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I am going to start off this review by saying that I am not really a fan of the game this anime is based on, I found Automata's story and especially it's characters to be inferior to the first Nier game even though it's been a while since I played the latter. I found the plot of the Automata game to be very barebones in terms of themes and character that I found the idea of beating the game 5 times over 20-30 hours to be a tedious affair that I don't want to go through that again. The story and the combat are both ... too dull for me to want to revisit.

So why I did I watch the anime at all if I never liked the game? I find the belief that you need to be a "fan" of the source material in order to check out and enjoy the adaptation to be a pretty misguided belief. There's a good number of people out there who never read a superhero comic and there are many who are apprehensive about the industry in general but is that going to stop those same people from raving about how much they enjoyed the Sam Raimi Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan Batman movies? No it won't.

To use an anime example, the Gungrave adaptation from the 00s is one my favorite anime of all time and that was based on third person shooters that were just "decent" at best so I'd say it's possible for me to enjoy this adaptation of Nier Automata despite me not liking the game.

Long introductions out of the way, what did I think of this show? I'd say as an adaptation of the Nier Automata game it's really misguided. The best of way of describing the show is that it feels like it was made for people who can't get into video games at all so what the anime creators did was create a 90% faithful adaptation while adding in new scenes that don't develop the two main characters, made changes that don't contribute much, and removed aspects of the game that showed the game's narrative was never that great to begin with.

I'll start with what was already similar, the basic plot of the game is still here and if this was a story and writing I was a fan of I would find this to be okay but watching the anime just reminded me of how much I never liked the game's story to begin with.

2B and 9S are just painfully dull lead characters and it's not because they are androids, it's because their character interactions are just the bare minimum for a character dynamic and most of their interactions revolve around the same thing, 9S gets overly excited and tries to have a fun conversation with 2B and the latter just stoicly dismisses everything 9S throws at her. There are some exceptions like when 2B and 9S discuss what they are going to do together after the war but these are few and far between.

2B doesn't have much going on with her outside of just being stoic and 9S only had two modes, acting casual around the people he works with and getting antagonistic towards "machine life forms".

Maybe if this would be forgiven if there were any backstory reveals or any hints as to why the charactes act the way they do and the anime never shows it much like the game. The characterization of 2B and 9S are in the lore of the Nier Automara game and I thought the anime would incorporate that and it didn't.

For example the reason why 2B acts so stoic in the game and anime is because she is forced to kill 9S and can't bring herself to kill do it which is why she acts dimissive towards 9S. I thought anime being a passive medium might be easier to portray this but they didn't which is such a shame.

Now there are the villains for the season which are Adam and Eve which who are just painfully dull. Most of their interactions consist of Eve wanting to "play" with Adam and the latter being primarily interested in reading books, that what is all consists of. You'd think Adam in the anime and by extension Eve in the game would do some villain things like actively get in the way of the lead characters, do some collateral damage or just do something to make me dislike them or be interesting foils to the leads in some way but they aren't. Eve dies in the anime instead of Adam but the latter goes through the same "character arc" where they both experience loss and then just turn into over the top nilhilists, what was the point of changing who dies if the writing is going to remain the same anyway? Some of the bosses with them are removed and Adam gets beaten with the Hammer of Dawn instead of fighting 2B which makes me question if you can remove key boss fights from the game and mostly have the same story then were the bosses really that important to the story to begin with? This is yet another reason why I am not big on the game.

Then there is the plot which is just super padded. It starts off with 2B and 9S joining up with the resistance, they randomly meet up with Adam and Eve and then a bunch of stuff happens in between that has nothing to with furthering the main characters' goals start happening, they go to an amusement park, they meet up with Pascal do some favors for him and then Adam randomly pops back into the story, the robots go crazy and then Adam does too and barely anything relating to the characters getting closer to their goal was achieved.

Some good things about the anime being faithful to the game is the audio since the english dub actors and the soundtrack both return for the anime and they were the best things about the game and I am glad I get to experience them both without needing to deal with tedious gameplay and beating the game 5 times within the context of the story.

The puppet shows that take place after the end credits are also really fun and enjoyable since they have more personality than the game and anime does, the characters get to more expressive in them.

The main difference is and this is where I get a bit more positive is that there is now a character named Lily and the scenes with her were not in the game and I found thse scenes with her far more interesting than 2B and 9S. Her introduction established both that she spent her whole life being an expendable pawn and that Yorha doesn't treat the earth resistance with much care or respect so in just one scene of the first 10 minutes of the 2nd episode I care about her more than 2B and 9S, and she gets fleshed out more than 2B and 9S ever do throught the game and this part of the anime. She is also a connected to a backstory reveal with A2 that the game never fully shown which already puts the anime slightly above the game, only slightly.

Which starts to make me wonder why not make the whole anime be told from Lily's perspective instead and the audience views 2B and 9S' actions through her. Halo Legends did this with the "Babysitter" short and it could've worked just as well here. Either do this or incorporate the characterization in the lore of the game into the anime.

Overall, I wanted to like this show over the game and in a backhanded way, the fact that the anime is mostly faithful to the game makes it much easier to revisit the story again instead of me beating the game 5 times and doing 30 hours of dull combat and awkward minigames. At the same time, I wanted this series to be more than a mostly faithful adaptation, I wanted it to make geniunely like a story I never liked that much but it ultimately failed in that regard.

