- Last OnlineMay 10, 10:38 AM
- GenderMale
- LocationFrance
- JoinedOct 29, 2018
Also Available at
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
May 16, 2021
If you couldn’t tell from the (ridiculously long) title, Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu, or “How Not to Summon a Demon Lord” in Shakespeare’s language, is a pretty generic anime. It’s about a socially awkward and shut-in NEET who is summoned into his favorite MMORPG as his character, an overpowered self-proclaimed demon lord known as Diablo. The only thing that’s “new” here is that the protagonist doesn’t die at the start of the series, but is instead summoned into the game’s world without any explanation by a cat-girl named Rem and a female elf with huge jiggly boobs named Shera.
--- The
...
technical aspects
Landscapes and buildings in this anime are generic, they’re the kind of stuff you can find in any garbage isekai or crypto-isekai. Though they don’t look ugly, they aren’t that well drawn, except maybe in the first episode. The character designs are… very meh. Some are decent, like Shera and Rem, as they fulfill their purpose of being cute, but most of them (Celestine, Emile, Galford and others) are extremely lazy. Take the protagonist Diablo for example: he has the generic video game demon character design, meaning he’s just a normal human with small horns on his head (in his case, they are fake) and some weird tattoo on his face, much like the demons in Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken and the demon lord in Hataraku Maou-sama! At least he look somewhat like a demon lord, contrary to some series where the “demon lord” is just a regular-looking human with overpowered abilities. There’s also the usual bullshit where males of the evil race are monsters and the females are human females but they have horns and pointy ears – they wouldn’t be fuckable if they were monsters, huh? As usual, magic in this anime is mostly just cheap and ugly magic circles. The animation is okay most of the time, though there are some moments with very little actual animation, and there can be inconsistencies in the characters’ faces.
Sound-wise, the background music isn’t good, sometimes even bad. Same for the generic opening. I’d say that the voice-acting is mostly good, except from Shera’s irritating voice.
--- It’s an ecchi
So our protagonist is summoned into his favorite game Cross Reverie (light novel writers stop using random foreign words challenge) by a cat-girl and an elf, who both cast an enslavement spell on him to make him their summon, but the spell is reflected by one of Diablo’s skills, and the two girls are turned into his slaves. You can see where this is going. This anime is a ecchi of the harem type, with the usual stuff like the protagonist sharing a bed with his two slaves, ear nibbling, boob fondling, skimpy clothing for almost all female characters (Rem, Shera, the guild master, the slave trader, Edelgard, Klem), jokes about boobs’ size, suspicious camera angles, and bath scenes with the girls groping each other.
Is the ecchi well done? Since it is very predictable and makes the female characters uninteresting, ecchi is always bad. But in this anime, the ecchi elements are surprisingly decent, at least for the first half of the series. After that it gets more and more stupid, as the series attempts to justify the ecchi elements with the plot: touching the girls’ breasts replenishes magic, staring at Shera’s boobs allows Diablo to makes potions, and to resurrect the demon lord Krebskulm who is kept inside Rem, Diablo has to finger her – yeah!
--- There are rare moments where the comedy is decent
… with Emile Bichelberger’s appearances, for example, but only in the few early episodes, as the series gets more serious after that – serious meaning cheesy and boring stuff about friendship and the like. One thing that is quite funny to see in the few early episodes is that, being a socially awkward incel, the protagonist has to role-play his demon lord character to be able to talk to people.
--- Sadly, this gets repetitive quickly
Not only this, but as the series progresses, Diablo speaks less and less like a demon lord, and more and more like your average otaku protagonist, saying sappy lines about friendship, making your own choices and so on. In short, Diablo is as much of a demon lord as Maou Sadao in Hataraku Maou-sama!, meaning he’s not a demon lord at all. In the entire series there is not a single time where he acts like an actual demon lord, except maybe from one particular moment in ep.4. Most of the time he helps people, saves his friends, fights bad guys, is idealist, and spares his enemies – even if they tried to rape and kill his friends!
--- The protagonist’s actions are incoherent
In ep.4 Diablo fights a Fallen (the Fallen being the bad guys of the series) who tried to kill Rem, since he is overpowered he has no trouble defeating him, and then he kills him in a really painful manner to punish him for harming his friend. But later in the series, when he defeats the Elven king who tried to rape Shera, Shera makes Diablo spare him because “he’s family”… Seriously? Same thing for Galford who attempted a goddamn genocide. Same thing for Edelgard and Alicia who tried to bring back Krebskulm, the true demon lord of Cross Reverie. Same thing for the demon lord Krebskulm, who is forgiven for her past crimes since she is actually just a normal loli. Yeah let’s keep a half-resurrected demon lord around, there’s no way that could go wrong – spoiler: it went wrong!
This is not the only thing that’s inconsistent in Diablo’s actions. Coming back to the moment where Shera’s brother, the Elven king, tries to rape her, he first brings her back to the Elven kingdom by hypnotizing her. When this happens, Diablo, who knows that she’s being hypnotized, goes to bed and cries like a little bitch instead of doing something to stop her brother. He is overpowered and knows what’s happening, he could easily beat him up and force him to release her, but he doesn’t. Why? Because the night before he had a dream about how lonely he was in his childhood. Ridiculous! I mean, if Diablo just starts acting like the average friendless otaku, there’s no point in watching the series anymore.
--- Another annoying thing in this series is the names
I already mentioned earlier that the name of the game was completely random: “Cross Reverie” – why not “Square Cauchemar” while we’re at it! A random english world and a random french that the author put one after another, probably because he thought that it would sound cool… it doesn’t you dumb fucking cretin. The names in general are random. Some sound German, like Krebskulm, some are Anglo-American like Chester Ray Galford and Greenwood, and some are french, like Celestine Baudelaire (you know, like the poet) and Emile Bichelberger. As a french person I can tell you that these names sound ridiculous, and that hearing them made by ears bleed.
