3-gatsu no Lion

Sangatsu no Lion is a completely pointless series, revolving around a few more than flat characters.

I'll try to be as spoiler free as possible while pointing out what I think worked and what not.

Story: 3
In a few words, the story in Sangatsu no Lion is "playing shogi". For as much as I would like to say that it talks about a kid growing, fighting his fears, learning how to relate to other people, eventually understanding how to live one's life, all of this is just barely touched, focusing more on "what if I moved the pawn in A7 instead of B2?". In 22 episodes, absolutely ... nothing relevant happens. No epiphanies, no events, no change, or if something happens, it's brushed off in an incredibly simplistic way.
We could think that since this is a Slice of Life, it reflects reality as it is, and oh, it does it perfectly. But please don't tell me that your usual, every day, routine lives are worth a series. Mine, is not.

Art: 6
For as much as I love shaft, the style here is pretty different from their usual. The colour palette, the watercolour-ish style, the animation itself were really pleasant to watch, as they give a warm vibe when it's needed, but doesn't work so well in the more "cold" scenes. Also, the classic shaft antics recur here as well, and maybe, they weren't so needed. What really bothers me here is the character design. From the beginning to the end of the series, the characters lose more and more punchiness and details, starting from a very specific character design (those mouths, really?) ending with a generic character from any other series of the last decade.

Sound: 5
Not much to say here
OTs and EDs are not so bad, but also not memorable. I finished the series half an hour ago and I already forgot what they sound like. Same goes for the background sounds and music. About the voices, the cast is galactic, it worked pretty well.

Characters: 3
Let's say you try to give an honest vote to your completely normal neighbour, or the guy that used to sit on the left corner in your classroom. That would be pretty hard, I imagine. The same goes here. The characters are completely normal people, but instead of having those many hues a normal person would have, they are just parodies of their "IRL" counterparts.
The MC is the usual "kind of problematic" character. Introvert, social issues, no friends, focused only on shogi. You keep watching him doing nothing, saying a lot of "I will whatever", then going back doing nothing. Just stupidly thinking about shogi. So much to forget to drink for days! Can you imagine that?
The female cast is the "obliviously-incredibly-good-and-sweet-girl-that-oh-so-love-to-help-you-for-whatever-reason-and-obviously-loves-sweets". As too often, the women in Sangatsu are put in the kitchen or related domestic areas, and those are the only moments in which you see them. Since it's a shogi anime, you could think there are also female shogi players, but no, the only one that you can see doesn't play anymore.
Is the rest of the cast worth mentioning? the fat but passionate kiddo, the cold and invincible player, the mentor, the blonde with weird haircut guy?

Enjoyment 3/ Overall 4
I think I said everything I had to, with very bad grammar and vocabulary, though, but since this anime has been so hyped up, I could not keep it in.
Sangatsu no Lion fails on every front. It fails in narrating a story, even a slice of life story, introducing elements that will be lost in the next scene, breaking tragedy or tension with out of place comedy, but still failing with both of them. It fails with its characters, with too good or too bad people that could exist in other genres, or using cliched characters that, as usual, follow the flow with no question asked. It also fails with the art, lowering the quality episode after episode.

So, there are a lot of way better anime out there. Go see them.

SHAFT previously installed a pretentious series that suffers from a massive diagnosis of what I like to call dialogue schizophrenia, making a guy with ahoge hair look cool while he continually sexually assaults lolis; it reined in unlimited amounts of money, yatta yatta (muting the preface point with that because this studio is the bane of my existence).

Still riding on the Bakemonogatari cash cow, I'm sure that they realized that adapting one of Chika Umeno's works (the mangka behind Honey & Clover), along with adding the overzealous, overly angular, dialogue heavy monologuing with a sexually ambiguous, teenage misfit boy that this would be a self-defining ... hit among narcissistic, Tumblr normies. I'm 100% sure that they weren't blind to their potential viewers.

I mean, they surely didn't know that the internet would fill Reddit forums with social justice powered, too deep for you conversations and people would GIFing the overly artsy and talkative moments, right? Let me clarify this for those you who didn't know, just because something is pretentious and artsy DOES NOT mean that it has any substance! The package is often different than the content. Just imagine if A-1 had directed this instead of SHAFT.

