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*Spoilers will exist to explain why this show is great*





Story: 8
Now some of you have heard that time is considered part of the fourth dimension, but what if you were told that there is a dimension that contains all of the possibilities in the world? This is basically what the story is based on.

The anime does not explain the mechanics of Dimension W too deeply, but it explores it enough to give us an understanding of what it's trying to convey, such as when coils go haywire and Dimension W manifests in the real world, or when the characters are able to enter Dimension W ... and see all the possibilities. However, the actual use of Dimension W is a bit superficial outside of that. Everything just mainly revolves around coils and the 'possibilities' get shoved back as more of a nominal thing. So in the end the actual usage and exploration of 'possibilities' was a bit minimal, and may have become more of just a theme to a battle story with some cute moments.

And as good as the combat was, it seemed a little odd at times. Mabuchi seems to just freely throw out however many dart things as he likes, while being able to wire them so he can perform spiderman or AOT style swings and climbs as he wishes, along with the fact that they can also act as some sort of snare. There wasn't any moment where he ran out of darts or was in any particular danger due to his choice of weaponry which kind of made him a bit of an immortal god of sorts.

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Art: 9
In regards to the art, it was very well done, especially the characters. They stood out well and were designed quite differently. Mira was consistently cute, Mabuchi maintained his gruffness, Loser maintained his enigma while Lasithi was designed quite sexily. The use of colour was appropriate to the moment, though backgrounds would occasionally look quite bland.

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Character: 9
As for the characters, I did want to give it a 10, but the only thing that ruined it was the main antagonist, Haruka Seameyer. He was just a little too cliched with his insanity and cruelty. He just didn't feel unique enough as an antagonist for me to really be drawn to him and to actually hate him for his existence (like Joffrey in Game of Thrones).
However, setting aside the antagonist, Mabuchi Kyoma is quite the likeable character. He's strong and independent (not clinging to friendship nonsense), and has a cool attitude but with a sad history.
Whilst Mira is the lovable female MC who's a robot with a full human personality. She cries, blushes, and even expresses pain. She's funny, cute and most of all, has a consistent character.

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Sound: 9
The voice acting in this was also great. Mabuchi has a cool, deep and slightly apathetic voice that suits the character and helps set him apart from everyone else, while Mira has an appropriately feminine and cutesy voice which greatly complements the character.

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Enjoyment: 10

Overall: 9
Overall, I really liked this show. Maybe I'm biased towards shows that can have a consistently cute girl and who isn't annoying or out of place. Mira is not your damsel in distress, but an actual partner to Mabuchi, which I feel really helped with me giving this show such a high score. And I definitely hope to hear more of her voice in future titles.




*Some further spoilers and personal inputs on what could have made this show even greater*

There was a line in the last few episodes that really helped bring the logic of the world and the coils together, which was: "Possibilities can be predicted and explained but not observed, that is because once it is observed, it is no longer the possibility but the result. I.e. Schrodinger's cat." or something to that effect.
This line alone is what could have made this show all the more interesting. Somehow manipulating Dimension W to bring about a favoured possibility which results in the defeat of the final boss. Maybe the anime studio ran out of time, maybe the author just wasn't ready for such a complex story. They had the opportunity to utilise it through Genesis, but ultimately removed it by 'destroying' Genesis.
Without actually exploring the fundamental concept of possibilities which links the entire story together, the show was prevented from being unique and instead became another battle story with just a different theme, much like Bleach, Naruto or Fairy Tail.

SPOILERS! Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers! Do not go ahead unless you don't care about the plot, which you shouldn't anyway because it's predictable as hell.

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And here's the second season of the uninspiring, cliche spewing show of Owari no Seraph.

To begin, I don't remember too much of the first season because it was unimpactful, however I do believe that it was at the very least, more enjoyable than this season.