--- The world-building is plain generic
There’s little development. There’s only two countries, and everything happens either in Faltra (basically the starting town of the game) and its surroundings or in the Elven kingdom. It’s a MMORPG world, so you have the usual stuff that you find in any isekai or crypto-isekai, with video game mechanics like classes, adventurer’s guild, quests, summons, levels, skills, MP and so on. Nothing new or interesting.
--- Yet again, pedophilia
Coming back to Krebskulm / Klem, she’s added to Diablo’s harem right after her resurrection, and Shera invites her to join her and Diablo in the bed, because you know, having sexual intercourse with children is cute and wholesome, apparently. And when Diablo enslaves her with a spell, he has to kiss her. She’s always nearly naked, by the way. I don’t care that she is 3000-year old or some other bullcrap, it doesn’t change the fact that she looks and acts like a child.
--- The protagonist
I won’t talk about Diablo’s personality much, as he is just your usual isekai male protagonist. It is established from the beginning of the series that he is overpowered, as his level is super high, he has overpowered equipment and skills like magic reflection, and so you know that he is going to win any fight with little to no trouble, whether it be against an army of Fallen, the ruler of the town, or the actual demon lord. He defeats most of his enemies in a matter of a dozens of seconds, one or two minutes at most, except from Krebskulm, whom he defeats with the power of friendship (gah!).
--- The other characters aren’t much better
As in any ecchi, female characters exist purely to be cute, sexy, or just a walking fetish, and as a result they are bad characters. This is the case for Shera, the elf that has huge jiggly boobs (in anime, female elf equals huge boobs if you weren’t aware), that’s her only personality trait. Ah, no, actually she’s also childish and has an irritating high-pitched voice… ugh. Her background is also pretty shit. She’s a princess who wants to be an adventurer because “blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah follow your dreams”… you get the idea. Even her dream is ridiculous: she wants to open a café with Rem and Diablo!
Then you have the cat-girl, Rem. A slightly less shit character because she has an actual objective and a better background, but she’s still mostly here to be Diablo’s plaything.
Both of these girls are too weak to fight by themselves, but thankfully for them Diablo is always here to save them.
The demon lord Krebskulm / Klem is just your average loli, she even has the moe face expressions and the chibi face at some moments. Because of her incomplete resurrection she forgot her memories and how to use her demon lord powers, and so instead of acting like an actual demon lord and killing people, she just wants to eat biscuits with Shera, with whom she sings a “biscuit song”… This is just stupid and unfunny.
The bad guys are even worse. Shera’s brother is cartoonishly evil. He is just your typical garbage anime villain that is easy to hate because he is a rapist with the generic anime psycho face and the generic evil laugh. Same thing for Saddler, the paladin of the church (or something like that, I didn’t pay much attention to the lore of this generic MMORPG world), who is also an evil psychopath with an evil smile who loves to torture and kill, but this one thinks he acts for good and claims he is god, constantly spouting nonsense about salvation and whatnot.
--- Verdict
This is a very generic series with nothing remotely good or new in the setting, the story, the characters, the animation or the music. There are only three things that aren’t completely garbage, namely: the protagonist role-playing a demon lord, the very rare comedy elements, and the ecchi elements, which are decently done, but are not good enough to make the series worth watching. While it is an easily watchable show, it belongs to the trash can.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
What did you think of this review?
Nice
 0
Love it
 0
Funny
 0
Confusing
 0
Well-written
 0
Creative
 0Show all
![]()
Apr 19, 2021
I already made a review for Aria the Animation, and for the most part, Aria the Natural isn’t very different, so both reviews will be very similar and some paragraphs will be the same, but I will also talk about what changed, what improved and what got worse.
The show being a slice-of-life, it doesn’t have an actual plot. It is episodic and the story of each individual episode is an excuse to show the characters doing things in a more tranquil version of Venice (IRL Venice is full of tourists and much more noisy) with a few SF and fantasy elements here and there.
...
The planet Aqua is a Utopian world. There are no antagonists, no conflicts or anything of the sort, only good emotions and happy people. The universe is not really developed either. But this isn’t that much of a problem, as the point of the series isn’t the story or the relationships between the characters but the peaceful and relaxing atmosphere.
Aria is a pure slice-of-life: no drama, no psychological or physical violence, just the peaceful and slow-paced daily lives of young women training to become Undines (aka female gondoliers – there doesn’t seem to be any male ones) in the beautiful scenery of an animated Venice. Everything in this anime is purposely made as relaxing and comfy as possible: the slow movement of the gondolas on water, the satisfying dialogues delivered by a very nice voice acting, the sound of the water, the seagulls cry, the relaxing background music, the simple and innocent comedy… In short, this anime is ASMR.
The animation is slow but there are very few to no static images. The character designs and the clothing are pretty original. The face designs, particularly the eyes, are very detailed. The backgrounds and the landscapes are very detailed, and Venice is beautifully recreated. In this second season there were a few episodes where the faces where inconsistent, but overall, the animation was of the same quality as the first season.
At first, this show seems like the usual “girls doing things” type of anime – well, it mostly is, but it manages to avoid most of the cliches and irritating tropes associated with the medium. Contrary to the vast majority of anime, there is no sexualization of the characters, and the show doesn’t shove naked minors with huge anime breasts into your face with the only objective of appealing to the horny teenage males and the pedophiles in denial that constitutes a big chunk of the modern anime community.
All gondola companies have a cat as their company “president” – they’re more like mascots. The show introduces us to three of them, as the 3 main girls all work in different companies. The cat that appears the most on the screen is Aria (hence the name of the series), “president” of the Aria company. This cat with a disproportionate head and unusually big eyes follows the main girls in most of their whereabouts, and he is constantly doing things in the background while the characters are talking, or paddling the Venetian Canals in their gondolas. His presence adds to the comfy atmosphere, particularly when he does funny uncharacteristic cat noises.
