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Jan 9, 2020
I will never, ever, understand the hype for this show.
I am forcing myself to watch the whole thing, as I cannot deny the impact this show has had on anime, especially in the west. However... that's the only reason I'm watching the show. I do not enjoy it.
Story: 6/10
The story is really the best thing going for it. The story is split up into different arcs, known as "sagas." Each saga, for the most part, features a new villain. The villains usually either want to conquer or destroy the place, and the heroes want to stop them. Pretty generic stuff, but ultimately it's harmless. The
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sagas also tend to introduce some new gimmicks, either for the heroes or the villains, to mix things up a bit. Freeza saga introduces Super Saiyan, Android Saga introduces Time Travel, stuff like that. At their best, these gimmicks can be somewhat novel elements that impact the story in neat ways. At their worst (and most common), they're asspulls to push the power-creep further along.
Art: 5/10
The art is poor by today's standards, but I'm not cruel enough to hold that against a decades old show. Ultimately, it holds up well enough that it's not BAD, but it does show its age.
Sound: 4/10
The music really depends on whether you're watching the dub or the sub. While I've heard music from the sub, I'm personally watching the dub, and... it's nothing to write home about, I guess, but it's not noticeably bad. My only complaint is that the same musical cues and tracks are replayed a LOT.
Character: 1/10
The characters... oh boy. The characters are BAD. At their best, they're cookie-cutter archetypes with no real personality like Goku and Vegeta. At their worst, they're absolutely insufferable to see on screen like Bulma and Chi-Chi. In the middle, you have non-personalities like Krillin and Piccolo: people with no discernable motives or thoughts of their own who serve to pad the runtime by losing until Goku shows up. At least Piccolo gets a few cool moments, Krillin does absolutely nothing.
Enjoyment: 3/10
I've already covered the meh story and the god-awful characters, so the only thing left is the action. This is what the show gets praised for, and honestly... I don't see it. At all. The fighting is bland and boring.
Do you want to see a bunch of lines that are supposed to represent fists just...kinda... appearing and disappearing while two people grunt and the spectators go "wow they're so fast, they're so powerful, damn they're fast, and they are SO powerful" for three episodes at a time? Because... boy does DBZ have a lot of that.
Or how about eight minute long flashbacks to clips you've already seen during every major fight? I'm not kidding. Eight minutes. I counted. It happens a lot.
Maybe you want to see a solid three minutes of people transforming or charging attacks, while their opponent just... watches. That happens a lot too.
This show doesn't really have any exciting fight choreography or impressive moments. There isn't an ebb and flow to combat so much as just "fighter A is definitively winning, but fighter B got a power up so now they're mopping the floor with fighter A, but fighter A got a power up so they're mopping the floor with fighter B", until someone runs out of power ups.
Goku vs Freeza is nearly an ENTIRE SEASON LONG. 30 episodes, to be precise. One single fight.
I honestly don't understand how people can find this show exciting.
Overall: 4/10
If this show wasn't so important to anime, I would've stopped watching a very, very long time ago. I cannot recommend it to anyone. I honestly see this show as a chore to watch. I wish I could see in it what others do, but I just can't. At its best, this show is only mediocre. With bland to annoying characters, action that equates to little more than flashbacks, repeated animation, and literally just lines appearing and disappearing, and a story that can't support any of this on its own, I recommend to keep a safe distance from this garbage fire. There are plenty of long-running shonens that are way better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 16, 2019
This show... might be the most boring show I've ever watched.
Now, granted, the show did not OFFEND me in any way, which keeps it from being a lower rating. However, it was just... boring. That might be the worst thing a show can do. I don't have much to say, so let's get into this:
Story (1/10):
This takes place in a world similar to ours at the outset of WW1, but with magic and other slight geographical differences. Our protagonist was an arrogant, atheist salaryman who is punished by God, a being he calls "Being X", to be reborn as a super powerful magical loli in
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this new world to fight.
...Yeah, sure, okay, whatever.
What strikes me about this is that the story can't seem to stay on track. In fact, the basis of the entire plot makes no sense. Essentially, Tanya has to either devote him/herself to God before she dies in this wartorn world, or else be punished for eternity. That, or she can just live until she dies of old age.
