Back to Justlike1984's Profile Justlike1984's Profile

This story details the career of the author, Kobayashi Makoto in plain sight for the world to see just how the careers of authors can be ruled over. It's a stunningly heart wrenching affirmation of the struggle to fulfill your dreams while being combatting with the expectations of society and your superiors.

Don't let yourself be taken advantage of and take care of those close to you. Don't let yourself succumb to the regrets of your past and future. Those are the main themes of this simple biography that lays the heart of this story to readers to bare. Brilliant.

There's really only one question on everyone's mind when going into the latest season of Psycho-Pass. "Is it as bad as season 2?" While initially, the short answer that came to me was that it was in fact not as bad as the previous season this simple comparison does fail to do justice to any ideas around this season and how it truly stacks up to the franchise. Psycho-Pass 3 takes place a few years after the events of the last season and the Sinners of the System movies. We follow new inspectors Shindou Arata and Kei Mikhail Ignatov. They are forced to chase ... various culprits in their attempts to make sense of the the manipulation and assassination attempts on the Tokyo gubernatorial candidates and resulting governor.

I'll go ahead state that this season is thought out in large detail, complex, and comprehensive. All issues that last season held as it tried to jump from case to case in the most convenient manner possible, are actually erased. Particularly each incident from S2 played out in a ridiculous, cartoonish manner. S3 grows up... or at least that's what I'd like to say. The comparative strengths of S3 actually don't look so bright on its own. As the season proceeds, the cases essentially devolve into the inspectors chasing info, while leaving the viewer struggling to keep up. What you see during the episodes is some issue or event occurs, then Arata along with the criminal investigation department's analyst Shion exposition dump a mass of info pertaining to whatever findings are discovered via either some data analysis deductions or some information searching that reveals the activities of a person of interest being investigated. This is followed by the team proceeding to investigate to attain more information only to either be stone walled by politics and bureaucracy, or to find new strings to chase in the investigation with little in the way of answers. Essentially, it's as if the writer is attempting to ensure that the failure of the last season doesn't not occur, merely creating another dilemma in the process. Instead of previously using cartoonish, silly scenarios in which no serious professional would act to force the story to go along its path to arrive at a certain place, on this occasion the writer drags the viewer through the course of the story in order to expedite the process of the story telling and arrive at the necessary conclusion by using mass case info and jumping to conclusions difficult for the viewer to reasonably follow. "But Rev, surely the show just wants you to think hard enough along with, maybe you just aren't paying attention!". Well, I wish. Let me give a plain example that occurs early on. It's established that a Gubernatorial campaign is occurring, and in episode 3 a staffer on one side dies by falling out a window. Shion asks the investigative group to guess what she found on security camera footage and Arata guesses that they found a member of the opposition campaign was staying at the same hotel. This is a significant scene due to how it's portrayed, which is to portray that Arata is smart but it also inherently says that you should be able to guess this. Well, turns out that the guy had actually absolutely nothing to do with the matter. This doesn't just happen once, this happens every episode. The viewer is given information stated to them from analysis about the case rather than witnessing the perpetrators actions. This creates confusion around the actions of various antagonists an deciphering who is behind ceratin events. The flaw behind this is clear. The series gets difficult to follow, particularly as you get into later episodes. If someone sat down with you to watch an episode mid season and asked for a brief explanation following the plot of the season, it would be unreasonably difficult to do.

There's a greater point that I want to make here, which is really the crux of the last 2 seasons of Psycho-Pass. Each season has cases that it starts off with, with the goal of eventually making it to the big case at the end and the overall point regarding the cases themselves as well as the integrity of the system. Season 1 managed this brilliantly, sticking to a single theme of individuality and freedom vs the Sibyl System and portraying that through the thoughtful actions of the antagonist. Season 2 for all it's criticisms did have a good overall idea around it wanting to look at the judgment of groups, but every single case was done in portrayed in some ridiculous outlandish manner in which you could not actually believe that the author would write it without actually seeing the flaw in it. But in season 3 we take a dive in the complete opposite direction. In this season, we can understand how the author wants to string each of the cases together, but most the information is conveyed to the viewer in a using a large amount of the aforementioned information dumping. We rarely see the actions of the culprits behind the initial cases. Although we are aware these guys are not the main villains, but merely the underlings of people being manipulated by those villains, it leaves the viewer feeling like you are lacking knowledge about events for the most part. Another example I could use is to return to season 1. For every case, Makishima manipulated someone to cause some sort of act. Over these cases, we got to observe what the culprit did and why, and slowly we learned Makishima's objectives. In this season, the viewer is near completely blind to the culprits. We play a role closer to the shoes of the investigators rather than that of a neutral, omniscient observer. This is doesn't work as an overall directional choice because this is a show. It's not for example a video game, where the player role plays an investigator solving cases.