However, this show can also be seen as boring. It is slow-paced, has no plot and focuses on mundane stuff like sleepovers, taking care of a cat in secret, a day off at a grandma’s house, new years celebration… People expecting plot progression will get tired of the episodic format very quickly. The dialogues can be very sappy, which doesn’t really help. The thing is, you’re not supposed to focus on the dialogues or the story, but on the atmosphere.
So, what changed in this second season?
While all the episodes of the first season had Akari as the main character, in this new season secondary characters got a lot more screen time. Some episodes’ stories focus entirely on one particular character, such as Aika or Alice, whereas some others consist in flashbacks with characters that were pretty much useless in the first season, like Akatsuki for example. These episodes were pretty pleasant to watch and they made the secondary cast more likable.
One of the good sides of Aria the Animation was that it had no romance. Unfortunately, this new season made the mistake of putting boring romance stories in some episodes.
Remember Al? The completely useless background character that Aika seemingly had no interest in? Well now she’s so madly in love with him she can’t help blushing and stuttering every time she sees him. That’s alright, you’d think, after all the first season did the same with Akatsuki and Alicia. However, this is not the same. In this season there are entire scenes, sometimes even entire episodes, about Aika not being able to confess her feelings. That’s just plain repetitive and predictable and I doubt anyone would enjoy watching a romance between a cute anime girl and a gnome that makes cringey puns.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that all romance is bad. But in a series like this it feels out of place, as it breaks the relaxing atmosphere, which is supposed to be Aria’s strong point. That’s not enough to make the show bad, but this still means that there are some episodes that are just plain boring.
Coming back to the cats, in this second season there’s a whole army of them. A kingdom, even. Well, it’s not an actual kingdom, but a set of secret places found all across Neo-Venezia. In several episodes, Akari encounters its leading figure Caith Sith, a giant cat with a gentle look that stands on his feet like a human, and is allowed to catch a glimpse of this mysterious and hidden other world. There are also a lot of episodes about other mysterious places, sometimes even ghosts, which aren’t scary at all but are interesting to watch. Those were easily the best episodes of this second season.
To conclude, this second season of Aria is on par with the first. Some aspects of the series, such as the secondary characters, improved, while some others got worse. If you enjoyed the first season, you will most likely enjoy this one as well.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: good character designs; good backgrounds; a few episodes with face inconsistencies → 8/10
Sound: good and relaxing BGM; very nice VA; good sound effects; decent OP → 8/10
Story: no plot progression; mundane things; some episodes had interesting stories → 4/10
Characters: good and likable characters; secondary characters got a lot of development → 8/10
Enjoyment: most of the episodes were enjoyable, except the ones with boring romance; some episodes can be re-watched; some sentimental value → 6/10
Overall: 7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 18, 2021
What’s Azumanga Daiou about? Simply put, this is a comedy series focused on the everyday life of a group of high school girls and two of their female teachers. Since it’s a slice of life adapted from a 4-koma manga, there’s no plot progression, and no evolution in the characters or in the relationship between them, so I will mostly focus on analyzing the comedy. But first, I’ll talk about the technical aspects of the show.
The technical value of this anime is good, no more, no less. The art-style is simple but fitting, it’s the “moe” art-style where most of the female characters have
...
huge eyes that take up one fourth of their face. The character designs are mostly good. Some of the characters have forgettable and dull character designs (Kagura and Sakaki among others) while some others have more memorable ones, such as Chiyo, “Chiyo’s father”, Kimura-sensei and the Osaka girl. The face expressions are well done. The backgrounds and background characters are very simple but since this is a comedy series adapted from a 4-koma manga, there is no need for extremely detailed backgrounds. There is one character that has an irritating voice, but other than that, the voice-acting is good. Although it is forgettable, the background music fits the various situations. The opening is also pretty good and catchy, though the high-pitched singing can be a little annoying.
So, what’s the comedy about? Since it’s a slice of life, most of the comedy is about the daily life and the school life of the characters. There is, however, some surreal comedy, with the character known as “Chiyo’s father”, some sort of weird cat-like monster who only exists in the mind of some of the characters. The surreal comedy is the most enjoyable, but unfortunately there isn’t much of it. There’s also Kimura-sensei, the pervert teacher, a pretty comical character with a weird face who always appears out of nowhere to say dumb pervert stuff. The series is sometimes more focused on the cute / “moe” aspect than on the comedy, and there is one character, Chiyo, the child prodigy, who is only here for her “moe” value.
The comedy is somewhat enjoyable in the beginning of the series, but as it progresses, it gets weaker and weaker. There are entire episodes that are just plain boring. The characters aren’t that great either. The characters have simple characters traits that they always follow: Yukari’s defining character trait is being a lazy teacher, Kaori is madly in love with Sakaki and that’s all, Tomo is the dumb “genki” girl… Obviously I’d rather have these characters than empty, cliché, incoherent or overly complex characters, but the problem is that it gets repetitive over time, as all of their interactions become extremely predictable.
There are three other things that are wrong with the comedy in this anime.
Firstly, the long moment of silence after a joke. This anime thinks that adding a long pause after a shitty joke will make it funny – it doesn’t! On the contrary, it makes it even more embarrassing to watch. This happens dozens of times in the series, and it ruins the jokes that are actually good.
Secondly, over-repetition. This anime thinks that a character repeating a sentence or a word dozens of times counts as comedy, and as a result you have many moments where the dumb “genki” girl or the Osakan transfer student (who is also dumb), repeats a sentence or a word dozens of times for no goddamn reason other than annoying another character. It’s not fucking funny. On the contrary, it is extremely irritating. It reminds me of children doing the same thing to drive their parents mad.
Thirdly, most of the comedy is childish stuff, and stems from the fact that some of the characters, namely the Osaka girl and Tomo, are complete morons. By the way, Tomo is one hell of an annoying character, as she is constantly yelling dumb shit with her high-pitched voice.
