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Oct 30, 2023
Luna and Ryuuto's dynamic may be wholesome and all, but does it deserve a place on your watchlist? "Kimizero" is like the fast food version of a romcom, and not the good kind. The character dramas are so dull even a sloth would ask for a refund on its time investment.
Four episodes in, and I'm still wondering if this anime was created as part of a secret plot to test my patience. The characters themselves are similarly dull, some borderline hateable. Ryuuto and Luna make for a boring main couple, Ryuuto's "friends" are insufferable, Luna's friend(s) are barely fleshed out, and the lone character with
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a bit of personality, Maria, plays the tired role of a derivative romance antagonist: Family Drama edition. It's like they attended a "Romcom Writing 101" class and followed the syllabus to the letter. Whatever conflicts that do arise are uninventive, and I could hardly care about how they affect them in the slightest. You're set up to root for them and their romance just seems pure, perfect, and infallible, only set back by the difference in personality between the two and the romance drama including Maria.
The most entertainment value it gives is watching Ryuuto geek out while Luna plays catch-up, or the inner debates of the turbo virgin's deciding whether to go full hornball mode or keep it in check, who, to his credit, often opts for the more virtuous path. However, let's not even get started on his dreadful friends, whose entire existence seems to revolve around being equally inept and dripping with envy over their friend landing a girlfriend. Luna is the naive hopeless romantic female lead and Ryuuto, unremarkable as he is, means well for the most part is the outlier, the loner who "treats her better" than her exploitative exes. Wow. "Kimizero" has as much appeal as watching paint dry, and the humor is about as uninspired as a blank canvas.
If you're in the mood for a similar wholesome romance between a gyaru and a loner, there are far better options out there. This anime is basically a wish-fulfillment fantasy where a socially awkward loser treats the popular girl better than her exes did. It's almost as if the target audience consists of guys who genuinely take "nice guys finish last" as a life mantra. The fact that it implies everything would be static in Luna's love life unless Ryuuto's friends dared him to confess just further appeals to that type of crowd, even if that wasn't the goal.
To be fair, I threw in the towel, so there's a slim chance it might improve later on. But given everything else I've witnessed so far, I'm not holding my breath. Nothing has convinced me to keep watching.
Oh and the animation's seasonal fodder. The art/character design is subjective (I personally find Kimizero's pretty plain.) but the production or animation quality isn't anything special to make up for the lackluster concept.
I do like the peppy opening tho. It's cute.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 21, 2023
BSD is actually good?!
This season delivers some of the most engaging content since season 3. A direct continuation from the 4th, the 5th installment sees the Detective Agency grappling with their tarnished reputation due to the Decay of Angels' plot.
I've often had my gripes with the series' worldbuilding and the sometimes haphazard introduction of plot points. But surprisingly, this season made me overlook most of those concerns, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. While previous seasons sometimes felt like they were making things up on the fly and brushing it off with a cheap, technically infallible "it exists, we just didn't give you prior
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context," and this annoying formula prevails, but this approach worked better this time around. The high-stakes and asspulls were entertaining in a way that the previous seasons failed me. What's even better is that the tone shifts and comedic elements didn't feel as disruptive as they did in the past. The show used to struggle with maintaining its balance, often feeling cheesy when it attempted seriousness (The finale of season 1 and the Guild arc sucked), barring a few good moments (Fyodor's in Episode 29, Backstory arcs, season 3 as a whole was pretty solid.). But this season, it's like they finally found their groove and made fewer missteps.
Even if they weren't winging it as I assume, it definitely felt like they did. I'm not sure whether it was the fault of Asagiri for not making the series as a whole cohesive, or Bones' adaptation of the source material. Granted, Bungo Stray Dogs has always excelled in its character department (with a handful of S-tier characters and others left underdeveloped), but its worldbuilding has often left much to be desired, although, this season's shortcomings in worldbuilding didn't bother me as much.
All in all, this season of BSD managed to overcome the issues that plagued its predecessors, offering a more consistent and focused viewing experience. The writing feels committed, unlike before when consequences often felt non-existent. Whether a die-hard fan or a skeptical viewer like me, season 5 is a definite W for the series.
Story: 7
Animation: 7
Visuals: 8
Music: 9 (OST) 7 (OP & ED)
Characters: 8
Sound: 8 (Sound Design) 7 (Voice Acting)
Favorite Episode: 4 - Hero War, Gang War.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 13, 2023
Another case of BSD struggling with whether it wants to be good or not.
The flashbacks as always, are the best moments of the show. Always masterfully written with great direction that makes a solid one-off story. The overarching plotline on the other hand is a mess. Somehow always making a writing misstep after a good scene. You'd think "How is that possible? It's just a backstory, it takes away from the current events." but when you look at the show holistically, the flashbacks existing in a bubble outside the current events is exactly the reason why it's the only parts of the show that has
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a solid foundation.
