY into. But for me, that just wasn't enough to counteract the inconsistent production, incomplete and uninteresting story, and overall meh characters. And with that, I guess this came out just about as extensive as most of my other reviews. Well, hope this was somehow helpful for someone to read! It was at least a nice way for me to gather my thoughts on this series.

[An Audiobook Review]

I am a rather slow reader. Although I’ve never been tested, I believe that I have been living with a mild case of dyslexia all my life. Because of this, it usually takes me just as long to read something as it would take for someone to say the words out loud, or even longer. Because of this, I found that audiobooks are a great way for me to get more “reading” of proper novels done. If it takes this long for me to read anyway, why not just have someone read to me?! So, when the English publisher Vertical decided to not ... only translate the original light novels for one my favorite anime franchises of all time, but also release audiobook versions of some of the books, it got me very interested.

Since it appears that no one else on MAL has specifically reviewed the audiobooks for this series, I figured I’d take up the task of being the first. Unfortunately, Vertical has not yet fully committed to the audiobook releases of this series. While they will be releasing their 20th English book in traditional reading formats by the end of the year (concluding the “Final Season” of the series), they have only released 5 of those books in audio form with no announcements for further releases at this time. And weirdly enough, they first released the audiobook for Kizumonogatari, the “first” book from the First Season, kind of. Then they released Nekomonogatari (White), the first book of Second Season. And most recently, they released the three parts of Bakemonogatari to get them to the half-way point in the First Season releases. So that is what my review is for: The first 4 books (or 3 books by the original Japanese release since Bakemonogatari was originally split into just 2 parts) of the First Season, the first 59 chapters. Are we confused yet? Well, let’s just get into my category breakouts:

-----Story - 9 out of 10-----
For those who may not be familiar with the Monogatari Series (and works from the mind of NISIOISIN in general), they are pretty much the light novel/anime equivalent of the “mumblecore” subgenre of films. While there is a plot going on in the series, about 90% of the story is made up of characters just chatting with each other about random things. And even when the series does cover actual plot points, the true meat of what’s going on has much more to do with the feelings and motivations of the characters. The supernatural elements that are used as a springboard for most of the conflict mostly amount to window-dressing. So yes, on the surface the Monogatari Series is about our lead character and narrator Koyomi Araragi as he encounters and deals with various supernatural creatures, usually in the form of or connected to various cute girls/women. But in reality, it’s mostly just about people BS’ing with each other and working through their feelings and trauma. If that doesn’t sound very appealing to you, then you may want to stay very far away for this series. However, if that sounds like something you can get into, then man are you in for a treat! This is some of the most fun BS you can ever listen to!

-----Characters - 10 out of 10-----
The next category breakout in my reviews for manga/light novels is usually the Art, but for the purposes of this review I decided to roll in the Audio performances into that category. Because of that, I felt it was important to talk about the Characters before discussing the performers who voiced them in the audiobooks. And in case the score here didn’t already tip you off, I absolutely love the characters in this series! Senjougahara and Araragi in particularly are two of my most favorite characters of all time, and a few of the others could easily rank in a Top 100 List of characters if I decided to make one. All of the characters feel like real people as they talk about various random things and they have great chemistry with each other. Well, mainly there is great chemistry between Araragi and all of the other characters. The stories in these first few books are pretty much exclusively told from Araragi’s point of view as the narrator and characters rarely interact with anyone other than him while “on screen”.

Since Koyomi Araragi is the main character and first-person narrator, I should definitely go into more detail about him as a character. In some ways, he is a bit of a typical anime protagonist “nice guy” who just wants to help people. He gets thrust into the world of supernatural beings because he decides to help Kiss-Shot (aka Shinobu), a beautiful vampire woman who was dying in a pool of her own blood. But what makes Araragi different from and more fun/interesting than the average anime protagonist is that we get to hear a LOT of his thoughts and they’re written in such a fun way that it’s hard to not just smile constantly while he does things like going on for multiple minutes describing the view of a girl’s panties when a gust of wind blows up her skirt. So yes, some of the talk in this series is a bit on the perverted side. In a way, the Monogatari Series can be seen as a bit of a harem genre deconstruction with all of the different girls that Araragi interacts with. Although, the biggest subversion of that genre is that Araragi ends up entering an official romantic relationship rather early on in the series.

All in all, I think the characters in this series is just wonderful. Araragi’s quips and over-the-top reactions. Senjougahara’s “acid tongue” and wonderfully cool “tsundere” demeanor. Hanekawa’s public face of the perfect class president and kind advisor to cover up her pain. Kiss-Shot’s playful yet deadly existence as a legendary vampire. Meme Oshino’s sly, almost-slimy know-it-all nature and pseudo-assholery. Hachikuji’s hyperactive childishness as one of Araragi’s most fun conversation partners when it comes to absolutely random BS. Kanbaru’s open perverted nature in her love for both Araragi and Senjougahara. And Nadeko’s weird awkward shyness but with something a little more underneath the surface.... Every character is just a load of fun to follow and I can just listen to them talk about random crap for hours. Oh yeah, that’s exactly what these audiobooks are! In a way, the Monogatari Series audiobooks are kind of like listening to people on a podcast with very little focus to what is actually talked about. This definitely isn’t for everyone, but if it sounds interesting to you, then definitely give it a try!

-----Art/Audio - 9 out of 10-----
Since the category breakouts for these reviews are built with manga and light novels in mind, and since art tends to be the least impactful of these categories when it comes to light novels (and especially when it comes to audiobook versions of light novels), I figured I’d talk about the audio work of these audiobooks here.... But first, to get it out of the way, VOFAN’s cover art for the Monogatari Series is rather nice and it is pretty cool that Vertical commissioned new unique artwork for the covers of their releases as well.