To conclude, even if Azumanga Daiou has good comedy at some moments, most of it is either boring or plain irritating. If you like this type of childish comedy, this show is for you. Otherwise, watching a compilation of all of Chiyo’s father’s appearances on youtube will provide you a much better experience than watching the entirety of the series.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: simple but fitting art-style; decent character designs; face expressions are well done; simple backgrounds → 7/10
Sound: one character has an irritating high-pitched voice, the rest of the VA is good; the BGM is forgettable but doesn’t hinder the show; good OP → 7/10
Story: no plot progression; some good comedy at the beginning but then it gets repetitive → 4/10
Characters: characters have very basic personalities; no character evolution → 5/10
Enjoyment: I enjoyed some of the comedy, the surreal comedy in particular, and most of the moments with Kimura-sensei; low sentimental value; some scenes can be re-watched → 5/10
Overall: 5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 15, 2021
Manie-Manie: Meikyuu Monogatari is a movie consisting in three short films. Since these short films are completely unrelated, have different art-styles and are made by different people, I will review them separately.
The first short film, Labyrinth Labyrinthos, is the most experimental of the movie, with an original art-style that doesn’t look like anime at all, and it is hard to tell what’s exactly happening in it, despite the fact that the animation is of very high quality. It involves at little girl and her cat chasing a mime from a circus in a labyrinth. Since it is pretty short (roughly 15 minutes), there is
...
no actual story or character development, but it is interesting for its nightmare-like visuals. Most of the background music is classical music. Sadly, the voice-acting is a bit bad, and the sound effects are weird.
The second short film, Running Man, is less experimental, with a more classic art-style, and a more understandable story. It is set in futuristic city and focuses on a champion racer who goes crazy and starts using telekinesis to destroy his opponents. In this film, too, the animation is superb, and is even more detailed – the faces in particular – than in the previous one, and only for that, it is worth watching. However, this short film is too slow, and the voice-acting is, just like in the previous, not very good.
The third and last film, The Order to Stop Construction, is the longest and the most complete, as it has an actual introduction, a confrontation and an end. It is about a salary-man who has been ordered by his bosses to stop a fully automated construction project. He arrives at the construction site and discovers that the robot who is in charge of the project has gone crazy and wants to finish the project no matter what. The characters and the story in this short film are most fleshed out than in the previous ones, and contrary to the second film it doesn’t focus on only one character. The voice-acting is more decent than in the two other films, and the background music is alright. The art-style is more anime-like, and the backgrounds are very nice and detailed.
The problem with this movie is the same as all collections of short films: they are too short to leave an impact on the viewer. Nevertheless, these three short films are interesting to watch, the first for its nightmare-like visuals, the second for its very detailed animation, and the third for its story. I recommend watching them.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: great animation and backgrounds in all three films → 9/10
Sound: the first and second films have some problems in the VA and the sound effects, the last film is alright; the BGM is decent→ 6/10
Story: the first film has no story, the second film as a very short story, the last film is good→ 6/10
Characters: no character development in the first film; some in the second film; characters in the last film are more fleshed out→ 6/10
Enjoyment: all these films where enjoyable in some way; some sentimental value; high re-watch value → 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 14, 2021
Being adapted from the 11th most popular manga on myanimelist.net, you would expect Horimiya to be a good show, or at least have something that makes it stand out. Sadly, this anime adaptation is average and is pretty much your typical high school romance anime, with some exceptions.
In terms of animation and sound, this series performs fairly well. The art-style looks good, the character design are pretty decent, and the backgrounds are well drawn. The face expressions and distortions (moe and chibi faces) are well done. The background music is forgettable but fits the various situations. There is nothing wrong with the voice acting.
...
The opening is also alright, both in terms of music and in terms of visuals, though it’s nothing incredible.
Just like a lot of high school romance anime, Horimiya is about an asocial protagonist who somehow manages to make the top girl of his school his girlfriend. There are however a couple of differences that makes it somewhat less unoriginal. Firstly, the protagonist has a pretty interesting character design. Instead of looking like your average self-insert protagonist, Miyamura is an effeminate boy with long hair. Secondly, he confesses his love to the top girl in his school, Hori, as early as episode 4, and she becomes his girlfriend soon after. Thirdly, the secondary characters are not mere background decoration, they get a lot of character development and play a more important role than in the average high school romance, with many episodes (at least 5) focused on them.
There is also some decent comedy, coming mostly from misunderstandings and the like, which helps making the show a bit better. Even so, that isn’t enough to make the show good, as there are three major flaws in the story and characters.
The first flaw is that Miyamura and Hori become a couple too early, that is to say, after the fourth episode. After they become a couple, their relation does not evolve a single bit, and when they appear on the screen it’s only to show boring couple stuff about holding hands, saying “I love you”, using first names instead of family names, and so on. Thankfully, the series does not focus only on the relationship between Miyamura and Hori, which prevents it from being completely boring, but this also means that in the second half of the series, the secondary characters – the relationship between Yoshikawa Yuki and Ishikawa Tooru in particular – were more interesting to watch than the main characters.
The second flaw is that nothing actually happens in this series. The show tries to be wholesome and cute, but that alone can’t make it good. There are no conflicts, as pretty much all the characters are altruistic and kind and have no particular objective, and as a result there is little evolution in the characters and in the relationships between them, and absolutely no plot progression. While watching the show, you will wait for something to happen, for an antagonism to rise between the characters, but nothing happens. The biggest “conflict” between the characters happens when a pink-haired girl who is member of the student council drops an important paper in the hallway but doesn’t want to admit her mistake, and so her boyfriend who is also member of the student council puts the blame on Hori. Miyamura intervenes to clarify the situation, everything is forgiven, end of conflict. There’s some stuff about social anxiety and bullying but the approach is too naive, with some idealistic bullcrap like “you can be friends with everyone”, and the protagonist befriending one of his former bullies.