Alright, this is fair enough, except God also decided to give her insanely powerful magical abilities and high intellect. At least, that's how it comes across, as there's no way a Japanese salaryman had naturally powerful magic or battle capability. So what's the deal? In standard Isekai, the hero being insanely strong is, while boring, at least somewhat understandable by the plot, as God's just a cool dude apparently. In this one, however, God is actively trying to punish Tanya, and yet she is somehow granted intense capabilities.
Furthermore, Tanya chooses, in order to stay alive, to ENLIST INTO THE MILITARY. Her logic is that if she can get promoted through the ranks fast enough, she can get into a cushy commanding role in the safe central region of the Empire (AKA Germany), rather than fighting on the front lines. This motivation would make sense... if she were DRAFTED. But no, she willingly volunteers, rather than just... I dunno... becoming a baker in the capital or something. This makes no sense, and yet we have to accept it as the basis of the entire series.
Art (2/10):
For the most part, this anime is just... ugly. Sometimes, that's clearly intentional. Sweeping scenery shots of a shellshocked no-man's-land, or glimpses into the ruins of a city having been pounded by artillery are clearly not supposed to be very pleasing to the eye. However, it's not limited to that. The flying of the characters is downright ugly, with very clear and distracting CG landscapes being glided over by hand drawn (or, even more distractingly, also CG) characters being something you'll have to get used to if you want to watch the show. Furthermore, the character design... by god, the character design. These are some of the ugliest looking characters I've ever seen, even when it's clearly not intentional. Tanya herself looks... fine, I suppose. The eyes are a bit distracting, but nothing too awful. Everyone else, however, runs the gambit from forgettable to downright hideous. The worst offender of this is the clear waifu bait of Serebryakov. She might be a bit more successful if she wasn't painful to look at, from her oddly long eyes to her drooping face to her very pronounced lips (this show makes the curious and regrettable decision to draw their characters with physical but uncolored lips). This show is a chore to look at.
Sound (6/10):
The only moderately redeeming aspect of this show is the sound, and even then it's only for the OP and ED. The strange metallic chanting and yelling of the intro, and the harsh sounds of the ED are very unique. They fit the mood the show is TRYING to go for very well. However, other than that, I cannot say anything about the rest. I hardly ever even notice the music in this show, and certainly none of it is memorable. It's a shame that "the OP and ED are decent" is the best I can say about this show.
Character (1/10):
This show has a very large cast of characters.
Too bad they're all awful.
To clarify, I do not mean that they're awful as in they're bad people. That's to be expected in a show called "Tanya the Evil" (although we'll get to that in a moment). What I mean is that they're not memorable in the slightest. I can remember no one's name except Tanya and, on a good day, Serebryakov. They have no personality whatsoever. Everyone is only there to move the plot forward. Depending on the character, that might be by giving Tanya orders, listening to Tanya's orders, shooting at the enemy, BEING the enemy, or being Tanya. However, that's as far as anyone's character extends.
More than anything else, a war story should make you love the characters. That way, seeing them go through the hell of war is legitimately worrying and you hope that everyone makes it out, even though you know they won't. This doesn't happen in Tanya.
The worst offender of this is perhaps Tanya herself. She either has no character, or her character changes on a dime, and I cannot decide which. She is stated to be evil in the title, but she does a grand total of TWO evil things in the entire show, and one of them is just her character introduction so it hardly counts.
In one scene, she's sacrificing the lives of some men for a small gain. In another, she's taking a hailstorm of bullets to save one random guy. In one scene, she's screaming about how awful God is, in the next she's praying to Him. Her character has no consistency to it, and it is infuriating to watch.
Enjoyment (1/10):
There are only so many times you can hear "woah, she's flying much higher than she's supposed to," followed by seeing Tanya shoot some planes and then shoot some people on the ground before it gets downright arduous to sit through.
Yet another isekai that feels the need to make its main character the most powerful person in the universe, and it's infuriating.
This show did something no other show has done. It made me cry actual tears of boredom and tedium. Only one other THING has ever done that, and this is the first show to do it. I can't adequately explain how boring this show is.
It DOES pick up eventually, and the last three episodes weren't torture to sit through. If this were just the last three episodes, I would give it a 6/10 or so. As it stands though, the show as a whole gets a 1. It's just...
It's so boring guys and gals.
