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Jun 12, 2023
If you've come across this anime on your own, then I'm sure you know what you're getting yourself into. This anime is simply a cute, episodic, low-risk adventure of a random dude getting transported into a video game-like world in which he serves as a pharmacist, typical isekai stuff. The show really sets itself apart with two simple factors; characters and setting. We've all seen isekai, but the fact that a drug store is the main location really sets this one apart, and without the colourful cast of characters, this show wouldn't be half as entertaining.
Story:
As mentioned previously, the story is mostly episodic with certain
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things that bleed into future episodes, like new characters, stuff like that. We follow Reiji Kirio, our typical isekai protagonist who can do practically no wrong. We never learn much of his past life, but the story wouldn't benefit much from an explanation, so it shouldn't be minded much. Most of the time, episodes will include a citizen of the town asking Reiji for help with something, usually pharmaceutical-related, but not all the time. On rare occasion, the plots can be more character driven, and those usually hit, as the characters that surround Reiji are the driving force that keeps this anime watchable. Most episodes contain multiple stories as the anime is a manga adaptation, and I feel that element also tends to keep things interesting.
7/10
Sound:
Relatively run-of-the-mill. All voice actors and actresses deliver solid performances and general sound design is as expected. Not bad, but really nothing amazing.
6/10
Animation:
For the most part, the animation is also pretty much as expected. Characters are expressive, colours are vibrant, generally just a fun atmosphere. I will note that this anime features a single animation for Reiji creating new medicine which is used in every single episode, usually more than once. One may find this lazy, but I personally find it extremely charming, almost like a magical girl transformation scene in an early 2000s anime. All things considered, the animation is pretty solid.
7/10
Characters:
As I've said repeatedly, the characters in this show are a huge selling point, each more fun than the last. Reiji himself is boring, but his sidekick, (and basically his servant) Noela is cute and fun, Mina is a ghost that haunts the pharmacy and is by far the most complex of the bunch, which isn't to say she's a buzzkill, she's just the one with the most depth. She also has one of the funniest scenes in the show, where she drinks a potion that shows her deeper thoughts and her calm and sweet demeanor is completely contrasted by her inner thoughts being the complete opposite. The majority of the rest of the cast is used very well and has plenty of standout moments, my personal favourite being Vivi, who we meet closer to the end of the show, but almost every line of dialogue she’s given is gold. The other standout is Garou, the demon king. I don’t want to get into what makes him so hilarious to me, as his development is one of the few things that actually progresses as the show goes on, so I won’t spoil it. The one character that I really disliked was Paula, the blacksmith. She’s extremely arrogant and I roll my eyes every time she has one of her rude and unfunny one-liners. Overall though, the characters are very well done.
8/10
Overall:
This show will never have you at the edge of your seat, it will never have you laughing endlessly, but what it offers is a fun, leisurely time in which you can relax and enjoy watching some creative characters in amusing and interesting situations. All around, this show will leave you feeling content.
7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 18, 2023
You may read other reviews for this OVA and think that people are overreacting, I mean, every anime has fan service right? Well let me start by saying the first half of this OVA is practically hentai. Not to get too specific, but you don't want to have this on at a family gathering. Then to make matters worse, the second half is utterly boring and uninteresting.
Story:
There are two stories in the episode that each take up roughly half the runtime. We begin with the plot of Ishigami and Shirogane looking at explicit magazines and imagining their female friends in lewd scenarios. A good portion
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of this plot was really uncomfortable to watch. It was actually shocking to see how far they took this premise and Shirogane really appeared to be out of character. That all being said, comedy-wise, this is the better half of the episode. Both guys have some funny jokes here and there, but you'll probably be too busy cringing at the overbearing fan service to appreciate any of it. The second half of the episode is a cooking competition which Kaguya and Shirogane take too far so that they can win each other over with their cooking skills. This plot wound up being rather boring and not very much better than the first half.
3/10
Sound:
Everything in this department is solid. There's a section in the cooking portion where Chika has this euphoric awakening- or something, and the sound-work used to convey that was great. And I'd be remiss not to mention the sounds used to convey... "breast movement" are all there and intact. I need to dock one point from the score though, as a certain part that I won't spoil used sounds that were kind of disgusting.
9/10
Animation:
Love Is War's regular animation quality is all there and looking as great as ever, and just because it made me uncomfortable doesn't mean that it wasn't well done.
9/10
Characters:
As mentioned prior, Shirogane is strangely out of character for the first plot, and doesn't really do enough in the second plot to save himself. As not the biggest Chika or Miko fan, their focus in the second half wasn't really my cup of tea. All other characters featured in the OVA act as expected, but Ishigami is really the only one to get any laughs out of me, but as previously stated, that was only during the first half.