This draws me to the conclusion that that Ubutaka Tow cannot string together a story to save his life. He cannot. I don't mean he can't make the basic outline of a story. Though it's hard to say for this season as the story isn't complete, for last season the overall concept was fitting and interesting. But good writers do the hard part, which is getting the story properly from start to finish and detailing it in a manner that makes sense. He tried one method in season 2 and it failed. He tried another this season and it did not fail as badly, but it still failed. He just isn't a guy that you want in charge of writing an overall story, because he can't link together points and ideas as well as Gen Urobuchi can. Hell, even the man who worked on the movies, Makoto Fukami, did a decent job of following up on the story. I can only assume that whatever role he played in the story help smooth things out in some manner to make it slightly better than S2, Due to Ubutaka Tow not having working on any of the movies.

Of course there are other strange things to see about the show. The mentalist ability is a rather outlandish way to characterize whatever psychotic issues Arata has while driving the story, as it's a capability he pulls out whenever he finds himself in a pinch to deduce what happened to the deceased. The show also focuses on the Sibyl's decision to accept immigrants after initally holding an isolationist policy. This matches the idea of Sibyl wishing to eventually expand to outside of Japan even with the risk of strain or failure as shown in the first movie. More so I just think the portrayal of it all is tactless. On some occasions the show paints any anti immigrants as evil job and health service thieves, but I was surprised to see they never touched on the mere that foreign hues clouded natives in other ways such as differing cultures. But at other times it is portrayed in an understandable manner, portraying them as exploited for cheap labor or prostitution. These issues are all still touched on rather superficially. The best case in which the show builds a concept is where it replicates the US housing crash and recession in one of the first cases, but again it is slightly superficial in how it handled the culprits and the progression of the case.

There is definitely other stuff the can be observed, but the aforementioned points on Ubutaka Tow, the overall writing and how the story is driven will form your overall opinion of the show. If you care about that, you will think the show is poor or average and that will be what truly lets the show down and makes viewers not really care about what entertainment it does provide. If that does not bother you, then you will like the show. And there is stuff to like. The action is still great to watch, the show is scheming, and the OST is good as with previous seasons. There are still a lot of interesting mysteries for the show to cover which will be good. The mysteries behind the two new inspectors families as well as the previous incidents in the 3 year gap between SS and this season the led to Gino and Teppei to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with the incarceration of Akane. The role of Bifrost and its relationship to Sibyl. I don't expect to be let down on all of these fronts, but for me the most important things in life are characterized not by their strengths, but their weaknesses. And the same holds true with Psycho-Pass Season 3.

People are too quick to call a series a “underrated”. This is because it’s not easy to gauge the popularity of a series in relation to the following you think it "should" have. If I were to make a list of underrated series, that list would be incredibly short. It would also include World Trigger which isn't a label typically attached to a Weekly Shonen Jump series. An up and comer in WSJ that drew interest in the when it began to air from the mere fact the it ran in that magazine, that interest almost immediately dissipated in the first couple of episodes. Suddenly, ... everyone remembered that it's Toei animating the series, and being surprised that a bad animation studio badly animates TV shows, they dropped the series. This is a reminder of how heavily influential the actual animation of an anime is for viewers.

As per most WSJ series, World Trigger starts off slow introducing its world, concept, and characters, before kicking off into the actual conflict. Enemies come from another dimension, people set up an organization to stop them, right, yes, whatever. Fairly straightforward Jump exposition dumping. Mainly bizarre is the anime’s weird name sense, though does get better later. The series starts out as main character Mikumo Osamu finds out a neighbor, Kuga Yuma, transferred into his school. Things gets more interesting around 10 episodes in when Border finds out what he is and attempt to deal with him, and even more so later when Border comes into conflict with other Neighbor worlds.