The movie surpassed my super low expectations I had for it, the movie isn't geniunely good at all but it's not the garbage I was expecting it to be either. It's middle of the road and I am surprised it accomplished that much.

It establishes itself that it's a dumb action movie from the first 10 minutes with how Leon finds the truck holding a vital character minutes after being told about his relevance to the plot and getting into a dumb motorcycle chase and highway fist fight later, if you can't accept the first 10 minutes of the movie and then you might as well ... shut it off. I can go on about the dumb crap in the movie, and some of it that bugged me was how they established a virus that acts like FOXDIE from MGS and how it's basically kryptonite for RE characters, which is a funny way of creating stakes and tension for the movie since it needs to seperate the team and make sure Rebecca and Jill play their roles in the story somehow.

A big issue however is the that villain is basically Obito Uchiha garbage levels of writing where he wants to destroy the world because he was forced to kill his friend. Give me a fucking break, and so much of his character is expressed through endless amounts of excessive monologuing most of it is during the middle point of the movie. His backstory is just too much of a boring sob story to even make me care and his characterization being expressed through monologuing doesn't help.

Some nitpicks as a "fan" of the games is that it's rather silly to see characters struggle against typical zombies when they have beaten them over 9000 times by now and it's also rather amusing to see Lickers get killed by one shot to the head with no use of a shotgun or high powered weapons considering in REmake 2 they take over 3 shotgun rounds to kill and the REmake games were the ones being refrenced in earlier in the movie.

Good things about the movie is that Jill is handled decently and is the best character in the movie. Her character is decently foreshadowed as being the "underdog" lone wolf of the team is decently contextualized within the first 20 minutes. I also like some of the nods to the games like RE5 and 6 which kind of does a good job at creating some degree of a continuity in a franchise as messy as RE's. Rebecca's role I also kind of liked since it does a good at making her establish her role as the medic of the team and the action was decent and wasn't wannabe John Wick like Vendetta was.

The ending climax with the super sayian hulk wannabe boss fight was hilariously over the top. It's basically an over the top climax boss fight you'd find in an RE game particularly the third person over the shoulder games.

Overall, for an RE movie it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be especially considering how much RE content has been produced as of late. Still, not "good" but at the very least tolerable.

Hellsing Ultimate was a show I watched almost 10 years ago and it was back in a time where I was waiting for each english dubbed episode to come out since they would take a while for them to release. Watching it again almost 10 years later after the final dubbed episode released and all it really did was confirm my thoughts that Hellsing Ultimate is an average show carried by an amazingly well acted english dub.

If the dub wasn't as over the top and amazingly directed as it was, I probably wouldn't even have made it through the show. While the OVA isn't ... super terrible or overly repulsive, I also think the writing overall is average at best and it also caried by the animation and art direction.

The big issue with the show overall is the character of Alucard and while I do have some entertainment value from watching him primarily due to Crispin Freeman's excellent performance as him, as a character who supposed to be on the side of "good", he is just a character that is just too hard to get behind, Crispin Freeman does a good job at selling me on the material and his character design is pretty good, the first issue is that he basically just a maniac who enjoys killing people and inflicting pain on to other, this wouldn't be too bad if he went through an arc of slowly regretting all that but he doesn't. On top of that, and I don't like saying this crticism towards any character but he is just way too "overpowered". Alexender Anderson early in the series was the only one who managed to provide him with some semblance of challenge, more on that later but everyone else Alucard fights are barely even a threat to him. Luke Valintine and the "Dandy Man" just scratch him a little and then he transforms and then wins and many of the fights ends this way. Anyone who isn't named Alexender Anderson, barely even puts up a decent fight.

The writers know this, so mid way through the series Alucard is literally waiting on a boat while all hell breaks loose around the characters. The episodes with Cerez and the Mercs have a decent amount of stakes and tension because they can't win super easily as Alucard has, the villains are only able to do any damage in this show at all is because Alucard spends so much time on the boat. If he wasn't, the Major and the Arch Bishop probably would've gotten killed extremely easily. This all feels like the kind of writing Superman gets bashed for having but at least he has villains who can hurt him like Parasite, Metallo, General Zod, Braniac, and Mister Mxyzptlk and Darkseid where Alucard only has one which is Alexender Anderson. On top of all this, Alucard isn't going through any existential crisis and making his next plan of attack while waiting on the boat, he is simpily just waiting there with nothing happening which makes me think the writers of the series couldn't figure how to keep around in the series at all times. He is also way too overpowered to do the Dragon Ball Z thing of having the protagonist get taken out of the story for a long period of time.

This is where Alexender Anderson is a rather fascinating character, he feels like the true protagonist of the story. He has a code of honor, needs back up and doesn't kill unless if the people he is killing absolutely deserve it like the Arch Bishop for example. The fact that Anderson needs back up with his Paladins on top of him struggling really badly against his rematch with Alucard and him giving up his humanity in order to beat him makes me think that he was the true protagonist of the story. He is easier to root for than Alucard is. Steven Brand's performance as him is also fantastic much like Crispin Freeman's as Alucard and admittedly their "ham to ham combat" with each other was very entertaining.