Overall (2/10):
With this, we've reached the end of the review. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I hate this show. It was miserable to sit through, and if I hadn't preemptively bought tickets to the movie so I could see it with my friends, I wouldn't have sat through more than two episodes.
At its absolute best, this show gets painfully average. I could not recommend this show to anyone unless the idea of a loli shooting people is enough of a sell on its own to warrant a show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 20, 2019
Stone Ocean is a very divisive part for many, and I can totally understand why. A ton of controversial decisions are made, and you can see Hirohiko Araki trying to figure out how much he can get away with. However, despite that, I believe this to not only be amazing in its own right, but one of the best JoJo parts to date, rivaled only by Steel Ball Run.
Story: 10/10
It should be noted that the story is not, by any means, FLAWLESS. It can be a tad difficult to follow at times and straight up nonsensical at others. However, this is part of the charm
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of JoJo, in my opinion. This story also feels far more involved than other parts. So often, ever since Stands were introduced, JoJo feels like "get from point A to point B and don't get killed along the way." Even Steel Ball Run falls into this trap for the most part. The only two parts that avoid this are JoJolion and Stone Ocean. It's not about just getting somewhere, but rather DOING something. The fights come (mostly) organically as a result of opposing goals, rather than the enemies being literal walking roadblocks. Towards the end, the story falls a bit more into this trap again, but at that point the build-up to it was so good that it didn't matter.
Art: 8/10
Personally, I've always had a hard time reading manga. That's why I have so little manga listed on my profile. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I just can't understand what I'm seeing. Granted, I read the JoJo's Colored Adventure release, but the lineart and shading is still Araki's work. And, all of that being said, Araki does an excellent job conveying his ideas and the actions. Beyond that, the art is simply beautiful. The only reason I have it at an 8 is because I read the colored release, so I can't speak PURELY for Araki's work.
Character: 9/10
This cast of characters is one of my favorites, without a doubt. From Jolyne's excessive vulgarity in language and action, to F.F.'s (literal) fish-out-of-water nature, to Annasui's almost aggressive pursuit of Jolyne, the Stone Ocean crew is immense fun to be around.
The villain, Pucci, is also interesting. I know this point is hotly contested by many, but I found his motivation to be unique, if a bit... confusing.
The only reason I have it as a 9 instead of a 10 is the under-utilization of characters like Annasui and Emporio and, most egregiously, Ermes.
Enjoyment: 10/10
There's not a lot you can say objectively to support something like enjoyment. It's kind of a feeling. Stone Ocean is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air for JoJo. While not bad, JoJo's had been steadily declining in quality since Battle Tendency, with Vento Aureo being somewhat weak. Stone Ocean felt so new and tense, and since this part JoJo's has been on the uprise, with Steel Ball Run being downright brilliant and JoJolion, from what I've read so far, being very nearly as excellent.
Overall: 10/10
Stone Ocean is a wild ride from beginning to end. With a spectacular cast of characters, fun and interesting stands (finally, an UNDERPOWERED main JoJo!) and a whole ton of risks taken, Stone Ocean feels like, appropriately, the dawn of a new age for JoJo. I highly recommend to anyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 13, 2019
I loved the first season. It was seriously one of my favorite anime around. With its message of opposing elitism and taking value in what you have, learning not to beat yourself up over failures, and choosing meaningfully to improve, I thought it was unique in so many ways.
The second season, however, really rubs me the wrong way. Everyone feels grossly out of character, and the world feels relentlessly mean-spirited. The first season was, generally, pretty optimistic. People were generally pretty nice, villains tended to come around in the end, and it was a fairly happy show for the most part. Season 2, on the
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other hand, is just cruel. The world feels so much more bleak and cruel for no particular reason. Reigen especially seems to have had his character butchered. In the first season, Reigen was a conman, but he was generally well intentioned. He conned people to make them feel better. He was a bit too blunt and could be a tad rude and dismissive, but he was never mean. In season two, however, he's become easily the most unlikable character. He's gone from a moral compass to a bully with no real reason.
I also feel like the music and art, while still phenomenal as usual, is a step down from the first season. I don't feel myself being floored by it like I was the first time around. Of course, by the standards of anime in general, it is still exceptional, but by Mob Psycho standards, it's not much.
It is still possible for the show to recover, but halfway through the season, and I'm not optimistic.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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