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MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

AoT went from one of my alltime favorite animes to insultingly dreadful trash in a single (half) season.

(Insert mandatory 'art looks like butt/Mikasa looks like a dude' here)

First off, we get unceremoniously thrown years into the future to watch a conflict that doesn't matter with characters we don't care about.

Next, the characters' personalities almost all radically change with no explanation whatsoever. Especially jarring is Eren, who has gone from a passionate and fiercely loyal standard "hero-protag" type, to a manbun-wearing nihilistic edgelord who carelessly endangers his comrades/friends, doesn't give a half-shit when they die, even when it's his fault, and treats his lifelong ... friends like absolute garbage.

Everyone acts like Zeke is some great character, but he's just an equally nihilistic edgelord who wants to genocide his own people because his parents expected too much from him.

Gabi is a brainwashed capital B-itch who hates her own kind because other people who hate her own kind tell her to. She's downright GIDDY to join in on a completely unprovoked mass genocide, and then is actually shocked that the people she wants to kill for no actual good reason do a pre-emptive strike. Continues to hate her own kind and learn literally nothing even after seeing how they are actually decent people. The anime is REALLY expecting us to like her for some reason.

For MOST of the season, everyone you expect would be DOING something is sitting on their hands for no real specified reason. Even Armin who throughout all previous seasons is hyped as a tactical genius, sits around, barely even ATTEMPTING to think his way out of the mess Eren created.
Hot-headed Mikasa, who in any other season would have gone to Eren's side to figure out wtf is going on, passively obeys orders for once in her life and just doesn't do anything.

Eren and Zeke's "master plan" to "save the world" is to genocide their own kind through mass sterilization. Not only is it jarring how quickly Eren jumps on board with this plan without a single inkling of moral struggle, when this plan is finally revealed to his ex-comrades, not only does NO ONE breath a word of objection to point out that this is evil, ask what gives them tge right to decide this for an entire race of people, or attempt to suggest alternatives.... Armin actually WEEPS at how NOBLE he thinks the goal of destroying his own people this way is. Literally.

It was already revealed that the story told about the Eldian's 'sins' are false, Marley is CLEARLY a deeply authoritarian power-hungry state bent on world domination who commits atrocities without batting an eye and wants to kill the Eldians just to remain an unrivaled superpower.....yet EVERYONE from the horribly oppressed Eldians in Marley to the Paradis Eldians whose troubles ENTIRELY stem from Marley's ruthless power-grabbing, to our "heroes", all unanimously agree that Eldians suck and need to stop existing and Marley needs to win...yet they're still fighting with eachother despite their goals being EXACTLY THE SAME, just with different ways they want to go about it.

In a lot of ways it was better than season 1, and in a lot of ways it just poked holes in its own narrative.

Spoilers ahead.

I like that they stopped playing up the 'sexuality' of the animals as much, as that was something in season 1 that was making me feel icky.
The plot focuses much more heavily on JUST Legosi, which is good because he's hands down the most compelling and likeable character.

But there's some MAJOR plot holes, like...for some reason the world in this anime acts like meat is some super-drug for carnivores. This is inherently flawed in itself, but when combined with ... other things this world presents, it becomes less believable from there.
For example, BUGS provide the same effects as meat, and bugs aren't seen as "people" in this world and are legal to eat...yet almost no one chooses to eat them?? Even the INSECTIVORES like the anteater are all eating veggies, like why?? Seriously, why??

There's a ton of LITTLE flaws for people who are well into real life animal biology, like all the cats would be dying because their protein demands are too high and their digestive tracts are too short to ever utilize vegetable protein.
Bears are omnivores and the only thing they normally 'hunt' is fish (are fish people in this world??), but they'd be just as happy eating fruits and nuts and whatnot.
DEER actually will absolutely eat meat, albeit just rarely, but there's been plenty of times they're documented eating birds and such.

And the biggest, dumbest, and spoilerest thing in this whole season was Legosi so easily abandoning his ideal of not eating meat to eat his friends foot (after he wouldn't even eat more than one BUG), and actually just WASTES it because he doesn't use that strength he gained to win the fight, he just....wins 'cause the enemy gives up???


I would have ranked it much higher if the ending hadn't been so stupid, but it was...

Up until the last episode though, it was very enjoyable, more so than the first season.