The third flaw is that nothing stands out in this anime. Though they aren’t extremely stereotypical, the characters aren’t particularly likable, original, or relatable, and so it is hard to care about them. Miyamura’s background is pretty unoriginal: being seen as gloomy and creepy by his classmates, he has suffered from bullying and loneliness for most of his school life. He then meets Hori by chance outside of school, they grow closer and form a couple, and he manages to befriend Hori’s friends and some other classmates.
To conclude, Horimiya is what I would a “neither good nor bad" show. There’s nothing particularly annoying in it, so it can be watched easily, and there’s some comedy that can be enjoyed, but it doesn’t have anything new or groundbreaking either.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: good art-style; decent chara design; good backgrounds; visually good OP → 8/10
Sound: good VA; fitting BGM; good OP song → 8/10
Story: no plot progression; nothing important happens; some decent comedy → 3/10
Character: some character development; little character evolution; protagonist has an unoriginal background → 5/10
Enjoyment: I enjoyed the comedy a bit; no historical or sentimental value whatsoever; low re-watch value → 4/10
Overall: 5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 12, 2021
Memories is an anthology film consisting in three short films: Magnetic Rose, Stink Bomb and Cannon Fodder. These short films are unrelated so I will review them separately.
Magnetic Rose is set in the future, where a spaceship of garbage collectors receives an SOS from an unidentified ship. We follow two members of the crew as they investigate the ship. The animation is extremely detailed and very beautiful, its quality and its art-style are comparable to that of the anime movie Ghost in the Shell. The background music is good, and consists mostly of opera and classical music. In this short film, the atmosphere is oppressive
...
and mysterious. The crew members discover the holographic memories of the owner of the ship, and face a computer that has her memories.
Stink Bomb is set in modern day Japan. A chemical researcher takes a medicine to get rid of his cold, but it turns out the medicine he took was a new type of chemical weapon, and everybody around him suddenly starts dying. In this short film, too, the animation quality is that of a movie. The art-style (the character designs in particular) is similar to the one in AKIRA – they were made by the same person so that’s not surprising. The background music is also pretty good. This short film is much more comical than the other two, the protagonist being a complete imbecile who doesn’t seem to understand that he is killing everyone, while the JSDF, the US army and the government are struggling to stop him from eradicating Tokyo. So there’s a comical distance between the army and the government doing everything they can to stop him, sending war helicopters, missiles, tanks and bombers to save Japan, and the protagonist being stupid and complaining about being hungry.
Cannon Fodder, the shortest film, is set in some sort of steampunk totalitarian dystopia, in a WW1-looking city where every building has a cannon on top of it, and where the whole of society is committed to fight an unknown enemy by firing cannons at them. The art-style is very original and completely different from the two other short films, looking more like a western cartoon than a Japanese anime, and being ugly on purpose. In this short film, too, the animation is very good, the backgrounds are well drawn and very detailed. The quality of the background music varies, it is sometimes good, sometimes bad. This film being pretty short (less than 25 minutes), there isn’t much time for character development, and we are only shown a bit of the daily lives of the characters. There’s also no plot, but it compensates with having an interesting universe.
In conclusion, these three short films are a very good watch, but the main problem is that they are completely unrelated as they have no common theme, and are way too short to leave an impact on the viewer. Despite this, it’s still an interesting experience, so I would recommend watching the anthology.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: movie quality; great art-style; very detailed backgrounds; an original art-style in the third film→ 10/10
Sound: good BGM most of the time; good VA; good sound effects → 8/10
Story: good plot in the first film; nice comedy in the second film; interesting universe in the third film → 7/10
Characters: only in the first film are the characters developed; the second film has a pretty comical protagonist → 6/10
Enjoyment: I enjoyed it a lot; high sentimental value; high re-watch value→ 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 11, 2021
DISCLAIMER: I am not a sensitive person. I have watched many other anime series that were more brutal and shocking that this. I am not giving this series a low grade because I am a “SJW” or some other bullshit, and I am, in fact, an unrepentant tankie.
Before getting into what the show is about, let’s talk about the technical value of this anime. Oh, that’s right! It’s non existent. The animation is extremely bad, even in the moments where its quality should be the highest (the first and the last episode). The characters’ faces are inconsistent and often look ugly because of
...
their distortion. The character designs are forgettable: the protagonist has the generic evil face, clothing is dull, and female characters are only sexy thanks to their over-sized breasts. The backgrounds and background characters are badly drawn, and the design of the landscapes and buildings is the generic stuff you can find in a crappy isekai hentai. There is little actual animation, as most of the fight scenes – which are ridiculously gore, by the way – consist for the most part in static images with movements lines. The art style is also very ugly. I would go as far as saying that there isn’t a single frame that looks good in the entire show. The sound isn’t much better. The sound effects are ridiculous: blades cutting through flesh sounds like a goddamn kitchen knife slicing a tomato. The background music is shitty and repetitive. The voice acting isn’t particularly good either, with exaggerated evil laughs and the like.
So, what’s this anime about? Simply put: it’s a revenge story and a rape fantasy. The protagonist, Keyaru (later called Keyaruga), the healing magician of a team of “heroes”, uses magic to go back in time to redo everything and get his revenge on the “heroes” who mistreated him and raped him for four years. How does he get revenge on them? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: he rapes them and tortures them one by one, along with rewriting the memories of some of them to turn them into his sex slaves. Keyaruga doesn’t hesitate to be more cruel than his enemies: gang rape, rape by monsters, psychological torture… As the show progresses, it gets trashier and edgier. In this anime, sexual abuse fixes everything and is the solution to all problems.
Luckily for Keyaruga, his ability allows him to copy the abilities of other people, making him overpowered and pretty much unbeatable. Every time a fight starts, you just know Keyaruga is going to win without an effort, and then do horrible things to his enemy. He is also lucky that two of his former abusers are sexy young women with huge breasts. What’s interesting about him, though, is that he went as far as to go through torture and sexual abuse a second time – which includes pretty funny stuff like CBT, being ass-raped by a strong man, and being forced to suck his own dick, among other things – in order to get his revenge.