Osamu is extremely weak but he’s well worked as a character. Initially introduced as a morally righteous individual, it was shown in initial scenes that simply being righteous was useless when he gets his ass kicked pathetically by his classmates while Kuga watches. He never gains anything undeserved and doesn't win just because he's more virtuous or emotional than his opponent. He struggles with his lack of strength and his goals in the story, often fearing inadequacy and failure. This is really one of the big things that Jump has traded away over the past few years. I certainly do not expect some inner turmoil on par with shows like Evangelion and others, but seeing protagonists struggle with themselves and make mistakes is always welcome. This combines with Osamu's efforts to improve which are well thought out and interesting to watch. Though somewhat smart his honesty, despite the potential self damage it incurs, is appealing. It creates a good underdog character. And most of the characters run along similar lines of characterization.

Shonen Jump has a tendency to constantly have the MC in the spotlight before all else as the recognizable face of the series. Whenever there’s a big fight, the MC is always in the lead, even if the fight has little to do with him. He may or may not give a big speech rebuking his opponent, often with little actual relevance to that conflict. Osamu is the antithesis of this. The MC doesn’t preach to the opposition, or the viewership, which gets highly annoying and silly if not meaningful. Characters are no longer shoved into some the unnecessary “good guy” and “bad guy” categories.

This means that characters have to more be defined by their thoughts and actions as people, not just as a hero or villain. This helps the author bring attention to the vast cast without having the audience first watch a huge amount of content. It’s frequent that a huge cast is introduced and only really make a small amount of that huge cast is interesting, or they all end up boring even if a huge amount of time is spent on the characters. They're all just there to make up numbers, but it doesn't feel that way with World Trigger. This is because they don't take up huge amounts of screen time or hold big 1v1 battles involving irrelevant characters.

The power system is actually quite interesting for the series. Fighting series are defined and remembered by their power systems. World Trigger is no different. Jojo, One Piece, DBZ, Hakusho are all examples of this done positively. Usually most shonen series which involve abilities usually center around everyone having their own unique ability, but that's not the case. The system is simple, but the way it's implemented makes it a great system as it still allows creativity but does away with individual gimmicks of one character having a silly overpowered ability, or powering up until he has one.

World Trigger’s trion system resembles a video game in its use. The show places tangible importance on the skills of the individual user, how they use what they have, the situation they are in, and how they fight with those around them. This is what make the battles truly exciting in World Trigger. They rely more so on strategy and very rarely if ever is there an outright power battle between two characters. It enticing to see how each character uses the weapons along with their own skills. And even if you're stronger, it's possible to lose in a way that's not an asspull designed just so the protagonist can win. While I do love to see a couple characters duke it out and try to kick each other’s ass every now and then, this is fun and refreshing in its own right.

I bring up Jump, the target Shounen demographic, and other shows that make these strange errors frequently because that’s the standard. Those are all the tropes and oft-used clichés. Those are all the unnecessary additives along with the annoying detractions that appear in this specific genre, particularly recently. These series hold a lot in common with each other and end up stiffly adhering to a formula to satisfy an audience and they fail to hold the entertain value that they strive for because of it. There’s definitely good in World Trigger, but that comes out because it doesn’t do basic things improperly. It doesn’t do things that are unnecessary, out of character, or out of line.

As for the animation, I mentioned that the first 10 episodes are quite slow, but any further pacing issues come down to how this show was animated and directed. World Trigger's first 10 or so episodes look god awful, plain and simple. Stills, the rehashed Trigger activation animation, and occasional strange lack of frames in scenes contribute to this. Luckily, they managed to get rid of 2 of these problems as the show goes on.

The main issue that persisted is the stills. I found them strangely endearing at times and they got me to laugh at their placement and how unbelievable it was. There are frequents moments in each episode where the frame sits on a character's face for several seconds as they say/do absolutely nothing. In most other anime, you'd see panning shots and some sort of camera movement or change in perspective when there is no dialogue to keep the viewer occupied.

Various scenes are also censored even though most action takes place in a fake body. It’s annoying, but bearable. Even with these problems World Trigger may be the best animated of Toei's TV works of the current century, particularly with how underwhelming One Piece is and what little I've seen of Dragonball Super. This should be fairly embarrassing. All fight scenes are done pretty nicely and it's nice to see that Toei at least doesn't slack off here.