Now, on to the more substantial (and tacked-on) part of this section! Also, this is the main part of this review that will be very different compared to a review of the traditional book releases of the series. Since the Monogatari Series is all about conversations between characters, there were four different voice actors/readers cast (two male and two female) to take on the different roles in the audiobooks. They are all experienced English-dub anime voice actors with at least 10 major roles under each of them and audio production was done by Bang Zoom! Studios. For those interested, here is the cast and the roles they play:

Eric Kimerer:
-Koyomi Araragi

Cristina Vee:
-Kiss-Shot/Shinobu
-Tsubasa Hanekawa
-Suruga Kanbaru

Erica Mendez:
-Hitagi Senjougahara
-Mayoi Hachikuji
-Sengoku Nadeko

Keith Silverstein:
-Meme Oshino
-“And Others”

Now, I’m a pretty adamant sub-only anime fan, so I was honestly a little weary of this series being “voice acted” in English. However, as I had previously enjoyed other audiobooks, I wanted to give this a shot. And in the end I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the performances. Since I haven’t watched any of the English dubs that these actors performed in, I had no frame of reference for their previous works. But overall, they all did great with their main roles. The voice acting for Araragi and Senjougahara in particular were pretty much perfect in my opinion, which I was not at all expecting. The thought of Senjougahara especially worried me as she is one of my favorite characters ever and she has a very particular way of talking in the anime. But Erica Mendez did an absolutely wonderful job with her. I also didn’t expect the essence of Oshino’s Japanese voice to translate over as well as it did in the English audiobooks. Kiss-Shot was also very well done. Hachikuji, however, was probably the roughest for me to get into out of the main cast. While not absolutely horrible, I felt like Erica tried a little too hard to emulate the whole “Japanese girl voice” thing which is one of my least favorite things in English dubs of anime. But Hachikuji as a character was so much fun that I was able to get used to the voice after a bit. The remaining main characters of Hanekawa, Kanbaru, and Nadeko were mostly just passable and inoffensive performances, though they all have a few shining moments as well. For me, just being “inoffensive” was about how high my expectations were going in on the voice acting overall, so I was happy to have those expectations exceeded.

With what I said so far from the above, I feel that this category could have still warranted a full-10 grade. However, I felt that there were two major missteps in the voice acting that were just so distracting/disappointing that I ended up having to ding this category by a point. Both of these come from the “And Others” roles by Keith Silverstein. He did the reading for all of the male characters other than Araragi. Again, I think he did great as Oshino, but the rest of his readings were a bit of a mixed bag. The most significant of the two missteps that I want to talk about was the character of Episode in Kizumonogatari. One of the three vampire hunters that Araragi confronts on behalf of Kiss-Shot, Episode is a vampire himself and has the body of a high-school-aged pretty boy (though his actual age is much different). So, what kind of voice does he have in the audiobooks?? The DEEPEST possible voice imaginable! Really, I don’t understand what they were thinking here. I know that Eric Kimerer had to put in a lot of work being Araragi’s voice since he’s the main narrator, but could he have not done the voice of Episode instead of Keith Silverstein? That voice was just so distracting. My other significant issue in Keith’s “And Others” roles is a little more nitpicky and personal. It’s with the voice of Daddy Senjougahara in Bakemonogatari Part 3. In the anime, the talk Araragi had with Senjougahara’s dad is one of my favorite moments in the series (that episode in general is one of my favorite episodes of anime ever). And I just really felt like the voice Keith used for Daddy Senjougahara didn’t really fit. He seems like he’d have a calm and cool kind of voice, subdued yet a little intimidating. But in the audiobook he sounded way more chipper than I felt he should, sounding a lot like a radio DJ. It was kind of jarring and took away from one of my favorite scenes in the series.

And that’s pretty much it. Overall, aside from a couple of missteps, I felt that the audio production was phenomenal. Hopefully they don’t have too many missteps in Nekomonogatari (White) and any other books that they might release as audiobooks in the future.

-----Enjoyment - 10 out of 10-----
Again, the Monogatari Series is a personal all-time favorite of mine. I’ve absolutely loved every piece of anime from the series that has blessed my life. I can’t get enough of the silly and stylish ramblings of this lovable cast of characters and their weird little stories with a touch of supernatural flair. And not only did I love the audiobooks just as much as the anime, but they’ve actually caused my love for the overall series to go up a few notches, going from my #5 favorite series of all time to my #3! That might not seem like much to some people, but I’ve been seriously into anime for about two decades now and my personal Top 10 when it comes to anime/manga series hasn’t had any real movement in the last 9 years until now. These audiobooks are simply a blast to listen to and should be a must for any Monogatari fan, but can also be a great way to introduce someone to the series, especially if you’re not into Shaft’s animation style or happen to be a dub-only anime fan.

-----Overall - 10 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
In the end, I’ve decided to go ahead and give the Kizumonogatari and Bakemonogatari English audiobooks a full 10 out of 10 overall score. Now, this does come with some very clear caveats. If you prefer your stories to be plot-heavy and have very little interest in characters just talking with each other a lot of the time, then you will likely not enjoy listening to these. I will say that Kizumonogatari is much more plot-focused than Bakemonogatari, but that’s just when you compare the two. And as I also mentioned, there is some perverted subject matter talked about at times which won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I’ll make the comparison again to podcasts: If you enjoy listening to people just talk about whatever and having fun doing it, then I think these audiobooks will be right up your alley. And with that in mind, I’ll close with a bit of a lame call to action. If you will be so kind, PLEASE buy these audiobooks! They’re all on Audible, so if you happen to subscribe there consider throwing a Credit at Kizumonogatari to give it a listen and if you like what you hear, pick up the rest. If these audiobooks sell well enough, maybe they’ll continue to release them! Thanks for hearing me out and have a wonderful day! ^_^

About Death is a Korean comic which centers on the theme of people reflecting on their lives after their death or a near-death experience. It’s a relatively short and rather episodic series with most chapters being standalone stories in which God talks to one or more people who are experiencing death in some way. As with most anthology-style stories, this can be a bit of a mixed bag of sorts. Actually, being a “mixed bag” will be something of a running theme in this review. While About Death seems to be held in quite high regard by many people, I didn’t end up loving this ... series.

Without further delay, I’ll go ahead and get into my category breakouts:

-----Story - 6 out of 10-----
Nearly all of the chapters in this series involve God talking to people about death and the lives they lived before their death (or near-death experience). A few of the chapters lead into one another or get a call-back in a later chapter, but most stories stand on their own. I found a few of the stories to be genuinely touching, thought-provoking, and/or impactful; two of my favorite chapters were one involving a car accident and the one about mountain climbers. However, most of the stories just fell flat and began to feel very repetitive despite involving different people and ways of death. Some of the storytelling seems pretty cleaver, but much of that is dragged down by a feeling of pretension. Like the author KNOWS he is just being SO cleaver with some of his tricks. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

In the end, most of the stories just come off as “okay” at best and some are fully eye-roll-inducing (or even irritating), soiling the few high points. One chapter in particular involves a certain controversial subject which nearly pissed me off, but I’d like to assume that the slant given to this particular subject can be caulked up to cultural differences. I’d also like to touch on the fact that the translation can be an issue. The series is available for free on LINE Webtoon which is a Korean platform and the English version is just not all that great. I’m assuming that it was done in house by people whom have English as a second language. I don’t know if it would have been more enjoyable with a better translation, but as it stands, the English version is very distracting.