Let's start with the OP. Why the hell was that song chosen for this series? It sounds like something for the Toaru no series, not this. Season 1 had a phenomenal OP and ED. However, this season's ... OP is absolutely terrible both song-wise and its sequence. The sequence is basically just a bunch of people making poses for the camera... that's it. Now the ED is better than the OP, but still nothing like season 1's ED which had a great song as well as a breathtaking and even mind provoking sequence (if you really want to think that hard). This season's ED just looks like something for a drama/romance series. It has very little relevance to the theme of the show.

Now the story for the second season is basically summarised in the title, "Battle in Nagoya". But before we get to that part there's a few episodes expanding on the situation and what not.

So firstly we're introduced to some kind of political infighting/stand off which results in Kimizuki and Yoichi getting tortured. But... they don't seem to mind (the entire party) because it seems to be something that should just occur naturally (wut). Kimizuki has a very good reason for accepting it (sister), but everyone else seems to accept it without too much issue. And I'll also mention that this event has no impact later whatsoever (or rather thus far).

The second event was 'demonic manifestation'. And how they overcome it, is basically the same as when they first got their weapons, just cos'. Demon makes illusion. User realises it's an illusion because the damn illusion itself is so unrealistic and out of whack within the story itself that even a five year old could probably distinguish it. And demon is overcomed... wow, such struggle...

For the main plot line it's basically just a bunch of fights with trash mobs (unimportant characters) dying off, probably to show 'maturity' (lol). And as for the fights themselves, they're very dull, boring and slow, making it feel worse than season 1. To describe it I will simply put it into three cases. The first is the faceless or generic faced vampires who basically get killed by a single offhanded practice swing, the second is the 'boss' fight which takes a little longer and results in either humans or vampires dying (depending which side's main character is present), and the last is background fighting where trash mobs swing at each other indefinitely or one of them gets on RNGesus's bad side and dies.

As for the conversations here's how it mainly goes between Yu and anyone else he talks to, basically:
Other person makes a realistic statement/evaluation about current situation which would be an logical remark at the time.
Yu complains and pulls out one of three responses:
1. Nakama (friends)
2. Kazoku (family)
3. Revenge against vampires
Afterwards the other person will look at Yu with shock and awe and realise how silly their original realistic remark was and immediately agree with Yu and forget that they even had an original thought in the first place.

So overall, if you liked season 1 would you like season 2? Maybe, but it does feel worse. If you didn't like season 1 would you like season 2? Definitely not, and you should probably go watch something else, like One Punch Man.

So the premise of the show is that it is a mystery and that Sakurako is an osteologist and thus knows a lot about bones and can tell the gender, animal and traumas from it, but the biggest problem with the stories/crime solving is that she magically becomes sherlock holmes at whim. She's suddenly knowledgeable in art. She's suddenly knowledgeable in jewellery. She's suddenly knowledgeable in knot tying. When you never present your character as being a very diversely knowledgeable person from the beginning (like Sherlock from Elementary), everything seems to be resolved by deus ex machina.

Now the show is presented in a fairly ... episodic format. One episode generally has no relevance to its previous one besides character introduction, similar to Elementary. So what makes a mystery show great is that there are often lots of clues given out, some that are later proven to be wrong to the case or some that are proven crucial since the beginning. This show basically has none of that. How the mysteries are resolved is largely Sakurako showing up at the necessary place and everything is solved instantly, letting only the audience see it being told. There's no amazing in-depth explanation or analysis of things, it's really just: I'll show up, have a glance, and now the problem is solved. A little bit of techno-babble would have been great as well as letting the audience see into the life of an osteologist would have been ever better. But as it stands, it really feels like the author thought up an idea then decided to research it on wikipedia and eventually made the summary of it in his story.

This is a horrible way to present a show, let a lone a mystery. It's boring, it's basically skimped. Let's take a look at another show that does something like this, Mushishi. Now why is this show so much better than Sakurako? It's because there's actually some techno-babble in it along with some developed episodic characters. Most of the episodic characters in Sakurako don't have enough backstory and we're just given a simple exposition explaining their relevance then everything is resorted to melodrama and yelling.