This season's exploration of Ranpo and Yosano's pasts, akin to the excellence displayed in Oda's backstory from season 2, and to a lesser extent, Dazai's from season 3, adds depth to the characters and continues to weave into present-day events nicely. For once, the writing felt committed, now that it felt like the events have actual consequences, especially with the impact of Fyodor in the first half. Eventually, after the episode with Nikolai which was fantastic, "The Hunting Dogs" gets written into existence without any real foreshadowing, which isn't the issue. As always, my biggest gripes come with the haphazard introduction of plot points and the neglect of essential story beats. It struggles with tone shifts and trying to make me care for most of the events, specifically because of lackluster worldbuilding. It relies heavily on the viewer filling in very huge blanks by themselves until they decide to actually write later on. And without being hooked in the first place, people would hardly care enough to try and play into this formula. For the same reason, the explanations don't feel satisfactory to me.
I find it difficult to enjoy BSD but highlight its flaws without explicitly spoiling the specific examples, but ultimately it just hinges on the eye of the beholder. How I see it, it's just the horrible worldbuilding that takes away from the smaller scenes. It's wasted potential, really. A bad mesh of good ideas.
Story: 4
Animation: 7
Visuals: 7
Music: 9 (OST) 8 (OP & ED)
Characters: 7
Sound: 8 (Sound Design) 7 (Voice Acting)
Favorite Episode: 9 - A Dream of Butterflies
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 22, 2023
The SFX, music, and voice acting are all worth coming to for this animanga. The art is objectively worse and their stylistic choice with the animation would've been excused if it weren't for the shitty tracing work.
The pacing of the jokes are a little too fast for me imo.
The manga's just the obvious choice if it weren't for the good voice acting, both the dub and sub.
Of course, if you don't mind the "animation" (when it barely is.) then go ahead, it's an okay adaptation, but there's so many areas this could've been improved on, especially with the Netflix money it's been funded with.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 10, 2023
Mob Psycho's final season sees it take a more grounded approach, focusing more on character relations and interactions. Behind such a grandiose display of sakuga and colorful animation is a sweet and relatable story about growing up.
Now that we had the big bad esper organization out of the way, where else does the story go? In this season, our big bad is adolescence. DUN DUN DUUUUN. We follow Mob this season struggling through this stage of maturation, while his friends pursue their dreams, with one, in particular, which drove the plot forward for the first important arc in this season. Because of the slice-of-life
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format this season adopted, the peaks of enjoyment, personally, are the character development moments that took the back seat the past two seasons. Ultimately, it also suffers from the issue most slice-of-life shows have, which is the lack of drive and conflict in some episodes. They do manage to make some episodes entertaining despite it, which solves that problem. Despite the flaws, Mob Psycho III still delivers a satisfactory ending for all the characters.
This season has a lot of charm to it. certainly has the spirit, but the presentation could've been better. My biggest issue was the pacing between arcs, but the emotional impact of this season was unmatched and carries the finale regardless of its flaws.
Story: 7
Animation: 9
Visuals: 8
Music: 7 (OST) 9 (Opening & Ending)
Characters: 10
Sound: 7 (Sound Design) 10 (Voice Acting)
Favorite Episode: 8
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 21, 2022
Redo of Healer is a power fantasy revenge story. How did it turn out? Eh.
Pretty typical, The protagonist super OP and has a harem, and most of the characters have tasteless characterization. Keyaru is somewhat interesting at the least. I don't really care about morals in a story, go crazy, as long as it can make the story compelling. But that's the thing: it doesn't.
It's decent. The animation is nice, the OST is alright, and I somewhat enjoyed it for what it was. The problem was with how the story itself was delivered. The worldbuilding is horrendous; a lot of it was just info-dumped
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to the viewers. Some scenes I'd say were quite well-written and enjoyable, though I think it's a missed opportunity that we didn't delve into Keyaru's psychology more. The story was fast-paced, making it feel like this anime was just made as a mere power fantasy and less of an actual decent story. Again, a missed opportunity. We could've had the anime as a slow burn to make us connect with Keyaru as a character more or even just for us to have more time to flesh out the story more. This could've easily been a nice dark fantasy (yes, even if we keep the sex scenes.) already knowing how great some of the scenes were.
Overall, decent. Would I recommend watching it? Probably not. Most that are here to watch this anime are most likely here for the sex and not for the story anyway to which I say go off I guess, but just watch actual hentai instead. And even if you're here for the story, it doesn't really have much substance for me to recommend it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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