Gonna be some spoilers here.

The fact that they really play up the fact that they're animals and particular animals helps to get over the cringe furry thing, but it just makes it all the more uncomfortable when things turn sexual. Like we're obviously supposed to be rooting for the main characters to get together, and just watching the protective, sweet kind of stuff is fine, but when it turns sexual it really grosses me out so much.

Salvaging this nonsense is the fact that the characters are interesting and they have really nice levels of development. Legosi, whom we follow around the most, is particularly an ... interesting character not typical to anime, with unique flaws and inner conflict and a genuinely likeable character.
But the fact that he's in love with Haru primarily because his desire to eat her has infatuated her to him is....creepy, to be honest (Twilight, anyone?). The fact that HE knows it's creepy is testament to Legosi's good character writing....the fact that Haru doesn't find it creepy is testament to her POOR character writing.

There's basically no REAL reason Legosi should love Haru, she's shallow and sleeps with anything that moves, and whines constantly. And apparently she has a 100% nonsensical "instinct" to throw herself into the mouth of a predator to TRY to be eaten??? That's not at all how prey instinct works. It would have made infinitely more sense and worked out the same for the story if she'd instinctively tried to fight him or run away or froze up or something...not...TRY to be eaten.

Also apparently this animal world has guns...guns are the greatest equalizer there is. If they just made it where herbivores had guns and carnivores didn't, that would solve most of this world's problems right there. Yet for some reason they don't.

Overall, it's enjoyable to watch, and the main character is well written and likeable enough to keep me hanging on, but some of the major plot points are hard to get past.

Someone insisted that if I liked Shield Hero that I'd like this... Definitely not so. Shield Hero, while obnoxiously "haremy" has a compelling story and some decent characters I can feel for.
This is really just a hentei avoiding shots where they'd need to add pixels.

I have NO problem with sex, violence, gore, torture, and pretty sadistic shit in my stories. The non-stop graphic rape in this show isn't even what turns me off from it, it's the lack of a compelling story or believable characters.

EVERYONE is a sexual sadist in this world, apparently. The protag COULD come back to his new life and start getting ... his revenge WITHOUT letting himself get raped and beaten all over again, but doesn't. He then erases the girl's memory so....what was the point??

NONE of these characters are likeable. It leads more to you feeling sorry for the girl who was a horrific abuser, but you remember that she's a horrific abuser so not that much. Can't relate to ANY of these people, don't even begin to like any of these people, and all the space that could possibly filled with story is filled with graphic rape instead.

Moreover, protag's "healing" magic is given virtually no explanation for how ridiculous it is, how he has "destructive" healing?? He can "heal" to obliterate things?? He can "heal" to erase memories and other things that are absolutely not 'healing'?
Realistically, if every time you healed someone you acquired all their memories, you'd imagine you'd be like the most empathetic person on the planet, not one of the most sadistic. Moreover, this COULD be a really compelling way to drive a story, but they do NOTHING with it but use it as a cheap way for protag to gain new powers.

The story is interesting, and unlike most isekai I've seen, this doesn't go the "MMO" route, and instead just drops MC into a more book-like fantasy world, which I find much more refreshing than having characters talking about stats and level ups and whatnot.

It's nice to see MC also grow from a baby and act like a child despite retaining all his memories. Though it's unnerving and uncomfortable to watch him being such a nasty perv.
Though his first life he was a disgusting pervert, realistically, being a pre-pubescent child now, he ought not to have the HORMONES to have such a lecherous attitude.

I also find ... there's a little TOO much of the sexual fan service in there, especially when most of it centers around children. It's one thing to explain this is the kind of person this character is, but it makes it hard to like the MC when he's literally molesting a young girl in her sleep.
I definitely couldn't recommend this anime to any of my more naive anime loving friends, they wouldn't be able to get past this stuff...

Overall so far I'm enjoying it, but I really wish they would tone down the overtly sexual stuff because in this kind of anime it's really detracting from the story and character development.

After arduously slogging through the first several episodes on people's promises that this gets good later, I can say that they were right and it gets good later.

Ronja remains an insufferable brat through MOST of the story, but you come to care about the other characters enough to make up for it.
Overall it's a very good story (would be better without the painfully dull slog in the beginning), and worth putting up with the beginning in order to appreciate the end.