5/10
Overall:
Unlike what many other reviews say, I don't think it's a COMPLETE waste of time to watch this OVA. It isn't good by any means and it doesn't add anything new to the story, but if you're horny, this OVA is for you! (And you can stop watching after the first half)
4/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 15, 2023
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children takes place two years after the events of the main game, in this time, Sephiroth has poisoned the lifestream and began to spread a disease through the mako that was released into the world when the main characters stopped METEOR. If none of this makes sense to you, don’t worry, the movie doesn’t explain it either. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children requires a deep understanding of the source material in order to fully enjoy the movie, and that’s a pretty big issue right there.
Story:
The story is relatively hard to follow, but it’s kind of smart when you have all
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the pieces to the puzzle, the problem is the fact that there’s a puzzle to solve in the first place. Three descendants(?) of Sephiroth are trying to find Jenova, who they consider to be their mother. There’s a subplot about all of the children in Midgar being infected with the Geostigma disease, which is that mako disease I had mentioned earlier. So, our heroes are primarily occupied with trying to save the children. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, the way the movie tries to deliver the narrative is reminiscent of a rollercoaster. It leaves out important details until way too late, sometimes omitting important details entirely. I can’t remember a single time that one of the Sephiroth descendants even mentions that “mother” is Jenova, and that’s kind of extremely important.
4/10
Sound:
Most of the sound work in this movie is generally solid. I watched the dub, so there were one or two scenes with some goofy interactions, but that’s more than made up for by some of the epic musical moments. One specifically I will not go into due to spoilers, but it gave me chills.
8/10
Animation:
The animation in this movie is near-perfect, for CGI in 2005 especially. The action scenes in this movie are STUNNING. Even if you have never played Final Fantasy VII, this movie is still worth a watch simply for its top tier animation. Final Fantasy VII Advent Children is visually wonderful.
10/10
Characters:
Most of what’s done with the characters is somewhat disappointing, you get plenty of Cloud, Tifa, and the Turks, but all the other main characters are designated to background characters that have a couple lines just to please the fans. Red XIII only has one line of dialogue to himself for god’s sake. Not to mention, you are subjected to far too much of those three Sephiroth descendants. Those three are the worst. They’re so whiny and I personally don’t see them as good villains by any means. For what characterization there is for the other characters, they all remain consistent with how you’d expect them to act in the main game. It’s just unfortunate that Cloud and Tifa are the only main characters that receive any development.
5/10
Overall:
Despite the lacklustre story, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is definitely entertaining. I enjoyed the action and some of the dialogue. If they tidied up the storytelling a bit, the movie would benefit highly. And unlike most movies that would just leave it at that, they went back and made Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, practically a patch of the original movie that fixes up the story a bit, but this is a review of the original, and the original is a…
7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 2, 2022
This manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a dumbed down and dull retelling of the events that occurred in the video game.
The story is incredibly shortened, and in a lot of ways censored. Link will go from place to place, introducing characters which are then tossed to the curb in the exact same chapter. The time Link spends freeing the giants feels so horribly rushed, even though it's supposedly the main goal in the story. They especially did Twinmold dirty, not even really getting his own chapter and barely getting two pages worth of time, which is an odd pacing choice,
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considering how much time all of the other giants got. The only slight silver lining is the ending was pretty solid, nothing special. I definitely don't think the manga earned it's heartfelt ending, but it was endearing enough. 3/10
The characters are a complete disappointment. The character I enjoyed the most was Tatl, and that can't be a good thing since she's supposed to be the annoying one. The Happy Mask Salesman was delightfully creepy, and I enjoyed Link. The only other characters I can give the nod to are Anju and Kafei. Their relationship was sweet, but didn't need to be stretched as long as it was. In any case, the rest of the characters were either horribly rushed or just glossed over. Skull Kid had the time to win me over, but something about his presentation in the manga didn't really work. Maybe it's the fact that he's completely absent from the middle of the story. Speaking of which, the middle of the story is where it truly suffers. You meet all these characters that live in the different locations of Termina. In the video game, these characters are grounded and really make you care about them, but in the manga, they're all just plot devices, missing all the nuance of the video game. "Missing nuance" is the best way to describe the vast majority of these characters. 4/10
The art is all well done. Most characters have a somewhat cutesy style which is nice, but I think it would've been really powerful if contrasted by the dreadful tones found in the video game. Even without that, however, everything looks just right visually. I do have to say that sometimes it is incredibly difficult to understand what's going on. Panels can be cluttered with characters preforming these complicated actions that have a good opportunity to go right over the reader's head. 7/10
Overall, this manga isn't abysmal. If you have zero access to the video game, but you have the manga, you'll be able to understand just enough to get a feel for the actual game. I'd say this is the more child-friendly version of Majora's Mask, but a child could easily get lost when the panels begin to get overloaded with information. Fans of Majora's Mask would be disappointed, so this manga is purely for people with a passing interest in The Legend of Zelda. You can pick it up, put it down, and move on. 6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 25, 2022
I hesitated to watch the Ao Oni Movie after watching the comedy shorts. I enjoyed the shorts and was afraid this movie would kill any respect for Ao Oni that I had, but after watching, I can say that I don't know how to feel.