Then this leads to the final encounter with Alucard and Walter, the latter's betrayal literally feels like an asspull since the writers needed another opponent who knows how to fight to face Alucard since Anderson died beforehand and it's really poorly written since Walter before this betrayal never seemed like he had any resentment towards Alucard and any signs he was evil. If he was, he would've turned Integra over to the Major the first chance he got as opposed to letting her escape. The fight is basically Alucard mostly winning which is already really dull and of course Walter gets a "hero's death" in spite of all the bad things he did. I started to zone out when I got to this part of the show.

Other parts where I zoned out was during the forced comedic expressions comedy scenes which I never really found funny and it can cause a massive tonal whiplash during the more serious moments. The ending was full of this stuff and it can be jarring since Integra lost someone who was "important" to her. It was 30 years later sure but that is also convient since you would need 30 years to rebuild Britain after all the damage that happened.

I also got sick of the excessive if well acted monologuing by the Major especially. The "War" monologue earlier in the OVA was decent but it really started to get over done and the final episode could be shorted down a great deal if the Major would just shut up and accept his own death instead of talking, talking and talking.

Overall, while I don't dislike Hellsing Ultimate and it was certainly better than the Gonzo show released years prior, the well acted and directed dub is why I reccomend this show at all. The writing overall is average and the animation and art direction also carries it a good deal. It just has too many issues for me to give a high reccomendation.

This show is a weird one, I do enjoy it and it's probably my favorite non Universal Century Gundam show that I have seen. I still kind of feel like I start losing engagement the more I watch it.

First of all, if you are one of those people who thought the Gundam franchise took itself way too seriously, this show might be for you. G Gundam while having the setting, the mechs, and the battles of a Gundam show, it's much more of a traditional fighting shonen, if you have ever seen Saint Seiya, this show feels like it borrows heavily from it. From ... the loudly screamed attack names that are mostly just punches, to the characters of the main cast representing a certain part of the world, and to the characters all having armor that represent their "gimmick". It all feels very familar. Familiar but welcome.

I do like the first half the show even if so many of the moments feels like you got to suspend your disbelief heavily just to go along with it but at the same time that first episode is pretty much make it or break it, the show established how ridiculous it is from the moment Rain makes a shield with her make up accessory, if you can't accept that, then the show is better off being dropped because it only gets more ridiculous from there.

The first half, I liked since it was introducing new fighters and expanding on the world and it's just over the top mech fight after over the top mech fight, plus Domon is just so typical of a shonen protagonist but at the same time so pure about it and never really contradicts himself that much that I can't help but find him delightful.

I did like how it was alluding to the Dark Gundam as this big overarching threat with him hiding but slowly showing his hand in affairs. It also had some solid character building with Domon and Rain while establishing other characters in the main cast with Domon fighting them and then their backstories getting revealed afterwards. The show will remind of their goals constantly to the point where it would be hard to forget even years after you watch the show.

But then the issue I had with the show and where I started to lose engagement with it is when Domon beats the Dark Gundam for the first time. It was way too early to fight him and it should've been saved for the end of the show since when Domon was fighting him, it didn't so much feel like Domon wanted to beat the crap out of him but because Domon was annoyed and wanted him out of the way so he can get to the tournament. It kind of lacked emotional investment by Domon to be engaging. The Dark Gundam also loses two more times and never gets a clean win over Domon so it's even harder to care about his as a villain.

After that it's a tournament arc and it's...okay, not terrible but it Wong and later Wullube are way too dull of villains to carry it. Wong's goal weren't all that interesting nor did he have an interesting enough prescence to make me wish he got beat up and Wullube is just such a generic out of left field and boring villain that I zoned out every time he was on screen. Wong also somehow gets access to the Dark Gundam parts...so the series can still have some overarching plot thread connecting everything. Wullube's redeeming aspect is that he gives all the Gundam fighters an excuse to band together and defeat him which does a good job making the tournament arc feel more than just a generic tournament arc.

Master Asia is a decent villain and a solid rival to Domon and his english voice actor does a good job at giving him a major prescence even if at times, he feels like he is crazy one moment and then rational the next but he is an entertaing character that I kind of let this slide.

Kyoji Kashu feels like a prototype to Itachi Uchiha from Naruto and to Kyoji's credit, he is done better here than Itachi, but I do ask questions why on earth did Neo Germany let Kyoji run around and do want he wanted and didn't question if that was actually their original fighter. He's decent character.

Overall, I do like G Gundam and it is a show worth checking out, but I can't deny that I did start to get slightly bored the more the series went on. It's still watchable but the later parts could've been handled better.

When I was watching this show, one question just came popping in my mind and that was, "who was this show even for?"

Make no mistake about this, it's basically the Studio 4 Degrees Celsius Berserk Golden Age arc movie trilogy that came out a decade ago except now it's in made into an anime series rather than a movie trilogy.

This series has the same issues that those movies have and it makes me bring up the question yet again, "who was this even for?"

If you are a newcomer to the Berserk franchise, you are just going to be asking a bunch of ... questions and wish the context for the emotional scenes were there when they happened or at the very least the good majority of them and if you are a Berserk fan whether it'd be the manga or the 90s anime, you are just going to get irritated by the amount of scenes and context that got cut in this version of the story. I read some of the manga and watched the 90s anime and while I can say thanks to the 90s anime, the scenes that happened in this adaptation still resonated with me due to me remembering the 90s anime, but that's the thing, it's because I enjoyed the 90s anime so much that these moments I still really like. Like Griffth's speech to Charlotte about friendship, Guts' first battle with Zodd the Immortal, the scene where Guts talks about himself and philsophy with Casca at the Campfire and so on. I love these moments because of the 90s anime and I recall it so well but if my memory was hazey and just watched this anime as a refresher, this show would fall flat, the whole anime fells like one of those licensed games or movie tie in game where it expects you to watch the 90s anime and read the manga to get all of it's context and that is a flawed way to make any adaptation since the story does not stand on it's own.

