Back to DarkSoul218's Profile DarkSoul218's Profile

The beauty of anime is unrivaled power to the author. Any premise, any character; any plot, any idea; any moment, and any image. It has limitless potential as a medium. In blatant disregard to such majesty stands Megalo Box. It's existence towers in disrespect to both art and storytelling. Every moment exists as a spit in the face to the audience for attempting to glean even the smallest sliver of value from the material. There is no justification for this facade of entertainment; it's a story where the characters don't matter. Completely driven by plot, any attempt of buildup is eradicated by time skips and ... fabricated intended outcomes. Cause and effect don't exist in this world, nothing you will find here makes rational sense.

If the above wasn't clear enough already, here's the specific: A previously untrained, uneducated, street urchin becomes the champion of the deadly sport of cybernetically enhanced boxing, without the
use of cybernetics. How does he do this? We don't know. The story for some reason skips most of those parts. What we do and don't learn are many things.

1.) Post the pilot episode where the premise is explained, the sport magically discontinues to be bloody and deadly mess.
2.) Apparently none of the hundreds of other fighters who have actually trained for years are "The Real Deal", whatever that means.
3.) Who is the kid in the hat, and why are you here? Remember how your friends literally needed you for survival and you immediately ditched them to live with strangers?
4.) How can you have fully functional bionic legs and feet for amputees, but not hands?
5.) Apparently your fully functional bionic legs and feet suck ass, despite being the 17th best fighter? But only now are causing you problems because you're fighting the MC...?
6.) How was the AI gear magically changed to not need other gear to detect for its sensors?
7.) How does removing an eyeball atone for losing millions and millions of dollars, in the face of people who have killed others for far far less?
8.) What kind of bad guy reveals his evil intentions to the good guy with a double-cross in the exact moment where the good guy holds all the power in the situation?
9.) How can a man who lost his sight yesterday have both tremor sense and perfect hearing sense?
10.) Is it a wolf or a dog?
11.) Why does it randomly bark at things?
12.) What was the actual dream of Yukiko? Joining the Military Industrial Complex?
13.) Why did Yuuri abandon Yukiko?
14.) Why did Yuuri join Yukiko to fight for her dream in the first place?
15.) As the champion fighter, isn't majorly handicapping yourself for the final "Real Deal" fight the most disrespectful thing you can do?
16.) Oh I guess the scientist/entrepreneur/top-fighter is an expert in very dangerous, never performed before surgey, and can do it all in his basement, by himself.
17.) How does the MC win every fight with a single punch to the face? His frame is smaller than every other character, and uses no cybernetics.
18.) And finally, why would you build a new massive megadome project and not put a roof on it?

Does this list of atrocities cover everything? Absolutely not. But for the sake of brevity, let's move on with our lives.
Art and Music were below standard.

Cookie-Cutter Fantasy/Drama/Shonen. The fantasy and shonen world apply overt external pressure on the characters to create "unique" dramatic entanglements and quandaries. Wow. The fantasy world itself is vaguely, and by that metric poorly, explained, but just done enough to let us understand some of the feelings for the characters drama to come through. The rest is left up to the viewers mind to very easily piece together the incoherence of the premise. Lack of focus and creativity leads the author to pitfall into the classic trope of stumbling through the climax through pure shonen, while the entire point of that genres use is architecturally auxiliary ... to the rest of the show.

Aside from one, the entire shows cast is never explored. The author even insults us by iterating a disgustingly common writing habit of completely changing what was the initial premise of one of the main cast for an attempt at some sort of pseudo depth. I consider actions like this to be blatant lying to the audience. Changing a characters backstory several episodes later isn't a twist, it's retconning. And as you can assume, opportunities to answer questions of the audience for actually interesting development are missed, furthering infuriation at the authors lack of competence.

Art is standard. Sound is above standard. Without the well doing of the audio department, many of the scenes would probably fall flat and rank this show even lower. All in all though, mediocre. Enjoyable for passing the time when there's nothing else.

The Abyss stares back, and I've gazed for a long time. Enervated by the chaos, revulsed with ghastly confusion. Words to objectify the veil passes my minds grasp. No ambivalence, I am disturbed. An insult to Frankenstein's creation as a comparison. My solace is only farce. Depreciated with every episode, every scene, every moment. The deepest shame I would endure if this were my own, and by God's ineradicable grace it was not my path.

What is there to criticize about the story? I truly do not know. There isn't one. I've searched, but a void isn't even hollow, it lacks the edges to even ... encompass. A premise? Possible. A character we know nothing about (and learn nothing about) obtains powers that even the audience isn't clear on. The latter isn't an issue, but the characters understanding of the former within the context is. What is the purpose of this "Premise"? Again I don't know, there is no story. Calls to justice maybe? Random murder? Selfish indulgence? The main character, our guide through this world, through every world, does not exist. We are aimless, and we are lost. The ultimate irony is that the only thing I can tell you about this "Person" is that he is a Devilman, and he is also a Crybaby. That's as far as it gets. We don't even know why. The rest is non sequitur and distant. Most egregious are the moments of climax avoidance. Which in itself is kind of funny, given that the most major theme of the show is sex.

Destitute characters. Soulless avatars devoid of internal qualities. Existing without pasts, reasoning, or ambition. Specters whose only forlorn purpose is to fill a frame. I have the deepest sympathy for their joyless existence.

Visually? Far below standard. Watchable, sure. But any praise for aesthetic is simply misguided. The animation is this way because it's cheap, halfheartedly crafted, hackery. Producers know that setting the bar low initially gives animators huge freedom to make mistakes and expedite the entire promise, while fully aware that by many it will be recognized as avant garde.