I thought it was high-budget trash, quite frankly. If you want to see tons of money put into in-your-face conveyances of depression while watching a rather privileged orphan whine to himself in exaggerated monologues while he’s allegorically drowning, than this is the series for you! This show is the primary example of what we you would call "victim culture," which I absolutely hate about modern day society.

I say privileged, because the unrealistic degree of how nice people are to him is uncanny. I understand people being nice to someone because their mother, father, and little sister died. And somehow, to make it more dramatic, they show Rei, the main character, looking at their corpses in the morgue? Who lets a child look at their family's bodies like that?

But, back to my point about the weird way every single character bends over backwards to make Rei happy, no seriously. EVERY time Rei is depressed: his teacher, a family that takes him in like their own, and a rich kid that he beat in shogi either talk about how great he is, or give him back pats.

I've seen this before, I mean MC privilege is a dilemma prevalent in anime. It frustrated me, because it was like a self-insert fan-fiction or like Tommy Wiseau from The Room with side characters that I like to call “two-dimensional-encouragement-puppets.” But it frustrated me more, on top of everything, that main character still angsts dramatically with internal monologues. Many people on the interwebs even find this little shit "relatable" or "likable". One of his angsts were that his adoptive father loved him more than his two ACTUAL kids (***MC privilege***), so his step-sister was violent and made, what seems like consensual, sexual advances at him.

I know that realistic teenagers like to wallow in their own sadness, and feel alone and alienated, but is this something that should praised? No. This is why teenagers are often made fun of. The main character is such a genius at shogi that it is stated in the show that he makes more than his HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER. What does he have to complain about?

He has:
• A professional shogi career.
• Unanimous accolades from everyone, except his bipolar step-sister.
• A family who unconditionally loves him and takes care of him, even though he's not related to them by blood.
• Friends and a school teacher that go out of their way to cheer him up.

As someone who was adopted, I would have killed to have my life laid out so cleanly in front of me. Where are these all of these allusions to suicide and self-hate even coming from? People complained about the melodrama in Your Lie in April, but at least there was a character that was dying from a disease, that, you know, had a reason to angst or freak out.

The banality of this series is astounding, Rei loses a shogi match and doesn't eat for days and more allegorical drowning. I get that he's a child genius, bordering on Asperger's, perhaps? Who knows? The series doesn't really clarify what the hell is wrong with him. It got better toward the end of the series, because it focuses on other characters like Kai Shimada (he has Kaiki Deishuu's voice actor) that made it bearable.

This anime could be categorized along with the Monogatari with how absurd it is. I mean, there's angst, then talking cats, depression metaphor then cute girls making food and talking about cute stuff. SHAFT treats you like you're some kind of intellectual when they go into the 3deep5me fucking dialogues ー that the main character has with himself. He's like one of those goths that writes poetry by candlelight.

Overall, the visuals are pretty and music can be enjoyable at times, except when they insert precocious French music in episodes for no real reason. This series is what it would look like if a hack art student had gallons of money to dump into a project like SHAFT, who not-so-secretly embodies the spirit of an avant-garde student that lives in Calabasas, CA.

I give it a 2/10, though barely that. I nearly dropped this garbage because of how silly and immature it was. I felt like putting my head into a cheese grinder after every episode. You would need a bidet and a degree in licking assholes to enjoy this show.

'3-gatsu no Lion' had a promising start but then lost it at the end of Season 1.

*please note that this is only a review of season 1, i gave season 2 a 5/10*

Story: 3 (Poor)
I have to say that the beginning was very engaging. The idea of shogi and the struggles you could face mentally was a new concept to me. However, as the show continued, it became quite boring and repetitive, and that very quickly. Dialogues between the characters were becoming bland and it seemed like the creators focused on the gameplay dialogues "move pawn to etc.", rather than the dialogues in crucial moments. ... I feel like the lack of enthusiasm shown really made the show seem repetitive. A lot more could have been done with 22 episodes. It had such a good start but it didn't reach my expectations.

Art: 7 (Good)
At first glance, I was not a fan. But as I continued watching, I started really liking it. The animation is really beautiful and unique. Kudos to the animators!

Sound: 6 (Fair)
Background music could have been better.

