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Boy fails at the moment he is to shine, becomes an otaku, is being bullied at school, has one good-ish friend who offers no help but just advice. At home, he has a continuously nagging younger sister, so, life isn't better at home, either. The lad also has problems about thinking about his future. Then, all of a sudden, he gets introduced to a girl at a video game store and deep dives into a nearly forgotten extremely realistic fantasy game. The boy is falsely accused, attacked, bullied, sidelined as in real life and through experiences learns perseverance and the importance of pursuing good activities ... in real life. Then, he discovers he is good. End of story. So, there is Neverending Story, Neverending Story II, and Neverending Story III. Then, there is Full Dive. They are conceptually, trope-wise, and lesson-wise very same.
However, I hadn’t liked Neverending Story films except for the second that starred the late and wonderful Jonathan Brandis. I liked Full Dive. It was a well-written, well-paced, well-developed anime show.
I believe my vote on Full Dive is a recommendation. It is easy to watch and has a great albeit a wee bit generic main character, a good enough story, alright music and visuals, and a quasi-harem. What is there not to like?

Here is the thing; I want to love Great Pretender and yet it sometimes infuriates me. Firstly, I like the character Makoto Edamura quite a lot. He is a nice lad who tries to remain moderately legit and gets engulfed in all the schemes of Thierry Laurent and his gang of swindlers. First three stories are made up of five episodes the last one is a whopping -and very unnecessary- nine episodes long, and while sometimes it is great to have a story that covers five episodes, in cases like the Singapore air races story that was plain boring, it becomes way too long, ... way too much. On the other hand, I could watch the Snow of London case for maybe twice that length.
The visualisation of humans is alright, the stage design and angles used for all scenes are wonderful. The use of colours is amazing and sometimes it feels like you watch an artwork, a tableau. As for the music, the opening theme is your average jazzy melody, there are good jazz pieces during episodes, but, Lord, how could they afford to pay to use “The Great Pretender” from the voice of the immortal and heavenly Freddie Mercury for the final credits? Even if the whole episode sucks, just listening to Freddie Mercury lifts you up.
The scripts are run of the mill swindling scenarios and some are better than the others, but there are quite a bit of plot holes in them and makes one ask questions like: how extensive a network does Laurent has? Why doesn’t poor Edamura never ends up with his cut and if he does get his cut then why is he in need of honest work at small stores all the time? If he doesn’t get any payment from Laurent, why is he returning to work with him all the time? How is Abigail Jones Iraqi and has done ballet shows when she was a wee girl? What sort of a terrorist organization was she recruited at? Why can’t Edamura speak English properly in Snow of London episodes while he was very fluent previously in the US episodes and later in episodes set in Japan? Even though I liked how they went through the story, how on earth would/should someone who already bought a painting for a small amount of money feel obliged to auction it for millions of pounds? The list can continue to the end of the time.
However, the series is charming. I personally dislike the characters Laurent and Abigail, find them forced, especially Abigail, and don’t like Edamura being a stupid, gullible idiot at times. The backstories feel like afterthoughts and sometimes are not believable. On the other hand, Edamura makes you feel to root for him as he is kind of pure despite all the scheming. At the end, Edamura is cool, the series is charming, and most of the time it draws you inside the story being told (despite using all the available tropes of the genre). I thought I had mixed feeling when I started writing this but now I believe I want to recommend it – it is such a strange show.

