Back to FlipFire95's Profile FlipFire95's Profile

I don't know what to feel about this manhwa.

First of all, if you're still new to reading webtoons and all that stuff, please go out of your way to read this manhwa as this is a perfect starter tailor-made just for you. I know this because this 'was' my first manhwa from 7 years ago, and what this manhwa serves as is basically to teach you and me about what TO DO and NOT TO DO in a romance story.

So, to begin, the premise is good. It's a romance between two people from two different worlds - humans and vampires. And, it's up to these ... two whether to let their love rise which facing the discrimination of the masses. A story that tackles the topic of discrmination, made in the early 2010s - I am hesitant about what to feel about that, but I digress.

The art was OK, the background style was good.

The story was actually off to a good start. It had characters with well-established personalities. Mari was a girl that was mostly reserved to herself, inherited from her discrimation back in her childhood. Jae-min, a guy who was pretty social but avoids relationship due to his family issues (I know this kind of character is cliche but hey, if a trope works, it works. let me remind you again that this is a manhwa for beginners). The supporting cast was also really good. Soo Ri, in particular, was my favorite. Ah Ra was your typical bitchy girl, a suitable antagonist for Mari, but she didn't overstay her duration in the manhwa which is what I want from her kind of trope. Her skits mid-story were also quite hilarious - an underrated highlight of the manhwa. Si Hoo was also good, great compatability with Ah Ra.

The back-and-forth between Mari and Jae-min were usually very good in the beginning of the manhwa till they actually got together. The progression between those two felt natural, albeit with contrived settings at times. Not only that, the way Mari gets more accepted by her peers despite of her own identity was quite touching. The chapters leading to Mari and Jae-min being an item were REALLY GOOD! The set-uo and all, my God, they were a masterpiece.

Those were the first 70 chapters, and they were the reason why Orange Marmalade was worth reading. Those first 70 chapters were the basic 101 on what TO DO in a romance story.

And then....

And then. Fuck.

I don't know where to begin. I don't even know if I even want to make an essay out of the next 50 chapters because I know that my efforts of writing it will take pretty much more time than the time the author Seok Woo took in writing the ending.

So, Mari and Jae-min broke up because of Mari's childhood friend who conveniently appeared and outed Mari as a vampire right in front of Jae-min. And Jae-min, even though he was literally bitten in the neck by Mari, never took his time (apart from that one chapter in the beginning) to even consider the possibility that Mari was a vampire, and was somehow shocked at the revelation. And then, he didn't even like ask her to take a break with their relationship, nor did he ask to take sometime alone to think. He outright ended their relationship right then and there, and then act as the coldest mf-er in the manhwa towards Mari in the subsequent chapters. Yes, the guy who had been acting all obsessive towards Mari, then acted like he was mightier than God himself towards Mari.

But then, one lunchbox later from Mari, and Jae-min regretted his actions started to act like NOTHING EVER HAPPENED!! World-class writing.

And you ain't even see nothing yet.

So, remember when I pointed out that this manhwa was a story that was tackling the topic of discrimination, 'made in early 2010s'? Well the final chapters of this manhwa totally reeks of that early 2010s tone-deaf aura and more.

So TL;DR Mari got exposed as a vampire in her school, in a time where vampires just got a really bad publicity. So, with all the public masses, including some of her close friends, turning against her, what could be possibly done to revert her public perception back to normal? Simple. DO A BAND PERFORMANCE. THAT WILL SHOW 'EM.

THAT'S LITERALLY THE ENDING OF THE MANHWA. MORAL OF THE STORY: IF YOU WANNA SOLVE RACISM, JUST DO A BAND PERFORMANCE.

Sigh.

The latter parts of this manhwa was so stressful yet somehow became so easy for the MC, that somewhere out there, Kaiu Shirai took it as an inspiration for writing TPN.

I've read two other manhwas that had Seok-woo's involvement after finishing Orange Marmalade. They all have the same pattern: good premise, shitty ending.

