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A reborn demon lord baseline with a nice onee-shota spin.

This anime places a good amount of emphasis on the onee-shota aspect in character design. You can feel from the dialogue that the MC is meant to be this kid who is trying to show that he is capable, and the girls as onee-sans who needs to protect the MC. The anime does a good job to not over-engineer these characteristics, whilst still ensuring they don't lose sight of the dynamic throughout the story.

With that said, it is a shame that the anime seems to be 70% fantasy combat and 30% SoL, with the problem being ... that the 70% is predictable and border-lines on boring. The typical enjoyment derived from combat in the demon lord revival sub-genre typically falls into two categories: Grandiose scenes from overwhelming power, or rapidly gaining/revealing their true power. Seiken gakuin for sure does not fall into the first category, since the action animation (and my god the 3d CG), leaves much to be desired, and arguably it doesn't even fall into the second catagory, since so far, I can't even tell if the MC is suppose to be "strong" or "weak", it feels his power level is literally what is most convinent for the plot at the time.

Don't get me wrong, the anime still has many quality features. The 30% SoL whilst not anything mind-blowing, still holds out to a good standard in Isekai SoLs. The anime doesn't dabble that deep into the Onee-Shota rabbit hole, it establishes the relationship and mostly leaves it at that, save a few scenes here and there.

The character design in this anime is quite gorgeous. Everyone is unique and vibrant, with the clean art style a perfect compliment. Aside from the predictable and mediocre action, the anime is a refreshing take on a enjoyable sub-genre, and it clearly has it's own strengths in design and art. It's not fair to call this cream-of-crop of demon lord revival animes, but it's for sure a solid entry that enjoyers won't regret watching.

But for real tho, the Onee-Shota is a nice bonus.

Warning: very minor spoiler

A fantasy world with stellar worldbuilding. Every character is oozing with unique flavour, from their distinctive appearance and power, to the sometimes explained backstories. There are no background characters in this show, every single person has the potential to be the main character in their own right.

The animation style and fight scenes are passable but nothing noteworthy, but the voice acting is absolutely phenomenal. This helps bring even more to life the uniqueness of each character. The additional design choices such as second names, or the way they chant spells, are also super cool to watch.

This is one of the best anime ... in terms of character designs and uniqueness. It reminds me of overlord, where everyone has a distinct character rather than fitting a generic isekai role. However, Ishura's storytelling does not compete up to the standard of overlord. Essentially, the stories in Ishura are mini events to help portray the character. There was only one storyline involving the main world, but that only really got 3 episodes of air time. The big tournament doesn't happen this season, which is a major dissapointment. There is so much hype buildup for the tournament in this season, so much, infact, that there was not enough time to actually show the tournament.

You could say this season was a bit of a nothing burger in terms of progressing the content, but it laid a sound foundation for an exciting tournament, using solid worldbuilding and enriching characters. Was it necessary to spend the whole season laying the foundation? Debatable. Was watching the anime introduce these characters and their power portrayed in various events fun and engaging to watch? Absolutely, give it a try.

A dude gets Isekaied, and for his power, he chooses to bring his smartphone. I think that tells you everything you need to know about his personality,

Given the long gap since the first season, I have literally forgotten any semblance of plot or character details due to the genericness of the first season. The second season didn't reintroduce any interesting plot elements or character quirks, likely because they aren't present in the first place. Rather it keeps going with a new plot with barely any background or setup.

In terms of world building and storytelling, this anime literally feels like the creator threw a dart ... on a board of generic anime troupes, and added them in without any consideration. It feels like elements of plot and world details are popping up erratically and disjuncted from each other, not to mentioning generally just quite boring and bland.

The actions here are much worse than the first season. There is basically no clear system for the combat power of the protagonists unlike in an anime like Overlord, so they are literally just performing as the plot requires, and there is no satisfaction at watching them beat an opponent, with pure confusion when an enemy is somehow "too strong" for them.

Now, it's clear that the anime focuses heavily on the Harem of girls around the MC. It does do pretty well in unique physical designs, ecchi scenes, and somewhat rarely it's a harem where they are in clear agreement rather than each trying to win. The anime also introduces new girls at an astonishing pace, continuing its average of almost one per episode since season 1.

The representation of the MC Touya is mostly cringe inducing, overusing the most basic troupes in a forceful manner. His dialogues showcase him as a bland character at best, and pure cringe at worst.

This anime is the literal definition of turn your brain off and watch, because leaving them on is likely to induce severe boredom. Only the harem is somewhat distinctive compared to other Isekais, but the individualism of the girls and Touya's personality could use some serious work.