To name some more examples. Remember when Guts assassinated that Nobleman and killed the kid? Show by extension movies removes context. Guts doesn't fight Samson and get his sword damaged and get saved by Zodd establishing that Guts isn't the strongest that even he at times needs help. 2nd episode spoils so much of the story. Remember why that leader of Doldrey wanted to keep Griffth alive even though Basgone wanted to kill him? Show by extension movie removes context. The Minister Foss sub plot is removed entirely. Pipin barely gets any scene or character and the down time is not as prevelant anymore. Timeskips especially early in the show are quite frequent which makes it harder to get attached to the characters since they change so much offscreen.

But to this show's credit, and this is where I start praising it. Episode 9 and onwards isn't that bad, the sex scene where Guts reveals his insecurities about Gambino and his abusive relationship to Casca is geniunely well done since it actually feels like it was kind of built up and it was very emotionally gut wrenching to see Guts a guy who the show portrays and as strong and dependable is breaking down and crying to the woman he has grown fond of. The only person Guts can actually be emotional around.

From here on out the show doesn't time jump nearly as much and you get more character interactions and it feels like you are actually following them through their journey and them falling apart emotionally due to what the Midland Kingdom did to Griffth. This isn't enough to completely save this adaptation but it does at the very least prevent it from me calling it outright bad. The music and the dub are also solid and I will miss Marc Diraison as Guts and this series reminds me why I always found his Guts performance to be endearing.

And to give this show and by extension the movies some more credit, it does have a much better ending than the 90s anime, which was way too anti climatic and ends way too soon. Best thing to do is watch the 90s anime and then jump to the last few minutes of this anime and the 3rd movie to get a better and more cohesive ending to the Golden Age arc in an animated format.

Overall, while I don't dislike this show completely, I still question who it is even for and why it was even made to begin with since it doesn't really improve the GAA movie trilogy by a whole lot. The 90s anime is still the better choice if you want to watch Berserk in an animated format rather than reading the manga.

I am not a big fan of Jojo and while I found Stone Ocean to be decent overall, these last 14 episodes were just a boring and painful slog. You got stand abilites that are nonsensical and are borderline situational at best, like a power where fairy tales comes to life, or the ability to summon snails(who would honestly want these as powers?), and the series just drags on doing it's typical jobber fight after jobber fight much like Part 3-5 and I slowly got bored by the one note formula then the series ends in a climatic showdown that takes forever to end just ... for the series' conclusion to be a time reset where only Emporio remembers everything and all the other memebers of Jolyne's crew doesn't even remember and it's just alternate versions of themselves making the whole series feel like one big waste of time since the main character Jolyne didn't even beat the main villain and it ends with 98% of the cast dying and being alternate universe versions of themselves where they don't even remember anything. From the alternate versions of the cast's point of view Emporio might as well be a crazy drugged up little kid. The whole formula yet again was fighting jobber after jobber and it ending with a boss where the main villain gets a powerful stand ability, I have seen this all before and it's even more nonsensical here since it now involves time travel or multiverses or something. And why the fuck didn't Jotaro ask the Morioh crew for help when the world was ending by the hands of Father Puuchi? I think I might actually like the Jojo Eyes of Heaven video game for the fact that the all the characters in the Jojo Parts back each other up and play a role in the plot instead of just doing nothing while the whole world could end. And why not have Josuke and Koichi pop up when the Stone Ocean already mentioned Rohan? Ugh, this is turning into a rant.

The only thing I kind of liked was Puuci's backstory and motivation but that's not enough to save these episodes for me.

If part 7 and 8 ever get their own anime, I doubt I will watch them in the near future, this series has been diminishing returns after Battle Tendancy for me.

When I watched Gundam Wing the first time all those years ago back in 2016, I was like, "what was the hype even about, what was so special about this?" While I like it a bit more than I used to I can understand why me from all those years ago was never a big fan of it despite me thinking the series is decent overall.

I'll start with the good, the setting and world like a lot of Gundam shows are fascinating and interesting, I always loved the idea of mankind moving up into space colonies and one day leaving the earth which could ... happen someday, and I love how this franchise explores that possibility, and it's still just as interesting here, even if much of the backstory is clumsily delivered through narrated exposition a lot of the time, and I feel like the show could do a better job at weaving in backstory and exposition in better. The characters are also decent, Heero is a strange character at first but he started to grow on me, the villains like Trieze and Miliardo are also solid enough. However characters like Catra and Wu Fei aren't particularly that great, Catra being hard to sympatheize with after the actions he does later in the series and Wu Fei just comes as a smug brat a lot of the time. I do like Duo Maxwell a lot and he's a pretty entertaining character and the rest of the cast is just okay overall. Relieena is also somewhat tolerable for a pacisfist character since she never contradict herself that much or at least I can't recall.