-----Art - 6 out of 10-----
The art in About Death is a total mixed bag and not really anything special. Sometimes the art is nice and clean with an interesting style, but at other times it’s a complete mess. The colored pages in particular don’t look all that great to me. Most of it is just muddied and I would have preferred it all be in black and white.

-----Characters - 6 out of 10-----
God is the only character in the series which is in nearly every chapter. He is a bit of a hipster-looking guy and I found him to be reminiscent of cool enigmatic adult male anime/manga characters like Ginko from Mushishi and Oshino from the Monogatari Series. For the most part, he is a good character who serves the purpose of the story well. But as the series goes on, he begins to feel more and more flat and his philosophical dialog isn’t helped by the spotty translation. Then all of the other characters, again, are a bit of a mixed bag. I found some of them to be interesting, relatable, and/or sympathetic, while others were just “there” and I couldn’t care less about their story or if they are actually dead or just haven’t a near-death experience. There was also one particular character who was somehow more of a pretentious hipster than God and the fact that him and God made this total bro-connection just made me laugh. I honestly suspect that guy to have been the author’s self-insert character.

-----Enjoyment - 6 out of 10-----
Again, the chapters in this series were very hit-or-miss with me. While some of them made me genuinely emotional, there were sadly far more misses than hits. I think much of the reason that I didn’t connect with the series more is that I might be a bit too experienced in death myself. I’ve had two major deaths take place in my life which shook my perspective on the subject. I’ve dealt with suicide attempts of a loved one. I’m in my mid-30s and have constant thoughts about my life, regrets, and inevitable oblivion. Maybe I would have connected with it more if About Death had a better delivery, better translation, etc. Maybe if I had different kinds of experiences with death I could have connected with it more? I don’t know. My enjoyment (or lack-there-of) for this series is probably far more personal than most other entertainment I’ve consumed, and I suppose that at least is something to be commended. It did give me some things to think about, even if those thoughts were largely, “Why did I not enjoy this very much?”

-----Overall - 6 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
Did I give all of the categories in this review 6s on purpose? Am I trying to say that the “God” character might actually be the devil?! No, I just really think that everything about this series is just “fair” in the end. While it seems to be reaching for great and profound heights, it just didn’t make the grade, at least not from my perspective. However, the enjoyment of art and entertainment is almost wholly subjective and this is likely one of the biggest examples of that fact for me. While I found About Death to be a largely pretentious mixed bag of content in dire need of a better translation, others may find it to be truly profound and a creative fresh look at the subjects of death, regret, and life. And hey, it’s online for free and only 27 chapters long, so if it sounds interesting you should give it a shot for yourself!

After School Dice Club (Houkago Saikoro Club) is a slice of life “cute girls + activity” series mainly centering around three high school girls playing modern board games together. As someone who is just as into tabletop gaming as I am anime and manga, this series feels like something that is tailor made for my tastes. Under normal circumstances, I rarely score things before I finish them, and especially not when I’ve consumed less than 15% of what has been released. However, this series strikes a very specific chord with me so I wanted to review it anyway. So be aware that this review is ... currently only based on the first 2 volumes (18 chapters) which have English fan translations right now, out of the 14+ volumes worth of content that is out in Japan.

With that in mind, let’s get into the category breakouts:

-----Story - 8 out of 10-----
Despite it not having the “Slice of Life” genre tag on MAL at the time of me writing this review, After School Dice Club definitely has a slice of life story structure. We follow the daily activities of three girls and a few recurring side characters as they go to school and play a variety of modern board games. There aren’t any major plot lines and many of the chapters almost play out like tutorials on how to play different board games. That said, things flow pretty nicely with fun little bits of banter and character development sprinkled into each game session to keep things interesting. I never find myself getting bored as I read this series, but I could imagine those who aren’t into board games might not feel the same way.

-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
I find the art style of the series to be very clean and attractive. The characters are all expressive and it’s always easy to tell them apart from each other. The artist also does a good job of displaying each board game in ways that make sense and reproduces the real board games used very well so that they’re easily recognizable for board game fans even if they’re not used to seeing the titles in Japanese.

-----Characters - 9 out of 10-----
Characters are usually the backbone of a slice of life series, especially when comedy isn’t a major focus. I think the characters in this series are great. The core cast of three girls make for a great dynamic between the outgoing Aya, the shy Miki, and the proper Midori. They always play off of each other well and it’s nice to see them become closer friends as the series progresses. The supporting cast also works well, such as the macho ex-military game store owner, the guys that have crushes on the girls, and Aya’s older sister and her yankee-like friend.

-----Enjoyment - 9 out of 10-----
Honestly, this is probably an extremely niche series. It might be too “moe” for board game fans who aren’t into this kind of anime/manga, but may not be moe enough and focus too much on board games to appeal to “cute girls doing cute things” slice of life fans who aren’t into tabletop gaming. However, if you happen to be someone who is into both modern board games and slice of life content like this, then there is a lot to love about this series. I find it to be absolutely delightful and can’t wait for each new chapter to get translated. It puts a big smile on my face and I’m growing very attached to the characters. It’s even introducing me to some new board games that I want to check out now!

-----Overall - 9 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
In the end, I think After School Dice Club is a very solid entry in the “cute girls + activity” slice of life genre with a very unique “activity” focus. The creator has an obvious passion for board games which is explicitly evident in the bonus chapter at the end of volume 2 in which he talks directly to the reader about the hobby and even gives a Top 5 List of games he’s been playing recently. In a way, this series can be seen as a board game YouTube channel in anime/manga form and I think it all just works splendidly. I would buy a US release of this in a heartbeat, but will go ahead and pick up the original Japanese volumes if an English version doesn’t get announced soon. It definitely isn’t going to be for everyone, but if this sounds at all interesting or even if you’re just curious about modern board games, then you should give this a shot!

