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Rail Wars is quite the bizarre series indeed. Anyone who actually bothers to research something would have understood that this series was going to have harem influence and the lead designers of the characters, same as the one who handled Witchblade, should also have told most people that a focus on T&A would be fundamental.

Where things really came out of the left field though was execution. From what I hear, the light novels are significantly more action packed and actually...relevant to the plot. Apparently there was a bit of an argument between the anime director and the novelist and as such the anime is nothing ... like the novels, or so I've heard.

This makes a great deal of sense though because this anime has no point to it. It's not quite a harem comedy, because there really is not THAT much fanservice and quite a few episodes put humor on the backburner. It's setup to be about a different way of thinking of railway management, and about some kind of war against terrorism on trains or something along those lines. The title and first episode both imply such. This all but gets dropped completely though, so much so that sometimes I wondered if I was just watching a series of OVAs and actually missing out on the real series.

Seriously episodes are just random action movie cliches mixed in with some ecchi elements. This wouldn't be so bad if the series had a budget of any real kind, but instead frames look terribly half-assed, with often times wonky proportions and faces, and even worse: there's little attention to detail. Pay close attention to any episode and you will see what I mean. The designers straight up ignore or forget about basic levels of space and realism. A character could be sitting on one side of a table next to Aoi, and then in the next frame be on the other side of the table or standing up, all during a steady consistent conversation. Trains can sometimes be not much taller than a human in one scene, and then so huge it would take multiple people standing on one another to reach its top in another scene. This sense of QUALITY was actually probably the funniest thing about the show.

As far as the sound score goes, it's got a good set of voice actors and I actually quite enjoyed the soundtrack. The OP and ED are both catchy and there's a few songs in particular that play during episodes that I found upbeat and enjoyable. The character designs are also great. I never thought I would find outfits like the ones they wear as appealing as I do now, though them being unrealistically tight helps for sure. The faces and base designs are excellent, but as I said the actual low budget and lack of well drawn frames somewhat ruins the potential of these designs.

What's truly strange about Rail Wars is how enjoyable it actually is though. Despite basically being bad objectively in nearly every single way, I always found myself coming back for more and it was a consistently enjoyable series throughout. It's the kind of show you watch weekly without much expectation; you just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride. When the show did try to take itself a bit more seriously and focus on trains, it was both informative, interesting, and sometimes quite exciting. As a whole the series seemed to start to better understand the direction it wanted to take toward the end, so it's a huge shame that most of it felt like filler OVAs. That and the low budget kind of spoils scenes that could be downright incredible in say an anime film.

The cast is also a bit baffling. Aoi, the main girl, is a tsundere that had she not had beautiful red hair and a huge ass, would be extremely unlikable. Simply put, she's a terrible person. She's violent, irrational, prone to illogical and sporadic actions, and belittles the protagonist for little reason. As a self proclaimed hater of men, she runs around asserting herself in ways that are laughably stupid. It's as though the writers tried so hard to make an alpha female that they ruined any sense of realism that could have been here. In her extremely tight skirt and stockings she manages to do superhuman motions and actions to take out thugs on a daily basis. It's an anime and not one that takes itself super seriously so I can forgive such things, but things like this also ruin any sense of suspense or realism that she show was trying to go for. I can't have someone explaining to me how cool reallife trains are and how dangerous terrorists are just to have an arrogant and rude red-headed girl run around soloing waves of people without taking a scratch. There are even scenes of her purposefully making things harder for her friends. She really is the weakest link to the show.

There is also Iwaizumi. If I got his name wrong, it should be obvious why. This is the token harem protagonist's friend. He's a happy-go-lucky active dude who seems to have little real sexual drive and as such can just run around laughing, smiling, and eating food. There are episodes where he is just straightup not in it, as though the writers actually forgot he existed. He gets no real time to shine especially because his one gimmick, his strength, is outmatched by Aoi who also shares this gimmick. He's not unlikable, but he's also not all that likable just because he has little real presence. It's a shame too because as the only other guy in the series he is pretty important to balance the cringe worthy harem elements the show throws around.