Next, since this is basically Sherlock Holmes, let's compare the two. Now Sherlock has a side-kick, Watson. And basically Shoutarou is Watson in this story. Except for a Watson, he is absolutely irritating and does nothing to contribute to solving the case; in fact it sometimes feels like he's hindering it. Hell, he's more like Watson and the police department mixed together since he ends up bringing the case to Sakurako. Shoutarou is probably one of the worst characters I have seen to date as he basically believes himself more mature than Sakurako but has the obtuseness of a male harem MC at understanding other people's emotions.

So how does the show feel overall? Well it's a mystery without the interesting mysteries. A dialogue heavy show with very superficial and unintriguing dialogue. The only redeeming thing I can find is the art, I find the character design okay, the background art ranges from industry standard to pretty good.

Lastly, yes there's some kind of story and it's told in between and kind of at the end of certain episodes (again, sort of like Elementary). Except we're basically left out of the actual story arc and you're either left to wait for season 2 or forced to read the novels.

In regards to deus ex machinas, Shoutarou is a black belt in whatever style for a single episode so solve that one exclusive case and then it's never heard from again.

Subete no F ni Naru is so a mystery show that had a really weak start but had an interesting ending that was able to string together the elements presented throughout the mystery part.

So the first few episodes, alone, I would rate poorly. Most of it was just philophaster nonsense that was presented in an inappropriate way. It was also in no way philosophical. It was almost on the level of Jayden Smith's tweets. The first few episodes seem to try to show the relationship between Moe and Saikawa except the first episode already establishes their relationship and the following episodes do nothing to expand ... that; all they do is continue with the philsophaster nonsense.

However, around midway, this is when the show becomes interesting, as this is when the mystery really begins. The elements and clues presented throughout the episodes thenceforth were directly related to the story and you don't feel like something random that was not presented earlier, just shows up. Also, as a computer scientist, I love how they implemented hexadecimal into the story. This all relates back to "Subete ga F Ni Naru".

So how was it overall? I'd say it okay. You could probably watch the first episode, then skip the next few and you wouldn't miss a thing. This is definitely the better mystery this season than, say, Sakurako-san

Definitely some spoilers, don't read if you don't want to be spoiled.

Story: 3
The story became very repetitive at this point. Most of the episodes were: Go from current point to next point, encounter enemy Stand user, defeat stand user, repeat until we reach Dio. It became a monster-of-the-week series and it just felt really bland. The fights varied somewhat but in the end I was expecting a little more than what was essentially an RPG grind until you hit max level and go do an end game boss.



Art: 9
The art style definitely made everything feel more dramatic and dark, while the backgrounds gave a really ... good view of what Egypt looks like (at least from someone who hasn't been there). The characters themselves are very detailed with proper shadings of clothing which makes them look 'realistic'.



Sound: 7
The op of the first season was really good and it got you pumped up and it made you feel manlier just by listening to it. But this second season's op just reminded me of Rozen Maiden, it doesn't fit. The voice acting is the same as the first season so if you liked it there, you'll like it here, especially hearing Jonathan yell "AWEEE MAIII GAWDDDDD" or "SHIIIIITTTT".



Character: 5
The villains felt very cliched in that they're always over the top sadistic with no redeeming qualities. Each one was basically just 'bad guy with certain bad trait' repeated over and over every episode until we got to Dio.

Dio - Dio maintains his arrogance and threatening nature which definitely made him feel like an end raid boss and reinforces his antagonistic role.

Joutarou - If you can call standing around, posing 'cool' and saying "Yare Yare Daze" as being a character... well... he's a character for you then. Initially, this was kind of cool, the nonchalant, tough without overtness attitude, but after two seasons of this composure, it starts to become dull and repetitive. Any encounters that involve Joutarou is basically resolved before it even begins and all you're left doing is thinking how far his legs are going to be apart this time and how angled is his body going to face.