Lesson for anyone when approaching Seok-woo's works: read the first few chapters, then GET THE FUCK OUTTA THERE

I'm totally grateful that I have watched this movie.

Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish tells a story of two people, Tsuneo, a student aspiring to be a study abroad and become a marine biologist, and Josee, a disabled girl that had been in the 'shackles' of her guardian for all of her lives. Overall, this movie shows us about what it means to step outside of your own comfort zone. You will be able to feel freedom, but in other to get there, there are obstacles needed to be tackled. A story baseline that has every potentials, and I gotta say - Studio Bones, Kotaro ... Tamura, and the rest of the team have managed to tell that story with flying colors.

The development around Tsuneo and Josee as the two main characters are done quite well, given the duration time it was given. Josee's story of being able to go outside on her own accords at the expense of her grandmother's life was very well-told, but not as well-told as Tsuneo's development after hers. Tsuneo's deterimination to heal up in order to be able to study abroad, which climaxed at the storytelling scene by Josee was very motivational and helpful, as well as showed how far the two characters have come in the movie.

The animation was superb - as expected by a studio like Studio Bones. Very smooth and captivating. The music scoring was also great, accompanied by songs from Eve.

There were a couple bumps that need to be accounted in this movie, however. The beginning for this movie was not really as inspiration-driven as the other parts of the movie. Also, the movie ending, even though it provided a nice imagery for the Josee and Tsuneo, didn't make a lick of sense. Like, Tsuneo was at the hospital waiting for Josee to pick him up. Meanwhile, Josee was at the zoo looking at tigers??? Like, did she forget about the appointment or something? She could've just visited that tiger AFTER picking Tsuneo up at the hospital smh

that being said, the epilogue redeemed that whole nonsense and the movie is still really good.

Jesus on-a-pole Christ......

I mean...WHAT CAN I SAY TO THIS?? What. Can I say. To this second season. After what was actually a quite good first season, Shaft just took a massive dump during the production of the second season and they left it at that. I guess that Monogatari franchise money was too good to pass up so they just didn't pull any admirable effort on this one. Now that the manga is long finished, they can't even capitalize on any salvagable hype if they ARE gonna make a third season. Good fucking luck with that.

Nisekoi: was a clear and concise 101 for any anime ... studios and directors out there on how not to do a second season, and it's not hard to see why. It all boils down to two main aspects...

Story - 3/10....Shaft took all the stories they managed to get from the first season (which were plenty tbh, all stemmed from Chitoge vs Onodera, the mystery of the locket, etc.) and they threw them all away. Every episodes on this second season DID NOT MATTER. Every Raku moments didn't matter. Chitoge's mom appearing didn't matter. Paula's appearance didn't matter. Maiko's forbidden love for his teacher (even though it was a cute episode) DIDN'T MATTER AT ALL.

Instead, what we got was a masturbatory season for all Team Chitoge around the world. Hey, I'm a team Chitoge too, but this is not a good content to nut on at all. When a harem story gets so one-sided on one character, you don't have a harem story. Literally the only main threat Chitoge got was Onodera, but they botched Onodera's potential in this second season HARD. Literally the first episode number where Onodera got some kind of focus was episode 6, the Valentine's Day episode, and even in that episode, she didn't even get the full shine because Chitoge and Marika was there. We got a blatant filler episode with Magical Patisserie Kosaki which, not only doesn't count if you gonna stay that puts the focus on Onodera, but it also just showed you once more how Shaft just didn't give a fuck with this project (I almost stopped watching after that filler,btw). Even with episode 11 fully focused on Onodera, it all still became undone because literally the next and FINAL episode, it was all Chitoge and Raku. No Onodera in sight. And the cherry on top was that at about the final five minutes of the final episode, Raku literally said to "just take it slow." Well fucking thank you Raku, we're now back to square one again.

My main frustratiion with the story was that they could've capped off the second season with the amnesiac Raku arc, which not only did that arc progressed the plot surrounding Raku's locket, but also gave us some kind of a threat to the Chitoge x Raku bukkake. like seriously, how can they fuck this up?