There are many flaws in the plot but I will mainly talk about the two major ones. The first major flaw in the plot is the fact that Keyaruga’s revenge starts too early. “Revenge is a dish best served cold” says the proverb, in other words: revenge needs preparation. The show would have been far less shit if there were more episodes focused on the preparation of his revenge. It would have helped create complicity between the viewer and the protagonist as he plans his revenge while suffering from the mistreatment, the torture and the sexual abuse. But no, this show wants to provide immediate “justice porn”, so we don’t get to see much planning, as the revenge starts as early as episode 2, with Keyaru raping Flare, one his former abusers, which brings me to the second major flaw of the plot: the glorification of rape.
As I said earlier, Keyaru / Keyaruga gets revenge on his former abusers mostly by raping them, which means that there are many rape scenes in this series. Granted, this is not the first time that an anime has rape scenes. But contrary to series like Berserk, where rape is clearly shown as an evil act made by degenerates, and contributes to making the series dark, in this series rape is also done by the protagonist. This wouldn’t be a problem if the protagonist was portrayed as evil, but that’s not really the case. Keyaru / Keyaruga doesn’t act evil for the sake of being evil, but to achieve his revenge, and his revenge is legitimate, given how badly he was mistreated. When he rapes one his former abusers, the viewer is supposed to enjoy the scene since they are “getting what they deserve”. Not only is rape shown in an almost positive light, the protagonist isn’t even portrayed as evil for committing rape and torture, in fact in many instances he is presented as some sort of anime Batman, much like Zero in Code Geass, because he fights against a corrupt power and sides with the oppressed – at some point there’s even a cheesy anti-racist message, something nobody would expect from the incel fantasy that this series is.
Regarding the other problems of the plot, there’s little actual world-building, and most of it is the stereotypical stuff you can find in any garbage isekai: a European-looking country, video game classes, heroes, magic, monsters, and demons, with male demons looking like orcs and female demons looking like… normal human women with slightly different ears. The names of characters and places are also pretty bad: Jioral kingdom, Keyaru / Keyaruga, Flare, Trist Organ, Kureha Crylet… Someone should tell the author that putting random letters one after another isn’t an efficient way to create good names.
Coming back to the characters, they can be separated into three categories: the protagonist, the bad guys, and the female characters who make up the protagonist’s harem.
The protagonist, Keyaruga, is by far the “least worst” character since he is the only one that has an actual objective, namely revenge, and each of his actions is done to achieve this objective. He is also the only one who gets some development, through flashbacks and such. Even so, that isn’t enough to make him a good protagonist. While it is pretty obvious that he is crazy, the anime still tries to portray his actions as justified.
The bad guys are cartoonishly evil. They are all psychopaths and degenerates who love to torture, rape, kill and plunder on a daily basis and for no apparent reason. Some people say that this anime is realistic, it is not. In the real world, people don’t do evil things for the sake of being evil, they do it to obtain certain things, such as money and power. This is not the case in this anime, where the bad guys are all sadists and perverts who hate the protagonist for no valid reason, which makes them shitty villains.
The female characters aren’t better. Once they join the protagonist’s harem, they are deprived or their personality and turned into sex dolls who only appear on the screen to have sex with the protagonist.
Not only are the characters and the plot bad, this series isn’t even good as a porn. As I said earlier, the animation in this anime looks like shit. This also applies to the sex scenes, and there are many of them. Seriously, even low quality hentai performs better than this. I ended up skipping most of them since they were ugly, ridiculous and didn’t add anything to the plot. On a positive note, it does have a lot of different fetishes: femdom, gender bender, wolf girl, monsters, strangulation, humiliation, slavery, CBT, etc…
In conclusion, Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi doesn’t bring anything new to the medium. It’s one these shows that try to appeal to the teenagers by having a lot of violence, rape and torture, so that they can feel like they’re watching something mature – spoiler: violence doesn’t equate maturity. If you’ve been bullied by girls in high school or hate women because they won’t date you, this anime was made for you. Otherwise if you have good taste in anime you should avoid this show.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:
Animation: little actual animation; inconsistent and ugly faces; ugly art-style; ugly backgrounds and background characters; forgettable character designs; not a single frame looks good→ 2/10
Sound: ridiculous SFX; bad BGM; very average VA → 3/10
Story: just a rape fantasy; bad revenge story; no world-building → 2/10
Character: OP protagonist; bad villains; little character development or character evolution; female characters are sex dolls → 2/10
Enjoyment: no historical or sentimental value whatsoever; zero re-watch value; it is sometimes so bad it can be enjoyable, but not much → 1/10
Overall: 2/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Apr 8, 2021
Despite its generic setting – overpowered demon lord protagonist in a magic academy – the first episode of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou made it look like it could have been a fairly decent show, as it was packed with a lot of good comedy, and the animation was well done. Unfortunately, as in many other garbage anime series, the first episode is a trap.
The most apparent flaw of the show is that the plot is rushed. There is just too much stuff happening for a series of only 12 episodes, and as a result it is hard to follow the story. The pacing is
...
also inconsistent. There are some episodes where the story goes too fast and it feels like random stuff happening on the screen, and others, such as episode 6 (the inevitable beach episode) and episode 8, where almost nothing of importance happens and the plot barely progresses.
The other major flaw of the series is its randomness: the protagonist’s fanboy becoming a bootleg iron man; ninjas fighting against mages; people dressed like warriors from the japanese middle ages using machine guns; tentacle monsters that look like they come from a hentai; a bad guy who is a masochist; a villain who is a pervert and attempts to rape a child… To sum up: things seem to happen for no goddamn reason. This is even more the case in the few last episodes, which are a complete shit fest. It is pretty obvious that this anime is stupid and random on purpose, but even so, does that make it good? It doesn’t! Randomness isn’t necessarily comical.