Story: The most interesting part of this movie is it's story. Plenty of twists to keep you paying attention- that is, if you can pay attention after the first thirty minutes of the movie which is primarily mind-numbing exposition. The second half of the movie, however, made everything feel worth it. All of the plot that's presented to the viewer in
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the first act gets wrapped up without much question in the final act. 8/10
Art/Animation: This is by the worst aspect of the Ao Oni movie. Half the time it looks like I'm watching a bunch of PSX cutscenes while the other half of the time it feels like I'm watching a Garry's Mod animation made in 2013. It's obvious by the way the human characters move that this movie was made to be animated in 2D, a lot of the problems with the animation style are caused by the CG graphics. The way the characters move would look perfectly fine in 2D, but because they're 3D models, their disjointed movements cause almost everything they do to look awkward. The characters look fine from far away shots, but getting too close to them kills almost any amount of immersion I was feeling. The silver lining of the animation style is the Ao Oni itself. I have a feeling that if the rest of the movie were 2D and it was ONLY the Ao Oni's that were CG animated, they would be a lot more frightening. As is, the best scenes in the movie visually are the scenes in which the Ao Oni is mauling someone. Everything else is just visual garbage. 3/10
Sound: I appreciate the fact that they still use the violin sting to signify danger, and I liked the song that played over the credits, but there's not much outstanding sound work to mention. There's one part of the movie in which the main characters are listening to old tapes, but the voice on the tapes is not distorted at all which seemed to me like an oversight. Nothing overly offensive though. 5/10
Characters: The characters are extremely hit-or-miss. It was really disappointing that the moment the movie began to capture my interest, the two only characters with strong personalities were completely absent. What makes matters worse is that the characters that stuck around are majorly boring and lifeless. I'll give a mention to Mifuyu Hatano, who sticks around for the majority of the movie and is actually pretty interesting. The rest of the characters are pretty bland, so this score will mostly go to the few characters that I actually enjoyed. 6/10
Enjoyment: When I finished the movie and got to the credits, I was left with a good time overall. The ending really made the movie something special. It's concept is actually quite unique as far as monster movies go. However, the abhorrent animation and boring first act make it a challenge to sit through at times, but if you're patient, then the Ao Oni movie may be an alright watch. 6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 9, 2022
Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile is a near perfect epilogue Final Fantasy VII and a great way to set up many plot points in Advent Children, in some ways even exceeding both of them. I would say you’d have to play Final Fantasy VII to enjoy this novel to its fullest, but in all honesty, this novel sets almost all of the characters up better than the game ever did. The novel does recount some things that occurred in the game when necessary, so even if you haven’t played the game in a long time, or never at all, you won’t
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be completely lost. (This review will contain spoilers for the end of the Final Fantasy VII video game, but not the book itself)
The story consists of 6 chapters all telling the story of a specific character’s adventure through the world since Meteor almost destroyed the planet at the end of Final Fantasy VII, with six micro-chapters in between the main ones which take the perspective of either Aerith or Sephiroth. This novel mostly follows the characters’ experiences with the Geostigma disease, which I was weary about at first, given how poorly Advent Children explained it, but this novel not only makes sense of the Geostigma, but also made me interested to learn more about it. Most characters, however, do have something separate from the Geostigma that they’re occupying themselves with. Cloud has started a delivery service for towns that were torn up by Meteor, Tifa opens up a bar in the new town they’ve began constructing since Midgar’s destruction, Barret and Red XIII (Or Nanaki as I’ll be calling him) are both on separate self discovery missions, Yuffie is trying to find a cure for the Geostigma, Cid is trying to build a rocket that doesn’t rely on Mako energy, and Sephiroth is trying to bring himself back to life, just to name a few. The story isn’t exactly action-oriented, which is astounding to think about because of how engaging it is. Despite the lack of flashy battle sequences, the story is constantly moving at a perfect pace, learning new information about the characters, environment, and circumstances at just the right speed. To close off this section, I’d like to say that this novel sets up many aspects of Advent Children very well, the one thing the story doesn’t set up in preparation of the movie is why Cait Sith rides Nanaki’s back all of the sudden during Advent Children. Nanaki and Cait Sith don’t share any interactions in On the Way to a Smile when it could’ve easily just been thrown in at the end of Nanaki’s chapter. This isn’t a huge issue or anything, but it’s the only thing that the novel didn’t clear up and I don’t understand why. The story is a 10/10