Fro the mangaka of Knight lady, I expected a manga that can utilise and explore unique troupes whilst having in solid worldbuilding. Instead, the content of the manga stop at the title, because the entire manga is *only* about "my new wife is forcing herself to smile"

It's certainly a unique concept, but when you stretch this one idea you have over 100 chapters, whilst adding no substance in between, the manga gets boring very very quickly.

The side characters and world building all gets pushed aside so this one concept can be present in almost every chapter. If you just read the first 10 chapters, you ... could get a pretty solid idea of what us to cone for the other 90.

Finally, the artstyle is pretty unique and decent, with fine details where due and clean consistency, but it is nowhere near as memorable as the mangaka's previous work.

A sequel that was fundamentally different from the original, not necessarily for the worse, but definitely not for the better.

The original goblin slayer was this gritty, grey world where the party uses their flexibility and resourcefulness to overcome the unexpected threats of goblins. The shock scenes were a perfect compliment to the world building and immersion. It also had its fair share of bond and comradeship moment.

Goblin slayer 2 was fundamentally different. The show focused much more on slice of life and world building (albeit pretty shallow). The artistic direction was changed to better accommodate this, as well as some censorship of violence. We see ... some character development, but nothing groundbreaking.

Goblin slayer 1 can only be described as Goblin Slaye, due to its charmingly unique style and story. Goblin slayer 2 can be described as "Isekai with a little bit more focus on goblins", because in all honesty, this is all it is.

As a standalone this is a very solid anime. It encapsulates a strong blend of combat, SoL, character writing, and world building. However, when it is the sequal to Goblin Slayer, the jarring difference between this and the original is immediately obvious. What's furthermore, even as a non-source material reader, I can easily tell that there were tons content skipped, often too much, which makes the story feel disconnected.

There's nothing bad about this anime judging purely by itself, but once you expect a sequel to Goblin Slayer, as many watchers rightfully should, you are left with confusion and bizzareness at best, or disappointment at worst.

Oh, and the opener by Mili was an absolutely banger.

Hard to say much due to the limited amount of English chapters, but so far things are looking pretty solid and promising.

There is a storyline that is wacky enough to be comedic but also balanced enough to be enticing. Whilst story isn’t the main focus of the manga, it does a good job of being engaging and reasonable.

But who the hell are am I kidding. This manga is about the *art*. And the *art* is quite phenomenal. You have this Tsudere Oujo-sama and the Kuudere maid. The characters faithfully represent their archetype whilst having enough life and vibrancy to be distinctive individuals rather than ... hollow husks that reflect nothing but their archetype.

More specifically, the mangaka has a pretty good idea of *exactly* what we are looking for, and the chapter contents reflect that. In almost all the chapters, there is a section dedicated to the cultured art. And this manga is the most limit testing of “how far can we go without any censors” I have ever seen, and it does a damn well job at it.

The manga gets extremely creative in what it has to offer. I won’t spoil the details but the mangaka clearly knows what troupes fit well and executes them flawlessly whilst remaining faithful to the characters and situation.

You might think “If I’m only reading for the art, then why would I bother with this manga? I might as well read a doujin.” My friend. This art is better than any explicit doujins.

Firstly, copy paste isekais aren’t a negative. Not every anime needs a revolutionary premise like rock collecting on a cyberpunk Mars. This anime has all the good settings of an isekai: OP reborn MC, focuses on “subtly showing off.” Quality Harem that’s not obnoxious nor unnecessary. And to top it all off, this dabbles into the idea of exorcism, which is a super cool concept to explore. Even the most generic show with the above settings can score a solid 8, and bringing exorcism to the mix could give the show an easy 9 or even a 10.

Unfortunately, the show suffers from quite a few ... problems:

1. Exorcists are so cool! Thank god there isn’t much of it in the show.

The first 11ish episodes of the show is half with the MC Seika using his custom exorcism “magic” spells (so pretty much just regular magic), and only half with exorcism powers. Honestly, whenever exorcism powers are involved on whenever summoning is done, the effect and summoned creature is pretty badass and makes you excited to see more, but it’s always the case that those moments are rare and pretty much boring one shots (not saying that just because it one shots it can’t be made to look cool, just look at overlord).

2. The hero really doesn’t want to be noticed, except for saving cannon fodder.

The show wants to push this agenda that Seika is reluctant to use his powers, except in the case to save his friends. So tell me, how exactly is mass reviving a castle full of fodder knights a justified cause to use his power? Screw Mabel’s brother I guess, can’t have the powerful people discovering that I can revive someone, but I’m sure they won’t notice a mass revive spell casted on a few hundred people (oh, and the knights themself better have short term memory loss…and brother Gly… and the princess).