This is where the series tends to break it for me, my big issue with Gundam Wing is the frequent time jumps and perspective breaks with characters, there's a lot that happens on this show but it never feels like you are going on a slow gradual journey with them, it feels more like a highlight reel where you will follow one character one minute for a few episodes, then they will be written out of the plot for a while and then you follow another character(s) and then after a while they will be written out of the plot. It makes for an awkwardly disjointed narrative where it's hard to get overly attached to anyone and their plight, Relianna's character development later in the show felt particularly jarring since she had shown up in so long. There's a "death" of sorts that happens later in the series and the whole time, I am wonder, "are they ever going to explain what her fate actually was already?" It makes me appreciate the original series and many other Gundam shows in how they are written since the cast was generally always together in one location, meaning you didn't have to break the perspective of other characters nearly as often since they were always near by. It made the narrative feel less disjointed ans stilted as a result. Most of the cast in Wing are always seperated and are off in different places so far away from each other as opposed to the story following two groups in the original series like the White Base and the Zabi family.

The last few episodes are easily the best since the series by that point is following 3 factions and the most of the characters are together making the story feeling it doesn't need to break off into subplot land nearly as much anymore. It actually feels like I am following a group and their stuggles rather than having it be the highlight reel.

Overall, I like Wing a bit better than before but not by much, this show will always be a reminder of how I take certain tropes for granted and how bizarre a story can be when these tropes are not being followed.

I am probably going to get a lot of shit for this and if anyone does read this will probably downvote my review but Jojo Part 5 really wasn't the revival of hope for the series that I wanted it to be. I found Part 3 and 4 to be dull and I thought Part 5 with it's whole Italian Mafia angle to be interesting and possibly reignite interest in the series. I love movies like Godfather and Goodfellas so a fighting shonen anime where it's inspired by those stories sounds super interesting on paper and would at least put it on the realm of ... average if the execution wasn't that great but I was wrong, the show isn't really much like those before mentioned mob movies, in fact, I argue the Italian Mob angle is mostly just window dressing, what this series really is an amalgamation of Part 3 and 4 that just so happen to feature the Italian Mob.

The start of the show seems kind of promising since it's about Girono trying to get into the mafia and work his way and then destroy it from the inside and the early episodes seems like it's heading in that direction even with it's pointless cameos(yes cameos at best), appreances of Koichi and Jotaro. Then Trish gets introduced and what the story ultimately turns into is Part 3 but with an escort quest twist, I thought the story was going to about Girono getting into introduced into the family and he wins over their trust as he comes up with an epic plan to destory the mafia from the inside out, but that is all a lie, what it really is nothing more than a bunch of jobber fights much like Part 3 and a villain who is a mob boss who has a similar goal as Yoshikage Kira of not wanting to be found. So much of this series is basically just Girono and the gang fighting jobber after jobber after jobber, and I was mistakened for thinking I was watching Jojo Part 3 instead of a story about trust and betrayal. What I dislike about Jojo's Part 5 and by extension Part 3's jobber fights is that it's just padding and getting inbetween the main destination, it's hard to get attached to villains who die in the very same fight they get introduced in, most of the villains in Part 3 and 5 are like this, and it gets old real fast, they fight, they struggle against jobber and then win, there isn't enough interesting shakeups or change in pace to distract that most of Part 3 and 5 are just fighting jobbers. On top of that, Part 3 at least had more of an attachment of seeing it through to the end with the whole return of Dio Brando, but in Part 5, all they do is go after a mafia boss who isn't even named for the longest time. What makes me dislike the escort quest more than I already do is that the Mafia Boss wants to kill Trish after episodes of Girono's group protecting her from the hitmen squad, so if the hitmen killed Trish by accident, the series would've been over way faster, and I doubt the hitmen would've gotten anywhere since she knows nothing of Divavolo, if the hitmen killed her through interrogation, it would save the Diavolo a lot of trouble, so either way, the escort quest was ultimately pointless in the grand scheme of things. Speaking of pointless, Polarneff pops up later in the show with hardly any foreshadowing beforehand and he never once asked Jotaro and the gang over at Morioh for help to defeat Diavolo, considering Jotaro was investigating Girono earlier on in the show, why didn't he show up at the end of Part 5? It's a red herring in the worst kind of way, I thought superhero comics handled this an awkward way, but this puts those to shame. Another red herring is that the story barely does anything with Girono being the son of Dio Brando, it felt like a super pointless connection to an established character, not enough is done with it to make this plot point feel substantial, you could make Girono a powerful stand user and cut the Koichi and Jotaro stuff out and nothing would change.

Then you got an overly dragged out final few fights one with another boring jobber and his lackey and I got so bored that I decided to play video games and watch this series at the same time, and then you have a really dragged out final fight which is undermined by a pointless flashback with Buciarati's gang about fate and how they are going to defy it but I already know this since they already did it. Speaking of Buciariti, he's a decent enough character that kind of helped me get through this show and in fact he feels like more of a main character than Girono does since he always keeps the team in check and his reasons for taking down Diavolo was more interesting than Girono since Diavolo was a liar and a hypocrite and wanted to free the organization of that.

Then you get to the ending and I am really supposed to believe that the mob would accept a teenager they hardly know as head of the family and there would be no civil war sparked over this. Honestly, as much I am not big on revenge stories as a whole, 91 Days was a far better Italian Mafia anime than this was and I would rather watch that instead and I would also rather watch other fighting shonen like DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto and Saint Seiya for fights and villains I actually care about and want to see get beaten. As a drama I don't find Jojo Part 5 very good and as a fighting story I don't find it very good.