Characters: 2 (Dreadful)
This is my biggest issue. Characters. I'll just say that there was no character development from any character. Rei Kiriyama might have had some, but it's not significant. And he's the main character. The show introduced bland, boring characters who were not likeable at all. I also felt like there were a lot of 'filler' characters, as in characters that were introduced for the sake of having more characters. Why introduce them when they won't be interesting or get any development? Especially the main character and the three sisters. More could have been done with these characters.

Enjoyment: 3
Throughout the whole show, no episode or part seemed engaging or 'ooh, I think I should concentrate on this part'. I took my time with this series.

Overall: 3
This anime was so disappointing. It had the potential to be a masterpiece but the pace and lack of development stopped it from being so. The flimsy plot and poor set of characters brought this show to a lower level. This is why I can't rate '3-gatsu no Lion' more than a 3/10.

Dear MAL members, do not be fooled like I did by the high score that this series obtained.

Spoilers ahead

I came across this anime which not only obtained an overall high score, but also received plenty of high scores by other reviewers. Hence I was excited to watch this series. However after finishing all 22 episodes, I was left disappointed and wondered what did this anime have that deserved the high scores it obtained?

Unlike run with the wind, whereby they made running interesting, this anime made shogi look difficult and boring to someone who does not know about the game. The rules and how the ... game is played is never really explained other than a brief introductory in the form of using cats to make it look cute. The creators of the anime seems to be talking down to the audience as they literally have to portray the rules of shogi being explained to kids.

I felt that they could have spent more time in explaining the rules and gameplay
more in detail like having a new Shogi member whom just join the association being shown the ropes, instead of that few minutes of explaining to the two kid sisters on how pieces move. The reason is because we are being informed a lot of time throughout the anime, of technical jargons such as 7c rook which without knowledge of the game or proper introduction, the viewers like myself are left wondering what they all mean

Shogi aside, I also do not understand a few things about the anime. Why is there a need for the mc to attend school? It is shown a lot of times that he would rather be somewhere else like attending a Shogi tournament than be in class. Is it to show his human side like him wanting to have a normal teenager life? If that is the reason, it seems counterproductive as it shows him having disdain towards his fellow students. Instead of reaching out to them, he eats by himself during lunch. They did show him attempting to reach out to his classmates but in the end he falls short of actually making contact with them but shows what he perceives as will happen in his mind and decides not to approach them instead.

If this is how the mc is going to behave, why bother showing us his pass childhood as what is happening now is the same as when he was young. Is it to make the viewers empathise with him? After all this is the lifestyle he choose and he seems to be happy with it so why does the viewers need to relate with him?

Back to my question of why the need to show the mc attending school. It is definitely not about him passing his exams to obtain his certificate for his future career because we have been told he already chose to be a professional Shogi player whom apparently earns more than his teacher. Is it to make friends in his life? If that is the case than why didn’t he actually bother to attempt to make friends? All we are told, the answer to him attending school is to experience high school life like this is some sort of plot amour so that this anime could incorporate high school for the sake of it.

Speaking of making friends, there is this three sisters and the other Shogi player Nikaidou that he did make friends with. Why the need to go to school to make more friends when he already have those which he could strengthen the bounds with. The school part could have just been cut out of the anime as it serve no purpose other than to show that the mc values Shogi above all else including a normal teenager life. I feel that the time the mc is shown as attending school should have been given to those four as it make more sense in character building.

If the anime wants to include drama besides Shogi, I felt that there should be more development among the mc and his foster family instead of the story of the other Shogi player Kai.

Overall if you like me who still do not know what is 5d pawn, 7c rook or 2f knight, after watching this anime, I would advice to skip this anime. This anime is neither good in explaining the game Shogi nor portraying a good drama.

It's difficult to review slice-of-life shows through a critical lens. It's the one genre that is seemingly immune to poor reviews, simply because as long as the show is comforting, then it'll get a good score. I particularly like it when slice-of-life intersects with progress. Last year's Comic Girls did that, as well as Barakamon a few years back.

One of my first favorites when I became an anime junkie was Hikaru no Go, which also centered around a competitive board game. With 75 eps and a controversial ending, it has largely faded from memory today. But it was enjoyable, and Hikaru had significant growth throughout ... its run.