This is the first time I've seen an OP/ED stuck in the middle of an episode. They're good though and for the most part the OST is as well. Toei still uses the same old not so dramatic sound effects that we've heard all the way back since DBZ aired. You'll also find it in One Piece. This helps to draw out various stills and take up episode time.

Really I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed the anime as I was expected to eventually drop it and just go with the manga like with One Piece, but it worth at looking into.

The filler sucks so don't watch it. It’s genuinely like they tried to put Pokemon battles in World Trigger. It’s insane.

The hyped up, fanservice extra to Kuroko's Basketball, Kagami and the Generation of Miracles take on the evil Americans in a game of streetball in this short sequel to the original.

This is fun for really one reason. You get to see a whole ton of overpowered players go at it at full force. You feel a bit of rehash, as this is the 3rd opponent of the series that's an evil asshole. It doesn't hold the weight of the original series because there isn't really a goal other than to beat the opponent. There's no reward or recognition, and the players are all already ... at full strength too, so it's not a stepping stone for further growth.

You kinda see why Kuroko ended after only 1 in story year, even with all the sales and fan sentiment willing it to continue. There isn't anything left to explore. What's past zone? What else can Kuroko improve? Will he make the hoop disappear next? Will Kagami jump from the 3 point line? Will Midorima just shoot faster or do fadeaway, fullcourt 3's? Will Murasakibara just dunk harder? Will Akashi read further into the future? Kuroko no Basket hardly focused on tactics at any point so I can't see it doing so in the future. It was built on what badass, ridiculous move would be pulled off next, and there's a pretty thin line between ridiculous fun and flat-out stupidity.

Kuroko stops just as it reaches that line, and that's a respectable thing.

“Light – A source of illumination, such as a small fire or torch. ‘A light shows us the way’”

Soft, quiet, and lukewarm, Fune wo Amu chronicles how an awkward yet thoughtfully observant man stumbles onto a job perfectly suited for himself. After being fairly unsuccessful in sales, Majime Mitsuya is recruited for dictionary editing through a colleague, and he quickly immerses himself in creating “The Great Passage” a modern Japanese dictionary.

Fune wo Amu does a decent number of things properly. From addressing the teamwork and differing strengths of the team members to the hindrances of upper management and obtrusive egos of outside help, the ... show nails how it feels to be in the workplace, and it does so without exaggeration, nor time wasting on issues that are irrelevant or just don’t really matter.

But for all the relatability, the show does leans rather on the optimistic side. For the 13 years put into the dictionary, the only real negative was that Matsumoto-sensei, the man who originally pushed for the creation of the dictionary, dies of cancer just prior to the work getting put into print and being released. For the fleeting influence he had on the show, Matsumoto may have had the most telling effect, discussing how personal interests can at time be of a better influence than public on certain projects, using dictionaries as an example. With all the obstacles, with the threats of their department being shut down, with the personnel transfers, and the time needed to complete the project and mistakes that arise, in the end they do win out. And although the hard work does come to fruition, it was done really without any losers or compromises. This lack of competitiveness partially contributes to the mellow atmosphere of the anime, but it almost says “as long as you’re dedicated, things will work out”.

The effect shows on one occasion through the timeskip. One of Majime’s issues is his inability to properly communicate and work with others, a role taken up by his fellow work colleague, Nishioka. Majime later receives much more work suited to Nishioka, but it is never actually shown how he deals with it. It all kinda works out. The change in character wasn’t what I take issue with as he and Nishioka do exhibit other changes, such as Majime finally getting with a girl or Nishioka finding personal value in his role at the office. It does, however, contribute to the overall atmosphere mentioned previously.

Really, Fune wo Amu is an anime that travels under the shadows of others and it’s clear why. It’s a show that concentrates on and emphasizes words and their importance and value in human society. What the show never really talks about is ideas behind them, the values they represent, the philosophies that they showcase. The idea that words are a conduit for the sharing of these things for people is an understated one, but reasonably so, because contemplating and communicating those ideologies is simply of higher precedence than the fact that we are capable of doing so. That’s what truly makes us people, and that’s why this show will slide by unnoticed.

This was enjoyable for what it was, a calm show following a guy life’s work. It was one of the better ones of Fall, but there’s more out there.