The 90s Trigun anime series is a show I don't remember all that well and it's been 11 years since I last watched it, my memory of it is hazey at best but I do thank Trigun's popularity because if it hadn't been for that Gungrave would've never have gotten made and spawned one of my favorite anime of all time, but with all that said, what I do think of this latest reboot?

I am going to be honest and say that the show COULD be pretty good but it's just held back by one major issue: it's protagonist Vash the Stampede. I am ... not a big fan of pacifist characters in fiction but Vash is a character so insufferable that I was starting to miss Batman and his monologues of, "if I kill my villains, I will become them", but I will describe more of that later on.

I'll start with the good, the characters outside of Vash and Meryl Strife are pretty solid and entertaining, my favorites are Nicolas Wolfwood, Knives and Roberto De Niro, in fact most of the characters are solid and are pretty solid and colorful. Knives is a solid villain in this version and has far more character than he did from what I can recall in the 90s Trigun, I actually rooted for him in this version of the show since compared to the main character, I felt Knives' motivations and convictions actually made sense and was far more reasonable, Wolfwood is such a good character I wished he was the protagonist of the show, and Roberto being a detached cynical old man I couldn't help but find him entertaining. His interactions with Wolfwood and the villains are also really amusing since he is so jaded attached compared to them. The music while nothing I want to listen to on Youtube is pretty solid during dramatic scenes, the animation is solid, the designs for certain characters particularly the villains I like, and the worldbuilding and how much it combines sci fi ad westerns is something I kind help but find interesting and cool as a fan of both. It's fun seeing them get mixed up like this.

Now, I'll get to the bad, Vash the Stampede has to be one of the most insufferable protagonists I have ever come across in a long while, I detest almost everything he stands for. He's almost everything people bash Goku and Superman for being. My big issue with Vash's pacifist morales is that nothing he ever does accomplishes anything. Villains are trying to kill him and instead of neutralizing the threat before the situation gets worse, he constantly screams like a little kid in a vain attempt at trying to difuse the situation, he feels like a censored cartoon character where he isn't allowed to be violent due to angering parents, but it goes at odds with the fact that Trigun Stampede isn't a censored kids cartoon and the show can be quite brutal. Vash doesn't even have good negotiations skills either, he just screams, "stay back" or "run away", every time violence is involved, like that will do him any good. The worst of this is during the episode where a kid Vash makes an empty promise to gets turned into a cyborg monster and all Vash did was hope that he was alright even though the monster was trying to kill him and his friends, and when he learns that the monster is that kid, he doesn't even end his suffering. Since the kid would want that, Vash still somehow thinks there is hope for him and after Wolfwood kills the kid, Vash actually has the nerve to take the moral high ground and act like he was better than Wolfwood. The way Vash acts all polite really gets on my nerves too, he acts like he is so pure when he is just a self righteous hypocrite.

It doesn't end there either, Vash is an immortal who can't age, and yet somehow despite seeing the worst of humanity, he still believes there is hope for them, I find this to be so unrealistic since the only people who treated Vash with any geniune kindness are Meryl, Rem and Luida. That's far too few people to be all pro humanity over and act like they are worth defending and worth taking their wrath over.

Anyway I can be here all day, but I feel like I would enjoy Stampede way more if it had Wolfwood as the protagonist, I could enjoy the show overall but Vash just ruins any consistent enjoyment I could get from the series. I normally don't like constantly reviewing anime but this show's protagonist was so clumsily written that I ended up writing this. I do sort of feel like rewatching 90s Trigun to see if Vash is as insufferable but I am not rushing out. I am not even sure if I will watch more of this series, Vash is just a protagonist I can't stand.

Yu Yu Hakusho is a series that holds a special place to me. It was one of the fighting shonen anime I watched back in high school when I was in my anti battle shonen anime phase when I watching stuff like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell and thought fighting shonen was incredibly lame. I watched this series 11 years ago, and I recall really enjoying it, I remember how watching it back in high school really felt like some grand epic adventure, so now 11 years later, what do I think of it? I do think YYH is a good show overall ... with some great character interactions, interesting villains, and a fantastic first half but it faulters a good deal later on in the series which I will explain more later on like my past fighting shonen anime reviews I will rate each individual saga/arc, give my thoughts, and then give an individual rating while giving an overall score for the series as a whole.