The characters are all done masterfully in this novel. Even Cid, who I personally find to be horrible in the Final Fantasy VII game, is fun to see whenever he shows up. A real shock to me was how well it did characters who I personally didn’t care much for. I rolled my eyes when seeing Denzel in Advent Children, but in this novel, his chapter was a beautiful first impression and made me respect his character much more. The same can be said for Rufus Shinra, who in the video game is a throwaway “whatever” character, but the novel shines a light on his character during the Shinra chapter that makes him much more endearing and sympathetic. Nanaki as a character may very well be at his best in this novel, with his chapter by far being the highlight of the novel for me. I also respect the amount they used Vincent. He was there about as many times as you’d expect him to be if you know his character, and I really do like that. The only flaw with the way characters are handled is the severe underuse of Cait Sith. He’s on half a page in the Shinra chapter during a flashback to the events of a game and that’s it. Reeve, the man that controls Cait Sith has a sizeable role, but when Reeve isn’t controlling Cait Sith, Cait Sith is its own living being with its own thoughts. Cait Sith is even on the cover of the novel, and I don’t get that. They could’ve put Aerith or Denzel there instead, given they have relevance to the plot, but instead they give it to a character that isn’t even technically in the novel. I’d give characters overall a 9/10
As for art, there’s no visual art in the novel besides the cover, which does look nice, but the art in this novel comes far more from the words used than what you can see. A huge factor in this novel’s immersion is how it describes everything with its words. This novel creates the world around you while never dwelling on something too long. It just uses the perfect vocabulary to get the feeling across and then moves on briskly to the next plot point. It will use big words with ominous subtext during sections with characters in turmoil, while using short, snappy sentences during moments of comedy in which the dialogue is the bigger focus. The “art” in this light novel is a 10/10
Despite its very few and nitpicky shortcomings, Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile is a fantastic read that’s engaging straight to the end. It’s mysterious, saddening, thrilling, and heartwarming.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 6, 2022
This was a complete subversion of expectations. If you’re looking for a horror-type thriller, this ain’t it. If you’re looking for a remotely serious show, you’re out of luck here. This all being said, this show made me laugh harder than almost any show I’ve watched in a long time. I went into it with the low ratings in mind thinking it would be a so-bad-it’s-good horror show, but I got a short and sweet comedy experience that leaves me with a smile on my face and wanting more.
Story - There isn’t much of a story. Every episode is only a couple of minutes. I
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appreciate the show being so similar in presentation to a video game, always ending in a “Game Over”. As a video game adaptation, it really trails off from the source material, but also plays with it in creative and funny ways. Anyway, to rope everything back to topic, the “stories” in every episode are short, sweet, and inoffensive.
Art - I enjoy the art in this show a great deal. The way the Ao Oni and it’s… family members (?) are animated and presented visually are quite funny looking, in a good way, of course. The main human characters themselves are also animated in a simple, yet effective way. I do however wish they maybe used the main characters’ detailed design, maybe in the last episode or something. Other than that, art is solid and inoffensive. Even the gore is done tastefully somehow.
Sound - I am in love with the fact that the show uses the short looping violin sting from the video game whenever Ao Oni shows up. That, plus the rest of the sound design being solid, means that the sound design never really dips below being good.
Character - I enjoy almost every character in this show. Even though some characters are more forgettable than others, they all have their defining personality traits that make them all memorable in their own right. All of the Ao Onis are funny, I especially enjoy the muscular one for some reason. As for the human cast, Mika probably has some of the most memorable moments, followed closely by Takurou. Hiroshi is a funny character, for being a stereotypical “nerd” type. Takeshi is the most forgettable, but he still has funny moments and I wouldn’t like the show any more if he weren’t in it.
Enjoyment - Every single episode made me laugh at least once, usually way more. Nearly every joke lands. The absurdity and speed of the comedy fits so much substance into so little runtime. For being under the horror genre, the show is insanely fun, and not exactly horrific.
Overall - I wish more people knew about the show. I wish the genre listed wasn’t so misleading. I wish the show was longer. I didn’t get what I expected when going into this, but I got something arguably better with an enjoyable experience that I haven’t gotten anywhere else thus far.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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