Jonathan - Not as cool as when he was younger with all his predictions but still a staple character that is hilarious when he swears/yells in Engrish.

Polnareff - Basically the comic relief of the show but his character really shines during his emotional moments with his comrades, especially Iggy.

Iggy - I initially didn't like him as his existence felt out of place most of the time as he didn't do very much, but in later episodes his character really develops and I liked him near the end.

Avdol - A firm, stable character that really cares for his friends and even sacrifices himself. Things actually happen to him which makes him feel mortal and human.

Kakyouin - Really stayed the same from the first season though his bonds with his comrades grows stronger.



Enjoyment: 7
Definitely wasn't as enjoyable as the first season as the encounters with the other Stand users felt very repetitive and monster-of-the-week.



Overall: 6
At this point, it just became repetitive until we came to the final showdown between Dio and JoJo.

As I normally do, I will have spoilers as you can't really explain how good/bad the story flows without actually explaining/telling parts of the story. So don't read if you don't want to get spoiled.


Story: 1
For an 11 ep series, it sure took its time to get to the main story: the Twenty Faces identity. The first few eps are largely character introductions, showing how inadequate the police force is, how great Akechi is and how unjust the justice system is. It dragged on needlessly as it could have easily been condensed within two episodes; maybe even one. And even when Twenty Faces was introduced ... it dragged on quite a bit with continuous side missions/mysteries.

The highlight was when the origin of Twenty Faces was revealed and that was when it became interesting. Unfortunately the writers probably have little to no experience regarding the philosophical/mathematical concepts they throw out, like 'Laplace Demon', 'Chaos Theory' as they mentioned how they were both similar; except a quick wiki search will show you that Chaos Theory is a counter to Laplace's demon.

Continuing... the ability for Twenty Face to affect people is largely excused with "people are angry" combined with the pseudo-intellectual application of "Butterfly Effect".
Now, you might be thinking that I'm harsh and that I should have a suspension of disbelief. Sure, let's try that for a moment and believe that everything works.
So as the climax, the antagonist then kills himself/disappears to complete his formula to make Twenty Face realised/complete. And the aftermath is that Twenty Faces appear more, then... they're forgotten... ??? All this is explained within the last few mins of the episode. It's as though the concept of Twenty Faces went back to square one and that the formula suddenly stopped working.

So the entire series was basically four episodes long that contradicts itself and ends up having essentially no effect as the concept of Twenty Faces pre-dates the story's timeline.

PS: There was even, what I consider, a filler episode (ep 6), in that nothing happens that advances the actual story. It is literally a side mission/mystery that's presented and solved in one episode.




Sound: 7
I liked the ending song and the piano insert song (look up Ranpo Laplace Dream on youtube and have a listen). Voice acting was pretty standard, I didn't feel like I felt attached to any particular character's voice selection. Overall, very average/standard.




Art: 7
The art isn't particularly bad, though the colours are a bit all over the place which reminds me of the *monogatari series. Though I feel that they share some kind of artistic overlap, in this series' case, it's not done as well as the *monogatari series and really just feels random.
Character designs are your more typical modern anime types in that their eyes don't take up half their face and hairstyles are more refined.



Character: 1
Akechi - Of all the three main characters, it feels like Akechi is the only one whose impact is actually felt outside of plot devices from the other two. He solves everything, fights everything and is basically the get-out-of-jail card that's used every single episode.

Kobayashi - He is basically the plot device to bring the camera to the villain (of the episode) so we can get some expository dialogue about the situation, then have Akechi come in and solve it.

Hashiba - His character feels completely out of place with the overall mood and story. His yaoi tendency serves no purpose towards the story nor does it even have any humourous impact. He's basically the incarnation of the concept of 'devil's advocate', except in a really annoying manner and without effect.