Ouran High School Host Club was one of the most iconic shoujo series of the 2000s with cosplayers at every anime con and a huge following online at the time. For those not familiar, it is a mostly light-hearted reverse harem comedy series centered around Haruhi, a girl from a relatively poor household attending a prestigious school for rich kids as a scholarship student. Due to an unfortunate accident and the fact that the lazy way she dresses caused her to be mistaken for a boy, she ends up getting recruited to be part of the high school’s “Host Club” in order to work off ... a debt. She must then act as a male to entertain the (mostly) female patrons of the Host Club while also dealing with the various antics of the other Host Club members.

I was originally exposed to this series around when the US English releases where first coming out and read the first 6 or so volumes around that time. I continued to collect the series, but fell behind in reading the books as I got them. Now I’ve just recently started over and read the entire 18 volumes series from beginning to end. While it did have some genuinely amusing moments and even some touching moments with fun characters, it sadly felt like a bit of a slog to get through it all. I am glad that I read the series, but I don’t imagine myself ever having the desire to read it again.

Anyway, let’s get into the category breakouts:

-----Story - 6 out of 10-----
The story was easily the biggest sticking point for me. As mentioned above, the 18 volumes were a bit of a slog to get through. For something that’s largely light comedy content, the series is much more text-heavy than it probably needed to be and many of the storylines felt a bit empty. While the overall story has its interesting bits, I didn’t feel very invested in it until the romance aspect took more of a central focus in the last 5 or so volumes. Also, a major personal issue that I had with the series was how it treated time. Early on in my manga-reading life, one of my favorite things about the series Love Hina was its progression of time throughout the series; characters aged over the years and it actually let time pass at a rate which seemed to line up at many moments with the actual real-world time when the manga was being published! However, in Ouran an artificial passage of time was used for a lot of the series similar to US cartoon and comic series like Peanuts and The Simpsons. At times the text would literally say things like, “A new school year has started, but please ignore the fact that the characters are still in the same grade.” That just really bothered me and took me out of the story. They did eventually pass on to a real new school year, but in a way that almost made the early parts worse. Like, why couldn’t you have just done this early?! Other than that, there were a number of genuinely funny and touching moments, although it did feel at times that the series was nearly twice as long as it needed to be.

-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
There was very little to complain about in the art department. The character designs were largely distinctive and fun to look at. A lot of the clothing design was particularly interesting. While there were some occasional gaffs and some awkwardly re-used panels for flashbacks from time to time, the art overall was very good shoujo material.

-----Characters - 8 out of 10-----
With a core cast of seven characters who you see over and over for 18 volumes, they need to be enjoyable. For the most part, the cast is successful in this. The boys of the Host Club are all largely presented as one-dimensional archetypes, but that was kind of the point. They’re essentially all parodies of different tropes as they play their roles in the Host Club to entertain the girls, but they also have a few nice layers to discover underneath as they interact with Haruhi and each other. Haruhi herself is a rather nice character. While she plays as a bit of a typical “I understand who you all are deep down and therefore you fall in love with me” kind of shoujo heroine, this is counterbalanced by her other personality quarks such as chronic apathy about most things, severe bluntness, and being totally oblivious about some key points (usually romance related). Most of the side characters in the series are also interesting.

-----Enjoyment - 7 out of 10-----
Again, while it did feel like more work to read through this than I would have liked, I did generally enjoy myself and don’t regret reading it. The series had some amusing comedy bits, the characters were fun, and there were some touching moments and interesting character building. Unfortunately the series’ length and bloated nature did hurt how enjoyable this could have been for me and it just barely skates by with a 7 here. I won’t ever care to re-read the series and I only have the slightest interest in watching the anime adaptation at this point. If it wasn’t for the fact that I already own the anime on DVD, I probably wouldn’t bother at all. But depending on your tastes and reading style, you may like this more than me.

-----Overall - 7 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
So overall, I can’t give this series higher than a 7. I’ve said it many times, but it drags a lot for what is mostly a simple comedy series about reverse harem trope parody and gender-bending antics. While it does have a larger story under the surface, it doesn’t get enough of a spotlight through most of the series to keep you invested while reading. The chapters start to feel like long drawn-out episodic gag-comedy segments which can be rather hit-and-miss and provide only the slightest influence to the overall plot. I feel like the series’ biggest failing is not committing enough to what it wanted to be: Did it mainly want to be a silly gag comedy or a somewhat-serious romance story? It felt jarring as it tried to do both equally. But that’s not to say there aren’t things to like here as well. If the comedy really connects with you, then you might enjoy it for the long haul. If you’re a faster reader, the text-heavy nature may not be that much of an issue for you and not feel like as much of a slog. And of course, if you get into the characters and design of the series, then it could even potentially be a favorite of yours. If what I’ve said interests you, then I’d recommend at least checking out the first two volumes to see if it’s your kind of thing. But if some of the issues I’ve brought up might bother you, then I would not consider the series to be essential reading at this point, even if you’re a big shoujo manga fan.

Let me get this out of the way: I absolutely adore this movie and think it is one of the most underrated and underexposed anime films out there. Welcome to the Space Show (Uchuu Show e Youkoso) is a delightful science fiction story about a group of children taking a journey into space with an alien. It is whimsical, beautiful, and a feast for the eyes and soul for anyone who loves light-hearted sci-fi stories and imagery. However, this is just my own feelings on the film and with the relatively lukewarm reception it received, I seem to be in the minority here.

So with that ... in mind, let’s get right into my category breakouts as I try to express my love for this movie while also explaining some of the pitfalls that might prevent others from enjoying it:

-----Story - 8 out of 10-----
Starting things off, the story of Welcome to the Space Show seems to be the biggest sticking point when it comes to how much someone might enjoy this film. The only professional review for the movie on Anime News Network stated the story as the biggest negative and summarized the negative points as, “Plot is a mess - it tries to be several different stories in succession and ends up with none of them making an impact on the audience.” While I can understand where this point is coming from in hindsight, I never felt that the plot was a mess at all as I watched it. I think the reason for this is that I felt there was only one main plotline: Five kids go into space with an alien and need to get back to Earth before their parents come to pick them up from summer camp. That is it. The movie is about the journey that the children go on. There are a number of B-plots going on at the same time and most of them are undeniably underdeveloped, but I never really cared. They were just things that were going on and I always felt invested in what was going on with the children first and foremost. In a way, I saw a lot of the main story as having more of a slice-of-life structure to it, even though MAL doesn’t have the Slice of Life tag attached to the movie. You watch the kids experience life in space; going shopping at a huge space port, getting jobs there when they need money, and visiting the home of their alien friend. In the meantime, things just happen around the kids, many of which aren’t fully explained, just to propel the journey forward and cause some conflict. If that structure of storytelling doesn’t sound appealing to you, then this could be a vastly less enjoyable film from your perspective.