Holy crap what the hell were they thinking? Sunrise may well have just come out and just said "we don'tactually know what to do with Akito the Exiled lmao". That's how poor this final episode really is. Now this isn't a sudden 180, but the show did hang in the balance after the events of the last 2 episodes with the damn gypsies and other events. The show just proceeds to get down on its knees and slam it's face into the ground joyfully afterwards.

Akito the Exiled finally shown the confrontation between Akito and his "NII-SAN!", ... and we finally after years of this OVA would arrive at this answer. What are the true motives of Hyuuga Shin?! Why does he want his precious younger brother to die?! Because he doesn't want him to go through all the suffering of this cruel world! I killed them because I loved them!

Leila also gets the magic ability to reset time for one convenient try and there was a weird event were Akito and co. disappeared and broke space but Hyuuga Shin's character was so egregious I hardly cared too much about it how silly this was at this point.

OVA's 1 and 2 were a good addition to the main series while 3, 4, and 5 just rendered it another cash grab featuring one of the worst antagonists that I've seen. Thanks Sunrise.

In anime there are times where a show would do one bad thing that gets on your nerves, but thinking that it will eventually stop, you ignore it and trudge onward. That's never how it works. This is the case whether it's a colleague frequently telling jokes with awful puns, a sibling constantly poking at you, or many other situations, and Bungou Stray Dogs exemplifies this quite strongly. Bungou Stray Dogs follows an orphaned kid named Atsushi who attracts misfortune to himself wherever he goes. After meeting Osamu Dazai, he joins the "Detective Agency", a small, special agency of superpowered detectives who solve cases in ... the city.

Story 4/10:
The atmosphere that the show creates is the most defining part of this anime. Bungou Stray Dogs often adopts a light, joking atmosphere that fails to amuse because it is so forced. Whenever a gag is made, the characters are drawn in a simple, cartoony manner and the reaction of surrounding characters are of the usual straight-man archetype, either finding difficulty in silliness of the situation, or berating the character making the gag. This is not funny. In fact the one time Bungou Stray Dogs made me laugh was in the penultimate episode in which it ditched this formula for a short period. For another good example of comedy from this season, look no further than "Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto" from this season. Each scene is completely outlandish yet treated as if it's almost natural for Sakamoto, which makes it amusing.

But not only is it completely unfunny, Bungou Stray Dogs wants to have it both ways. This is mostly a serious anime, but it also tries to simultaneously be funny. This only makes it difficult to take seriously. BSD has no idea of how to segment the serious from the non serious. The main example of this comes in the opening episodes when the opposing "Port Mafia" launches a raid on the Detective Agency after being built up for the whole episode only for every character from the Port Mafia to job and get chucked out the window of the building at the end. This is what makes Bungou Stray Dogs incredibly hollow. An unnecessary and unnatural tone and a frequent betrayal of expectations only hurts this anime.

Characters 4/10
The characters are slightly interesting but I don't think the story takes full advantage of what is has, at least for now. Each of the characters in Bungou Stray Dogs in based on a historical Japanese author, with Osamu Dazai and Edogawa Ranpo probably being the most recognizable, but I don't think the anime does enough to incorporate that into the story. With a character already set as the base, there is more expectation on what is done with that character but very little happens. We are limited to their ability being somewhat representative of their works. The theme of the characters representing authors ends up being something that is just there, but not at all necessary. Atsushi is particularly disappointing as his characterization is limited to a flashback that occurs at least once per episode in which he remembers his former caregivers at the orphanage kicking him out for bringing them misery. This is an annoying stigma that tends to haunt anime. Pushing a theme of wanting a sense of belonging in a not at all subtle way almost treats the viewer as if they aren't at all intelligent, and tries to draw pity where there is little to none.

Overall 4/10:
It's unfortunate because Bones has been building this show up for a while with some decent looking trailers and the synopsis of the show is quite interesting. But both the fights and the detective cases don't follow through on the initial promise. Just give me a cool action show with detectives actually solving issues and battling criminals and I'll be happy. Bungou Stray Dogs only added a lot of unneeded fluff to that.

Harmony is one the three movies of Project Itoh, a series of anime films based on the works of Satoshi Itoh. Harmony encompasses a dystopian society in which all health needs are now medically solved, but society is in turn controlled by health and the government.