But seriously, if you want show Seika reluctantly unleash more and more of his power, use it on an actual good cause (for the audience). I really don’t care that because Seika felt bad for the princess, he decides to use it to undo the deaths he has caused. To be honest, I’d rather he double down and unleash his power to straight up burn the castle to the ground.

3. What a nice cast you have. Let’s add some “friends”.

3.1 First character that comes to mind, the Prince dude in the dragon kingdom. Leaving aside the bongcloud that must have been in Seika and Yifa’s heads when they interacted with this prince, the anime really wants us to be fans of NTR where we look at the prince two steps away from probably raping Yifa on the spot, and we… apologies to him and leaves? I swear Seika cares more about the princess he played literally one game of chess with than his lifelong friend and maid Yifa. Hm, funny I should mention the princess because:

3.2 The princess is in her own world brewing up a plan, but the anime wants to guilt trip you into thinking, “ah, she is a friend, but Seika doesn’t trust her, how sad for her”, forgetting the fact that it makes perfect sense for Seika to not trust the princess after she literally tried to kill Amyu (if Seika actually said yes and left the castle in the last episode I’m pretty sure I would have dropped at least 3 more points).

Also, I am very interest in how the anime explains that Seika lost a chess game vs only king and pawns. It would literally have to be the case that 1) Seika is astonishingly bad at chess, or 2) The princess has some transcendental hax powers that fabricates rules. Because having future sight does not make you have any chance of winning a chess game with only king and pawn against someone who at least know the rules.

Overall, this anime suffers from a lot of problem. “The MC is op but never shows it” is a problem in some isekais. This adds another layer with “The MC is op but literally shows it at the worst opportunities”. There’s nothing remarkably positive or negative about other aspects such as animation, sounds or VA. The story actually felt quite slow with some episodes barely having any meaningful content. The next arc seems interesting but I’m doubtful of a season 2.

If you are an enjoying of the op reborn isekai genre, then the problems I’ve mentioned above can really be overlooked since the anime does still tick all the boxes, and the breath of exorcism (when present) is undoubtedly very interesting.

The show’s visual and design easily sustained a baseline of 9 with full potential to top a 10, but never in my life have I seen it lose all its score’s so fast through each episode.

The bad:

The biggest problem is by far the content. Shallow. Each character’s theme story feels shallow and unfulfilling, and even the main line story has no substance in it. The challenges and sad moment is over forcefully engineered, and each story is just as predictably boring as the next.

The show also prides itself by being heavily music focused. The show seems to have forgotten the fact that the music needs ... to be actually good. Almost all the songs are forgettable and blend together, with the main reason being that it doesn’t fit the theme of the character. The only exception to this is Houkiboshi’s song, which was absolutely phenomenal, and perfected fitted her theme and encapsulated her story and the emotions of the soldiers in it.

Finally, the show wants to portray the grimness of war, so it prepares these menacing robotic war machines and… doesn’t use them? In pretty much any flashback or conflict, pretty much all the robots do is charge at people. The missile launcher and machine guns are I guess only for display, and the “chaotic battlefield” just feel like a street brawl with how little effort was put into crafting those scenes.

The mixed:

The personality of each character is very distinct, but not always memorable.

Half of the shows main cast (Gekka, Karasuba and Houkiboshi) just “was there” and didn’t feel like any interactions they had made any impact on the show.

Haizakura, our main lead, has a very vibrant and energetic personality. For the most part this is done quite well. The show makes it deliberate to over-demonstrate her cutesy “I’ll give it my best” effort, and that vibe is present in all her actions and interactions, but sometimes it feels repetitive and goes too far. Her personality and vibe is mostly enjoyable and well suited to her design, but I would say if this is toned down perhaps just half a notch, she still would have the same unique personality, but it would feel much less jarring.

On the other hand, the show desperately tries to push Chiyo into the role of the shows second main character and Haizakura’s best friend. Unfortunately, Chiyo brings nothing to the table and her personality consists of basically nothing. The show would have been better had she just not been a character.

The good:

You may have noticed there was someone I didn’t mention in the above section, and that is the actual best girl of the series: Retzel. Not only does she have top tier outwards design that instantly picks her out from the rest of the cast, her distinct two personalities (before and after her story), are both interest and portrayed splendidly. On top of this, her interactions with Haizakura, albeit very little, are the highlights of this show. She even had the most promising storyline, had it not been butchered for being rushed in one episode.