Character....2/10. The two stands for two things. One, Maiko getting an actual character development holy fucking shit. The other one is for everyone else not getting a development at all. Everyone else just acted like they always was. Of course, there were two new characters. Paula, even though at first she was cool and funny, she did jack shit to the plot.

Haru Onodera, on the other hand....I want to bash her head with a sledgehammer, over, and over, and over, and over, till it's flat like a pancake. Then I use a pancake machine to make a pancake out of her pancaked head, only to overcook the 'pancake' so much that it's turned to ashes. Then I take a piss on her pancake ashes so I can use it as some kind of a ceramic clay. I make a shit-looking ceramic plate out of it, just so I can bash it again with a sledgehammer.

what I'm saying is that Haru is a change-the-goddamn-TV-channel level of nuisance in this wretched second season.

I guess this is where I'm listing all the positives I can find. Really cool theme songs once again, just like the first season. The OP theme is definitely a top 5 LiSA OP songs. Also, in isolation, I can say all the fillers episodes were fairly good standalone episodes. The red ribbon episode was probably the best filler, but that's where it's at. Good Shaft animation, as always.

fuck I need to get a cigarette after this.

.......Jesus earth-rumbling Christ.

I had three overall attempts at trying to watch this anime:

-First attempt: reached 4 episodes and decided that it was the most confusing shit I've ever seen, and left.

-Second attempt: reached 2 episodes and then I slept halfway thru episode 2, so I deduced that it must also be the most boring thing I've ever seen, and left.

-Third attempt: finished the whole thing and....you know what, the first 6 episodes were actually not as bad as I thought. They were alright. I understood the story that the anime was trying to tell. Sure, the characters were as all plastic cardboards as they come. ... Not to mention that the MC Nishijou Takumi was unbearably stupid during the first 6 episodes, but hey, I understood his character, being that he was excessively paranoid to the point where he shut himself off from the world. The sci-fi system in this anime was also intriguing. Delusions being the main object of the system helped making all the circumstances thus far make sense. It also able to foreshadow many things that were to happen in future episodes.

But the things they foreshadowed were some of the most lazily written story materials I've ever seen.

The next 6 episodes were overall, absolute wank. First off, the main antagonist didn't get introduced until halfway past the series, so what does that tell you about this fucking story? Episode 7-9 were just BAD. Just BAAAAAAD. But still kind of hopeful in a way that, maaaybe there is a story to be salvaged. But no, the female characters all eventually became damsels in distress. Or maybe they all volunteered to, cuz the delusion system here was in fact, full of holes and way too overpowered for those characters to be weakened. The energy/mana system was only applied when it was convenient. CERTAINLY NOT TOWARDS THE MC. CUZ HEY THE MC HAS AWAKENED. TIME TO PULL OFF HIS BULLSHIT POWERS!!!! oh and also the final fight is plain bullshit and the main antagonist is predictably one-dimensional and the epilogue was also foreshadowed but also utter wank.

The common problem I've found between the first 6 episodes and the rest of the anime is the animation directing. IT'S SO BAD. They somehow missed like 50% of the supposed key points of this whole plot. So if the source material was already meant to be a mindfuck, now the anime has became univerally confusing in more ways than one, all because of a poor directing skills. I couldn't believe that a studio like Madhouse picked Takaaki Ishiyama, of all people to direct this anime.

but hey the sound design is nice, great job sound design staffs.

TL;DR this is a worse harem anime than redo of healer

......what are you expecting me to say here?

Like legit, the general consensus of this anime is true. This anime, for the most parts, feels like a personified temper tantrum by the original author for not getting enough sex in their life. Most of the times I spent watching this anime are done while my hands were facepalming hard.

99% of the sex scenes here felt really childish. Didn't feel earned whatsoever. The MC here is so OP yet so stupid, it's actually really funny. Most of the aspects of this anime are not good at all, apart from the artstyle and sound design (they are fine). ... The story just devolved into a manchild dream that is illustrated by a 6 year old. The characters, no matter what gender, what race, what everything, they are all just centered on Keyaru the MC. It was so one-dimensional that I think it's an insult to even have this adapted.