-----Art - 10 out of 10-----
And this is what most people consider to be Welcome to the Space Show’s biggest strength. The art is just absolutely amazing and it’s a bit hard for me to believe that this originally came out in Japan 9 years ago! While the visual production values all around are absolutely great both on Earth and in space, the sci-fi imagery in particular is wonderful to behold. The initial space port has a vast array of alien creature designs and space ships, structures, and technology. And while it’s a comparatively minor aspect of the visuals, the character designs for the main human cast (the five children) are also very pleasant, distinctive, and expressive. Funny enough, the character designs will look familiar to people who have seen the similarly named anime Welcome to the NHK, as the same guy did the designs for both. Really, I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the visuals in Welcome to the Space Show and if you don’t like them, it would really just be a matter of taste.

-----Sound - 9 out of 10-----
A while back, I remember hearing a movie composer say something along the lines of, “If you notice my score, then I failed at my job.” In that respect, the music score for Welcome to the Space Show was just about perfect. I remember specifically keeping an ear out for the music at times, but otherwise the score perfectly blended with what was going on in the visuals, seamlessly becoming part of the larger production. And while I can see some people not liking them, I also found the English-lyric songs to be haunting and beautiful, fitting the strange space setting perfectly. The general sound design also left me with no complaints. When it comes to the voice acting (Japanese version), I felt that all of the characters were well acted. As the main cast is a bunch of kids, your tolerance for “child” voices could also affect your enjoyment of the movie, but I personally thought all of the performances worked very well.

-----Characters - 9 out of 10-----
Overall, I loved the characters in Welcome to the Space Show. The five kids all felt like they had their own distinct personalities and their own hopes and dreams which motivated them during the journey. They essentially all get a miniature coming-of-age arc during the movie’s runtime which felt very satisfying by the end. Our main alien friend was also a lot of fun and felt very human in his own way. The trip to his home planet felt especially down-to-earth (yes, I recognize the irony of these statements). Many of the side-characters are also great. Ink is probably the most adorable alien I’ve ever seen in a story and her dad was also amusing when he was working with Kouji. I’d say that the only low point in the character department would be the antagonists. While the “villains” initiated a great climax and some awesome action sequences throughout the story, their motives were really confusing and not fleshed out all that well. This goes back to some issues that others may have with the story, so that issue can be compounded if you’re a fan of villains in stories. But again, if you primarily see this as a journey for the kids and see everything as stuff that’s “just happening” without thinking about it too much, then it all works out.

-----Enjoyment - 10 out of 10-----
Yes, I absolutely loved this movie! While I’m watching many anime movies at the moment, trying to catch up with a lot of stuff that I’ve missed over the years, Welcome to the Space Show is currently my second favorite standalone anime movie. It was simply a delight to follow the overall-simple story of these five kids traveling through space. I got deeply invested in their adventure and the emotions, positive and negative, which they experienced. I had tears in my eyes a number of times and had a smile on my face for nearly every other bit of the 2 hour and 16 minute runtime. And it DID NOT feel that long. I almost didn’t want it to end. I ordered a Blu-ray copy of the movie that night and will happily watch it again when that comes in the mail despite having many, many other things in the queue to watch.

-----Overall - 9 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
So in the end, I can say that this is not an “objectively perfect” anime film. If you are looking for a fully engaging story which fully fleshes out all of its plotlines and has everything “make sense”, then you may not enjoy this. And it might be a bit far on the “family movie” side of things for some people, although it does have some bite to it. The visuals could also get a little goofy for some peoples’ tastes. But if a fun and grand almost-slice-of-life style adventure story following kids in a wonderful and diverse sci-fi space setting sounds interesting to you, then definitely give this film a watch. It truly has not gotten the love and exposure that I feel it really deserves.

I’m a big fan of Makoto Shinkai’s work. When I first saw Voices of a Distant Star in the early 2000s, I was amazed by how beautiful and touching it was, especially when considering that Shinkai initially did everything other than the music and female voice acting himself. The Place Promised and 5 Centimeters then showed growth for Shinkai as a director and displayed what he could do with a higher budget and more fleshed out staff. Fast-forward about a decade and I was blown away by Your Name when I saw it during its US theater run and it immediately became my #1 favorite ... standalone anime movie. However, there were two big holes in my consumption of Shinkai’s work which I recently finally filled. The Garden of Words was a simple yet wonderful addition to Shinkai’s filmography, becoming my second favorite of his work. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about my feelings towards Children Who Chase Lost Voices.

Before I watched Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo) I had pretty low expectations, but also had hope that it’d at least be a fun and pretty fantasy story. I’d heard many people describe this as being Shinkai’s attempt to create a Ghibli/Miyazaki-style movie and sadly that may have put an unfair bias in my head by the time I viewed it, especially since I’m kind of “over” my old love for Miyazaki’s work. But I did my best to go in with as open of a mind as I could and this movie still came out as my least favorite of Shinkai’s major works. Maybe even my least favorite of ALL of his works. I mean, at least his animated commercials are over quickly.

But before I go too far here, let’s get into my category breakouts:

-----Story - 4 out of 10-----
What is there to say about the story? Well, I was rather bored throughout most of it. The setting is modern Japan maybe around the 1980s? There is also a fantasy world that is under the surface. A girl meets a boy from that world after encountering a fantastical beast and falls in love pretty quick. This eventually triggers a journey for her within the fantasy world below with her substitute teacher at her side. They meet some people and bad creatures along the way to reach a particular goal dealing with bringing the dead back to life. And that’s mostly it. It’s a rather basic story that is stretched out over a nearly 2-hour runtime and I could really feel it. The pacing of the story was mostly decent for what it was, but it didn’t have much momentum or feel like there was much meaning or feeling behind what was going on. Unlike Shinkai’s other work, I didn’t feel any personal weight behind the relationships between the characters or their feelings overall which is really odd. The theming and connection between scenes just felt off during the entire movie. There was also some integration with real-world history (such as Hitler) which felt very awkward. By the end I just didn’t care and there wasn’t any kind of payoff to tie everything together. I just couldn’t get into this.