Regarding how magic works in this series, don’t expect anything new or interesting: it is lazy and nonsensical. As in any fantasy series like this, magic is nothing more than re-branded SF elements: telepathy equals magic phone calls, magic circles make a cheap replacement for helicopters as they can make people fly, and there’s even teleportation. What’s next? Magic coffee machines?
There is little to no explanation as to why magic can do so much. It is also never explained how modern science (or futuristic science, since there are androids) and magic coexist.
What about the characters, then? Well, sadly, they aren’t that great. Sai Akuto is the stereotype of the naive, kind and idealist protagonist who has all of the girls at his feet but prefers to stay a virgin. Junko is just your typical tsundere. Korone is the archetype of the girl who seems emotionless and speaks in a monotone voice, similar to Arin in Trinity Seven and Re=L in Roku de Nashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records, to name a few other garbage series. Soga Keina is the “genki” girl who is also childish, dumb and annoying. In a nutshell, the characters are boring stereotypes.
By the way, the female characters aren’t even that cute, which is pretty problematic since this anime is a ecchi.
The technical aspects didn’t manage to save the show. The production value is very average. The animation is too inconsistent. There are a few episodes where it is alright, but in most episodes it is jerky and ugly, and it gets worse as the show progresses. The only character who has a decent character design is the protagonist, the others are all generic and dull. Magic in this anime looks like what you would find in any other lazy fantasy anime: cheap and shiny magic circles. Smoke and explosions often look like the type of special effects you would find in an amateur youtube video from 2011. The backgrounds don’t look ugly but they are forgettable. There is also some CGI for trains and such, though it isn’t too invasive.
The voice acting is mostly okay, but some of the characters have irritating voices. Regarding the background music, it is shit. The main theme and its variations that are repeated multiple times throughout the show are particularly cheesy and ridiculous.
In conclusion, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a failed comedy anime that must be avoided.
SUB-SCORE EXPLANATIONS:
Animation: sometimes jerky and ugly, sometimes alright; dull and generic character designs; cheap SFX; minor use of CGI; decent backgrounds → 5/10
Sound: decent VA; some irritating voices; horrendous BGM → 5/10
Story: random, stupid and rushed plot; bad world-building; lazy magic system → 3/10
Character: all generic and boring → 3/10
Enjoyment: only enjoyed the first episode; no historical value whatsoever; no re-watchability; no sentimental value → 3/10
Overall: 3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Mar 11, 2021
In a nutshell, Trinity Seven is: a generic setting with a magic academy, a demon lord and such; heavily sexualized female characters with generic personalities and, thankfully, a better than usual protagonist.
THE PROTAGONIST ISN’T SO BAD FOR A HAREM LEAD
The protagonist, Arata, isn’t so bad in the sense that he doesn’t have the annoying characteristics that most harem protagonists have, namely: idiocy, naivety, the “white knight” attitude, weakness, shyness, and unawareness of the fact that most of the girls around him are desperate to have sexual intercourse with him. Rather, Arata is a pretty powerful dude with piercing eyes who speaks without hesitation and is
...
honest with the fact that he is a pervert. Well, to be fair he isn’t the only harem lead who is an unrepentant pervert, there’s also Issei in Highschool DxD. But contrary to Issei, Arata isn’t motivated solely by his desire to grope girls’ boobs, and doesn’t yell all the time with an irritating voice like an imbecile.
STILL VERY GENERIC, THOUGH
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast isn’t nearly as good as Arata. As in any harem / ecchi anime, female characters only exist to be either cute or sexy, and as a result most of them are just stereotypes: Arin is the inexpressive girl who doesn’t talk much and speak in a monotone voice; Akio is the tomboy, Lilith and Mira are two variations of the tsundere archetype – because one tsundere wasn’t enough, I guess! Of course they didn’t forgot to add a loli character to please the ped- I mean the “lolicons”. The only thing that’s slightly different from other harems is that many of the female characters are as perverted (or as straightforward?) as the protagonist. You also have the academy president, the only other male character, whose only personality is being a pervert, which is sometimes funny, sometimes repetitive.
Though the comedy can be, at rare moments, quite funny, most of the time it’s the generic and predictable ecchi “humor” such as Arata always ending up fondling a girl’s boobs after a fall, or the fact that his magic can destroy magic clothing, creating countless situations where the characters end up naked. These situations aren’t funny. They’re cliché, repetitive and annoying. There’s even a scene where Arata and the girls are trapped in a room with no bathroom, and suddenly the girls need to pee, and they start moaning and blushing as if they were in a hentai. What is even the point of this scene? Comedy? Cuteness? Turning the spectator on? Well too bad! In all these categories, it failed.
THE STORY
As expected from a harem / ecchi anime, the story is generic and weak. TL;DR: Overpowered demon lord protagonist comes to an all-girl’s magic academy to learn magic and find his cousin, meets a bunch of powerful mage girls called the “Trinity Seven”, and fights evil mages.
There are tons of dialogues and explanations about how magic is supposed to work but it’s all bullcrap, and I doubt that anyone actually payed attention to it. Magic in this anime is just cheap shiny special effects, which sometimes doesn’t even look like magic, and can do pretty much anything, including teleportation, modern weaponry, and some sort of futuristic computer screens. The terminology is… ugh… extremely annoying. Attack names are just two random non-japanese words put together. Arata doesn’t know anything about magic, but it doesn’t matter since he is overpowered from the beginning, and needs little training.
Other annoying elements in the story include a beach visit as early as episode 3, and the fact that the grimoire of one of the evil mages is a goddamn tablet computer.
SOUND AND ANIMATION: ALRIGHT
Production-wise, this show performs fairly well. Though the outside backgrounds look dull – there’s a lot of photographic backgrounds, which look ugly – and the magic attacks look cheap, the animation is nice and clean. The inside of the buildings and the props look good. Character designs and clothing were rather generic, but at least they were well drawn. The most remarkable thing in the animation is the face designs, particularly the eyes, which are really pretty. Sound-wise, there was nothing wrong with the voice-acting and, as I said earlier, the protagonist doesn’t have an irritating voice, which is a plus. The background music was alright and fitted the mood. The opening was also alright if you can forgive the awful engrish – so awful that the fansubbers have to translate it!