Tunshi Xingkong / Swallowed Star is a Chinese production. It has a basic enough storyline: there is a post-apocalyptic world, our use of atomic bombs created monsters, there are superlative warriors fighting against these monsters, and there are good and bad people alike within the warrior cast as well. The main character is the son of a low-earning family and wants to improve his family's fortunes by becoming a warrior, and his main rival, the boy who wanted to bully him and yet didn't have the power for the said bullying, tries very hard to make him pay for a small humiliation that leads to ... lots of elaborate and extremely lawless schemes.
Now, I have very mixed feelings for this show. Firstly, many people like the great visuals, but for me, 4K or whatever, they look like the forced animation of video games' video stories. You can see every single hair in one's head, but they cannot walk properly, so that's not my cup of tea. Secondly, the storyline, poor lad attempted to be tormented by the rich jerk is too outdated and too unnecessary. Still, the in-military-squad relations, the camaraderie of the group members, the family's love for their son who can improve their fortunes, the love story that is there but for no great reason (its origin is related to her worrying about him due to bullying attempts) are all positive sides to this series, in addition to great monster fights and alright schemes. I am not a great fun of its musical score, either.
What bothers me the most, though, is the fact that the episodes are extremely short. I am saying that as a man used to the 22 minutes episodes with 1 1/2 minute songs at the beginning and end of an anime show. Swallowed Star starts the new episode only at 2 minutes 52 seconds mark, has a very lengthy scene divider at the middle (possibly longer than 45 seconds, didn't time it), and, it stops at the 19 minutes mark, making the episodes just about 15 minutes in length which is, to be honest, ridiculous.
As a result, we have a show which is alright to watch but I wouldn't miss if I hadn't watched it for a year. I don't understand the people voting in MAL, either as this show has a superlative rating but better-scripted, better organized Arifureta has far, far lower ratings. At the end, I cannae tell anyone to not watch it, but I can't recommend it wholeheartedly, either. It is the perfect "mixed feelings" animated series for me.

I really, truly liked Arifureta. Alright, yes, it has a simple, link-the-dots scenario, it has a generic unwilling isekai hero, it has villains out of a light novel, it has friends that are no more friends, it has an always-developing harem, and so it is a generic isekai light novel adaptation. There is even CGI that even I can understand to be CGI. There are parts that are out of the traditional anime storytelling, too, though: you understand our main man Hajime Nagumo is a loner, a bullied lad who is transported to another world with the wish of a god; he has obtained some ... ability to manipulate the elements in the soil and yet, as in real world classroom, that doesn’t make him the best labyrinth explorer/adventurer only by flashbacks, from the reactions of other characters and so on. You see him with his torn-down adventurer gear with his left arm missing at the end of an episode, and lo and behold, at the beginning of the next episode Hajime-kun has a suit that would compete with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who attire as well as a metal and fully (mechanically) operational left arm without the anime telling us how he received it. There are time-laps and you still understand that from the way the story unfolds. That approach made me very happy. Besides, he becomes stronger by facing obstacles head-on and being creative and that pleased me, too. Yes, the harem people are very generic, yes there are times I wished Hajime-kun was a bit less terse and churlish, but still I like how he is portrayed and I like his cute and attractive isekai entourage. So, whatever many others may say, I emphatically recommend Arifureta.

Good Lord, that was boring. I mean, Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? / And You'd Think There's Never A Girl Online starts alright, in fact it start quite well. However, things not only don't improve but they also regress from that promising start.
So, there's that lad who plays video games and gets acquiainted with a girl who cannot understand the difference between real life and gameplay conditions, and they discover they are at the same school and then with others they form a school club to play a game so she would understand that real life and play are different mediums.
And ... guess what, from then on, till the very end it is "Rusian this" "Rusian that" and nothing changes and nothing improves and strange things just become normalized.
Maybe I miss the main point of this anime series, but I found it to be tiresome, pointless, and frankly, useless. Maybe you might enjoy it.

I really, truly wanted to love Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom. A lot. It started alright, too: an interesting lad without memories gets brainwashed to become a premium assasisn and gets associated with an emotion-free girl named as "Ein" while he becomes "Zwei," the second amnesiac assassin.
Then, he learns his name, then he keeps working as an assassin, then he takes in a small girl as his protegee, then he is betrayed from every possible angle by every possible person and scenario. The thing is, all these are up to episode 18 and from episode 18, it is only downhill in terms of storyline, ... consistency, credibility, belieavability, and things get complicated and the series ends in the worst possible way, without any meaning to what has happened.
The problem is that there are a myriad tropes used in Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom (and why, oh why, does the name have to contain two Phantoms? It's quite alright for it to be named Requiem for the Phantom) from the idiot who sees the best in the emotionless assassin girl to Nazi-like German scientist to manipulative female mafia boss. All these might have been used to make a coherent story and et this opportunity is wasted. I seriously thought at the first few episodes that the series goes very slowly but it will be a great story, worth grading a neat 9/10 or 10/10 and then I am now struggling to leave it at 7 and am thinking it possibly deserves a 6/10. I am so disappointed.