-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
The main shining light of this movie. At least it was pretty overall. However, this is when the blatant similarities between this and Miyazaki films begins. The movie largely looks like it’s trying to emulate an older more classic style with its art and designs. I’ll get more into this in the “Characters” section, but most of the characters and creatures can be seen as nearly direct analogs to those in Miyazaki works. And while the art and animation is overall pretty, it honestly feels a little flat compared to Shinkai’s past work as well the works he seemed to have been inspired by.

-----Sound - 5 out of 10-----
For the most part, things just felt serviceable in the sound department. The voice acting was good overall and the music sounded alright. However, while the score sounded fine on its own, it also felt very intrusive at times. Whenever there was a big artistic shot of a landscape, a big epic booming yet generic-sounding section of the score would call out almost like a laugh track in a sitcom, like it was yelling at you saying, “Hey! This scenery is meant to be awe-inspiring! Be in awe!!” But unfortunately, it just didn’t have the desired effect with me. As mentioned in the “Art” section, while the visuals were pretty, they also felt a bit flat and I didn’t ever really feel that “awe” and the score seemed to try too hard to force the effect. While Tenmon’s music worked well for Shinkai’s previous movies, I felt like he was a bit over his head in scoring an epic tale and I’m kind of glad that Shinkai’s subsequent works used different people for the music.

-----Characters - 5 out of 10-----
In general the characters feel a bit empty. I rarely cared about them, although there were a few genuinely decent moments of emotional manipulation. But when it comes to the characters, this was the most obvious homage(?) to Miyazaki works. So here’s a quick rundown of characters from this movie as Miyazaki character analogs: Asuna was essentially a copy of Satsuki from Totoro with a touch of Nausicaa. Shun was business-casual Howl. Mimi was a total rip-off of Teto from Nausicaa. Pretty much all of the other creatures felt derivative in some way to things from Princess Mononoke. Shin was mostly a copy of Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke. And Morisaki-sensei was pretty much a combination of Jigen and Zenigata from Lupin III. I could probably draw more comparisons, but there are a few Miyazaki films that I haven’t watched, probably the most relevant being Castle in the Sky (I tried to watch it once but fell asleep, sorry). But yeah, while the characters had a few nice moments, they were very few and far between and drawing comparisons to Miyazaki characters is probably the most fun thing about them.

-----Enjoyment - 6 out of 10-----
So my personal enjoyment score (what I put on my actual anime list) ended up being a 6. I was originally going to give it a 7, but after thinking about it for a bit, that felt far too generous. Hell, even a 6 here feels a little generous. Again, while the visuals were rather pretty in general and there were some good moments, I was mostly bored throughout the movie. I didn’t get much of an emotional connection to the story or the characters and I really felt the time that I stent watching this movie. I still have some appreciation for what Shinkai did here and the fact that he tried something very different from his usual stuff, but it didn’t really stick the landing.

-----Overall - 5 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
That brings me to the final overall score of a resounding “Meh.” While this is an interesting piece of work at times and it is indeed pretty (I’m really milking that aspect of this film), it just doesn’t make for much of a cohesive or interesting story overall and doesn’t have strong enough characters to carry it either. Again, I still appreciate this for being a piece with which Shinkai is trying something different and I think it helped him grow as an artist, but as an isolated work there just isn’t much here to love. It is easily my least favorite of his films and I am glad that he went back to something simpler and to his strengths when he made The Garden of Words. Maybe someone who is a bigger fan of Miyazaki works can appreciate this more, or maybe they would dislike it just as much because they’d see it as derivative? But if you’re a fan of Shinkai’s other works, I’d personally say this can be one that you skip unless you’re a completionist.

The first Houkago Play followed a “Boyfriend” and “Girlfriend” as they just hang out, playing and talking about video games and other random things. While Houkago Play 2 is considered a sequel, the Boyfriend and Girlfriend from the first manga never make an appearance in this story. Instead, we follow a new un-named boy and girl pair as they hang out together in a manga club room after school.

So how does this manga compare to the first in the series and how does it stand on its own? Here are my category breakouts:

-----Story - 7 out of 10-----
This 4-koma slice of life series doesn’t break ... a lot of ground in the story department. A lot of the manga is simply a bunch of video game references with most of the proper names censored, making it hard to track down the references if you don’t immediately recognize them. Also, while the first Houkago Play was a refreshing bit of manga depicting an already established relationship, Houkago Play 2 has a more typical slow-burn of a developing relationship. While the story does stumble quite a bit in the beginning, even by slice of life standards, it does do a few interesting things (such as some rather well-done strips with no dialog) and picks up quite a bit later on as it focused more on drawing manga and the characters’ relationship. In the end, it does have a rather satisfying conclusion for the two characters, standing very well on its own.

-----Art - 6 out of 10-----
Now I personally enjoy the art style of the Houkago Play series quite a bit. It’s very unique and stylish. I think a lot of other people can find it to be attractive as well and you can decide if you do or don’t like the style based solely on the covers of the various books. However, the art category takes a major hit from me here due to what I see as a critical graphic design flaw: the speech bubbles usually have no indication of what character the dialog is coming from. In the first Houkago Play, the speech bubbles almost always had pointers to indicate who is saying what. But in Houkago Play 2, pointers are only ever included for the rare thought bubbles in the series. As the two characters go back and forth talking to each other, it is often difficult to figure out which character is saying what. This can make what should be a simple 4-panle comic read into a bit of a chore. It really hurts the flow of the story. Because of this, the strips that have absolutely no dialog are some of my favorites. It’s really a shame.

-----Characters - 8 out of 10-----
While this is a slice of life manga, the characters are very important. For the most part, the two characters in this series are fun to watch and have a good amount of chemistry. Senpai (the girl) in particular has a surprising amount of depth to her with many scenes in which you can really feel her anxiety when dealing with her feelings, both in dealing with the boy and in creating manga. While the characters aren’t absolutely amazing and I still like Girlfriend from the first manga much more, I did find myself legitimately caring about these two and their relationship by the end.