Spirit Detective Saga - 8 out of 10. This saga has one of the greatest starts to an anime I have ever seen, and how does it engage me so well? It starts off with pondering with the age old question, what happens when you die? It's a question I think of from time to time and YYH's early episodes do a good job at exploring those ideas. It really hits home when Yusuke Uremeshi, the protagonist of the show was a good for nothing deliquent that did something no one else would actually do, and actually saved someone who was never really in need despite appearing to be so. It only gets more interesting from there since Yusuke thought the entire time no one ever really cared for him but in fact, people actually did and it makes his sudden death in the first episode seem all the more tragic. These episodes also do an incredible job at establishing the characters surronding Yusuke like Keiko Yukimura and Kazuma Kuwarbara outside of the Yusuke's mom, everyone feels reasonably fleshed out especially the first two characters I mentioned.Keiko might seem like generic childhood friend character that you often see with anime starring teenagers as the protagonist, but she stands out much more than them since really goes out of her way to ressurect Yusuke like going into a burning house just to make sure Yusuke bodies doesn't get burned before he can be brought back, and just how committed she in helping him despite Yusuke coming off as a jerk to her. Kuwabara has a macho code of honor that could come off as a bit cheesy but since he is so committed to following it and never once betrays that rule, he comes off as a really endearing character. Kuwabara has so much conviction in how much he follows his code that he is likeable and a character you can't help but respect like when the school teachers threaten to expell one of Kuwabara's friends if the latter raises his hands on someone. Yusuke does eventually get ressurected from there, and the story does some enjoyable and lighthearted adventures until the characters of Hiei and Kurama get introduced and once again, these two characters are incredibly well written. They start off as villains with Kurama's sympathetic side being foreshadowed early on with him willing to turning himself over to Yusuke if the latter helps his mom and Hiei showing off how fiesty he is by challenging Yusuke to a fight after Hiei kidnapping Keiko. The fight was decent enough and the way Yusuke defeats Hiei is clever too. Hiei is a male tsundere much like Vegeta from Dragon Ball and the thing with YYH is that even if the characters can appear to be sterotypical, the way they are written with how they interact with other characters make them very likeable and engaging to watch. Hiei and Kurama no show for a while and Yusuke eventually meets up with Genkai who will play a big role later and she also has some very entertaining interactions with Yusuke and later on Kuwabara. The Rando tournament episodes are all solid enough and my only big gripe with it is that the final fight with Rando ends pretty anti climatically and it felt like Yusuke needed to win somehow despite him clearly being at a disadvantage, so Rando gets defeated with Yusuke's ears being clogged which doesn't make any sense since Rando has killed many people and they never had their ears clogged with blood when they were defeated and killed? It's decent but the ending was rather anti climatic. Next is the four Saint Beasts was a good introductory section to introduce the four lead characters of Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei, the character dynamics with them are great and they make for the most entertaining character group in anime. The fights with Saint Beasts themselves are decent and the episodes do a good job at establishing the stakes with human world being infected by the Makai insects. The character interactions sells most of these episodes even if the villains can be a little too one note since they are obsticles rather than fully fleshed out characters but they do their job decently enough. The only issue with these episodes is that Yusuke's fight with Suzaku ends in a rather strange way with it making look like Yusuke will die again to defeat Suzaku but that turning out to be a red herring, this will become a bigger issue later in the series. Finally, to end off this Saga, it's the Demon Mansion raid, and it's pretty solid and does the same as the 4 Saint Beasts did and introduce a bunch of one note jobber villains for Yusuke and Kuwabara to fight, but this section also introduces the first villains outside of Hiei and Kurama to surivive more than one encounter against Yusuke. It also does a good at establishing Yukina and Hiei's relationship to her but Kuwabara's attachment and love towards her can come off as a bit too cheesey for my liking since it comes off as this weird puppy dog love of sorts. Anyway, I have talked about this Saga long enough and it's time to move on to the Dark Tournament.

Dark Tournament Saga - 9 out of 10. Honestly, when it comes to stories like this, Dark Tournament ticks all the boxes when it comes to being engaging. It has a great main villain through Younger Toguro and the Saga does an amazing job at establishing him to be a sympathetic or "anti villain" of sorts by having him be very polite. Like when the Saga first starts, it begins with Toguro destroying a construction site with not many people looking so Toguro right away you can tell isn't a cold blooded killer who enjoys killing people. It doesn't end there either, he always apologizes to the people he didn't want to kill and he even refers to Sakyo as "Mister" even though Toguro can kill him at any time. He even kills his older brother later on when he kept interfering with his fight against Yusuke. Outside of Toguro, the Saga always manages to mix things up by putting Team Uremeshi at constant disadvantages throughout the whole Dark Tournament, which keeps the stakes high and keeps the tension strong since the Tournament committe really wants them dead, it isn't really until the fight with Team Toguro where Team Uremeshi is put in a fair fight, and each fight with the invitable fight between Yusuke and Toguro's teams are great, Kuwabara and Elder Toguro, Karasu and Kurama, Hiei and Bui all have good connections to put more investment in their respective fights. Kurama's fear of Karasu, Kuwarbara needing to pull his wight, and Bui's hatred for Toguro are stories told well in their respective fights. Koenma and Jorge's interactions works for great comic relief and they are very entertaining duo. The saga also raises the stakes towards the end with Sakyo putting a tunnel between human and demon world so it gives Yusuke even more reason to beat Toguro outside of the smaller stakes of Toguro threatning to kill Yusuke's friends and family. Genkai is also much more fleshed out here and is a great character by having a personal connection with Toguro, and it also does a good job at showing how important it is to cherish the people you love over material gain since Toguro gave up everything for it. There isn't a whole lot of criticism I can give this saga except towards the end of it. The first issue is that Genkai being masked was kind of pointless since it was pretty obvious from the start that it was her, and everyone eventually figured it out anyway, and the biggest issue I have with the saga and it becomes a big issue later on in the series is the red herring "deaths". Both Genkai and Kuwarabara was built up that they were going to die and it was retified later and they got brought back. Kuwabara I can somewhat look past but Genkai makes no sense since the series was building up towards her death and it all turned out to be a lie. That Koenma and Toguro actually had time to arrange Genkai's body from not being destroyed so she can be brought back to life, the whole thing felt like because Togashi was too scared of actually killing off any major characters, Genkai also becomes a side character later in the show anyway, this will become a bigger issue later and now lets get to the next saga.