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Trinity Seven doesn’t have much to offer. As any harem / ecchi, its characters are lackluster and its story is just a bad excuse to show the protagonist ending up with his face between one of the girls’ legs or boobs every two minutes. While its protagonist is pretty alright compared to other series of the same type and the animation does look nice, it isn’t enough to make the show good or enjoyable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 15, 2021
Hello everyone, for today’s review I will be beating a dead horse! Yep! I will be talking about the worst Ghibli movie to be ever released: Ged Senki: Tales from Earthsea. This movie is Miyazaki Gorou’s first animated film.
“Miyazaki? Like Miyazaki Hayao, the frickin’ god of anime movies?” Indeed! But unfortunately, Miyazaki Gorou’s first movie is nowhere as good as the worst of his father’s movies. In fact, the dad left the movie theater after one hour and then said “I felt like I’d been in there for three hours”, that should give you an idea of how boring this movie is!
WHAT HAPPENED WITH
...
THE ANIMATION?
Talking only about the first half of the movie, the scenery is really outstanding.
I wish I could say that the animation in this movie looks great, but unfortunately that can only be said about the backgrounds and scenery. What’s more, the scenery only looks good in the first half of the movie. After that the only things you get to see are a cliché cottage at the top of a green hill for where the good guys live and a dull dark castle for the bad guys.
Then there’s also the fact that the some of the characters’ expressions look ugly as hell – when one of the characters (Arren) activates his “edgy” mode, for example.
THE LAZIEST GHIBLI FILM
If you have already watched other Ghibli movies, Ged Senki will give you an impression of déjà-vu. Why? Well, a lot of things in this movie are straight up stolen from better Ghibli films!
Most characters have the same type of clothes as in Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa. For Usagi, the bad guy’s henchman, this goes even further. His character design is the same as Kurotowa’s, a secondary character from Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa: he has the exact same grin and the exact same face design. Therru’s personality is pretty much the same as San’s from Mononoke-hime, except from the fact that she has no character development.
When character designs aren’t plagiarized from other Ghiblis they’re just extremely lazy and lack detail. The movie also makes an overuse of single-colored clothing, which makes character designs even more dull.
Ghibli movies usually have great music, which makes them even more memorable. Sadly, the music in this movie is lazy, too. I wouldn’t say the music is bad, but it is boring and repetitive, on top on not fitting the universe at all – Scottish-sounding music in a Mediterranean-looking country, really?
Even the voice-acting and dialogues are lazy: characters seem to lack both energy and emotions. This makes it almost impossible to care about them.
Then there’s also a scene that is stolen from Star Wars, with the bad guy “force-choking” his henchman to punish him for his failure. But I guess that’s just a reference, huh!
A WEAK VILLAIN
Coming back to the bad guy, Kumo (or Cob), he is a weak villain. Contrary to antagonists in other Ghibli movies, he is pretty Manichean. He does have an objective – to become immortal – but it is pretty obvious that he’s just evil. Granted, you can have good Manichean antagonists, but in that case they must have something else, like charisma – which Kumo doesn’t have.
By the way, he is said to be a powerful and evil wizard responsible for a lot of the bad stuff happening in the kingdom, but he has less than ten men on his side? With all the people he abducts and sells as slaves he should have enough money to recruit more mercenaries. But no, slave trading is just how he makes a living, apparently. Economic crisis, perhaps?
STORY AND CHARACTERS: UNCLEAR
The film opens on dragons fighting, a king dealing with his country’s problems – the spread of a disease – and the murder of said king by his son, Arren. You would expect the bad guy to have something to do with this, since he is an evil wizard, but it is never stated if that’s actually the case. It is never explained if the disease is Kumo’s doing.
It is also never explained why Arren killed his father – he himself doesn’t know! This young boy sometimes switch personalities and turns into a strong and edgy-looking dude with an ugly and evil-looking distorted face, which sounds extremely cool, but is never properly explained. Is it linked with his crippling death anxiety or not, nobody knows…
From her first encounter with Arren, Therru starts hating him for some unknown reason. And when the plot needs them to get close, they get close and become friends in less than five minutes without any proper justification. It’s not like they didn’t have the time to make their relationship evolve: the movie is two hours long!
TWO HOURS OF MOVIE, AND FOR WHAT?
With the movie being two hours long you would expect its universe, plot and characters to be properly developed, but that’s not the case. The reason? It wastes its time on useless bullcrap. A big chunk of the movie consists in Arren and Ged traveling across the country. Sure, it’s very nice because you get to admire the landscapes and the city’s stunning architecture, but after half an hour of watching the characters walking, visiting a town and buying stuff at a marketplace, you start wondering if this movie even has an actual story. And when the plot finally starts to progress, it’s with the introduction of a slave trader whose character design is stolen from another story. Ironically, this character was the most enjoyable and most likeable of the movie. After that, instead of actually developing the universe or explaining why Arren has a double personality, the movie wastes more of its time by showing the good guys doing farm work!
I won’t talk much about the ending, as it isn’t better than the rest of the movie. It’s actually worse since the beautiful scenery (the only good aspect of the film) isn’t there anymore. Long story short: the bad guys capture two of the good guys, the two other good guys Arren and Therru come to their rescue, some unexplained stuff happens, the bad guys are beaten, happy end.
CONCLUSION
There’s nothing good about Ged Senki: Tales from Earthsea aside from the good backgrounds that appear in the first half of the movie. It plagiarizes other Ghibli films and doesn’t create anything. It is neither entertaining nor enjoyable, as it is slow and uneventful. Watching the whole thing feels like a chore, so my advice would be to not watch it at all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|