-----Enjoyment - 8 out of 10-----
Despite the graphical hardship of its bad speech bubbles, I enjoyed Houkago Play 2 quite a bit. As far as my own enjoyment goes, I like it about as much as the first Houkago Play. While the beginning felt like a slog at times (mostly due to the speech bubbles and references I largely didn’t connect with), the payoff at the end was well worth it.

-----Overall - 7 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
Overall, this is a pretty solid single-volume 4-koma slice of life manga. Objectively speaking, I’d say that the first Houkago Play is a bit better as it doesn’t have the same speech bubble issue and the novelty of the characters’ relationship already being cemented throughout the entire run of that manga is rather nice. But I still think there is a lot to enjoy in Houkago Play 2. It may even be more up your alley than the first manga if you are someone who enjoys creating art or other creative endeavors as Senpai’s joy and hardship in drawing manga can be very relatable. Give it a try!

Let me start by putting this out there: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is not only my favorite manga ever, it is my second favorite overall work of entertainment after the Suzumiya Haruhi series. So this will be a rather glowing review. However, I will do my best to express why I consider this to be an absolute masterpiece and talk about a few aspects which may prevent others from feeling the same way.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is an award winning manga by Hitoshi Ashinano. The series follows Alpha, an android who runs a café by herself, as she goes about her daily life and explores a beautifully ... calm post-apocalyptic version of Japan.

Before I go into full-on “gush” mode, I’ll divide things into the category breakouts:

-----Story - 9 out of 10-----
Let’s start off with what will likely be the main category to turn some people off to the series. While I would personally put this at a 10 out of 10, I deducted a point because I recognize a few things that some might see as flaws. But first, the positives of why I love this story: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has some of the most subtly exquisite world building that I have ever seen in a work of fiction. If you want to experience a perfect example of what people mean when they say “show, don’t tell” in storytelling, read this series. There is almost no exposition and the narration that is present is usually Alpha’s personal thoughts and experiences with the world around her.

However, looking at things from another perspective, this meticulous and subtle world building can precisely be what turns other readers off. There honestly isn’t much of an actual “plot” in this series and it presents many mysteries about the world that are never explicitly answer. But as you read it, that doesn’t ever seem to be a goal of the story. It is more of an experience for the reader in its overall atmosphere than it is an intricate tale.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has a bit of an “iyashikei” (healing) slice-of-life feel to it and if you go in expecting an epic, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. On that note, while it may feel like there isn’t much of substance going on, I’ve found the pacing of the series to simply be amazing. While the “nothing” goes on, the series never feels like a drag and its overall dialog-light nature makes it an extremely fast read. Some chapters actually have no text whatsoever. Even if you are a very slow reader (as I am), each volume can easily be finished in about 30 minutes while still fully absorbing every piece of wonderful art. Speaking of which....

-----Art - 10 out of 10-----
The art in this series is just plain wonderful. While it does use a simpler style than other manga that would be praised for their amazing art (such as the crazy amount of detail in something like Berserk), I can’t really understate how beautiful I find many of the compositions in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. I’ve literally been brought to tears by the art alone. Will the art be to everyone’s liking? Maybe not. It could seem a little dated to some as the series began in 1994 and the character designs might take some getting used to. Some may find it too simple compared to other manga out there. But regardless of tastes, I would be surprised if anyone can read this and deny the inherent charm of the art. I feel that the style is perfect for the story being told, a simple and calm kind of beauty that will absolutely pull you in if you let it.

-----Characters - 10 out of 10-----
There are really two main characters in this manga: Alpha and the world itself. Alpha is the center focus of nearly every single chapter of the series so it is important that she is a character that the reader can enjoy, especially with its slice of life structure. Luckily, Alpha is a very easy character to like or to even fall in love with. She is a cheerful yet grounded character who is always excited to experience life and explore the world. That excitement is then contagious so that, again, the absence of an actual plot never makes the story feel like a drag. It also helps to let the reader fully appreciate the world which is a character in its own right. The setting of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou truly feels like a living, breathing entity. The landscapes, artifacts of the past, and mysterious creatures (the Misago in particular being a personal favorite) all feel like a part of the world as a character, interacting with Alpha and other supporting cast members in wondrous ways.

-----Enjoyment - 10 out of 10-----
Surprise, I really enjoyed this manga! For me, everything talked about above creates a perfect package of a beautiful, calm experience that transports me to this world with Alpha at my side. Was that too cheesy? Well, the subtle sense of adventure as this strange post-apocalyptic world is traversed is right up my alley. It is a delightfully easy yet fulfilling read that is able to just make me feel good and immersed while also providing a sense of wonder that I haven’t experienced in any other piece of entertainment.

-----Overall - 10 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
For my tastes, this is really the full package: wonderful art, great characters, compelling world, and perfectly paced. While there are questions left unanswered, it feels like a complete story that is just the right length for what it is trying to do. Since it is such a fast read, I would recommend at least reading the first volume to absolutely anyone. Even if you don’t usually get into slice of life stories and especially those with an iyashikei feel, this still has potential to be an exception for you.

But that’s not to say this series is for everyone. I remember once there was someone from an American manga publisher (I think it was Vertical) who was asking for license suggestion on a forum. I suggested Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and it turns out that he REALLY doesn’t like the series. Oh well. Again, the questions left unanswered could end up bothering some people as can the general lack of a plot. Also, as this series has quite the large amount of praise out there, the hype of the series could potentially raise the expectations of new readers to unreasonable heights. If you do try the series, please do your best to go into it with an open mind. While I personally feel that Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is one of the greatest pieces of entertainment ever produced, that is definitely not a universal opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt. But if you are able to let yourself get absorbed into this world, you are definitely in for a treat.

How do you quantify a series that was rather good up to a point, but then takes a significant nose dive in its quality? This is the question that I had to ask myself when I finished watching Darling in the FranXX.

Darling in the FranXX is a post-apocalyptic mecha series based in a unique setting with a futuristic utilitarian society fighting to survive against attacks from strange giant blue monsters. However, one of the most immediately striking things about the series is the dual-piloting system of the mecha which many have deemed “butt controls”. Your ability to enjoy this series in any way could ... very well hinge on whether or not you can at least tolerate the silliness of how these mechs are piloted, but this design choice does serve a purpose as a metaphor of one of Darling’s underlying themes: The development and sustainment of personal relationships with others.