March Comes in Like a Lion explores much of Rei's past. But I felt empty when the show didn't use this past to really affect the person he is now. And at the end, I felt the same way he did. Nothing much got accomplished during S1, and I didn't feel Rei had grown as a person. Instead, he was still wallowing in self-pity. Without significant progress, S1 felt like a disappointment.

It didn't help that the humor in the episodes felt completely forced, as the artstyle turns into chibi silliness. This is supposed to relieve the view from the seriousness of Rei's depression, but I felt it was out of place and more annoying than how it was used in Your Lie in April.

Hikaru no Go inspired a generation to learn Go, including more than a handful of western fans at anime conventions. I don't think March Comes in Like a Lion will do the same with Shogi. I hope S2 impresses, I really do. But S1 was a slog to get through with its strange chibi takes and generally inconsequential cast.

Story 5/10
Since the show has a good rate I forced my self to watch it but I didnt feel anything from the show but a little motivation that shimada and rei may give me. The progression of the story was slow alot of characters r presented but they didnt do much or play a real role for the show and aswell their developpement was poorly made (like misumi, takahashi, tsujii, hanaoka...) Animals speech are pretty not necessary since they speak for nothing... Mostly jokes r really really bad i never laughed after watching those 22 epsiodes but i guess comedy isnt the aim of ... the show. However the story about a young adolescent who has lost their parent in a accident but thanks to shogi and his relatives managed to find a reason to live and to change his life is decent.

Art 3/10
I hate the art and the way they draw characters expression when it came to joking... So childish and annoying.

Music 3/10
Musics r bad they arent made to be listening many times. I put 3 for the first op of the show.

Character 5/10
I dislike so much Nikaidou omggg and all of this over reaction he got. Didnt like Hayashida aswell i find thay he lack of charisma for a teacher, his reaction is so chiddish sometime. And Misumi and his cat (what does the cat do in the show ? Nothing ! Exactly just like Misumi him self ;) ) However i still put 5 for Shimada who inspired me alot for his motivation and his determination for shogi.

Enjoyment 3/10 and Overall 4/10
Didnt enjoy the show because above :D. I found the rythm was very slow bc of those characters that doesnt have a real impact in the story.

This anime is a very slow-paced story revolving around a spineless kid with no personality or heart. It's incredibly frustrating when the protag is constantly being pushed around by other unlikeable characters, and submitting to their abuse and nonsense. There was ONE redeeming quality of the story which involves a family who displayed a great deal of support for the protag and showed a great example of how friends should have your back with no expectation of anything in return. I WILL be continuing onto the next season, in hopes that it'll get better, but this one was pretty dreadful.

This review is for people who don't like Slice Of Life anime and find them boring and unbearable to watch but want to venture into the world of Slice Of Life anime.....This is NOT the anime to start!!

I ventured into this anime hearing good things about it from all sources such as people recommending it online ,the fact that it won at the cruchyroll awards and also that fucker The Anime Man praising it

Plot/Story
When it comes to anime , im all about the action and higher meaning even sprinkle a little symbolism... But the story, for me, was too dull. I mean its slice ... of life and i did not have any high expections to start with but the plot here was all dull. It fails to grab the watchers attention in my case,Kiriyama who is an expert shogi player has the attitude of someone who has just given up on life,he is just so dull ,so unenergetic that he makes you feel the same way too when you watch. Kiriyama's tragic life story begins later on but by this time I was so uninterested to even care but for the most part,the plot is kiriyama going to his shogi matches,kiriyama going to school, kiriyama going to akari's place and helping them with whatever problem they have. But seriously this Anorexic kid's pitifull state of mind was the most off putting thing

Art/Sound
The art is good for the most part,I really like and appriciate the small things such as momo's design suiting her personalitiy,and the cats etc but there are certain things i don't like ...such as the fact that i HATE the way kiriyama's mouth is shaped .....sometimes especially when he is annoyed its really bad. The voice Acting was Superb! Couldn't have asked for better.... all the voice actors were so in tune with their characters and it was just a perfect fit espcially momo ,the cats and Kouda

In the end I'd like to state again that i wrote this review for a very niche group of people but you are free to take from it what you will.thanks for taking the time to read this

Story

March comes in like a lion is a slice of life. What we do have of a story is nothing remarkable. There are huge pacing problems throughout the story. Little of note happens in a majority of the episodes, the series would be much more digestible if it was more concise, but there is plenty of repeitive melancholic scenes. We get it, Rei is a troubled individual. I expected more drama, but there is also plenty of "humor". This is the biggest offender of the story, it simply doesnt work, is super repetitive, and I found it very obnoxious. For a serious anime, I ... did not expect obnoxious humor.