The protagonist is actually pretty likable. Usually we all hate these beta harem protagonists, but this one has his motivations and facts straight. He loves trains and dreams of being a conductor. He works hard at his job, is pretty easy going, and has a big heart. I can see actual reason why the girls around him take a liking to him and he's consistently nice to everyone around him, without really being all that naive, except of course when it comes to the feelings people have for him. He's stupidly naive to such things and it comes across as awful writing too. Multiple times in the series the cast of women will actually fight over him verbally...right in front of him. How dense can you be? It always leads to nothing too. He might blush or shrug, but that's it. It's such shitty writing that it makes you want to facepalm.

Literally every girl in the series seems to fawn over this man within minutes too. There could have been such better ways to go about this.

All in all the concept of this series was wonderful and deserved a hell of a lot better treatment than what we got. All Rail Wars made me want to do was brush up on my Japanese and give the novels a try, because the anime sure did fail to live up to its base premise.

Plain and simple. That's the name of the game with this show. Sabagebu is a solid comedy that had surprisingly great potential early on, and then somewhat dips a bit below later. It never gets bad nor does it ever become amazing, but it does suffer from a few problems here and there. I was hoping for something akin to a successor to Yuru Yuri (I believe the director of both shows might be the same person, but I am not sure) and it was not quite that. Of course I cannot fault it for it not being something that it was not setting out ... to be.

What I can fault it for are things like its music. One thing that drove me insane with this show was its extremely small soundtrack. All the songs are fun enough, but it is honest to goodness something akin to only two or three songs that just keep getting played over and over again, multiple times an episode. I'm sure plenty of anime do this (especially comedies), but never has it been so blatantly obvious to me.

The cast and voice acting are top notch however. Even the strange perverted otaku Lemon ends up being a ton of fun and always a pleasure to have around. The protagonist is definitely unique among your typical ones too and her cruel nature becomes the butt of most of the game's gags. Every now and then the show would remember the airsoft theme, but it feels odd how rarely utilized it actually is. From the getgo it tells you not to take it seriously, but even for comedic effect the shootings can be somewhat rare. That being said, what this show does best is shake things up. The circumstances and setting for each episode vary so greatly that you sometimes can question if the writer was changed constantly. It's a lot of fun too since it will refer to things like Predator, Alien, Chuck Norris, Arnold, and Otaku culture. It's a mix of a lot of different things so some episodes will feel familiar while others will be completely out there.

And despite the cast being so strong, I felt that most of them got no real time to shine, especially the cosplay fanatic and the model. I certainly never got tired of the show and always enjoyed every episode, but I wouldn't really say it's something I'm going to miss now that it's over. It's just your solid seasonal comedy. There's generally one every season. Nothing wrong with that either. I recommend everyone follow a show like this over the weeks as it can always bring a smile to your face even during rough times.

Truly a terrible series, but boy does it have a wonderful idea. The concept is excellent. Cockroaches used to establish Mars as a place for humans to move to in order to deal with overpopulation, but things go wrong and the roaches somehow evolve into hostile sentient creatures. In this way it boils down to a war between humans and cockroaches, but now the roaches are the dominant being.

It sounds so great on paper, but the execution is among the absolute worst I have ever encountered in a manga. In the end of the day it is your typical battle shounen, except quite a deal ... worse than even that. It is a poor man's Gantz. A poor man's last portion of Gantz in fact; that's just how bad it is.

Where things really get shaky is the setting. Despite taking place in 2600, the environment, the "politics", the dialogue, and the characters are all straight out of a dated and stereotypical 1940s racist depiction of the world. There is no logic behind anything that happens. It really boils down to just random fun facts the author acquires probably on his spare time and then he throws it into the series however he can see fit. Despite taking place well into the future, there really is nothing futuristic about it. It's as though the author wanted to write a science fiction without putting in the effort. Instead we get highly stereotypical depictions of characters based on their race at a point in time where such things would hardly matter.

All it boils down to is Japanese supremacy in everything. The Japanese characters are the masters, Japan is the most important country, etc... It's fine to do something like this, but when the writing is so nonsensically bad and so ill-fit for the occasion, it becomes straight up unforgivable. I have very high tolerance, but within ten chapters I straight up hated the manga and I tried giving it another seventy more chapters before killing over in defeat. I cannot recommend this to anyone on the planet, no matter what period in time or what country they come from. I think even a small child is too intelligent to enjoy this. Just stick to Attack on Titan, Gantz, or both.