Darling is also perhaps the first ever new, currently airing anime series to ever be referenced by major celebrity. Now, as much as it pains me to acknowledge a Kardashian as a “major celebrity”, Darling in the FranXX being mentioned by Kim Kardashian is kind of a big deal since, although it may have been one of the biggest new shows of its season, this wasn’t some super popular shounen franchise or even a show that could have been stumbled on while browsing Netflix or Amazon. This was a new original series showing on Crunchyroll. Now, this has no real barring on the show’s quality, but this is undoubtedly significant to the anime medium as a whole whether you like the Kardashians or not.

Anyway, Darling in the FranXX began rather strong, or at least rather good and showed a lot of promise. But then, things happened. To go into more details of what those “things” were, here are my category breakouts:

-----Story - 4 out of 10-----
This was one of the hardest categories for me to stick to a score for as it had the most drastic shift in quality as the series went on. Darling starts as a series with a very well-paced and balanced story, building its world in a delicate manner and dividing screen time nicely between cool mecha/monster fights, good character interactions, and interesting global intrigue. You wonder what exactly is going on and who the true enemy is and the series seems to have some interesting things to say about the value of relationships with one another. While there are some minor hiccups along the way, the story is rather well executed all the way through to episode 15 where we’re treated to a rather wonderful climax and left wondering what was going to happen next!

Then, everything was kind of downhill from there. We shift gears into a bit of a hard slice-of-life arc. Now, I personally love slice of life and didn’t really mind this aspect of the show, but when the series started dedicating entire episodes to this format it began to lose focus. The pacing became extremely erratic, going from slow progression of next-to-nothing happening and jumping to shoving as much plot into the episode as possible. It felt as if the direction of the story had a total breakdown. It was like they had an overall idea of where they wanted to take the series all along, but then realized that they were quickly running out of episodes in which to tell that story. It was like watching a failure of time management unfolding week-to-week, episode-by-episode. And then there was the episode that just went ahead and explained everything about the story in flashbacks and narration instead of continuing to organically build the world and its story.

By the time the series ended, I didn’t really care anymore. I’d lost all interest in the story that was being told and the message behind it. I was hoping for some kind of payoff at the end, but the ending was at most just “okay”. While the first 15 episodes told a rather good story, the remaining 9 where just an absolute mess. It was all really sad, and not in a good way.

-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
When people talk about quality drop-off in an anime, the art and animation quality is usually one of the biggest things to suffer. That’s not really the case in Darling. From what I could tell, the art and animation in the series was very consistently good throughout. For the most part, the CG that was used in the series blended very well with the traditional-style digital animation. There were a few moments of jarringly noticeable CG when it came to some of the monsters, but even then it wasn’t that bad. The character and mecha designs all looked really cool (although the lady-mechs could take some getting used to) and there were some really nice action sequences. I’d say that perhaps my biggest (albeit still minor) disappointment in the art department is that, with this being a Trigger co-production, there weren’t quite enough REALLY BIG epic animation moments for my tastes, especially in the last 9 episodes. In a way it was nice to see Trigger show some restraint and not go full Gurren Lagann for the finale, but I also kind of wanted and was expecting there to be some of that to some extent.

-----Sound - 8 out of 10-----
Again, no real complaints or drop-off in the quality of the sound in Darling. The score and voice acting was solid. The opening theme song is really catchy and the ending theme was nice. The only really unfortunate thing in this department was the fact that Goro’s voice actor had some health issues and had to be replaced for the final two episodes. I didn’t really notice the change in episode 23, but man, in the final episode Goro sounded very different. I can’t really fault the show too much for that, but I do feel like they should have been able to get a voice that was a bit closer to the original so it wasn’t quite so jarring.

-----Characters - 6 out of 10-----
While the characters in the series didn’t deteriorate quite as badly as the story, there was still a significant drop in quality here. The series began with Hiro, our main boy, desperately wanting to pilot a giant robot (you could call him the anti-Shinji). The first 15 episodes are largely built around a boy-meets-girl story between him and Zero Two, a fun feisty girl with a mysterious past. Zero Two can be an especially great breath of fresh air if you’re tired of common anime girl tropes like those who are easily embarrassed, quick to anger, and/or girls who just can’t be upfront about their feelings to save their lives. The relationship between Hiro and Zero Two develops very well as the series goes on and it has a good supporting cast.

Unfortunately Darling puts all of their eggs in one basket with Hiro and Zero Two. Once their relationship is pretty much fully developed and all conflict around it is resolved with the climax of episode 15, the couple gets regulated to the background a bit. The other characters in the series are interesting in their own way, but they just do not carry the same force behind them as Hiro and Zero Two. I lost interest in most of the other characters largely because they didn’t measure up to the same level and the story being told around them just wasn’t all that interesting. Combine that with the villain of the story being extremely underwhelming when it was revealed and new side characters being underutilized or badly used to begin with and the overall character level of the final 9 episodes gets a resounding “meh”.

-----Enjoyment - 6 out of 10-----
After I finished the final episode of Darling in the FranXX, it was hard for me to quantify just exactly how I felt about it as a whole. While I thoroughly enjoyed the first 15 episodes, the breakdown that followed simply squandered any potential that the series had to be truly great. The series pulled some genuinely powerful feelings from me early on, but by the end of it all I just got bored, didn’t care where the story was going, was done with the characters, and was just waiting for it to all be over. However, while it ended on a very underwhelming note and had some absolutely horrendous storytelling to get to that point, I can’t completely ignore the parts that I truly enjoyed.

-----Overall - 6 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
My overall rating for Darling in the FranXX was also hard for me to quantify. In the end I went with the same score as my Enjoyment because I had to go through the exact same balancing act here. Did the last 9 episodes completely annihilate how solidly good the first 15 episodes were? I don’t think so, but for some people the ending is one of the most important parts of a series. For me it was truly sad to see what became of this series, but I am still glad that I watched Darling in the FranXX.

But after this, would I recommend the series to others? I can’t give a blanket answer to that question. If you’ve read this review, you probably know if it would be worth your time. However, to sum it all up, if you are itching for a new mecha series to watch and you can look past some really bad storytelling and a rushed finale that might not be fully satisfying, then sure, give this a shot. On the other hand, if you don’t see yourself getting past the somewhat silly piloting system of the mechs, you’re really sensitive to a well-paced story, and/or the ending of a series is very important to you, then you probably shouldn’t bother.