I'll go ahead and get right into why such an idea I find interesting ended up so poor, given my liking of various dystopian anime and other works. Harmony is very barebones in its approach. A large amount of information is dumped onto viewers through the viewpoint of the main character, Kirie Tuan regarding the society and her experiences. ... Through Tuan and her friends, the movie attempts to imply how this is an example of how poor the society is now. Eventually the girls decide to commit suicide together, but this is an isolated incident and teenagers being frustrated at the world and considering suicide is a fairly normal thing, so this proves to not be a reflection on the underlying issues in this world. Such a thing could happen regardless of whether we're situated in this society, or a normal one. We're never shown how society as a whole receives the system because most other characters are pretty irrelevant. So Harmony gives the viewer a very minimalistic view of the society it creates and this just works against it. In the 2 hour length of the film, Harmony fails to find the time to the sole important factor that it really needs to go into depth about

What this film does dedicate a large amount of time was to exposition on Mihie Miach's character, but it ends up too repetitive. We find out that she's read some books about humanity, thus she's a genius. She neither says nor does anything profound or particularly philosophical. Her strangeness makes her two friends love her, but too much time is spent on so little.

The biggest problem with the story is that in the end no one really rejects the supposed utopia. Nor do they accept it. The movie ends anti-climatically and inconclusively. To compound the oddness of this, the movie also eventually comes down to two choices, produced by Miach in reject of the current state of society. Choice one is to continue with the current dystopia that monitors health, restricts freedom, and homogenizes humanity. The second option that comes up is to force the people to run around and live unconsciously, mindlessly and automatically carrying out their duties. So in the end, we're just replacing one dystopia with another. This is the solution the genius Miach came up with to solve the suffering of the people. Amplify the non-problems of the people into actual problems, and turn them into bots.

Keeping people healthy isn't a moral issue, especially when it's available to everyone. Being capable of getting ill doesn't make you more "free", but just the opposite. It's quite odd that this is considered an issue, especially on the level they present it as.

For some reason it seemed like the story was supposed to come out smarter than this. There was hardly any humanity in this film. The movie reaches it's best point when the people of the world are handed an ultimatum and havoc begins. It doesn't make much sense how we arrived at the point but it seemed like it realized that it was hitting the dull side and threw a shock at you at the right time. But the latter half of the scene was relegated mostly to Tuan watching reports of the incidents. It almost seemed like a lazy way to not have to do any voice work or heavy animation for the entire 5-10 minutes.

Animation wise, it's okay. The CGI was surprisingly good at times, blending in with the typical hand drawn animation. But mostly it was typically irking.

This movie was somewhat entertaining, but disappointing. No, actually this movie was just plain stupid. Whittle down a human concept to characters trying to be revolutionary, but just being childish and pretentious is ultimately silly. A movie such as "Gattaca" which holds a similar premise actually posed a moral question by purging those who are deemed genetically inferior, something that doesn't occur in Harmony. Harmony says nothing about human nature, and the follies people have to face for themselves. The movie wants to stand for something, but it doesn't really have a thing to offer.

Storming through the ranks and into the top 10 of MAL, Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, or Erased, was a hit declared a 10/10 and determined to by AOTY just three episodes into the year by quite a few people. Erased follows a jaded, cynical manga artist who is working as a pizza deliveryman. Main character Satoru Fujinuma has the ability to travel back in time shortly to prevent the death of those around him. But after the murder of someone he knows he is sent back to his childhood. Now he has the opportunity to prevent the murder of his classmates in a previously ... unsolved murder case.

Story:
Erased has a lightning start, slugging the viewer in the face in episode one and leaving them wondering who the killer and what his past actions were. Initial episodes covered Satoru taking measures to protect the first victim from 18 years ago, Kayo. While this happens, information and hints are dropped regarding "who dun it" and the viewer is able to make a list of who's the most likely culprit early on.

Dissimilar from typical mysteries, Satoru actually makes little attempt to deal with the problem at it's source. Rather than searching the killer or masterminding a way to catch the person in the act, he takes a less proactive role as guardian protector of Kayo. And he tries to do the same for the next victim. This actually turns out to be an issue which he somehow doesn't realize. It puts a rather obvious neon lighted target on his back as the series progresses. Although the show does well to make you care for the outcome of the conflict and whether or not Kayo is saved, the big issue is that there's still a killer running about in town either way. This contributes to making the tension high at first, but it's troubling to see that the main character is not acting on the suspicion that he may be found by the killer. He see's the danger of the situation in a very narrow view. At no point considering this.

