To make a long story short: The first half is good. There's plenty of drama, and a few strange choices to be made here and there, but a story about a woman coming back to rebuild her old broken family, and rebuilding her new broken family in the process is sweet, and suitably dramatic. The problem is that the main conflict of the story is solved halfway through, and the author then changes the premise.
There's this in-universe story that's used as a parallel to the one we're reading. Once the main conflict is over, the ending for the story changes, and suddenly FMC starts
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Jul 11, 2024
Basashi ga Tabetai
(Manga)
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It's got a slow start, but the story won me over on chapter 4, where the author actually creates an actual issue between two Human Beings and resolves it in a natural, satisfying way. She and her sister don't get along. Her sister is harsh to everyone, and FMC herself doesn't like sharing her art. Problem is she took up art to get closer to her sister. The most FMC would manage to do it sneak a drawing into her sister's hands, then run away before hearing anything. She asked her sister why she likes drawing so much, and when she said she likes seeing
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Jun 30, 2024
R15+ ja Dame desu ka?
(Manga)
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TL;DR: This story has MASSIVE plot holes, abandons its premise unceremoniously, doesn't solve the mystery it sets up, and the timeline doesn't make sense (Which is basically just the plot hole complaint again)
The author basically set up a big mystery, then kept playing off it to serve as an obstacle to our main cast. And it served that purpose wonderfully. But here's the problem: The author really likes movies. He likes to include real-life movies in the story, and that causes problems. Namely, that since the movies actually exist, you know roughly what period of time the characters are in, or talking about. Which leads ... Jun 17, 2024
Koi no Torikata
(Manga)
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The story starts off fine enough with a quick en medias res, before moving on to setting up the actual story. FMC's character is a little inconsistent. She starts off by being a weirdo with a camera, then we quickly transition to her being an ice queen, and then a couple more things afterwards.
I'll get to the point: Volume 1 is fine. Volume 2 has Bullshit Drama. It involves the other girl in the club trying to hurt MC, revealing FMC is already into someone else, and then the rest of the volume is literally just everyone coping with their unrequited loves. To add ... Apr 2, 2024
AI ga Tomaranai!
(Manga)
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The series takes the all-you-can-eat buffet approach to storytelling. Rather than refining what it already has, it chooses to add yet more to keep your attention. What starts off as a main couple, with a cast of side characters popping in to spur change, turns into an ensemble cast who's been made quirky for quirky's sake (According to the author). In particular, Forty was supposed to be a little sister character, but the author thought that was too dull, so he made her also turn into a boy sometimes, but that was also too dull for the author's tastes, so he ALSO gave the boy
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Mar 21, 2024
To sum of a very long, confusing story, it basically starts as a comedy, then it turns into a drama. And it spends a LONG time spinning its wheels, focusing on side characters, at least one of which is an objectively awful human being. Halfway through, the quality of the art just stops off a cliff for no apparent reason, to boot. But if I had to point to its biggest sin, it's the fact that the story actually ends two or three times. Seriously, the main conflict is resolved, everything's set for the end card... and the author just pretends it didn't happen. Especially
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Mar 14, 2024
Taishou Otome Otogibanashi
(Anime)
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TL;DR: This show features garbage so-called "people", and you're supposed to be ok with them.
I dropped it. And it's a 3 to me. The only reason I can't outright warn you against it is because the main girl is very much the embodiment of the perfect woman. But besides that, the show regularly introduces pieces of shit, and then, after an episode or two, with barely even a "Sorry" (Literally none, in the bitch sister's case), we're supposed to ignore everything they've done and just move on like nothing happened; they're "Forgiven" now. MC is literally abandoned by his whole family, his own sister ... Feb 27, 2024
Umibe no Q
(Manga)
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It starts off good, but the moment the dog slug splits, the story suddenly has to juggle the obvious implication of an anti-slug breeding out in the wild, the redemption arc for a LOT of really shitty people, a romance arc, managing the original dog slug's reproduction, and wrapping all of this up in two volumes. And frankly, it falls flat on that front. The ending boils down to a Deus Ex Machina, and a "ooo, we're mysterious and beyond your comprehension".
Almost everyone kind of just sucks here. FMC is the least unlikeable out of the lot. But everyone around her is some variety of ... Feb 6, 2024
Thing is, the story starts out great! You quickly get the sense that this is basically going to be "Sassuga Mia-sama!": The Series. And they really work the joke, while making FMC believably flawed. Just because her personality got her killed once, doesn't mean she's suddenly going to pull a 180. She's mean, childish, and manipulative, and this time around, she has her execution as a fantastic excuse to be that way. The issue is that somehow the show peters out as time goes on, with issues coming to a head in Episode 8. I can't put my finger on it, but after seeing her
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Jan 24, 2024
Yofukashi no Uta
(Manga)
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The story has an extremely strong start. And if this was all there was to it, this would be a great work. The problem is the author decided to move away from the dynamic between the two main characters, and decided to change the genre several different times. The story expands to explore all the different outcomes of Vampire's various relationships with Humans, and by god, they're all sad.
Without spoiling too much, there's this MASSIVE digress where both main characters are presented as some kind of exception to basically all the rules established. Then, after the author spends literally over one hundred chapters setting ... |