Supports - When we find out that some of the recurring characters turned out to be part of Twenty Faces, their impact towards the story just feels like the writer was trying to pull a 'bet you didn't expect that' card. But since their purpose basically fades away instantly, you end up not really caring too much about it in the end.
- Black Lizard had literally no purpose other than perhaps providing some fan service which also applies Hanabishi who is a 'moe', loli looking school teacher introduced for the sake of more fanservice (probably).

Nakimoshi - The only one who's remotely interesting but is quickly off'd as the series had to come to a conclusion. Basically a bullied guy who has a 'notice me senpai' complex who looks for affection from Akechi and took his disapproval as rejection which led him to Twenty Faces



Enjoyment: 2
I really dislike episodic series if they're trying to have an overall story. Stuff that's a slice of life like Non non Biyori works fine because of its nature, but when something has an overall story but takes almost 6/11 to get to it, then there's a problem with the writing. A large portion of character interaction is bland and has no development and the mysteries aren't even that enjoyable as they're resolved too fast with little complexity.



Overall: 1
I would not recommend this series

It's a hot spring episode with lots of loli goodness. If you're watching season 2 of Fate/Kaleid, then it's obvious what you're here for.

The art is astounding, and I would say it is the best that I have ever seen. Everything from the characters to the backgrounds have really made an impact . The characters look sharper while the backgrounds look like masterpieces of art. A definite 10/10 and a must watch for any Fate/Kaleid fan.

As for the fanservice, well... disappointment and any synonyms cannot be applied to this episode.

And last of all let me just say... DAT WATER

Sigh... another potentially good story ruined by a lamppost like execution. And what do I mean by lamppost like execution. Basically, everything is centred around Koro-sensei in that the only reason why the other characters exist is because of Koro-sensei. However, this isn't as lampposty as other anime as Koro-sensei has a decent character and isn't hopelessly there just so others can have some air time. Now for the main review.

Story 4:
The general outline of the story would've been 9, however the execution of it reduced it to 4. You'd think that having junior-high school students learning to become an assassin would be a great ... idea. In fact, this somewhat reminded me of Akuma no Riddle (which wasn't great but it's a comparison). Since it's set in a school setting the writer wanted to have some school related stuff/activities, which is fine. However, it seemed like he wanted to do both assassination and normal school life and what he ended up with was neither.

There was literally almost no mention of any assassination techniques, nor is there much air time of any assassination related type information, as one would find in say, a cooking/sports anime. In fact this was more of a school life with an assassination theme dlc attached to it. This story feels more like GTO but much more poorly executed and much less interesting.

And since this is a shounen series, when the students are presented with the prospect of possibly being allowed to actually kill someone, it's suddenly labelled as bad and they're forced to perform non-lethal takedowns. Basically just another generic, naive moralistic story that's contradictory since their entire purpose is to assassinate their teacher.

Art 9:
There's not much to complain about the art, but perhaps with the lighting on the faces a tad too bright. I didn't explicitly notice any weird frames or distorted characters so not much to complain about overall.

Sound 6:
Intro/outro not my type, the BGM isn't memorable and the voice acting is pretty standard stuff.

Character 3:
Here's the majority of the show's problem. We get introduced to a large cast where most of them are then given very little personality due to the lack of air time for each one. As we go further in we are introduced to another couple of characters who then continue to serve very little purpose to the overall story.

We get introduced to Karuma who's the cool/lazy/smart guy who's just there for convenient purposes. We get introduced to the AI who becomes a huge plot convenience outside of her introduced episode. We get introduced to Ms. Bitch who ended up being an unfunny gag and is sidelined for most of the episodes. And... there's the bunch of the other classroom students that we really have no idea about because neither their background nor determination to assassinate is explored. A bunch of other characters appear for a brief period of time to 'spice up' the anime, but in reality, it feels like they just diluted the entire story instead.