This is one hell of a great anime series.
Yes, Senpai wa Otokonoko / Senpai is a Crossdresser touches some taboo subjects (especially if you think about the Japanese society) with ease and elegance.
Senpai wa Otokonoko is an amazing show that includes such issues as cross-dressing, teenage homosexual and heterosexual love, insecurities, broken family ties, irresponsible parenting, compliance or incompliance with societal norms, and if you are not triggered by any of these issues you don't even feel there is a strong discussion going on while you watch it - you just see a series about friendship and tolerance.
It may be the best written show ... since Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align. I fully recommend it.

Buddy Complex is a mecha anime. It has Aobu Watase, an average 16-year-old high school pupil, go 80 years into the future and be part of a group of mecha warriors with special abilities. He meets a tsundere lad of his own age named Dio Weinberg, and he also runs into the girl who had saved him in 2014 from the attack of a mecha from future named Hina. Then, events carry on.
Now, what makes the Buddy Complex anime wonderful for me, grading it nearly 3 points above its average at MAL is the fact that I wanted to carry on watching it. Dio and ... Aobu are very interesting and loveable characters, one can understand where these two stand in terms of their backgrounds in the story. The production quality is above average and mecha battles are really, truly great. The music score is average. Yet, as I already mentioned, it made me watch it one episode after the other; and ,for the first time in my anime watching years, I started watching an anime and watched 13 episodes and then two extra storyline-concluding-episodes, in one sitting from 15:30 till 01:30. I have had never done this before; not even while watching the best mecha anime I know which is Eighty-Six. So, it was an extraordinary and very pleasurable experience for me. This anime therefore means a lot to me. As a result, from a personal standpoint, I recommend Buddy Complex wholeheartedly.

Now, Qualidae Code is an anime I liked a lot and many people have mixed or negative feelings about. It is probably due to expectations.
The anime series has a simple enough plot: youngsters that were kept in cryo-sleep had woken up with powers referred as “world” in them, and, are fighting against invading aliens from an alternate dimension. The question is, is this a rightful fight. We have seen many SF anime, manga, and TV series based on the concept and at times Qualidae Code resembled the film Island a lot in the first few episodes – at least for me. The quality of animation ... is not great, music is not bothersome but is not a real supporter of the storyline, either.
So, why do I recommend it with such a high score, then? Because it ticks important check points for me: does it contain easy-to-follow and good male and female characters? Yes. Does it have witty exchanges and enjoyable banter between characters, especially between the two male leads? Yes, plenty. Does it involve redemption? Yes. Is it fun to watch? Yes. Are there good fight scenes and innovative gadgets or fight plans? Yes. Does it show how friendship and solidarity are important? Yes, indeed. I therefore liked Qualidae Code a lot. Others might not due to freezeframe dialogues in which only the mouth of the talking person is moving or the lack of great, involving music, or for plot related reasons.
Still, Qualidae Code and its main characters Ichiya and Kasumi are pretty dear to me and I recommend it.

Kaicho wa Maid-Sama (the President is Maid-Sama!) is a wonderful, wonderful anime. It is heartwarming, with every character doing their best to survive in the high school world -from the three idiots to the eponymous Maid-Sama aka Misaki- and there is a constant air of feelgood in the series. It is a bland of romcom, slice of life, and -sometimes farcical- comedy and it creates the balance so well. It is hard to believe it was made 14 years ago, to be honest, because it catches the dynamics of everyday life and everyday feelings so very well.
The story is sort of ordinary – there ... is the poor girl who has to work after school at a maid café to support her family and the rich, athletic, good-looking guy who falls for her and her constant refusal to believe that he can fall for her. However, what makes Maid-Sama so different and so successful is the attention to detail in every single character, from the main characters Misaki Ayuzawa and Tokumi Usui to the cross-dressing Aoi, the girls and boys of the high school they attend. They are all very well written and the dialogues are fun and possible to have in real life.
Another thing that makes this anime series so great is that it can be watched without feeling cringy at any point, with a smile in your face, and with great ease of mind – and therefore it is very suitable for extreme binge-watching. I recommend Kaicho wa Maid-Sama to anyone interested in laughing and feeling good while watching anime.