So by all means, I should've rated this a 1/10 easily. But this anime somehow got away with a 4/10. Why?

First off, this anime still has a certain structure to itself, and it still followed some fundamentals (whatever it is but it's there I swear). By that account, this anime should be above 3/10.

Secondly, the parts of this anime, where it's only Keyaru and members of the Kingdom, are pretty interesting to watch and pretty compelling. SOMEHOW, SOME WAY, all the scenes related to Keyaru vs Jioral Kingdom are still able to develop Keyaru as a character,

which leads to my next point.

An aspect that I never thought I'd see in what should've been a straightforward, basic, mid anime like Redo of Healer, which is SUBTLETY.

I would like to bring you guys to episode 11, where Karman, a certain merchant who Keyaru acquainted a few episodes ago, get slain by Jioral knights in Keyaru's sight. Keyaru then went out of his way to embrace Karman in his arms like Karman's one of his comrades. Then, Keyaru talked about Karman was one of the few friends he made. At first, I was so confused because Keyaru and Karman only interacted for like mere minutes throughout the whole anime. But then, Keyaru pulled out an evil smile as he swore on Karman to exact revenge on Norn. THIS IS BRILLIANT SUBTLETY because this meant that Keyaru was just making Karman's death as a hollow excuse for Keyaru to wreak havoc on Norn's group even though Keyaru's motives for revenge on Norn were pretty much second to none. This then continued on to the next episode where Keyaru put flower on Karman's grave, which may look as if Keyaru' was showing actual companionship, but in actuality it just showed that Keyaru was committing to his own bit in order to stay firm to revenge ideals (which by this point, was looking really brittle and lacking foundation). I was bamboozled, yet so happy, that at least this anime managed to add details like that. just shows how low my expectations had become by the end of my binging

i just showed a positive from redo of healer, lord forgive me

When compared to the Future side, this is definitely the more interesting, and superior arc.

I quite believe that the studios put more work into this arc than the Future arc not only because the stories here are directly connected to SDR2, but it's also evident from its presentation here. The OP and ED themes are excellent. It is more enjoyable to watch, it has more depth, lots of stuffs can be said. Also, the other additional details and references just make me watching this series even more.

Despair arc is essentially a tale of two halves. Started out as a happy-go-lucky slice of life anime before ... the inevitable bad creeped in. We get to see more from the characters from SDR2 when they're not in a killing game. It was all fluff, sure, but how can you not want to this cast of characters having a good time? It also includes other characters featured in the Despair arc killing game, fully enhancing our investment in those characters. All these things will later culminate in a real tearjerker scene at the end, one of the few times I cried at a scene.

To be quite honest, this anime would've been panned by people who are used to watching standard animes. But, when applied to the Danganronpa environment, this is definitely a stellar anime.

Yeah, this is a pretty underwhelming anime.

At first, I was quite intrigued by the mix of sci-fi along with yuri on the sides. The world design, at first glance, was actually quite cool. I kind of liked the post-apocalyptic elements of the Otherside. The soundtracks that played when they were in the Otherside also pretty much sold how eerie and intense the exploration is gonna be like....but that's not what happened.

What we got were mostly boring fights that I'm pretty sure 99% of them involves running away. The most effective way of fighting ofc. And when it DOESN'T involve running away, it usually ends very ... quickly and easily. That's just not a good fight writing.

The yuri relationship pretty much didn't go anywhere by the end of it all. Sorao's character is pretty half-assed, and CAN I JUST SAY THIS? I really don't like the continuity problems related to Sorao's contact lenses. Like, sometimes she puts them on, sometimes she doesn't. And somehow, none of the people around her noticed this stuffs. Like, if Liden Films ain't gonna care about these sorts of detail, how am I gonna feel immersed in the story being told?