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My old review below because it's still completely valid for the first several episodes:

The CGI is really bad looking, the character movement and expressions are ... awkward and the lip syncing (even in the Japanese) is really badly off.

The characters themselves are all over-the-top, and the protagonist is utterly devoid of personality and could easily be replaced with a happy puppy instead and you'd barely notice, and she laughs WAY too much at EVERYTHING. It wouldn't be so bad except that they can't just have her laughing as she does things, they constantly cut away to show you a close-up shot of her stopping to laugh at every single thing.

The story starts out looking promising, but there's major flaws as soon as you get into the end of the 2nd episode and into the 3rd.

*MINOR spoilers ahead*

Ronja is sent into the woods ALONE with virtually no guidance, as her first EVER trip outside the safety of her home, and yet somehow, despite running around entirely aimlessly in the heavily wooded forest where she's never learned to navigate, she magically doesn't get completely lost, and her parents are SHOCKED when it even appears to them that she might have gotten lost. She's never SEEN a river before but knows it when she sees it, she's never SEEN a lake before, but knows it when she sees it.
It's only AFTER being rescued from danger that she was told how to avoid the danger. Peek parenting skills...

The pacing is SO insufferably slow that the ENTIRE 3rd episode could have been done effectively in 5 minutes. But no, let's have 25 extra minutes of close ups of Ronja giggling.

ZERO STAKES.

That about sums up this entire anime so far. It was kinda cute and wholesome right in the beginning, funny to see an underestimated lil slime show people up..
But EVERY episode just becomes that.

The slime is underestimated, the slime wins without even trying. It's like if One Punch Man was a slime and not funny.

ALL of the slime's henchmen are OP as f*ck too, but they're at least occasionally challenged...but you NEVER need to worry about them even when they struggle, because OP Slime-God-Sama has 100% heal potions out the whazoo, and will always step in and sweep away any threat to his underlings ... like brushing away a feather.

Oh, and that girl they keep showing in the opening/credits and in all the adversizing? She's not in this anime...no really, she isn't in it. Technically, kinda...actually...not in the least. Why they show her like she's a major character, I have no idea, because she ISN'T EVEN IN THIS ANIME.

So despite this anime constantly acting like it's building stakes, it actually never is.
If you enjoy flashy battles and anime waifus, you may enjoy.
If you're looking for a deep story or characters to become invested in.....look elsewhere, there's none to be found here.

I'm giving it a 4 because despite being devoid of real story, character development, direction, purpose, etc... It's at least not boring me COMPLETELY, it's just disappointing me a lot.

I want to start by saying that the top review by Karhu is incredibly unfair as I can only assume he has NO first-hand experience raising small children--especially not a newborn and toddler simultaneously.

Throughout the story Kun is very evidently NOT being neglected, he's only being a very spoiled and needy child out of jealousy of not being the center of attention, and whenever his parents have to stop paying attention to him for extremely valid reasons, such as WORK (the dad is not scrolling memes, he's working), cooking, taking care of the infant's needs, or just being beat tired and attempting to get a ... modicum of rest, kun throws a tantrum like many a spoiled toddler will do.
He throws tantrums over EVERYTHING, things as inconsequential as not being able to wear the color pants he wants.
The parents are incredibly patient throughout, not even subjecting the kid to punishment even when he hits the baby (this goes further to explain why he's such a brat than anything).

Mostly I just wanted to rebut the top review because of how unfair it is. The parents are perfectly average parents, neither terrible, nor wonderful, kun is just spoiled, and throughout the movie learns to appreciate his family and not be so ridiculously selfish.

It's really trying to be a Miyazaki film, and on some levels, totally accomplishes this, and on others, completely misses the mark.

It's good and entertaining for a first time watch and I'd recommend it, but after the conclusion, you realize there was a LOT of unresolved plot points that you really wish would be resolved, especially a major one involving the overall fate of the magical world the story takes place in, which is left completely up in the air, as the main characters are completely unconcerned with this...which I suppose is fair, considering they went there for a purpose, and not every person would ... realistically become the hero. Rather our characters just have themselves a personal adventure and are done with it.

The ending as well, while acceptable, leaves a bit wanting, as some details of it don't line up with what you would expect or hope for.

All told still, I still was well enough entertained throughout and don't regret my time spent on it, and would recommend it to others.