While protecting Kayo, Satoru also must deal with her abusive parent. For the most part he does little wrong here at least at first. His actions can easily come off as strange to observers. His main friend Kenya notices this and wishes to get in on Satoru's plans to help Kayo. He plays it off as him just trying to help a potential friend. This is just a one event, but when the main character again seeks to help under the guise of making this a project of his to play hero, he further draws suspicion on himself.

Characters:
Being a murder mystery, the story centers around the protagonist and his opponent. Unfortunately everyone else takes a back seat. Kayo is an abused child, who is beaten for a simple circular reason. His friends and mom and aren't too atypical. They're really just motivational helpers for the main character. One chocolaty back story proves to be an egregiously laughable motivation for what may have been a reasonable theme, showing what matters isn't just what you say, but how you say it.

If you do sacrifice the side characters then the main ones matter even more. Revival actually plays a big role in the characterization of Satoru because it tackles what was, or perhaps should've been, an important theme in the story involving his character. That was that second chances don't come often, so take them. Satoru is a character who's failing as a manga artist and working an entry level job entering his 30s. By all means he is not experiencing success. Revival gives him the second chance he needs, but he ultimately fails. Then he uses Revival again. Then he fails again. There's an inconsistency in theme here. Satoru gets multiple opportunities to finally get it right, ultimately lucking out because, well, he's the main character. It starts to feel reminiscent of a shonen anime where the protagonist wins against all odds because the situation wills it.

Add to that the hero theme that's built and often referenced in the anime. Satoru really starts to feel like an cartoony hero rather than a tangible human one. This is particularly poor given that the setting is real life, even if time travel is a mechanism used in the story. Satoru is built up as heroic and inspirational, but only slightly comes off as such.

The killer and his motivations were initially quite interesting. What drives him kill and how does he choose who? This comes down to a strange oversimplification that renders his interesting views just dumb. In fact his explained reasoning lacks consistency with all of his murders. Though it seems to finally explain why he chose his targets, it actually completely fails to do so. Erased isn't poor when it comes to character's but it is disappointingly average.

Overall:
Erased was a decent show, but it didn't fall flat due to it's concluding episodes. The path was built up long before that. When looking at a broken bridge, the break is only one part to observe. The lack of proper support is just as important and Erased reflects that. Inconsistencies in the Revival concept would only lead downwards for the story, and the lack of depth for characters doesn't assist the story. Erased hurried through its best moments and slipped on its potential.

In the end, the show may be largely remembered for claims of NTR and pedophilia though.

Before watching Concrete Revolutio, there's much to like and catch your eye. Bones is always an interesting studio, the artstyle pops, and it's about superhumans. But the real problem is what comes after.

Concrete Revolutio follows an organization that seeks out superhumans and protects them in order to maintain public order. This show's plot isn't necessarily beat up some guy abusing his power and terrorizing the city which is a good thing. But it starts to fall wayward soon after its start.

The big issue I have with the show is that nothing is properly connected. This is not because of the occasional transitions between the current ... timeline, which shows the MC after having left the Superhuman Bureau, and the past timeline in which he's still a member. In fact the most interesting part of the show is finding out how the story got to where it was. The problem is that plot points are all so dull. The cases that the Superhuman Bureau works don't catch the interest of viewers and the big failing is the it doesn't emphasize the main characters enough. As an episodic style anime, Concrete Revolutio fails to strike a balance between the plot, the main characters, and the small cast that gets their one episode slot.

What happens here is that the extras get too much time and the main plot is nowhere near emphasized enough in the story. Each episode features a side plot that isn't linked in a way that draws more interest into the main plot. In the end this makes it feel like filler, a wasted 20 minutes of time that could've detailed something else. A few of the episodes just felt like "another day at the office". This could be okay if the main cast had more time in the story and we got to learn more about them, but this isn't the case.

The best part of this anime was definitely the art. The few fights looked nice and as stated before everything pops and is vibrant. The backgrounds are fantastic and I definitely plan to save a few of them.

Overall, Concrete Revolutio isn't particularly worth watching this season. The show seemed pretty unique, which is something I'm all for, but it was executed poorly. I may finish it if I first finish up some other things.