Toriko also just straight up dismissed Satsuki at the end, the main reason behind her eagerness to explore the Otherside. I know that it was said at the end that t's been three months ever since they both started doing stuffs together, but by the way this anime is made by Liden Films, it really only felt like a couple weeks.

Also, you know how I said at the start that I thought the world design was quite cool? Welp, the world design turned out to be a pile of mess. We weren't told clearly, if at all, about the origins of the Otherside. Like, the explanation just flew by. Cuz, all of them, we switched from a post-apocalyptic world into.... a cat world? And then, some occult fights happened IN THE REAL WORLD and NOT THE OTHERSIDE? Like it's as if the studio didn't wanna fully explore the world itself, even though they have the materials given.

If I wanna end this review with a silver lining, I'll just say the OP theme of this anime FUCKING BOPS! Easily a contender for OP of the season. It gave me excitement everytime I start continuing watching, and the lyrics also pretty much told a story in itself.

The FIVE in my review score also pretty much represents the final FIVE minutes of this anime, cause it is quite wholesome and very beautiful. Kind of made all of the binging worth it (????) like if there isn't anything in this anime that is gonna make me go in awe, the final minutes of episode 12 will.

All in all, I think I'll just read the manga/LN.

When I was watching the first 13 episodes, I was getting a solid 9/10 vibe out of this anime. A lovable set of characters, each have their own stories and overcomings, a really good power system, and still being able to break some shonen molds. But for me, those first 13 episodes still feel like, something is missing, and I can't put my finger on it.

But then, the second cour happened, and BAH GAWD IT'S THE BEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN.

The goodwill event is all I ever wanted from a tournament arc. It has all the great battles to keep you pumped up throughout the ... arc, great character developments to keep us invested in all the new characters introduced in the arc, all of that are encapsulated with a WHOPPER of a final boss fight. May have mirrored a bit from the Naruto tournament arc, but this tournament arc, might just be the end-all-be-all of tournament arcs.

And the excitement didn't just stop there. The baseball episode may be my most favorite filler episode yet (right up there with Kill la Kill episode 4 and SK8 beach episode). Not only did it serve as relief after a belter of an arc, it still managed to be entertaining by incorporating all the characters' developments till that point. Then, the Yasohachi Bridge arc is just the cherry on top on this beautiful cake. Seeing Megumi, Nobara, and Yuji being in a trio action once again, made a really satisfying end to the trios' current development.

I haven't spoken much about the first cour (mainly because of one certain heart-wrenching arc that I don't want to remember; still quite good tho), but I'm not taking anything away from it. It is still a really good watching experience. The trio of Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi, along with Gojo, really just kept me entertained with all of their interactions (Yuji and Nobara one brain cell moments are the sugar that daddy likes).

All that being said, this is truly peak shounen.

Another one of those animes that just hit me in ALL the right spots.

I mean, it has cats. CATS. CUTE, FLUFFY CATS. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY?

The story basically themed around finding your own world to live in, which is definitely the case when contrasting between cats and humans. The character cast is very wholesome. The sound design is really cute, the ending theme is cute as well. Animation is REALLY GOOD. THE CAT WORLD IS SO BEAUTIFUL, LIKE WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY? THIS IS A MUST-WATCH, ESPECIALLY FOR CAT-LOVERS

I might as well just meow continuously to prove ... my point

meow. meow? meooowwww? mreeeow? mew. meowmeow MEEEEOWWWW MEOOOOOOOOOOOOOW MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW MREEEWWWWWW meow.

Really fun, innit?

I don't know, this show just hits me in all the right spots. It has lovable cast of characters. Kabane is really cool. Akira is absolute best girl of 2021. Shiki is absolute best boy of 2021. Inugami. I need more Kabane x Kon in my life. What else is there not to love?

Oh, and the fights are all really good, they all work well in developing the characters taking part. The animation is swift with rarely any botches. The soundtrack is alright, but I enjoyed this anime so much. What more do you want me to say?

Really fun, innit?