The moe:

I will be honest. I joined this show 100% for the moe and would have been fine if this was all there is to it. Unfortunately when I watch a moe anime I don’t mean all I want is a moe characters and that’s it (if I wanted that I would just look at a picture). An anime can convey this aspect through story, dialogue, and interactions, almost all of which the show fails catastrophically. The lack of story is already mentioned above (not to mention they don’t really related to this aspect anyways). But 90% of the interaction and dialogue are flat or over-engineered to the point of being uncomfortable. The show doesn’t understand demonstrating moe through subtleness and tries too hard to push it into your face. The only place where this is done right is through Retzel. She demonstrates the perfect way to present a dynamic between her and the MC to show CGDCT whilst maintaining naturalness.

Now for what the show is really good at: the art-style. Whilst moe-through-subtleness was non-existent in other aspects, the artists (unfortunately not the animators. Whilst they did a fine job they didn’t amplify anything through their actions) was god-tier in encapsulating that feeling through their designs. Some signs that I have picked up include slightly fleshy/chubby (but in a very good way!) design around the face and joints, or pinkness on the fingertips. They go a long way to fully bring out the appeal in these characters, and these are the techniques I often see in other highly prominent works. Haizakura, Retzel and Haikagura all are examples of how outstanding this design philosophy has been applied. Gekka also to a lesser extent, and we don’t talk about Chiyo.

Conclusion:

I saw the visual. I saw the character. I was preparing myself for a 9-10 show as I thought to myself “there’s no way this can go that badly.” The show proved me wrong by doing everything incorrectly. The saving grace is that at least the show did didn’t actually turn it into unenjoyable, just unreasonably boring. Watching for the subpar moe that happened every so often, the show quickly lost its score to a 6-7, and I’m certain I only put it in this range and not much lower due to a unreasonable bias I have with a certain aspect in this show. Despite this, the show managed to spit in your face one last time with the ending, which confirmed a score of 6 for me.

The show felt perfect for me and had everything I wanted to see in an anime, until I actually watched it.

A solid premise with sound and rich world building. The concept is standard but progression is paced satisfyingly. The skill gains are frequent and distinctive enough to feel novelty during each encounter, and the main storyline is well integrated so far.

The most distinguishing merit this anime has going for it is undoubtedly the writing of the main character Fran. The studio absolutely poured their soul out to methodically craft one of the best characters in anime I’ve seen.

Physical appearance wise, you have the initial phase where Fran is shown as a slave, rugged and tattered. The choice of clothing design (tattered brown gown, collars ect) ... is implemented superbly to convey the helplessness of her situation.

When she receives her adventurer’s gear, it felt perfectly designed for her. All the accessories are visible and distinctive, especially the ear bracelet, a simple yet surprisingly effective accessory design that really enhances her character.

Throughout the episodes, more and more sides of her is slowly revealed to us: the joyous side when she receives thing she can only dream of as a slave, the determined side when presented with a challenge, and the cute reaction side to absolutely anything, all this complimented with outstanding animation.

Did I mention the f-ing animation? I won’t lie to your face and say this has god levels of animation, but all the scenes are done at a professional level…except any scene involving Fran. Somehow, the animation involving Fran transcends god level with movements both fluid and crisp. The amount of effort put into the body language and facial expression brings vibrance into the character. Even the most minute and subtle animation feels lifelike and absolutely compliments her character, a good example of one of my favorites is Fran’s ear twitch whenever she hears anything.

In STARK contrast, the other “MC”: the sword “Teacher”. Both the physical and character design leans towards goofy and casual, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but for some reason it just doesn’t work in this anime. The sword almost always comes off as annoying or cringe, especially with its failed attempt at being funny.

Ultimately, the aforementioned point is nowhere close to a dealbreaker, and with all the good points mentioned, I can only see the anime getting even better from here. Whilst it is a shame that the sword could have been written in a much better direction whilst still maintaining the casual/goofy persona in order to support Fran’s persona, it would be a even bigger shame to miss out on one of the best shows this season just because of that. Even if nothing else, watching just for Fran and her animations will be undoubtedly worth your time.

An absolute bongcloud of a concept that makes me wonder how much the author was smoking when he thought of this idea.

Unfortunately, the wild concept is all the manga has going for it at the moment.

The manga seems to have issues identifying itself as a relationship/love manga, and a pure comedy skit manga. Some mangas successfully do both, and the others fail at both. This manga belongs to the latter.

The comedy of this manga falls pretty flat despite the wide array of ideas that could be worked with with this concept. The jokes only feel funny if you force it to be funny because of ... the concept, rather that than the content.

Credits where it’s due, the fact that the concept was actually published without failing catastrophically means the author did a relatively okay job at keeping this concept under control, which is why this isn’t exactly a bad read, albeit a slightly dull one, but if you read the concept and think to yourself “wtf is this? I want to check it out”, then that’s enough of a reason to give this manga (or rather, the concept) a try.