Now for Nagisa. He's our main protagonist and was thrown into Class E for... no one really knows... with the anime complete, I still don't know how much he has developed. Supposedly he has great potential to be an assassin except he's never actually allowed to kill anyone (besides the octopus) and we don't really know how good he is since we have had very little to compare to, not to mention the lack of actually seeing him train. The majority of the time he is on, we just see him enjoying a somewhat normal school life, or having an exposition on what's happening/happened so far.

This story would've been much more interesting if it was focused between Koro-sensei and the school's headmaster and dropping the assassination theme all together, as we actually spend more time focusing on the students welfare/education than we do about their actual ability to assassinate.

Enjoyment 4:
There's not really much humour, you're not inspired, you're not thrilled, you're not given the sensation of anything much overall.

Overall 4:
It tried implementing morality of killing in an assassination themed story, which makes no sense at all. They introduced several characters which have killed more than a dozen high value targets, yet it's somehow wrong for the students to do the same thing (which they are actually being trained to do). So the anime both tries to glorify assassination and denounce it at the same time, leading it to be unable to present a compelling story.

Death parade is a story that attempts to look into the philosophical side into life and death, more so on the side of death and judgement. In life we may feel that decisions are made arbitrary by others on our behalf but in death, they are even more arbitrary.

The problem with this story is that it tries to appear mature and philosophical but comes out light and obscure. Most of the episodes feel more like short stories with the theme centred around two people who died and had some sort of relation in life. The purpose of the games in each episode is to draw ... out their 'dark side'. Each story seems to attempt to speak something philosophical, perhaps about not judging a book by it's cover, regrets that are only realised after death, vengeance etc. Unfortunately they are delivered in an non-thought provoking manner which leaves you desiring for something more than an anime form of Grimm's fairy tales.

Overall if you wanted something much more thought provoking I'd recommend psycho-pass instead, as it delivers both action and social commentary.

Score breakdown:

Story - 5
There really isn't much of a story, it's more of a character development that started off very slow then kind of just accelerated suddenly, giving a sort of jerking feeling as you would in a car.

Art - 8
Personally I didn't like the character design/art style, but other than that the background and colours were very nice and soothing.

Sound - 8
Nothing wrong with the voice acting, the op was pretty nice, but feels at odd with the theme of the show. Didn't really like the ending in the way that it really contrasted the opening.

Character - 7
Every ep where there's a game involved there are people in different situations which at least didn't feel like watching the same episode as the previous. However, the characters didn't really have any oomph to them and felt like drama for the sake of drama. Especially in the episode with the otaku and tv mother.

Enjoyment - 7
The story mostly progressed nowhere for the first few episodes. They were all just talking about games and people's response to them, which left me wanting more than just some Grimm's fairy tale-esque stories. The clear attempt at being philosophical but delivering a very obscured and watered down conclusion really just felt like someone trying to argue without any conclusions.

Overall - 6
It wasn't a great show by any stretch of means. It probably could've been much better if it was longer with each game having more development for Decim and Chiyuki. It was either too slow or too sudden in the development which just felt like lazy/stumped writing.

I have to say, with absolute subjectivity, that this is probably the best season by far... and it's all because that it basically ignores the actual storyline for the first 6 episodes. And if this was any other anime, I'd definitely rate this much lower as it's basically filler, however because it's Fate/Kaleid, you all know why you're here. So let's continue and see why this is probably the best season.

Since our lovable main cast has all been introduced and their characters outlined, this season expands their characters and gives you lots of fan service in between, making it one of the most enjoyable out ... of all three seasons. We get to see more of Kuro's mature, seductive and cheeky side, while Miyu opens up and has cuter interactions with Illya, with Illya staying relatively the same but it's the antics that she's thrust into and her reactions to them that seals the deal.

So overall, if you didn't like the series in the first place, you really shouldn't be watching this (let alone season 2). But if you loved Fate/Kaleid for what it is, definitely watch this, you will not be disappointed... well maybe when the story actually gets back on track, lol.