Sound is atrocious. It's almost almost pathetically silent. And any hope to cultivate a moment through auditory suffusion is laughably botched.

I don't even think an ironic viewing of this can bring enjoyment. It's just sad, plain and simple. The only avenue to preclude my judgement of you enjoying this show is the bliss adolescent naivete.

Vacant is the heart that sits a crest the mountain of broken hopes. This visual diatribe of over-sized anatomy should be shelved inside the encyclopedia breastanica alongside its similarly pointless yet plentiful sistren. With no real story and a premise abandoned after the pilot, we're left to voyeur through the harem of a vacuous and microscopically dialogued protagonist. The barren space is then finger painted in with shrill jealousy unattentively gilding pubescent insecurity.

The characters are glaringly flawed, and rarely act in what should be their own interest. Most egregious is the heroines complete change in personality after just the first episode. Although outside of ... the actual shows content, the jarring incoherence is magnified by the episode ending, which ironically reminds us of the person who we were actually introduced to.

The show is enjoyable in the comical nature of it's existence. With clear sincerity in its production, it persists as another testament to the anime industries desire to churn out luke warm dead-air filling content.

Art is standard. Sound is Standard.

Another faceless insert experiences harem that glorifies incestuous relationships above all else. Airable on the technicality that no genetic connection exists between our fated lovers, this perverse work exists solely for the marginal increase of lower body blood flow of pre-teen male viewership. Sexual depictions of almost borderline children provide the majority of this shows content, and the rest is crayoned in as a pretense to not endlessly replay the same scene with the same background. None of the characters are redeeming, and no plot point has any relevance to story progression.

Art is standard. Sound is standard. Enjoyable for the sexual deviants and emotionally ... desperate.

Defiantly incoherent in its ability to tell a story, this monstrous showboat is laden with nonsensical and unrealistic plot holes within even its own fantasy world. Carried by its strong initial premise and an enormous rearguard of aesthetic, this show does surmount its flaws, catalyzing a nonetheless enjoyable ride. A ride devoid of developed characters and consistent storytelling albeit, with its author clearly indicating a lack of forethought in all areas; evidenced by the grotesque abundance of unexplained time skips that are abused in retroactive reference for the purpose of unforeseen plot advancement. This common gimmick is used by writers incapable of chronicling a consistent ... and logical character base or storyline, and instead rely on surprise flashbacks to lead key decision making and story outcomes. The author of this story should be flagged and cast heinously as example for future generations of writers.

Art is well above standard, but has issues with depicting facial expressions and has a strong tendency towards littering the frame with unsourced and obstructive particles. Sound is well above standard. Enjoyable, but suspended disbelief required.

Mysteries to be theorized about and solved only by the author, this show fails at engaging its audience in the most basic form of the mystery genre. Despite this detriment, the story is interesting enough to counter-balance this lack of interaction to warrant continued consumption of the content. Character archetypes are initially attractive but inadequately develop, and often repeat the same key lines through almost any situation. They carry through the show enough to make it work, but not diverse enough to create anything of significance.

Art is above average. Sound is above average. Enjoyable mainly to just look at and listen to.

An extremely constraining premise not thought out past its uncharacteristically edgey first episode, this show is doomed to be either pigeonholed into anecdotal and repetitive character dramas or developing and exploring the few recurring characters in the show that have almost no room to grow. Of the character dramas, the audience spends the majority of their viewing experience waiting for the obvious twist or two to take place before them. It's a gimmick that works for the gullible, unsuspecting, or inexperienced, but for anyone else most of the episodes mirror a waiting room the majority of the time. Of the recurring characters, any development possible ... is completely transparent and self-evident. The combination of sparse personality and a sterile environment incinerates any hope of advancing the show in this direction.

Art is slightly above average. Sound is above average. Enjoyable in some areas, but finishing this show feels mostly like a run out the clock situation.

Visually and emotionally engrossing but intellectually misplaced, this show struggles most at maintaining a focal core to its story, undermining its originally interesting characters. This nebulous nature is demonstrable most by disregarding the emotional struggles of the protagonist. The advancement of story plot by becoming a sports-esque shonen midway through the show abandoned our initial premise of a numbed and enervated youth, struggling with self-discovery and plagued by a fear of straying from routinely methodical thinking. The transition in show style itself is not necessarily at fault, rather that the execution lended itself poorly to the furtherment of the characters. This striking offence widens even ... greater when the show eventually doesn't even follow the main protagonist, who becomes relegated to a support character with no influence over the story whatsoever. After this, the rest of the watching experience becomes waiting for the show to run out of episodes and come to a close.

Art is above average. Sound is above average. Enjoyable despite culminating and then terminating without proper development or resolution of the main characters.

Starting innocently enough, this show rapidly devolves into an utter farce of a story. All but one of the characters in this show are completely sociopathic, to the point where you eventually begin to legitimately wonder if the author understands basic cause and effect. It's almost unfathomable how a show can be written where every single character fails to exhibit even the most primitive inkling of having responsibility for their actions. The authors writing skill set is juvenile at best, and fails to follow even the most basic storytelling premise of presenting the story through the main characters' point of view. This lack of focus ... is so unimaginably flagrant, it borderline questions who the main characters of the show even are. Devoid of almost all sense of realistic human interactions, this story falls completely flat on its face.

Art is less than standard. Sound is almost non-existent. Enjoyable just to see the madness end.