Chapter Black Saga - 7 out of 10. This is a strange saga because it's definately something that is carried on it's back by it's main villain Sensui. To put it simiply, when Sensui is involved or when he is on screen, the saga is an 8 out of 10, but whenever he is not involved or on screen, it is a 6 out of 10. The saga starts off pretty decently overall with Genkai showing off the to Yusuke and the gang that random teenagers have super powers but questions start getting asked immediately when Hiei gets written out of the plot because Koenma told him that there are stronger demons than him, this could make for an interesting arc where Hiei struggles if humanity is worth defending or not but he no shows for a while and then randomly shows up to help Yusuke so it felt like a missed opportunity. What I do like about this saga is how much Sensui's action puts Yusuke in situations that they don't want to be in, and are often forced in life or death fights that kind of prove Sensui's points that humanity is a barbaric race focused on self destruction. Much of these themes carries this saga for me. Some more questionable writing starts happening when Kuwabara decides to randomly ditch Yusuke and the crew to go to a Metallica concert and it feels questionable since the world is able to end and Kuwabara decides to go to a concert with his friends? And that Yusuke actually didn't keep a watch on him? It all feels like a contrived way for Kuwabara to get new powers without getting upstaged by the other characters since his Spirit Sword abilites are pretty useless by the time you reach this point in the story. I also feel like the saga doesn't involve Kurama, Hiei, Kuwabara and Genkai as much as the Dark Tournament since they all had clear roles in that saga, here most of the time it feels like they are on the sidelines. Another issue is Yusuke's battle with Sniper since his powers are pretty ambigious and lacks rules. It's established that he can use makeshift weapons and needs to aim to use his powers yet a good number of his abilties requires him not to aim like moving knives and trucks that can home in, so it makes what could be a good fight into me asking questions. I might as well, say some more positives before getting negative is that Sensui's backstory and his fights with Yusuke are great and like I said before he is an interesting villain in that he uses humanity's knack for causing destruction or the dark side of humanity in general to manipulate people to do his bidding, and as a result he makes characters like Kurama kill Gamemaster who was just a little kid, and whenever this arc heavily involves Sensui in anything, it's great and it always raises interesting philsopshical questions. Koenma is also much better here than he was before, he might've come off as snotty brat in previous sagas but here is much more fleshed out and interesting in that he has to take responsility for his mistakes regarding Sensui and putting the world in danger. I will finally get to the issue I have been alluding to the whole time, and that is the "deaths" and lack their of any. Togashi has a big issue of killing off characters who are only pure evil like Gourmet and Elder Toguro, and every time a character is not pure evil, they either get a face turn or get an off screen ressurection. I was willing to forgive this before, but with Chapter Black being the darkest saga in the series, this becomes a lot harder to ignore. It gets really silly with how much stuff like Kurama killing Gamemaster turned out to be a red herring or Hiei killing Sniper. Then there is Yusuke being a descendant of ancient group of demons which comes out of nowhere and is only there because killing off Yusuke twice would be silly but it also gets in the way in the fact that Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara were willing to do anything to avenge Yusuke and that plight also turned out to be a lie. I still enjoy this saga but it's mainly due to Sensui and the philsophical questions it raises, take that away and I would not enjoy this saga nearly as much.

3 Kings Saga - 6 out of 10. This has to be by far be the most disappointing saga in the whole show and it feels Togashi just wanted the series to end at this point. I hear this saga is even more incoherent in the manga. But before I start tearing into it, I'll start with the good, it starts off pretty well with Yusuke becoming so disillusioned of living a normal life after his battle with Sensui that he is in some ways slowly becoming the battle crazed demon that he spent the whole series getting rid of when he tried to rationalize demons eating humans like how humans eat meat, I felt the arc was going to interesting places. The conviences get a little too much for my liking with Kurama, Hiei and Yusuke all being connected to a major King, but there are things I enjoy the long awaited backstory reveal for Hiei which is pretty solid and finally answers some questions regarding him, and the whole Cold War esque tension regarding the 3 Kings was interesting enough and it kept the stakes high, but the saga goes downhill when Raizen dies and then Yusuke tries to wrap things up in a fighting tournament that I am surprised anyone would agree to. What's worse is that no one in the tournament is even that interested in winning for nefarious purposes or anything that would cause tension between human and demon world, it all just feels like they are fighting for the fun of it, which is a far cry from the Dark Tournament with Sayko putting a whole between human and demon world. There is no tension from here on out and Yusuke doesn't even seem interested winning the Tournament and he loses his fight with Yomi making it even hard to care what happens later, and Yomi loses his fight later which loses any kind of investment this saga had left, and then it ends with one of Raizen's friends winning he got introduced super later into the story by the way and he says there will be no trouble in human and demon world, and I am surprised anyone would agree to these terms considering how Raizen died. The ending to the show overall feels anti climatic and feels like there was more to come but nothing came of it.

Overall, YYH while good is carried by it's character interactions and mostly interesting villains. The show in general feels like diminishing returns the anime, and while I can say I like it, I feel like some people in the anime community can overhype it a good deal. I enjoyed my time with it but I can't help but say I wanted more in some respects.