Art

Fairly distincitve style that is recognizable.

Sound

The 2nd opening theme is pretty good. Not much else of note.

Character

I think Rei is a good character, but a lot of scenes are repetitive. Other than Rei, the main cast consist of his adoptive family and his sister. I found the best friend character to be the most obnoxious of the bunch. They are pretty much one note. largely forgettable. The large cast side chracters are so forgettable, I completely forgot their names and would zone out when many of them were on screen.

Enjoyment

I am not a fan of shogi, so I did not understand what was going on when they were playing. I was expecting a more serious drama, but what I got instead was a show with an overabundance of obnoxious humor, forgettable chracters, scenes that drag out for too long, and a cast of characters I am largely indifferent to. The drama was decent, but it became very repetitive. When you are watching a series, and only a fraction of the series is good, it is probably not worth watching. I thin the worst thing a series, can be is boring and I found myself zoning out a majoirty of the time.


Overall

I found this series boring. I think it lacks a lot of appeal and I would not recommend it.

The only redeeming quality of this series as of episode 10 is the hauntingly accurate depiction of life with depression.

However, no actual effort is made by the protagonist to work on said depression, so the anime is just a cycle of get depressed -> rely on external people as emotional crutches to feel better again -> go win some tournaments -> forget about people again, resume depression. Yes, this can be realistic, but it is also hopelessly boring and directionless because, as other reviewers have pointed out, nothing is moving forward or changing.

The shogi aspect is not all that interesting and felt more like an ... afterthought than anything.

The side characters are flat - particularly the women, who either selflessly take care of our MC, or are a toxic draining existence (classic female characterizations in any piece of media).

The art direction seemed to draw inspiration from the manga art, but has an uncanny valley effect when shown animated.

I sadly watched the entire 1st season of March Comes in at 1.25x speed due to a friend's recommendation and truly I could not tell you one remotely interesting aspect the whole way through... I've seen some tedious ass shows I can get through with maximum binging efficiency, but that genuinely felt like maybe the most excruciatingly painful slog a singular piece of media outside of Evangelion has ever put me through. What is the incentive everyone is drawn in by please do tell me? It's literally a whiny ahh dude moving Shogi pieces for mf 22 eps in between 20 second long drawn out ... shots that feel like they are meant to be deep or something. It doesn't even go into Shogi, the one thing that sets it apart from other shows. Like whatsoever! They just play the game. You can go watch two senile people play chess in the local park with more entertainment, plus actually maybe have something happen :○ (I know, shocking). Because seriously name me 3 even relatively important events within this series. To be honest I struggle to name one. I quite naively smashed through the whole season in hopes there was even potentially some kind of actual character progression or perhaps maybe surely one redeeming event that made everyone rave about it, but it ended literally exactly the same as it began, with what felt like absolutely not a speck at all of substance whatsoever in the middle. (I am aware of the genre that is slice of life btw 🧐🎩) I love deep stuff, honestly I do, but it felt like it was just trying so damn hard to be meaningful with every sentence/shot it delivered, with no reason whatsoever to be doing so at all. Almost exact déjà-vu with Evangelion ngl. With an accompanying equally annoying orchestra of cicadas to boot as the entirety of the wholeass soundtrack. Thankfully I can't quite put MC on the level of Shinji's over-privileged grating, infuriatingly b*tchy unprecedented whininess, but god damn it boi is it close. My hoemies & I have all been through substantially worse on a daily basis i swear that, and in real life the more sobering fact is that you'll be ostracized instantaneously for being anything like these aforementioned genuinely depressing characters. I feel like I'm missing something because all my friends on MAL rate it so highly too. I can say without a doubt top 3 most monotonous troupe ass shows I've ever had the misfortune too come across & its not 3rd. There are thousands of shows with actual events out here fellas/gentleladies and we're watching 22 episodes of other people's deadass backs playing a board game. Sh*t is wack.